Zeitschriftenartikel zum Thema „Shock advertisement“

The essay is designed to present the phenomena of popular culture, its difference from pop culture, both products of modern West, and their impact on film and advertisement media in India. First, the discussion focuses on the Critical School which proposed the initial thesis of commodification of culture with a resultant “lowering” of standards to appeal to “the masses”, and an appeal to the “average” tastes. In the essay an argument is presented that pop culture is a “critique” of popular culture and is an elitist position attempting to shock popular mores and media content. Given this setting, it is argued that while India has followed both the globalizing popular and pop cultures, neither are adequate to encompass Indian media, specifically their film content.

The goals of this review are to evaluate the impact of socioeconomic (SE) status on the general health and cardiovascular health of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic and also discuss the measures to address disparity. SE status is a strong predictor of premature morbidity and mortality within general health. A lower SE status also has implications of increased cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality and poorer CVD risk factor profiles. CVD comorbidity is associated with a higher case severity and mortality rate from COVID-19, with both CVD and COVID-19 sharing important risk factors. The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected people of a lower SE status and of ethnic minority group, who in the most deprived regions are suffering double the mortality rate of the least deprived. The acute stress, economic recession and quarantine restrictions in the wake of COVID-19 are also predicted to cause a decline in mental health. This could pose substantial increase to CVD incidence, particularly with acute pathologies such as stroke, acute coronary syndrome and cardiogenic shock among lower SE status individuals and vulnerable elderly populations. Efforts to tackle SE status and CVD may aid in reducing avoidable deaths. The implementation of ‘upstream’ interventions and policies demonstrates promise in achieving the greatest population impact, aiming to protect and empower individuals. Specific measures may involve risk factor targeting restrictions on the availability and advertisement of tobacco, alcohol and high-fat and salt content food, and targeting SE disparity with healthy and secure workplaces.

The recent article entitled “Emotions and Prosocial Behaviors: A Study of the Effectiveness of Shocking Charity Campaigns” authored by Jeanne Albouy published in Recherche et Applications en Marketing provides important evidence on the effectiveness of shocking advertisements in the context of charity appeals. Specifically, this research highlights how the negative emotions and empathy that are produced by shock campaigns lead to positive attitudes toward the ad, the cause, and the intentions to help the charity. This work is important because it helps to resolve a conflict in the literature – namely, divergent findings that have shown both positive and negative outcomes for ads in charity campaigns that are emotional and raw in nature. Furthermore, like any good research, this work also seeds new opportunities for future investigation into the role of shock advertising in the context of charity communication campaigns. This commentary will look to highlight where additional research opportunities exist. Specifically, the discussion will center on three directions of potential interest: (1) a broader investigation into the notion of shock advertising in the context of charity campaigns, (2) understanding potential differences in how an audience is exposed to shock advertising and the implications therein, and (3) contemplating other outcome measures that could provide meaningful insight into how shock advertising has an impact in the marketplace.

Abstract In today’s economies the role of marketing cannot be underestimated, just the sole amount of media communications is astonishing not taking in consideration the different marketing and PR strategies involved. The most well-known tools include advertising, public relations, sales promotions, direct marketing and personal selling. There is an increasing number of advertisements that reach our attention by the presence of vulgarity, nudity or moral offenses. The aim of the article is to extensively review the literature of shock advertising namely shockvertising and to pinpoint its evolution in case of Benetton fashion brand. Shockvertising focuses on the idea of selling products through evoking terrifying and repulsive emotions. This type of advertising is used to sensitize people to religion, racism, war, poverty and other taboo topics. The descriptive method is used in order to describe such complex phenomena. The research is conducted in the form of a retrospective qualitative case study focusing on the historical events that are connected to the communications at Benetton. Through the following research a better understanding of shockvertising and its dynamics is reached and emotional reactions of a range of individuals is presented. In addition, the question of ethical considerations and the shock advertising effectiveness is analyzed.

Today’s infotainment clutter puts pressure on advertisers to come up with more surprising and more memorable ads. This need for novelty, creativity, and astonishment does set the expectation bar high, steering ads towards various means of eliciting surprise, including humour, shock, and taboo. In this paper, the author will try to investigate a set of multimodal advertising messages which use (debatable) humour and surprise, with a view to finding trans-cultural similarities and differences in terms of ad appreciation. The primary objective of this paper is to explore attitudinal responses of Taiwanese informants to controversial humorous advertisements in English; to this end, an online survey was conducted to ask them about their interpretations of and feelings towards a selection of ads. Its results will be compared with those obtained from Polish respondents, described in the author’s previous study (Stwora 2020).

The advertisements have a direct bearing on the socio-cultural,"m::*:li: academic, and psychological framework of the children. Constant watching of 1V programs and commercials affect child's social behavior. Behavior is referred to the way the child conducts oneself in his/ her social surroundings. Behavioral impact affects not only the child but also the associates and the environment of child's life, mainly comprising of the family, the school and the neighborhood friend, in terms of the shocks experienced by them. The study delves into identifying the impact of advertising on the social setup of child's world. The best way to understand the child's behavior is to look into the child's family and the social circle it is associated with The parent's responses and their opinions, give a true representation of the child's actual behavior. Hence the parents of the respondent children form a focal point of this study

Architectural lighting design aims to improve the image and aesthetics of an area or building at night known as the concept of city beautification, the lighting must also be able to meet the criteria of safety, orientation and security when implemented in areas or buildings with complex activities such as in an area adjacent to the traffic flow. Technological advances resulted in the change of commercial media communication facilities, such as static billboards turned into LED videotrons. The placement of videotrons needs to be considered on roads with motorized traffic flow, as it allows for the risk of accidents, as well as light pollution especially at night. This study used The Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) method, the extent of the influence of videotron light on the comfort of driving a motor vehicle at the intersection of videotron Menteng Bintaro Park. The result of this research that the placement of videotron is the policy of local government, vendors and environmental managers by paying attention to the AMDAL before and after the facilities are installed, with road safety complementary facilities such as road boundaries and shock lines. Information about commercial advertisements on videotron Taman Menteng Bintaro as much as 80% for pedestrians and motorists get the information, compared to motorists as much as 60% do not get information. The light effect of videotron greatly affects the surrounding environment and there is a glare effect of light that changes suddenly with results for pedestrians (80%), motorists (60%) and the least of the motorists (50%), because of the more comfortable condition in driving. Desain pencahayaan arsitektural bertujuan untuk meningkatkan citra dan estetika sebuah kawasan atau bangunan pada malam hari yang dikenal dengan konsep city beautification, pencahayaan tersebut juga harus mampu memenuhi kriteria keselamatan, orientasi dan keamanan ketika diimplementasikan pada kawasan atau bangunan dengan aktivitas yang kompleks seperti pada sebuah kawasan yang berdekatan dengan arus lalu lintas. Kemajuan teknologi mengakibatkan perubahan sarana komunikasi media komersial, seperti papan reklame yang statis berubah menjadi videotron LED. Penempatan videotron perlu diperhatikan pada jalan dengan arus lalu lintas kendaran bermotor, karena memungkinkan untuk terjadinya resiko kecelakaan, serta polusi cahaya terutama pada malam hari. Penelitian ini menggunakan metoda Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE), sejauh mana pengaruh cahaya videotron terhadap kenyamanan mengemudi kendaraan bermotor di persimpangan videotron Taman Menteng Bintaro. Hasil penelitian ini adalah bahwa penempatan videotron merupakan kebijakan Pemda, vendor dan pengelola lingkungan dengan memperhatikan AMDAL sebelum dan sesudah fasilitas terpasang, dengan fasilitas pelengkap keamanan jalan seperti batas jalan dan garis kejut. Informasi mengenai iklan komersial pada videotron Taman Menteng Bintaro sebanyak 80% untuk pejalan kaki dan pengendara mobil mendapatkan informasinya, berbanding terbalik dengan pengendara motor sebanyak 60% tidak mendapatkan informasi. Efek cahaya dari videotron sangat mempengaruhi lingkungan sekitar dan terjadi efek silau dari cahaya yang berubah secara tiba-tiba dengan hasil untuk pejalan kaki (80%), pengendara motor (60%) dan paling sedikit dari pengendara mobil (50%), karena kondisi yang lebih nyaman dalam berkendara.

The research paper analyzes the effect of shock advertising on the buying behaviour of consumer. Behavioural scientists confirmed that there is positive effect of shock techniques in advertisement influences the buying behaviour of consumer. The research paper analyzes the shock advertisement components which have a negative attitude or positive attitude of shock advertisement and its effect on buying behaviour of consumer. Literature reviews have shows that positive consumer attitudes and negative consumer attitudes related to shock advertisements are affected by cultural and socio-demographic factors such as religiosity, age, moral code of conduct, gender, individualism and collectivism, and language of high context or language of low context. The theoretical model is made related to social-cultural factors and socio-demographic factors, buying behaviour of consumer, and the perception of consumer related to shock advertisement. The research finding suggests that the content of shock in advertisement enhances the benefit memory, attention and affect the consumer behaviour.

On December 12, 2000, the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) issued its judgment concerning the controversial “shock” advertising campaign of the Italian fashion designer and retailer United Colors of Benetton. Momentaufnahme reported on the oral arguments before the FCC. (No. 3/2000 - Nov. 15, 2000). The Second Senate of the FCC found the 1995 decisions of the Federal Court of Justice (FCJ), which upheld bans on the Benetton advertisements, to be unconstitutional because the bans constituted an infringement of the constitutionally protected right to freely express one's opinion. The Benetton marketing campaign used large format photography depicting provocative issues, including: a duck smothered in oil, apparently from an oil-spill; children being exploited as laborers in a third-world factory; and a naked buttock bearing the stamp “H.I.V. Positive.” Publication of the Benetton advertisements had been challenged as “unfair competition” by a leading consumer protection group (Zentrale zur Bekämpfung unlauteren Wettbewerbs e.V., Bad Homburg).

Introduction This article argues in favour of same-sex marriage, but only under certain conditions. Same-sex marriage ought to be introduced in the Australian context in order to remedy the formal inequalities between lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) citizens and their heterosexual/cisgendered counterparts. One common method of justifying the introduction of formal same-sex relationship recognition has been via the promotion of LGBT “normalcy.” This article explores such a trend by analysing popular media and advertising, since media representations and coverage have been shown to affect the way the general public “learns, understands, and thinks about an issue” (Li and Lui 73). This article finds that the promotion of normalcy can, in fact, perpetuate hetero-norms, and only offer LGBT people an imaginary social equality. Such normalisation, it is suggested, is detrimental to a wider goal of gaining respect for LGBT people regardless, not in spite of, their identity and relationships. Yet, this article maintains that such imaginary equality can be avoided, so long as a plurality of possibilities for one’s intimate and familial life are actively legitimated and promoted. Australian Same-Sex Relationship Recognition The Relationships Act 2003 (Tas) was the first piece of Australian legislation to formally recognise same-sex relationships. This act allowed Tasmanian residents to register a partnership, although these unions were not recognised in any other Australian State. However, despite this State-based movement, as well as other examples of same-sex unions gaining increasing recognition in the West, not all legal changes have been positive for LGBT people. One example of this was the Howard Government’s 2004 reformation of the Marriage Act 1961 (Cwlth), which made explicit that marriage could only take place between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, and also refused to acknowledge same-sex marriages performed legally overseas. Furthermore, 2012 saw the failure of several Bills which sought the introduction of same-sex marriage at both the State and Federal level. Thus, same-sex marriage is still illegal in Australia to-date. But, despite these major setbacks, other progress towards same-sex relationship recognition has continued. At the Federal level, different-sex and same-sex de facto relationship recognition became formally equal over the period of 2008-9. Furthermore, it is both official Greens and Australian Labor Party policy to support equal marriage rights. At the State level, the example of recognising same-sex civil unions/registered partnerships has been followed by Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, and Queensland. There are several reasons why same-sex couples may desire the right to marry. Some reasons are practical; in any given Nation-State where same-sex couples are without the right to marry, then same-sex partners are unable to claim the same benefits and undertake the same obligations as heterosexual married couples. They are formally unequal. On the basis of their empirical research Jowett and Peel argue that formal equality is a motivating factor for the same-sex marriage movement, noting that a likely incentive to engage in these unions would be security, since LGBT people have heretofore lived and continue to live with a very real threat of discrimination. This is largely why the option of civil unions was created in the West. The measure was first introduced by Denmark in 1989, and its purpose was to be a marriage-like institution, existing solely for the recognition of same-sex couples (Broberg 149). Although civil unions should theoretically offer same-sex couples the same legal benefits and obligations that heterosexual married couples receive, this is widely believed to be false in practice. The Netherlands has almost achieved full equality, at 96%; however, countries such as Belgium rate poorly, at 48% (Waaldijk 9). As such, it has been argued that civil unions are not sufficient alternatives to marriage. Amitai Etzioni claims, “many gay people feel strongly that unless they are entitled to exactly the same marriages as heterosexuals, their basic individual rights are violated, which they (and many liberals) hold as semisacred” (qtd. in Shanley 65). This opinion demonstrates that formal equality is a key concern of the same-sex marriage debate. However, it is not the only concern. The organisation Australian Marriage Equality (AME), which has been at the forefront of the fight for same-sex marriage since its establishment in 2004, claims that “Civil unions are not as widely understood or respected as marriage and creating a separate name for same-sex relationships entrenches a different, discriminatory, second-class status for these relationships” (Greenwich, The Case for Same-Sex Marriage 3). They claim further that, if recognition continues to be refused, it maintains the message that same-sex partners are not capable of the level of love and commitment associated with marriage (Greenwich, The Case for Same-Sex Marriage). Thus, AME claim that not only do the legal entitlements of civil unions frequently fail to be formally equivalent, but even the difference in name contributes to the ongoing discrimination of LGBT people. Although neither marriage nor civil unions are federally available to same-sex couples in Australia, AME argue that marriage must be primarily endorsed, then (Greenwich, A Failed Experiment 1). The argument is, if Australia were to introduce civil unions, but not marriage, civil unions would reify the second-class status of homosexuals, and would present same-sex relationships and homosexuality as inferior to different-sex relationships and heterosexuality. Thus, the title “marriage” is significant, and one strategy for demonstrating that LGBT people are fit for this title has been by promoting representations of sameness to the heterosexual mainstream. To achieve the status that goes along with the ability to marry, same-sex couples have typically tried to get their relationships publicly recognised and legally regulated in two ways. They have sought to (a) demonstrate that LGBT people do structure their relationships and familial lives according to the heteropatriarchal normative stereotypes of traditional family values, and/or (b) they emphasise the “born this way” aspect of LGBT sexuality/gender identity, refusing to situate it as a choice. This latter aspect is significant, since arguments based on natural “facts” often claim that what is true by nature cannot be changed, and/or what is true by nature is good (Antony 12). These two strategies thus seek to contribute to a shift in the public perception of homosexuals, homosexuality, and same-sex relationships. The idea, in other words, is to promote the LGBT subject as being a “normal” and “good” citizen (Jowett and Peel 206). Media Representations of Normal Gays In Australia, the normalcy of same-sex relationships has been advocated perhaps most obviously in television adverting. One such advertisement is run by Get Up! Action for Australia, an independent, grass-roots advocacy organisation. This ad is shot from a first-person perspective, where the camera is the eyes of the subject. It follows the blossoming of a relationship: from meeting a man on a boat, to exchanging phone numbers, dating, attending social events with friends, sharing special occasions, meeting each other’s families, sharing a home, caring for sick family members, and so forth, finally culminating in a proposal for marriage. Upon the proposal it is revealed that the couple consists of two young-adult, white, middle-class men. The purpose of this advertisement is to surprise the audience member, as the gay couple’s relationship follows the same trajectory of what is typically expected in a heterosexual relationship. The effect, in turn, is to shock the audience member into recognising that same-sex couples are just like different-sex couples. Hopefully, this will also serve to justify to the audience member that LGBT people deserve the same legal treatment as heterosexuals. The couple in this advertisement appear to be monogamous, their relationship seems to have blossomed over a length of time, they support each other’s families, and the couple comes to share a home. Projecting images like these suggests that such aspects are the relevant features of marriage, which LGBT people mimic. The second Australian advertisement from AME, features a young-adult, interracial, gay couple, who also appear to be middle-class. In this advertisement the families of the two partners, Ivan and Chris, comment on the illegal status of same-sex marriage in Australia. The ad opens with Ivan’s parents, and notes the length of their marriage—45 years. Ivan later claims that he wants to get married because he wants to be with Chris for life. These signals remind the viewer that marriage is supposed to be a life-long commitment, despite the prevalence of divorce. The advertisement also focuses on Chris’s parents, who claim that thanks to their son’s relationship their family has now expanded. The ad cuts between segments of spoken opinion and shots of family time spent at dinner, or in a park, and so on. At one point Ivan states, “We’re not activists; we’re just people who want to get married, like everyone else.” This reiterates the “normalcy” of the desire to marry in general, which is confirmed by Chris’s statement when he says, “It means that everyone would accept it. It’s sort of like a normal... A sense of normalcy.” This implies that to be seen as normal is both desirable and good; but more to the point, the ad positions LGBT people as if they are all already normal, and simply await recognition. It does not challenge the perception of what “normalcy” is. Finally, the advertisement closes with the written statement: “Marriage: It’s about family. Everyone’s family.” This advertisement thus draws connections between the legal institution of marriage and socially shared normative conceptions of married family life. While these two advertisements are not the only Australian television ads which support this particular vision of same-sex marriage, they are typical. What is interesting is that this particular image of homosexuality and same-sex relationships is becoming increasingly common in popular media also. For example, American sitcom Modern Family features a gay couple who share a house, have an adopted daughter, and maintain a fairly traditional lifestyle where one works full time as a lawyer, while the other remains at home and is the primary care-giver for their daughter. Their relationship is also monogamous and long-term. The couple is white, and they appear to have a middle-class status. Another American sitcom, The New Normal, features a white gay couple (one is Jewish) who also share a home, are in a long-term monogamous relationship, and who both have careers. This sitcom centres on this couple’s decision to have a child and the life of the woman who decides to act as their surrogate. This couple are also financially well off. Both of these sitcoms have prime Australian television slots. Although the status of the couples’ relationships in the aforementioned sitcoms is not primarily focussed on, they each participate in a relationship which is traditionally marriage-like in structure. This includes long-term commitment, monogamy, sharing a home and economic arrangements, starting and raising a family, and so on. And it is the very marriage-like aspects of same-sex relationships which Australian equal marriage advocates have used to justify why same-sex marriage should be legal. The depiction of on-screen homosexual couples (who are gay, rather than lesbian, bisexual, or trans) and the public debate in favour of same-sex marriage both largely promote and depend upon the perception of these relationships as effectively "the same" as heterosexual relationships in terms of structure, goals, commitment, life plans, lifestyle, and so on. A comment should be made on the particular representations in the examples above. The repetition of images of the LGBT community as primarily male, white, young-adult, middle-class, straight-looking, monogamous, and so on, comes at the expense of distancing even further those who do not conform to this model (Borgerson et. al. 959; Fejes 221). These images represent what Darren Rosenblum calls “but-for queers,” meaning that but-for their sexual orientation, these people would be just the same as “normal” heterosexuals. Rosenblum has commented on the increased juridical visibility of but-for queers and the legal gains they have won; however, he criticises that these people have been unable to adequately challenge heterosexism since their acceptance is predicated on being as much like normative heterosexuals as possible (84-5). Heterosexism and heteronormativity refer to the ways in which localised practices and centralised institutions legitimise and privilege heterosexuality, seeing it as fundamental, natural, and normal (Cole and Avery 47). If the only queers who gain visibility thanks to these sitcoms and advertisements are but-for queers, the likelihood that heterosexism will be challenged with the legal recognition of same-sex marriage drastically decreases. Appeals to sameness and normalcy typically refuse to critically examine heteronormative standards of acceptability. This results in the continued promotion of the “sexually involved couple,” realised according to particular normative standards, as the appropriate, best, or even natural trajectory for one’s intimate life. Thus, a key reason that some LGBT people have rejected marriage as an appropriate goal is because assimilative inclusion does not offer a legitimately respected social identity to LGBT people as a whole. When legal changes promoting the equality of LGBT people are predicated on their assimilation to heteronormative relationship criteria, this can only achieve “imaginary” equality and the illusion of progress, while real instances of homophobia, discrimination, marginalisation and hostility towards LGBT people continue (Richardson 394). Thus, given the highly specified representations of “normal” LGBT people, it is fair to conclude that there is a biased representation of same-sex relationships on-screen in terms of sex, race, ability, wealth, monogamy, and so on. The assimilationist strategy of publicising particularly gay identity and relationships as just like heterosexuality appears to depoliticise queerness and render lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people more or less invisible. This can be problematic insofar as the subversive role that queer identity could play in bringing about social change regarding acceptability of other sexual and intimate relationships is lessened (Richardson 395-6). The question that emerges at this point, then, is whether same-sex marriage is doomed to perpetuate hetero-norms and designate all other non-conformists as socially, morally, and/or legally inferior. Pluralisation Ironically, while some activists reject civil unions, their introduction may be crucial to support a “pluralisation strategy.” AME is, in fact, not opposed to civil unions, so long as they do not pretend to be marriage (Greenwich, A Failed Experiment 1). However, AME’s main focus is still on achieving marriage equality, rather than promoting a diverse array of relationship recognition. A pluralisation strategy, though, would seek to question the very normative and hierarchical status of marriage, given the strategy’s key aim of greater options for legally regulated relationship recognition. Regarding polyamorous relationships specifically, Elizabeth Emens has argued that,The existence of some number of people choosing to live polyamorous lives should prompt us all to [...] think about our own choices and about the ways that our norms and laws urge upon us one model rather than pressing us to make informed, affirmative choices about what might best suit our needs and desires.” (in Shanley 79) While non-monogamous relationships have frequently been rejected, even by same-sex marriage activists, since they too threaten traditional forms of marriage, the above statement clearly articulates the purpose of the pluralisation strategy: to challenge people to think about the way norms and laws press one model upon people, and to challenge that model by engaging in and demanding recognition for other models of intimate and familial relationships. When a variety of formal options for legalising various types of relationships is legislated for, this allows people greater choice in how they can conceive and structure their relationships. It also creates a political space where norms can be publicly assessed, criticised, and re-evaluated. Thus, the goal to be achieved is the representation of multiple relationship/family structures as being of equal worth, rather than fixing them in a relationship hierarchy where traditional marriage is the ideal. There exist many examples of people who “do relationships differently”—whether they are homosexual, polyamorous, asexual, step-families, and so on—and the existence of these must come to be reflected as equally valuable and viable options in the dominant social imaginary. Representations in popular media are one avenue, for example, which advocates of this pluralisation strategy might employ in order to achieve such a shift. Another avenue is advocacy. If advocacy on the importance of formally recognising multiple types of relationships increased, this may balance the legitimacy of these relationships with marriage. Furthermore, it may prevent the perpetuation of hetero-norms and increase respect for LGBT identity, since they would be less likely to be pressured into assimilation. Thus, same-sex marriage activists could, in fact, gain from taking up the cause of refusing one single model for relationship-recognition (Calhoun 1037). In this sense, then, the emergence of civil union schemes as an alternative to marriage in the West has potentially yielded something very valuable in the way of increasing options regarding one’s intimate life, especially in the Australian context where diverse recognition has already begun. Interestingly, Australia has come some way towards pluralisation at the State level; however, it is hardly actively promoted. The civil union schemes of both Tasmania and Victoria have a provision entitling “caring couples” to register their relationships. A “caring couple” involves two people who are not involved in a sexual relationship, who may or may not be related, and who provide mutual or one-sided care to the other. The caring couple are entitled to the same legal benefits as those romantic couples who register their relationships. One can infer then, that not only sexual relationships, but those of the caring couple as in Tasmania and Victoria, or possibly even those of a relationship like one “between three single mothers who are not lovers but who have thrown in their lot together as a family,” could be realised and respected if other alternatives were available and promoted alongside marriage (Cornell, in Shanley 84). While Australia would have quite some way to go to achieve these goals, the examples of Tasmania and Victoria are a promising start in the right direction. Conclusion This paper has argued that marriage is a goal that LGBT people should be wary of. Promoting limited representations of same-sex oriented individuals and couples can perpetuate the primacy of hetero-norms, and fail to deliver respect for all LGBT people. However, despite the growing trend of justifying marriage and homosexuality thanks to “normalcy”, promotion of another strategy—a pluralisation strategy—might result in more beneficial outcomes. It may result in a more balanced weight of normative worth between institutions and types of recognition, which may then result in citizens feeling less compelled to enter marriage. Creating formal equality while pursuing the promotion of other alternatives as legitimate will result in a greater acceptance of queer identity than will the endorsement of same-sex marriage justified by LGBT normalcy. While the latter may result in speedier access to legal benefits for some, the cost of such a strategy should be underscored. 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Cigarette smoking continues to pose a global health risk, including in developing countries. Fear appeal messages have been widely employed in health communication to reduce cigarette smoking, but studies provide conflicting results on their efficacy. The present qualitative study explores smokers’ perceptions of fear appeal messages used in anti-smoking advertising. Focus group discussions were conducted with male and female smokers from Gauteng. A thematic analysis found that participants negatively viewed advertisements that use unrealistic images and failed to relate to the message portrayed. Information about the risks associated with smoking was perceived as patronising and as positioning smokers as ignorant and unintelligent. In addition, fear appeal messages that only focus on long-term consequences of smoking were perceived as ineffective. Participants failed to identify with content that solely relied on factual information at the expense of an emotive appeal. The findings suggest that anti-smoking communication could benefit from content that evokes shock without sacrificing realism, that it should include information about short-term and immediately visible consequences of smoking and that it should avoid negative depictions of smokers that alienate them from the message being portrayed.OpsommingSigaretrook dra steeds ’n wêreldwye gesondheidsrisiko, met inbegrip van in ontwikkelende lande. Vrees-oproepende boodskappe word algemeen in gesondheidskommunikasie gebruik om rookgedrag te verminder, maar studies toon teenstrydige resultate rakende die doeltreffendheid daarvan. Die huidige kwalitatiewe studie ondersoek rokers se persepsies van vrees-oproepende boodskappe soos in antirook-advertensies gebruik. Fokusgroepbesprekings is met manlike en vroulike rokers in Gauteng gehou. ’n Tematiese ontleding het gevind dat deelnemers advertensies wat onrealistiese beelde gebruik, negatief beskou en dat hulle nie met die boodskap identifi seer nie. Inligting oor die risiko’s geassosieer met rook is as neerbuigend gesien en dat dit rokers as onkundig en onintelligent voorstel. Verder is gevind dat vrees-oproepende boodskappe wat slegs op langtermyngevolge van rook fokus ondoeltreffend beskou word. Deelnemers het nie met inhoud geïdentifiseer wat slegs op feitlike inligting steun ten koste van ’n emotiewe beroep nie. Die bevindinge stel voor dat antirook-kommunikasie uit inhoud kan baat wat skok uitlok, sonder om realisme prys te gee. Inhoud moet oor inligting van korttermyn- en onmiddellik sigbare gevolge van rook beskik en negatiewe uitbeeldings wat rokers van die boodskap distansieer, moet vermy word.

There have been a number of Australian memoirs written by adoptees over the last twenty years—Robert Dessaix’s A Mother’s Disgrace, Suzanne Chick’s Searching for Charmian, Tom Frame’s Binding Ties:An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia, for example—as well as international adoptee narratives by Betty Jean Lifton, Florence Fisher, and A. M. Homes amongst others. These works form a component of the small but growing field of adoption life writing that includes works by “all members of the adoption triad” (Hipchen and Deans 163): adoptive parents, birthparents, and adoptees. As the broad genre of memoir becomes more theorised and mapped, many sub-genres are emerging (Brien). My own adoptee story (which I am currently composing) could be a further sub-categorisation of the adoptee memoir, that of “late discovery adoptees” (Perl and Markham), those who are either told, or find out, about their adoption in adulthood. When this is part of a life story, secrets and silences are prominent, and digging into these requires using whatever resources can be found. These include cookbooks, recipes written by hand, and the scraps of paper shoved between pages. There are two cookbooks from my adoptive mother’s belongings that I have kept. One of them is titled Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking, and this was published around 1937 in England. It’s difficult to date this book exactly, as there is no date in my copy, but one of the advertisements (for Bird’s Custard, I think; the page is partly obscured by an Orange Nut Loaf recipe from a Willow baking pan that has been glued onto the page) is headed with a date range of 1837 to 1937. It has that smell of long ago that lingers strongly even now, out of the protective custody of my mother’s storage. Or should I say, out of the range of my adoptive father’s garbage dump zeal. He loved throwing things away, but these were often things that I saw as valuable, or at least of sentimental value, worth keeping for the memories they evoked. Maybe my father didn’t want to remember. My mother was brimming with memories, I discovered after her death, but she did not reveal them during her life. At least, not to me, making objects like these cookbooks precious in my reconstruction of the lives I know so little about, as well as in the grieving process (Gibson).Miss Tuxford (“Diplomée Board of Education, Gold Medallist, etc”) produced numerous editions of her book. My mother’s is now fragile, loose at the spine and browned with age. There are occasional stains showing that the bread and cakes section got the most use, with the pages for main meals of meat and vegetables relatively clean. The author divided her recipes into the main chapters of Soups (lentil, kidney, sheep’s head broth), Sauces (white, espagnol, mushroom), Fish (“It is important that all fish is fresh when cooked” (23)), Meats (roasted, boiled, stuffed; roast rabbit, boiled turkey, scotch collop), Vegetables (creamed beetroot, economical salad dressing, potatoes baked in their skins), Puddings and Sweets (suet pastry, Yorkshire pudding, chocolate tarts, ginger cream), Bread and Cakes (household bread, raspberry sandwich cake, sultana scones, peanut fancies), Icings and Fillings, Invalid Cookery (beef tea, nourishing lemonade, Virol pudding), Jams, Sweetmeats and Pickles (red currant jelly, piccalilli) and Miscellaneous Dishes including Meatless Recipes (cheese omelette, mock white fish, mock duck, mock goose, vegetarian mincemeat). At the back, Miss Tuxford includes sections on gas cooking hints, “specimen household dinners” (206), and household hints. There is then a “Table of Foods in Season” (208–10) taking the reader through the months and the various meats and vegetables available at those times. There is a useful index and finally an advertisement for an oven cleaner on the last page (which is glued to the back cover). There are food and cookery advertisements throughout the book, but my favourite is the one inside the front cover, for Hartley’s jam, featuring two photographs of a little boy. The first shows him looking serious, and slightly anxious, the second wide-eyed and smiling, eager for his jam. The text tells mothers that “there’s nothing like plenty of bread and Hartley’s for a growing boy” (inside front cover). I love the simple appeal to making your little boy happy that is contained within this tiny narrative. Did my mother and father eat this jam when they were small? By 1937, my mother was twenty-one, not yet married, living with her mother in Weston-super-Mare. She was learning secretarial skills—I have her certificate of proficiency in Pitman’s shorthand—and I think she and my father had met by then. Perhaps she thought about when she would be giving her own children Hartley’s jam, or something else prepared from Miss Tuxford’s recipes, like the Christmas puddings, shortbread, or chocolate cake. She would not have imagined that no children would arrive, that twenty-five years of marriage would pass before she held her own baby, and this would be one who was born to another woman. In the one other cookbook I have kept, there are several recipes cut out from newspapers, and a few typed or handwritten recipes hidden within the pages. This is The Main Cookery Book, in its August 1944 reprint, which was written and compiled by Marguerite K. Gompertz and the “Staff of the Main Research Kitchen”. My mother wrote her name and the date she obtained the cookbook (31 January 1945) on the first blank page. She had been married just over five years, and my father may, or may not, have still been in the Royal Air Force. I have only a sketchy knowledge of my adoptive parents. My mother was born in Newent, Gloucestershire, and my father in Bromley, Kent; they were both born during the first world war. My father served as a navigator in the Royal Air Force in the second world war in the 1940s, received head and psychological injuries and was invalided out before the war ended. He spent some time in rehabilitation, there being letters from him to my mother detailing his stay in one hospital in the 1950s. Their life seemed to become less and less secure as the years passed, more chaotic, restless, and unsettled. By the time I came into their lives, they were both nearly fifty, and moving from place to place. Perhaps this is one reason why I have no memory of my mother cooking. I cannot picture her consulting these cookbooks, or anything more modern, or even cutting out the recipes from newspapers and magazines, because I do not remember seeing her do it. She did not talk to me about cooking, we didn’t cook together, and I do not remember her teaching me anything about food or its preparation. This is a gap in my memory that is puzzling. There is evidence—the books and additional paper recipes and stains on the pages—that my mother was involved in the world of the kitchen. This suggests she handled meats, vegetables, and flours, kneaded, chopped, mashed, baked, and boiled all manners of foods. But I cannot remember her doing any of it. I think the cooking must have been a part of her life before me, when she lived in England, her home country, which she loved, and when she still had hope that children would come. It must have then been apparent that her husband was going to need support and care after the war, and I can imagine she came to realise that any dreams she had would need rearranging.What I do remember is that our meals were prepared by my father, and contained no spices, onions, or garlic because he suffered frequently from indigestion and said these ingredients made it worse. He was a big-chested man with small hips who worried he was too heavy and so put himself on diets every other week. For my father, dieting meant not eating anything, which tended to lead to binges on chocolate or cheese or whatever he could grab easily from the fridge.Meals at night followed a pattern. On Sundays we ate roast chicken with vegetables as a treat, then finished it over the next days as a cold accompaniment with salad. Other meals would feature fish fingers, mince, ham, or a cold luncheon meat with either salad or boiled vegetables. Sometimes we would have a tin of peaches in juice or ice cream, or both. No cookbooks were consulted to prepare these meals.What was my mother doing while my father cooked? She must have been in the kitchen too, probably contributing, but I don’t see her there. By the time we came back to Australia permanently in 1974, my father’s working life had come to an end, and he took over the household cookery for something to do, as well as sewing his own clothes, and repairing his own car. He once hoisted the engine out of a Morris Minor with the help of a young mechanic, a rope, and the branch of a poinciana tree. I have three rugs that he wove before I was born, and he made furniture as well. My mother also sewed, and made my school uniforms and other clothes as well as her own skirts and blouses, jackets and pants. Unfortunately, she was fond of crimplene, which came in bright primary colours and smelled of petrol, but didn’t require ironing and dried quickly on the washing line. It didn’t exactly hang on your body, but rather took it over, imposing itself with its shapelessness. The handwritten recipe for salad cream shown on the pink paper is not in my mother’s hand but my father’s. Her correction can be seen to the word “gelatine” at the bottom; she has replaced it with “c’flour” which I assume means cornflour. This recipe actually makes me a liar, because it shows my father writing about using pepper, paprika, and tumeric to make a food item, when I have already said he used no spices. When I knew him, and ate his food, he didn’t. But he had another life for forty-seven years before my birth, and these recipes with their stains and scribbles help me to begin making a picture of both his life, and my mother’s. So much of them is a complete mystery to me, but these scraps of belongings help me inch along in my thinking about them, who they were, and what they meant to me (Turkle).The Main Cookery Book has a similar structure to Miss Tuxford’s, with some variations, like the chapter titled Réchauffés, which deals with dishes using already cooked foodstuffs that only then require reheating, and a chapter on home-made wines. There are also notes at the end of the book on topics such as gas ovens and methods of cooking (boiling, steaming, simmering, and so on). What really interests me about this book are the clippings inserted by my mother, although the printed pages themselves seem relatively clean and uncooked upon. There is a recipe for pickles and chutneys torn from a newspaper, and when I look on the other side I find a context: a note about Charlie Chaplin and the House of Representatives’s Un-American Activities Committee starting its investigations into the influence of Communists on Hollywood. I wonder if my parents talked about these events, or if they went to see Charlie Chaplin’s films. My mother’s diaries from the 1940s include her references to movies—Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell, Bing Crosby in Road to Utopia—as well as day to day activities and visits to, and from, family and friends, her sinus infections and colds, getting “shock[ed] from paraffin lamp”, food rationing. If my father kept diaries during his earlier years, nothing of them survives. I remember his determined shredding of documents after my mother’s death, and his fear of discovery, that his life’s secrets would be revealed. He did not tell me I had been adopted until I was twenty-three, and rarely spoke of it afterwards. My mother never mentioned it. I look at the recipe for lemon curd. Did my mother ever make this? Did she use margarine instead of butter? We used margarine on sandwiches, as butter was too hard to spread. Once again, I turn over this clipping to read the news, and find no date but an announcement of an exhibition of work by Marc Chagall at the Tate Gallery, the funeral of Sir Geoffrey Fison (who I discover from The Peerage website died in 1948, unmarried, a Baronet and decorated soldier), and a memorial service for Dr. Duncan Campbell Scott, the Canadian poet and prose writer, during which the Poet Laureate of the time, John Masefield, gave the address. And there was also a note about the latest wills, including that of a reverend who left an estate valued at over £50 000. My maternal adoptive grandmother, who lived in Weston-super-Mare across the road from the beach, and with whom we stayed for several months in 1974, left most of her worldly belongings to my mother and nothing to her son. He seems to have been cut out from her life after she separated from her husband, and her children’s father, sometime in the 1920s. Apparently, my uncle followed his father out to Australia, and his mother never forgave him, refusing to have anything more to do with her son for the rest of her life, not even to see her grandchildren. When I knew her in that brief period in 1974, she was already approaching eighty and showing signs of dementia. But I do remember dancing the Charleston with her in the kitchen, and her helping me bathe my ragdoll Pollyanna in a tub in the garden. The only food I remember at her stone house was afternoon tea with lots of different, exotic cakes, particularly one called Neopolitan, with swirls of red and brown through the moist sponge. My grandmother had a long narrow garden filled with flowers and a greenhouse with tomatoes; she loved that garden, and spent a lot of time nurturing it.My father and his mother-in-law were not each other’s favourite person, and this coloured my mother’s relationship with her, too. We were poor for many years, and the only reason we were able to go to England was because of the generosity of my grandmother, who paid for our airfares. I think my father searched for work while we were there, but whether he was successful or not I do not know. We returned to Australia and I went into grade four at the end of 1974, an outsider of sorts, and bemused by the syllabus, because I had moved around so much. I went to eight different primary schools and two high schools, eventually obtaining a scholarship to a private girls’ school for the last four years. My father was intent on me becoming a doctor, and so my life was largely study, which is another reason why I took little notice of what went on in the kitchen and what appeared on the dining table. I would come home from school and my parents would start meal preparation almost straight away, so we sat down to dinner at about four o’clock during the week, and I started the night’s study at five. I usually worked through until about ten, and then read a novel for a little while before sleep. Every parcel of time was accounted for, and nothing was wasted. This schedule continued throughout those four years of high school, with my father berating me if I didn’t do well at an exam, but also being proud when I did. In grades eight, nine, and ten, I studied home economics, and remember being offered a zucchini to taste because I had never seen one before. I also remember making Greek biscuits of some sort for an exam, and the sieve giving out while I was sifting a large quantity of flour. We learned to cook simple meals of meats and vegetables, and to prepare a full breakfast. We also baked cakes but, when my sponges remained flat, I realised that my strengths might lay elsewhere. This probably also contributed to my lack of interest in cooking. Domestic pursuits were not encouraged at home, although my mother did teach me to sew and knit, resulting in skewed attempts at a shirt dress and a white blouse, and a wildly coloured knitted shoulder bag that I actually liked but which embarrassed my father. There were no such lessons in cakemaking or biscuit baking or any of the recipes from Miss Tuxford. By this time, my mother bought such treats from the supermarket.This other life, this previous life of my parents, a life far away in time and place, was completely unknown to me before my mother’s death. I saw little of them after the revelation of my adoption, not because of this knowledge I then had, but because of my father’s controlling behaviour. I discovered that the rest of my adoptive family, who I hardly knew apart from my maternal grandmother, had always known. It would have been difficult, after all, for my parents to keep such a secret from them. Because of this life of constant moving, my estrangement from my family, and our lack of friends and connections with other people, there was a gap in my experience. As a child, I only knew one grandmother, and only for a relatively brief period of time. I have no grandfatherly memories, and none either of aunts and uncles, only a few fleeting images of a cousin here and there. It was difficult to form friendships as a child when we were only in a place for a limited time. We were always moving on, and left everything behind, to start again in a new suburb, state, country. Continuity and stability were not our trademarks, for reasons that are only slowly making themselves known to me: my father’s mental health problems, his difficult personality, our lack of money, the need to keep my adoption secret.What was that need? From where did it spring? My father always seemed to be a secretive person, an intensely private man, one who had things to hide, and seemed to suffer many mistakes and mishaps and misfortune. At the end, after my mother’s death, we spent two years with each other as he became frailer and moved into a nursing home. It was a truce formed out of necessity, as there was no one else to care for him, so thoroughly had he alienated his family; he had no friends, certainly not in Australia, and only the doctor and helping professionals to talk to most days. My father’s brother John had died some years before, and the whereabouts of his other sibling Gordon were unknown. I discovered that he had died three years previously. Nieces had not heard from my father for decades. My mother’s niece revealed that my mother and she had never met. There is a letter from my mother’s father in the 1960s, probably just before he died, remarking that he would like a photograph of her as they hadn’t seen each other for forty years. None of this was talked about when my mother was alive. It was as if I was somehow separate from their stories, from their history, that it was not suitable for my ears, or that once I came into their lives they wanted to make a new life altogether. At that time, all of their past was stored away. Even my very origins, my tiny past life, were unspoken, and made into a secret. The trouble with secrets, however, is that they hang around, peek out of boxes, lurk in the corners of sentences, and threaten to be revealed by the questions of puzzled strangers, or mistakenly released by knowledgeable relatives. Adoptee memoirs like mine seek to go into those hidden storage boxes and the corners and pages of sources like these seemingly innocent old cookbooks, in the quest to bring these secrets to light. Like Miss Tuxford’s cookbook, with its stains and smudges, or the Main Cookery Book with its pages full of clippings, the revelation of such secrets threaten to tell stories that contradict the official version. ReferencesBrien, Donna Lee. “Pathways into an ‘Elaborate Ecosystem’: Ways of Categorising the Food Memoir”. TEXT (October 2011). 12 Jun. 2013 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct11/brien.htm›.Chick, Suzanne. Searching for Charmian. Sydney: Picador, 1995.Dessaix, Robert. A Mother’s Disgrace. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1994.Fisher, Florence. The Search for Anna Fisher. New York: Arthur Fields, 1973.Frame, Tom. Binding Ties: An Experience of Adoption and Reunion in Australia. Alexandria: Hale & Iremonger, 1999.Gibson, Margaret. Objects of the Dead: Mourning and Memory in Everyday Life. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne U P, 2008. Gompertz, Marguerite K., and the Staff of the Main Research Kitchen. The Main Cookery Book. 52nd. ed. London: R. & A. Main, 1944. Hipchen, Emily, and Jill Deans. “Introduction. Adoption Life Writing: Origins and Other Ghosts”. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 18.2 (2003): 163–70. Special Issue on Adoption.Homes, A. M. The Mistress’s Daughter: A Memoir. London: Granta, 2007.Kiss and Tell. Dir. By Richard Wallace. Columbia Pictures, 1945.Lifton, Betty Jean. Twice Born: Memoirs of An Adopted Daughter. Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1977.Lundy, Darryl, comp. The Peerage: A Genealogical Survey of the Peerage of Britain as well as the Royal Families of Europe. 30 May 2013 ‹http://www.thepeerage.com/p40969.htm#i409684›Perl, Lynne and Shirin Markham. Why Wasn’t I Told? Making Sense of the Late Discovery of Adoption. Bondi: Post Adoption Resource Centre/Benevolent Society of NSW, 1999.Road to Utopia. Dir. By Hal Walker. Paramount, 1946.Turkle, Sherry, ed. Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 2011. Tuxford, Miss H. H. Miss Tuxford’s Modern Cookery for the Middle Classes: Hints on Modern Gas Stove Cooking. London: John Heywood, c.1937.

Cut In 1964, William S. Burroughs' Nova Express is published. Part of the trilogy of books Burroughs wrote in the early 1960s (The Soft Cell and The Ticket That Exploded are the other two), Nova Express explores the problems that technology creates in the information age; and the ways in which language and thought have come under the influence of mass media. The book begins with a broad declaration against consumerism and corporate control: Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever - "For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out -" (Nova Express 3) Rather than opt for conventional narrative as a means of uncovering the problems ideology brings with media-driven mass consumption, in the early '60s, Burroughs develops a method of writing he calls "the cut-up". The cut-up method entails taking a page of writing (a newspaper, a poem, a novel, an advertisement, a speech) and cutting it down the middle twice so that four sections remain. One then rearranges the sections in random order to create a new page. Variations of the four section cut are permissible and can lead to further juxtapositions. The purpose of the cut-up is to disclose ideological positions within media, to recontextualise the language of media often taken for granted as natural and not as a socially and economically constructed act. Information has become addictive, Burroughs says, invoking the junkie as a metaphor for mass consumption. Its addictive state leads to hallucinations, distortions of what is real and what is illusion; what do we need to live, and what do we buy for mere consumption. The scanning pattern we accept as "reality" has been imposed by the controlling power on this planet, a power primarily oriented towards total control - In order to retain control they have moved to monopolize and deactivate the hallucinogen drugs by effecting noxious alternations on a molecular level. (Nova Express 53) The cut-up provides a means to combat the "junky" in us all by revealing the powers of technology. In the end, the cut-up leads to a collagist practice of juxtaposition. As Burroughs and collaborator Byron Gysin explained in a later work, The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passersby and juxtaposition cut-ups (Burroughs and Gysin 29). Through its structure, Nova Express is a lesson in making cut-ups, a demonstration of how power might be undermined in the digital age. Paste In 1964, the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham began. Influenced by Raymond Williams' 1958 Culture and Society, the Birmingham School legitimized the reading of popular culture as a means to uncovering dominant ideologies and power structures within institutional systems. In particular, the center proposed structuring scholasticism so that the study of media texts would allow for the questioning of social and political practices. The Birmingham school advised that curriculae supplement their agendas with the question of class; the complex relationships between power, which is an easier term to establish in the discourses of culture than exploitation, and exploitation; the question of a general theory which could, in a critical way, connect together in a critical reflection different domains of life, politics, and theory, theory and practice, economic, political ideological questions, and so on; the notion of critical knowledge itself and the production of critical knowledge as a practice. (Hall 279) One of the Birmingham School's first works was Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel's Popular Arts, which searched out ways to teach media. In particular, Hall and Whannel viewed popular culture as a place to teach the power of ideology. There is, in fact, a growing recognition that the media of mass communication play such a significant role in society, and especially in the lives of young people, that the school must embrace the study of their organization, content, and impact. But there is little agreement about how such studies should be carried out. Just what shall be studied? With what precise purpose? In what relationship to the established subjects? Ultimately the answer will depend upon our attitude towards these media, our social thinking about the kind of society in which they wield their influence and, in particular, our response to the things the media offer - individual films, television programmes, popular songs, etc. (Hall and Whannel 21) Today, the Birmingham School is recognised as the beginning of contemporary cultural studies. It answers Hall and Whannel by using texts from popular culture to uncover the semiotic cultural codes that make up popular discourse. These methods shed light on how supposedly naturally constructed messages contain deeper meanings and purposes. Mix In 1964, DJ Alan Freed was convicted of tax evasion as a result of his involvement in the payola record business scandal of 1962. Considered one of the first rock and roll DJs, Freed is often credited for breaking ‘50s racial barriers by playing African-American music on the airwaves and hosting largely attended African-American dances and concerts. Even though Freed didn't invent the phrase "rock and roll," he credited himself with the term's introduction into music vocabulary, a myth-making act with far reaching implications. As critic Nick Tosch writes: "Though he was certainly not the first who had done so; he was only the most influential of those who had - Freed [had] rinsed the Dixie Peach from its image, rendering it more agreeable to the palate of a greater public" (Tosch 9). In the same year of Freed's conviction, another legendary DJ, Murray the K, found fame again by following the Beatles around on their 1964 North American tour. Murray the K had been popular in the late '50s for "his wild stammering of syllables, fragments of words, black slang, and meaningless, rhythmical burbling" to make transitions between songs (Poschardt 75). Mass copying of Murray the K's DJ stylings led to his redundancy. When New Journalist Tom Wolfe rediscovered the DJ tagging along with the Beatles, he became intrigued, describing him as "the original hysterical disk jockey": Murray the K doesn't operate on Aristotelian logic. He operates on symbolic logic. He builds up an atmosphere of breathless jollification, comic hysteria, and turns it up to a pitch so high it can hypnotize kids and keep them frozen. (Wolfe 34) While Freed introduced African-American culture to mainstream music, Murray the K's DJing worked from a symbolic logic of appropriation: sampled sounds, bits and pieces of eccentric outtakes used as vehicles to move from song to song. Both Freed and Murray the K, however, conceived the idea of the DJ as more than a spinner of records. They envisioned the DJ as a form of media, a myth maker, a composer of ideas through sounds and politics. In a sense, they saw their work as disseminating social commentary on '60s racial politics and ideology, working from a fairly new innovation: the rock and roll record. Their DJ work became the model for contemporary hip hop artists. Instead of considering isolated train whistles or glass crashing (the technique of Murray the K) as sources for sampling, contemporary DJs and digital samplers cut and paste fragments from the history of popular music in order to compose new works, compositions which function as vehicles of cultural critique. Groups like Public Enemy and The Roots utilise their record collections to make political statements on drug usage, economic problems within the African-American community, and racism. For Tricia Rose, these artists are the cultural studies writers of the digital age. "Rappers are constantly taking dominant discursive fragments and throwing them into relief, destabilizing hegemonic discourses and attempting to legitimate counterhegemonic interpretations." (Rose 102) Remix The juxtaposition of these three events in 1964 marks an interesting place to consider the potential for new media and cultural studies. Such a juxtaposition answers the calls of Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler in their introduction to Cultural Studies, a collection of essays from the 1970s and 1980s. The editors suggest that cultural studies can be thought of, in some ways, as a collagist practice. The methodology of cultural studies provides an equally uneasy marker, for cultural studies in fact has no distinct methodology, no unique statistical, ethnomethodological, or textual analysis to call its own. Its methodology, ambiguous from the beginning, could best be seen as a bricolage. (2) For these editors, "Cultural studies needs to remain open to unexpected, unimagined, even uninvited possibilities" (3). To consider cultural studies from the perspective of 1964 is to evoke the unexpected, the unimagined, and the uninvited. It is to resituate the demands of cultural study within the context of new media - the legacy of Burroughs' cut-up reborn in the digital sampler. In response to the editors of Cultural Studies, I propose the practice of temporal juxtaposition as a way of critical writing. My initial juxtaposition of 1964 asserts that to teach such a practice, one must teach cutting and mixing. The Break The break, as a DJ method, is "any short captured sound whatsoever" (Eshun 14). The break motivates digital sampling; it provides the points from which samplers appropriate past works into their own: "Break beats are points of rupture in their former contexts, points at which the thematic elements of a musical piece are suspended and the underlying rhythms brought center stage. In the early stages of rap, these break beats formed the core of rap DJs' mixing strategies" (Rose 73-74). Breaks are determined by how DJs produce cuts in previously recorded music. "The cut is a command, a technical and conceptual operation which cuts the lines of association" (Eshun 16). For William Burroughs, cuts create shock in readers; they are tools for destroying ideology. "Once machine lines are cut, the enemy is helpless" (Ticket That Exploded 111). In Nova Express, Burroughs issues the command, "Cut word lines" (62). And in Naked Lunch, the cut provides a set of reading instructions, a way for readers to uncover Burroughs' own ideological positions. You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point . . . I have written many prefaces. . . Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book. (Naked Lunch 224 For Roland Barthes, a major influence on the founding of the Birmingham School, the How-To functioned as a place for cultural critique. Barthes felt that semiotic analysis could break ideological positions constructed in popular culture. Barthes used the How-To as one example of what he called mythologies, items of popular culture assumed to be natural but latent with ideological meanings. He treated the how-to tourist guide (how to enjoy yourself on vacation) as one such place for further analysis. The good natured image of "the writer on holiday" is therefore no more than one of these cunning mystifications which the Establishment practices the better to enslave its writers. (Barthes 30) Mythologies has inspired contemporary cultural studies. Dick Hebdige states that through Barthes' work, "It was hoped that the invisible temporary seam between language, experience and reality could be located and prised open through a semiotic analysis" (Hebdige 10). My juxtapositions of 1964, however, tell me that the How-To for cultural studies is cutting and pasting, not hermeneutical or semiotic analysis (i.e. What does this mean? What do these codes reveal?), which have long been cultural studies' focus. 1964 updates cultural studies practices by reinventing its methods of inquiry. 1964 forces academic study to ask: How would a contemporary cultural critic cut into cultural texts and paste selections into a new media work? The Sample Cuts and breaks become samples, authorial chosen selections. My sample comes from Walter Benjamin, an early DJ of media culture who discovered in 19th century Paris a source for a new compositional practice. Benjamin's unfinished Arcades project proposed that the task of the writer in the age of mechanical reproduction is to become a collector. "The collector was the true inhabitant of the interior" (Benjamin 168). Benjamin felt that the "poets find their refuse on the street" (79) preempting William Gibson's now often cited remark, "the street finds its own use for things" (Gibson 186) and modern DJs who build record collections by rummaging bargain street sales. I find in Benjamin's work a place to sample, a break for cutting into Burroughs' nova method. "The basic nova mechanism is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflict - This is done by dumping life forms with incompatible conditions of existence on the same planet" (Nova Express 53). Like Burroughs, Benjamin expressed interest in the ideological conflicts created through juxtaposition. His collections of the Parisian Arcades led to a cultural history different from that of the Frankfurt School. The Arcades' juxtapositions of consumer goods and artifacts opposed the Frankfurt School's understandings of Marxism and methods of critique. The conflict I create is that of incorporating the concerns of cultural studies into media study as an alternative practice. This practice is a system of sampling, cutting, breaking, and pasting. What might initially seem incompatible to cultural studies, I propose as a method of critique. My initial juxtaposition of 1964 becomes the first step towards doing so: I critique current cultural studies' methods of semiotic and hermeneutical analysis by way of the cut and mix I create. This Benjamin sample is pasted onto the Networked Writing Environment (NWE) at the University of Florida where I teach media classes in one of several computer networked classrooms. Working from a sampled Benjamin and the juxtaposition of the previously described temporal events of 1964, I see a place to rethink new media and cultural studies. The NWE's graphical user interface completes the cut. Our Unix operating system uses X Windows for desktop display. The metaphor of the X, the slash, the cut, becomes a place to rethink what cultural studies admits to be a cut-up, or a non-unified practice (as stated by Grossberg et al). The X also recalls the crossroads, the iconic marker of the place of decision. Standing at the crossroads, I envision the blues song of the same name, which in 1964 was cut from its Robert Johnson origins and remixed as a new recording by the Yardbirds. This decision shifts the focus of media study to cultural collections, their juxtapositions, and the alternative understandings that surface. The tools of technology (like those we use in the NWE: the Web, MOO, and e-mail) cut the structural dominance of critique and encourage us to make new pedagogical decisions, like juxtaposing a William Burroughs novel with the founding of the Birmingham School with the rise of the DJ. Putting these practices into the mix, we redefine cultural critique. 1964, then, is the place where cultural mixing begins. References Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Harry Zohn trans. London: NLB, 1973. Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch. New York: Grove, 1982 (1959). _________________. Nova Express. New York: Grove, 1992 (1964). _________________. The Ticket That Exploded. New York: Grove, 1987 (1962). Burroughs, William S. and Byron Gysin. The Third Mind. New York: Viking Press, 1978. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than the Sun. London: Quartet, 1999. Gibson, William. "Burning Chrome." Burning Chrome. New York: Ace Books, 1981. Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds. Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1992. Hall, Stuart. "Theoretical Legacies." Cultural Studies. Hall, Stuart and Paddy Whannel. The Popular Arts. New York: Pantheon, 1964. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London and New York: Routledge, 1979. Poschardt, Ulf. DJ Culture. London: Quartet, 1998. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Black Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Tosch, Nick. Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. Wolfe, Tom. "The Fifth Beatle." The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby. New York: Pocket Books, 1965.

A friend of mine once tried to capture the feeling that one gets from a new thing. He decided that there was no word to describe the sensation of having an unblemished eraser when you were in primary school, but nevertheless it produced a kind of fascinating awe in the apparent perfection of the new. A similar feeling captures the new car owner in smelling the interior's recently minted plastic. Used car dealers would doubtless love to bottle that smell because it produces the momentary pleasure of new ownership. And I am sure there are certain people who are addicted to that smell, and go test drive new cars with no intention of buying just for the experience of the "new" smell. New clothes produce that same sensation: most of us ignore the label which says "wash before wearing" because we want to experience the incredible stiff tactile sensation of a new shirt. My friend called this gle-gle, and it is a pervasive relationship to New in a variety of guises. New implies two kinds of objects or practices: it implies either the replacement of the old or it points to the emergence of something that has not existed before. In both cases, new always heralds change and has the potential for social or cultural transformation. As a result, popular writers and ad copy editors often link new with revolution. For example, the advent of the computer was seen to be revolutionary. Similarly a new detergent which worked in cold water promised cataclysmic change in the 1960s. But these promises of revolution through some innovation have not necessarily led to massive social upheaval; rather they have identified a discursive trope of contemporary culture which links new with rejuvenation. The claim that something is new is the mantra of modernity and the kitsch of the postmodern. This double-play of the concept of the new is best untangled through thinking how a once new object becomes the contemporary way of expressing the former hope of progress and change -- with raised and knowing eyebrow. I recently stumbled into one of these double-plays. While searching for bedding for yet another birthday slumber party, I picked up an old mattress which still had its 1950s label, where it proudly announced that the cushioning was the wonderful new revolutionary foam system called the Dunlopillo. The Dunlopillo system was certainly trademarked and no doubt patented for its then unique system of troughs and cones of army green foam; but in its current incarnation the foam was weak and the bed easily crumpled in half. All that was left of the sentiment of newness was the label, which in its graphics expressed the necessary connection to science as the future, and authoritative zeal in its seriousness of its revolutionary potential. But seen from 1998, the claims seemed bombastic and beautifully optimistic. Modernity's relationship to the new is to celebrate the potential for change. It is a cultural project that has enveloped the sentiments of capitalism and socialism from their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, and manifested itself in what Schudson labelled "capitalist realism" in advertising, and what is known as socialist realism as a state-sanctioned artistic movement in the Soviet Union. Both representations provided their systems with the capacity to repaint the cultural canvas with each new product such as Dunlopillo, or in the Soviet system with each new five-year productivity plan for the collective. Maintaining the unity of the cultural project was a challenge to each system's representational regime; sustaining the power of the new as a revolutionary force is the fundamental link between capitalist and socialist systems throughout the twentieth century. These representational regimes were in fact connected to the production of new phenomena, new materials, new social formations. However, the message of the new has gradually weakened over the last thirty years. Think of the way in which the Space Race produced all sorts of new technologies of computing, calculation and the integration of electronics into the running of the automobile. It also produced the breakfast orange-juice substitute, 'Tang'. Indeed, the first advertisements for Tang intoned that it was the drink that astronauts enjoyed in space. Tang and its flavour crystals provided the ultimate form of efficiency and convenience, and provided a clear link between the highly ideologically driven space program and the everyday lives of citizens of the "free" world. In the 60s and 70s the link between the general project of modernity and improving everyday life was made evidently clear every time you added water to your Tang flavour crystals. One has to ask: where is Tang today? Not only is it difficult to find in my supermarket, but even if it were available it would not operate as the same representation of progress and the project of modernity. Instead, it would have little more than a nostalgic -- or, kitsch -- hold on a generation that has seen too many representations of the new and too many attempts at indicating improvement. The decay of the cultural power of the new is clearly linked to consumer culture's dependence on and overuse of the concept. The entire century has been enveloped by an accelerating pattern of symbolic change. Symbolic change is not necessarily the same as the futurologist Toffler claiming that we are in a constant state of "future shock"; rather it is much more the introduction of new designs as if there were not only transformed designs, but fundamentally transformed products. This perpetually 'new' is a feature of the fashion industry as it works toward seasonal transformation. Toothbrushes have also been the object of this design therapy, which produces both continual change over the last twenty years, and claims of new revolutionary designs. Central to this notion of symbolic change is advertising. Advertising plays with the hopes and desires of its audience by providing the contradictory symbolic materiality of progressive change. The cultural and political power of the new is the symbolic terrain that advertising has mined to present its "images of well-being". What one can now detect in the circulation of advertising is at least two responses to the decay of the power of the new. First, instead of advertising invoking the wonders of science and its technological offspring providing you with something revolutionary, advertising has moved increasingly towards personal transformation, echoing the 30-year-old self-help, self-discovery book industry. In Australia, GM-Holden's Barina television ads provide a typical example. No technical detail about the car is given in the ads, but a great deal of information --- via the singing, the superimposed dancers, and the graphics employed -- signifies that the car is designed for the young female driver. Symbolically, the car is transformed into a new space of feminine subjectivity. Second, advertising plays with the cynicism of the cognoscenti. If the new itself can no longer work to signify genuine change and improvement in contemporary culture, it is instead represented as a changed attitude to the contemporary world that only a particular demographic will actually comprehend. The level of sophistication in reading the new as a cultural phenomenon by advertisers (or by proxy, their agencies) is sometimes astounding. A recent Coca-Cola radio ad played with a singing style of ennui and anger that embodied punk, but only as punk has been reinvented in the mid-90s through such groups as Green Day. The lyrics were identical to the rest of the "Always Coca-Cola" campaign that has been circulating internationally for the last five years; however, the cynicism of the singers, the bare tunefulness, and even the use of a popular culture icon such as Coke as the object of a song (and ridicule), tries to capture a particular new cultural moment with a different audience. Advertising as a cultural discourse on its own expresses a malaise within the transforming promise of the new that has been so much a part of modernity. However, the myths of modernity -- its clear association with social progress -- have never completely dissipated. In contemporary culture, it has fallen on new computer technologies to keep the ember of modernity and progress glowing. Over the last two decades the personal computer has maintained the naiveté of the new that was central to mid-twentieth century advertising, if not post-war culture in general. Very much like the Space Race stitched together an ideological weave that connected the populace to the interests of what Eisenhower first described as a military-industrial complex, the computer has ignited a new generation of optimism. It has been appropriated by governments from Singapore and Malaysia (think of the Multimedia Super Corridor) to the United States (think of Vice President Al Gore's NII) as the rescue package for the organisation of capitalism. Through Microsoft's hegemony there is a sense of coherence in "operating systems" which makes their slogan "where do you want to go today?", in its evocation of choice, also an invocation of unity of purpose. The wonderful synergy of the personal computer is that it weaves the conception of personal desire back into a generalisable social system of value. Despite all these efforts at harnessing the new computer technologies into established political and economic forces, the new nature of computer technology draws us back to the reason why new is intrinsically exciting: the defining nature of the new is that it offers the potential for some form of social change. The Internet has been the source for this new discourse of utopia. If we follow Howard Rheingold's logic, New "virtual communities" are formed online. A disequilibrium in who controls the flow of information is part of the appeal of the Internet, and the very appearance of this journal stems from that sense of new access. The Internet is said to challenge the boundaries of nations and states (although English language hegemony and pure economic access continue to operate to control the flow of those boundaries), with regulation devolving out of state policy towards the individual. Transforming identities are also very much an element of online communities: if nothing else, the play of gender in online game and chat programs identifies the constructed nature of our identities. All of this energy, and what I would call affect, refers to how computer technology and the Internet have managed to produce a sensation of agency. What I mean by agency is not necessarily attached to the project of modernity; rather it is the sense of being able to produce the new itself, as opposed to just living in the architecture of the new provided by someone else. On one level, the Internet and personal computers do provide a way to make your information look as if it is more significant and of a higher quality. The continuing proliferation of personal websites attests to this narcissistic drive of contemporary culture. On another level, the narcissism also identifies activity and agency in engaging in a form of communication with others. The Internet then can be thought of as paralleling movements in contemporary music, where the ability to construct soundscapes through computer interfaces has given the musician greater agency in the production of new electronic music. The new is intrinsically an odd phenomenon. It continually threatens established patterns. What is different about the new and its meaning in the twentieth century is that it has become part of the central ideology of western culture in its characterised representation of modernity. In a strange mix, the new reinforces the old and established. Nonetheless, the new, like culture itself, is never completely contained by any overarching architecture. The new expresses the potential, and occasionally the enactment, of significant cultural change. The fatigue that I have identified in our thinking about the new identifies a decline in the power of modernity to capture change, difference and transformation. That very fatigue may indicate in and of itself something profoundly new. References Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Schudson, Michael. Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. London: Pan Books, 1971. Citation reference for this article MLA style: P. David Marshall. "Thinking through New." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.1 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php>. Chicago style: P. David Marshall, "Thinking through New," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 1 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: P. David Marshall. (1998) Thinking through new. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php> ([your date of access]).

The first uncomfortable twinges started when I was a grad student, churning out my Master’s thesis on a laptop that I worked on at the library, in my bedroom, on the kitchen table, and at the coffee shop. By the last few months, typing was becoming uncomfortable for my arms, but as any thesis writer will tell you, your whole body is uncomfortable with the endless hours sitting, inputting, and revising. I didn’t think much of it until I moved on to a new city to start a PhD program. Now the burning that accompanied my essay-typing binges started to worry me more, especially since I noticed the twinges didn’t go away when I got up to chat with my roommate, or to go to bed. I finally mentioned the annoying arm to Sonja, a medical student friend of mine visiting me one afternoon. She asked me to pick up a chair in front of me, palms out. I did, and the attempt stabbed pain up my arm and through my elbow joint. The chair fell out of my hands. We looked at each other, eyebrows raised.Six months and much computer work later, I still hadn’t really addressed the issue. Who had time? Chasing mystery ailments around and more importantly, doing any less typing were not high on my likely list. But like the proverbial frog in slowly heated water, things had gotten much worse without my really acknowledging it. That is, until the day I got up from my laptop, stretched out and wandered into the kitchen to put some pasta on to boil. When the spaghetti was ready, I grabbed the pot to drain it and my right arm gave as if someone had just handed me a 200-pound weight. The pot, pasta and boiling water hit the floor with a scalding splash that nearly missed both me and the fleeing cat. Maybe there was a problem here.Both popular and critical understandings of the body have been in a great deal of flux over the past three or four decades as digital media technologies have become ever more pervasive and personal. Interfacing with the popular Internet, video games, mobile devices, wearable computing, and other new media technologies have prompted many to reflect on and reconsider what it means to be an embodied human being in an increasingly digitally determined era. As a result, the body, at various times in this recent history, has been theoretically disowned, disavowed, discarded, disdained, replaced, idealised, essentialised, hollowed out, re-occupied, dismembered, reconstituted, reclaimed and re-imagined in light of new media. Despite all of the angst over the relationships our embodied selves have had to digital media, of course, our embodied selves have endured. It remains true, that “even in the age of technosocial subjects, life is lived through bodies” (Stone 113).How we understand our embodiments and their entanglements with technologies matter deeply, moreover, for these understandings shape not only discourse around embodiment and media, but also the very bodies and media in question in very real ways. For example, a long-held tenet in both popular culture and academic work has been the notion that media technologies extend our bodies and our senses as technological prostheses. The idea here is that media technologies work like prostheses that extend the reach of our eyes, ears, voice, touch, and other bodily abilities through time and space, augmenting our abilities to experience and influence the world.Canadian media scholar Marshall McLuhan is one influential proponent of this notion, and claimed that, in fact, “the central purpose of all my work is to convey this message, that by understanding media as they extend man, we gain a measure of control over them” (McLuhan and Zingrone 265). Other more contemporary media scholars reflect on how “our prosthetic technological extensions enable us to amplify and extend ourselves in ways that profoundly affect the nature and scale of human communication” (Cleland 75), and suggest that a media technology such as one’s mobile device, can act “as a prosthesis that supports the individual in their interactions with the world” (Glitsos 161). Popular and commercial discourses also frequently make use of this idea, from the 1980’s AT&T ad campaign that nudged you to “Reach out and Touch Someone” via the telephone, to Texas Instruments’s claim in the 1990’s that their products were “Extending Your Reach”, to Nikon’s contemporary nudge to “See Much Further” with the prosthetic assistance of their cameras. The etymology of the term “prosthesis” reveals that the term evolves from Greek and Latin components that mean, roughly, “to add to”. The word was originally employed in the 16th century in a grammatical context to indicate “the addition of a letter or syllable to the beginning of a word”, and was adopted to describe “the replacement of defective or absent parts of the body by artificial substitutes” in the 1700’s. More recently the world “prosthesis” has come to be used to indicate more simply, “an artificial replacement for a part of the body” (OED Online). As we see in the use of the term over the past few decades, the meaning of the word continues to shift and is now often used to describe technological additions that don’t necessarily replace parts of the body, but augment and extend embodied capabilities in various ways. Technology as prosthesis is “a trope that has flourished in a recent and varied literature concerned with interrogating human-technology interfaces” (Jain 32), and now goes far beyond signifying the replacement of missing components. Although the prosthesis has “become somewhat of an all-purpose metaphor for interactions of body and technology” (Sun 16) and “a tempting theoretical gadget” (Jain 49), I contend that this metaphor is not often used particularly faithfully. Instead of invoking anything akin to the complex lived corporeal experiences and conundrums of prosthetic users, what we often get when it comes to metaphors of technology-as-prostheses is a fascination with the potential of technologies in seamlessly extending our bodies. This necessitates a fantasy version of both the body and its prostheses as interchangeable or extendable appendages to be unproblematically plugged and unplugged, modifying our capabilities and perceptions to our varying whims.Of course, a body seamlessly and infinitely extended by technological prostheses is really no body. This model forgoes actual lived bodies for a shiny but hollow amalgamation based on what I have termed the “disembodimyth” enabled by technological transcendence. By imagining our bodies as assemblages of optional appendages, it is not far of a leap to imagine opting out of our bodies altogether and using technological means to unfasten our consciousness from our corporeal parts. Alison Muri points out that this myth of imminent emancipation from our bodies via unity with technology is a view that has become “increasingly prominent in popular media and cultural studies” (74), despite or perhaps because of the fact that, due to global overpopulation and wasteful human environmental practices, “the human body has never before been so present, or so materially manifest at any time in the history of humanity”, rendering “contradictory, if not absurd, the extravagantly metaphorical claims over the past two decades of the human body’s disappearance or obsolescence due to technology” (75-76). In other words, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak seriously about the body being erased or escaped via technological prosthetics when those prosthetics, and our bodies themselves, continue to proliferate and contribute to the piling up of waste and pollution in the current Anthropocene. But whether they imply smooth couplings with alluring technologies, or uncoupling from the body altogether, these technology-as-prosthesis metaphors tell us very little about “prosthetic realities” (Sun 24). Actual prosthetic realities involve learning curves; pain, frustrations and triumphs; hard-earned remappings of mental models; and much experimentation and adaption on the part of both technology and user in order to function. In this vein, Vivian Sobchak has detailed the complex sensations and phenomenological effects that followed the amputation of her leg high above the knee, including the shifting presence of her “phantom limb” perceptions, the alignments, irritations, movements, and stabilities offered by her prosthetic leg, and her shifting senses of bodily integrity and body-image over time. An oversimplistic application of the prosthetic metaphor for our encounters with technology runs the risk of forgetting this wealth of experiences and instructive first-hand accounts from people who have been using therapeutic prosthetics as long as assistive devices have been conceived of, built, and used. Of course, prosthetics have long been employed not simply to aid function and mobility, but also to restore and prop up concepts of what a “whole,” “normal” body looks like, moves like, and includes as essential components. Prosthetics are employed, in many cases, to allow the user to “pass” as able-bodied in rendering their own technological presence invisible, in service of restoring an ableist notion of embodied normality. Scholars of Critical Disability Studies have pushed back against these ableist notions, in service of recognising the capacities of “the disabled body when it is understood not as a less than perfect form of the normative standard, but as figuring difference in a nonbinary sense” (Shildrick 14). Paralympian, actress, and model Aimee Mullins has lent her voice to this cause, publicly contesting the prioritisation of realistic, unobtrusive form in prosthetic design. In a TED talk entitled It’s Not Fair Having 12 Pairs of Legs, she showcases her collection of prosthetics, including “cheetah legs” designed for optimal running speed, transparent glass-like legs, ornately carved wooden legs, Barbie doll-inspired legs customised with high heel shoes, and beautiful, impractical jellyfish legs. In illustrating the functional, fashionable, and fantastical possibilities, she challenges prosthetic designers to embrace more poetry and whimsy, while urging us all to move “away from the need to replicate human-ness as the only aesthetic ideal” (Mullins). In this same light, Sarah S. Jain asks “how do body-prosthesis relays transform individual bodies as well as entire social notions about what a properly functioning physical body might be?” (39). In her exploration of how prostheses can be simultaneously wounding and enabling, Jain recounts Sigmund Freud’s struggle with his own palate replacement following surgery for throat cancer in 1923. His prosthesis allowed him to regain the ability to speak and eat, but also caused him significant pain. Nevertheless, his artificial palate had to be worn, or the tissue would shrink and necessitate additional painful procedures (Jain 31). Despite this fraught experience, Freud himself espoused the trope of technologically enhanced transcendence, pronouncing “Man has, as it were, become a prosthetic god. When he puts on all his auxiliary organs, he is truly magnificent.” However, he did add a qualification, perhaps reflective of his own experiences, by next noting, “but those organs have not grown on him and they still give him much trouble at times” (qtd. in Jain 31). This trouble is, I argue, important to remember and reclaim. It is also no less present in our interactions with our media prostheses. Many of our technological encounters with media come with unacknowledged discomforts, adjustments, lag, strain, ill-fitting defaults, and fatigue. From carpal tunnel syndrome to virtual reality vertigo, our interactions with media technologies are often marked by pain and “much trouble” in Freud’s sense. Computer Science and Cultural Studies scholar Phoebe Sengers opens a short piece titled Technological Prostheses: An Anecdote, by reflecting on how “we have reached the post-physical era. On the Internet, all that matters is our thoughts. The body is obsolete. At least, whoever designed my computer interface thought so.” She traces how concentrated interactions with computers during her graduate work led to intense tendonitis in her hands. Her doctor responded by handing her “a technological prosthesis, two black leather wrist braces” that allowed her to return to her keyboard to resume typing ten hours a day. Shortly after her assisted return to her computer, she developed severe tendonitis in her elbows and had to stop typing altogether. Her advisor also handed her a technological prosthesis, this time “a speech understanding system that would transcribe my words,” so that she could continue to work. Two days later she lost her voice. Ultimately she “learned that my body does not go away when I work. I learned to stop when it hurt […] and to refuse to behave as though my body was not there” (Sengers). My own experiences in grad school were similar in many ways to Sengers’s. Besides the pasta problem outlined above, my own computer interfacing injuries at that point in my career meant I could no longer turn keys in doors, use a screwdriver, lift weights, or play the guitar. I held a friend’s baby at Christmas that year and the pressure of the small body on my arm make me wince. My family doctor bent my arm around a little, then shrugging her shoulders, she signed me up for a nerve test. As a young neurologist proceeded to administer a series of electric shocks and stick pins into my arms in various places, I noticed she had an arm brace herself. She explained that she also had a repetitive strain injury aggravated by her work tasks. She pronounced mine an advanced repetitive strain injury involving both medial and lateral epicondylitis, and sent me home with recommendations for rest, ice and physiotherapy. Rest was a challenge: Like Sengers, I puzzled over how one might manage to be productive in academia without typing. I tried out some physiotherapy, with my arm connected to electrodes and currents coursing through my elbow until my arm contorted in bizarre ways involuntarily. I tried switching my mouse from my right side to my left, switching from typing to voice recognition software and switching from a laptop to a more ergonomic desktop setup. I tried herbal topical treatments, wearing an extremely ugly arm brace, doing yoga poses, and enduring chiropractic bone-cracking. I learned in talking with people around me at that time that repetitive strains of various kinds are surprisingly common conditions for academics and other computer-oriented occupations. I learned other things well worth learning in that painful process. In terms of my own writing and thinking about technology, I have even less tolerance for the idea of ephemeral, transcendent technological fusions between human and machine. Seductive slippages into a cyberspatial existence seem less sexy when bumping your body up against the very physical and unforgiving interface hurts more with each keystroke or mouse click. The experience has given me a chronic injury to manage carefully ever since, rationing my typing time and redoubling my commitment to practicing embodied theorising about technology, with attention to sensation, materiality, and the way joints (between bones or between computer and computant) can become points of inflammation. Although pain is rarely referenced in the myths of smooth human and technological incorporations, there is much to be learned in acknowledging and exploring the entry and exit wounds made when we interface with technology. The elbow, or wrist, or lower back, or mental health that gives out serves as an effective alarm, should it be ignored too long. If nothing else, like a crashed computer, a point of pain will break a flow of events typically taken for granted. Whether it is your screen or your pinky finger that unexpectedly freezes, a system collapse will prompt a step back to look with new perspective at the process you were engaged in. The lag, crash, break, gap, crack, or blister exposes the inherent imperfections in a system and offers up an invitation for reflection, critical engagement, and careful choice.One careful choice we could make would be a more critical engagement with technology-as-prosthesis by “re-membering” our jointedness with technologies. Of course, joints themselves are not distinct parts, but interesting articulated systems and relationships in the spaces in-between. Experiencing our jointedness with technologies involves recognising that this is not the smooth romantic union with technology that has so often been exalted. Instead, our technological articulations involve a range of pleasures and pain, flows and blockages, frictions and slippages, flexibilities and rigidities. I suggest that a new model for understanding technology and embodiment might employ “articulata” as a central figure, informed by the multiple meanings of articulation. At their simplest, articulata are hinged, jointed, plural beings, but they are also precarious things that move beyond a hollow collection of corporeal parts. The inspiration for an exploration of articulation as a metaphor in this way was planted by the work of Donna Haraway, and especially by her 1992 essay, “The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others,” in which she touches briefly on articulation and its promise. Haraway suggests that “To articulate is to signify. It is to put things together, scary things, risky things, contingent things. I want to live in an articulate world. We articulate; therefore we are” (324). Following from Haraway’s work, this framework insists that bodies and technologies are not simply components cobbled together, but a set of relations that rework each other in complex and ongoing processes of articulation. The double-jointed meaning of articulation is particularly apt as inspiration for crafting a more nuanced understanding of embodiment, since articulation implies both physiology and communication. It is a term that can be used to explain physical jointedness and mobility, but also expressive specificities. We articulate a joint by exploring its range of motion and we articulate ideas by expressing them in words. In both senses we articulate and are articulated by our jointed nature. Instead of oversimplifying or idealising embodied relationships with prostheses and other technologies, we might conceive of them and experience them as part of a “joint project”, based on points of connexion that are not static, but dynamic, expressive, complex, contested, and sometimes uncomfortable. After all, as Shildrick reminds us, in addition to functioning as utilitarian material artifacts, “prostheses are rich in semiotic meaning and mark the site where the disordering ambiguity, and potential transgressions, of the interplay between the human, animal and machine cannot be occluded” (17). By encouraging the attentive embracing of these multiple meanings, disorderings, ambiguities, transgressions and interplays, my aim moving forward is to explore the ways in which we might all become more articulate about our articulations. After all, I too want to live in an articulate world.ReferencesAT&T. "AT&T Reach Out and Touch Someone Commercial – 1987." Advertisement. 13 Mar. 2014. YouTube. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OapWdclVqEY>.Cleland, Kathy. "Prosthetic Bodies and Virtual Cyborgs." Second Nature 3 (2010): 74–101.Glitsos, Laura. "Screen as Skin: The Somatechnics of Touchscreen Music Media." Somatechnics 7.1 (2017): 142–165.Haraway, Donna. "Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others." Cultural Studies. Eds. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula A. Treichler. New York: Routledge, 1992. 295–337.Jain, Sarah S. "The Prosthetic Imagination: Enabling and Disabling the Prosthetic Trope." Science, Technology, & Human Values 31.54 (1999): 31–54.McLuhan, Eric, and Frank Zingrone, eds. Essential McLuhan. Concord: Anansi P, 1995.Mullins, Aimee. Aimee Mullins: It’s Not Fair Having 12 Pairs of Legs. TED, 2009. <http://www.ted.com/talks/aimee_mullins_prosthetic_aesthetics.html>.Muri, Allison. "Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture." Body & Society 9.3 (2003): 73–92.Nikon. "See Much Further! Nikon COOLPIX P1000." Advertisement. 1 Nov. 2018. YouTube. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtABWZX0U8w>.OED Online. "prosthesis, n." Oxford UP. June 2019. 1 Aug. 2019 <https://www-oed-com.proxy.hil.unb.ca/view/Entry/153069?redirectedFrom=prosthesis#eid>.Sengers, Phoebe. "Technological Prostheses: An Anecdote." ZKP-4 Net Criticism Reader. Eds. Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz. 1997.Shildrick, Margrit. "Why Should Our Bodies End at the Skin?: Embodiment, Boundaries, and Somatechnics." Hypatia 30.1 (2015): 13–29.Sobchak, Vivian. "Living a ‘Phantom Limb’: On the Phenomenology of Bodily Integrity." Body & Society 16.3 (2010): 51–67.Stone, Allucquere Roseanne. "Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures." Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge: MIT P, 1991. 81–113.Sun, Hsiao-yu. "Prosthetic Configurations and Imagination: Dis/ability, Body and Technology." Concentric: Literacy and Cultural Studies 44.1 (2018): 13–39.Texas Instruments. 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Introduction In November 2020, upon learning that the company’s Covid-19 vaccine trial had been successful, the head of Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Development, Kathrin Jansen, celebrated with champagne – “some really good stuff” (Cohen). Bubbles seem to go naturally with celebration, and champagne is fundamentally associated with bubbles. Yet, until the late-seventeenth century, champagne was a still wine, and it only reached the familiar levels of bubbliness in the late-nineteenth century (Harding). During this period and on into the early twentieth century, “champagne” was in many ways created, defined, and defended. A “champagne bubble” was created, within which the “nature” of champagne was contested and constructed. Champagne today is the result of hundreds of years of labour by many sorts of bubble-makers: those who make the bubbly drink, and those who construct, maintain, and defend the champagne bubble. In this article, I explore some elements of the champagne bubble, in order to understand both its fragility and rigidity over the years and today. Creating the Champagne Bubble – the Labour of Centuries It is difficult to separate the physical from the mythical as regards champagne. Therefore the categorisations below are always overlapping, and embedded in legal, political, economic, and socio-cultural factors. Just as assemblage – the mixing of wine from different grapes – is an essential element of champagne wine, the champagne bubble may be called heterogeneous assemblage. Indeed, the champagne bubble, as we will see below, is a myriad of different sorts of bubbles, such as terroir, appellation, myth and brand. And just as any assemblage, its heterogeneous elements exist and operate in relation to each other. Therefore the “champagne bubble” discussed here is both one and many, all of its elements fundamentally interconnected, constituting that “one” known as “champagne”. It is not my intention to be comprehensive of all the elements, historical and contemporary. Indeed, that would not be possible within such a short article. Instead, I seek to demonstrate some of the complexity of the champagne bubble, noting the elaborate labour that has gone into its creation. The Physical Champagne and Champagne – from Soil to Bubbles Champagne means both a legally protected geographical area (Champagne), and the wine (here: champagne) produced in this area from grapes defined as acceptable: most importantly pinot noir, pinot meunier (“black” grapes), and chardonnay (“white” grape). The method of production, too, is regulated and legally protected: méthode champenoise. Although the same method is used in numerous locations, these must be called something different: metodo classico (Italy), método tradicional (Spain), Methode Cap Classique (South Africa). The geographical area of Champagne was first legally defined in 1908, when it only included the areas of Marne and Aisne, leaving out, most importantly, the area of Aube. This decision led to severe unrest and riots, as the Aube vignerons revolted in 1911, forcing the inclusion of “zone 2”: Aube, Haute-Marne, and Seine-et-Marne (Guy). Behind these regulations was a surge in fraudulent production in the early twentieth century, as well as falling wine prices resulting from increasing supply of cheap wines (Colman 18). These first appellations d’origine had many consequences – they proved financially beneficial for the “zone 1”, but less so for the “zone 2”. When both these areas were brought under the same appellation in 1927, the financial benefits were more limited – but this may have been due to the Great Depression triggered in 1929 (Haeck et al.). It is a long-standing belief that the soil and climate of Champagne are key contributors to the quality of champagne wines, said to be due to “conditions … most suitable for making this type of wine” (Simon 11). Already in the end of the nineteenth century, the editor of Vigneron champenois attributed champagne’s quality to “a fortunate combination of … chalky soil … [and] unrivalled exposure [to the sun]” (Guy 119) among other things. Factors such as soil and climate, commonly included in and expressed through the idea of terroir, undoubtedly influence grapes and wines made thereof, but the extent remains unproven. Indeed, terroir itself is a very contested concept (Teil; Inglis and Almila). It is also the case that climate change has had, and will continue to have, devastating effects on wine production in many areas, while benefiting others. The highly successful English sparkling wine production, drawing upon know-how from the Champagne area, has been enabled by the warming climate (Inglis), while Champagne itself is at risk of becoming too hot (Robinson). Champagne is made through a process more complicated than most wines. I present here the bare bones of it, to illustrate the many challenges that had to be overcome to enable its production in the scale we see today. Freshly picked grapes are first pressed and the juice is fermented. Grape juice contains natural yeasts and therefore will ferment spontaneously, but fermentation can also be started with artificial yeasts. In fermentation, alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2) are formed, but the latter usually escapes the liquid. The secret of champagne is its second fermentation, which happens in bottles, after wines from different grapes and/or vineyards have been blended for desired characteristics (assemblage). For the second fermentation, yeast and sugar are added. As the fermentation happens inside a bottle, the CO2 that is created does not escape, but dissolves into the wine. The average pressure inside a champagne bottle in serving temperature is around 5 bar – 5 times the pressure outside the bottle (Liger-Belair et al.). The obvious challenge this method poses has to do with managing the pressure. Exploding bottles used to be a common problem, and the manner of sealing bottles was not very developed, either. Seventeenth-century developments in bottle-making, and using corks to seal bottles, enabled sparkling wines to be produced in the first place (Leszczyńska; Phillips 137). Still today, champagne comes in heavy-bottomed bottles, sealed with characteristically shaped cork, which is secured with a wire cage known as muselet. Scientific innovations, such as calculating the ideal amount of sugar for the second fermentation in 1836, also helped to control the amount of gas formed during the second fermentation, thus making the behaviour of the wine more predictable (Leszczyńska 265). Champagne is characteristically a “manufactured” wine, as it involves several steps of interference, from assemblage to dosage – sugar added for flavour to most champagnes after the second fermentation (although there are also zero dosage champagnes). This lends champagne particularly suitable for branding, as it is possible to make the wine taste the same year after year, harvest after harvest, and thus create a distinctive and recognisable house style. It is also possible to make champagnes for different tastes. During the nineteenth century, champagnes of different dosage were made for different markets – the driest for the British, the sweetest for the Russians (Harding). Bubbles are probably the most striking characteristic of champagne, and they are enabled by the complicated factors described above. But they are also formed when the champagne is poured in a glass. Natural impurities on the surface of the glass provide channels through which the gas pockets trapped in the wine can release themselves, forming strains of rising bubbles (Liger-Belair et al.). Champagne glasses have for centuries differed from other wine glasses, often for aesthetic reasons (Harding). The bubbles seem to do more than give people aesthetic pleasure and sensory experiences. It is often claimed that champagne makes you drunk faster than other drinks would, and there is, indeed, some (limited) research showing that this may well be the case (Roberts and Robinson; Ridout et al.). The Mythical Champagne – from Dom Pérignon to Modern Wonders Just as the bubbles in a champagne glass are influenced by numerous forces, so the metaphorical champagne bubble is subject to complex influences. Myth-creation is one of the most significant of these. The origin of champagne as sparkling wine is embedded in the myth of Dom Pérignon of Hautvillers monastery (1638–1715), who according to the legend would have accidentally developed the bubbles, and then enthusiastically exclaimed “I am drinking the stars!” (Phillips 138). In reality, bubbles are a natural phenomenon provoked by winter temperatures deactivating the fermenting yeasts, and spring again reactivating them. The myth of Dom Pérignon was first established in the nineteenth century and quickly embraced by the champagne industry. In 1937, Moët et Chandon launched a premium champagne called Dom Pérignon, which enjoys high reputation until this day (Phillips). The champagne industry has been active in managing associations connected with champagne since the nineteenth century. Sparkling champagnes had already enjoyed fashionability in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century, both in the French Court, and amongst the British higher classes. In the second half of the nineteenth century, champagne found ever increasing markets abroad, and the clientele was not aristocratic anymore. Before the 1860s, champagne’s association was with high status celebration, as well as sexual activity and seduction (Harding; Rokka). As the century went on, and champagne sales radically increased, associations with “modernity” were added: “hot-air balloons, towering steamships, transcontinental trains, cars, sports, and other ‘modern’ wonders were often featured in quickly proliferating champagne advertising” (Rokka 280). During this time, champagne grew both drier and more sparkling, following consumer tastes (Harding). Champagne’s most important markets in later nineteenth century included the UK, where the growing middle classes consumed champagne for both celebration and hospitality (Harding), the US, where (upper) middle-class women were served champagne in new kinds of consumer environments (Smith; Remus), and Russia, where the upper classes enjoyed sweeter champagne – until the Revolution (Phillips 296). The champagne industry quickly embraced the new middle classes in possession of increasing wealth, as well as new methods of advertising and marketing. What is remarkable is that they managed to integrate enormously varied cultural thematics and still retain associations with aristocracy and luxury, while producing and selling wine in industrial scale (Harding; Rokka). This is still true today: champagne retains a reputation of prestige, despite large-scale branding, production, and marketing. Maintaining and Defending the Bubble: Formulas, Rappers, and the Absolutely Fabulous Tipplers The falling wine prices and increasing counterfeit wines coincided with Europe’s phylloxera crisis – the pest accidentally brought over from North America that almost wiped out all Europe’s vineyards. The pest moved through Champagne in the 1890s, killing vines and devastating vignerons (Campbell). The Syndicat du Commerce des vins de Champagne had already been formed in 1882 (Rokka 280). Now unions were formed to fight phylloxera, such as the Association Viticole Champenoise in 1898. The 1904 Fédération Syndicale des Vignerons was formed to lobby the government to protect the name of Champagne (Leszczyńska 266) – successfully, as we have seen above. The financial benefits from appellations were certainly welcome, but short-lived. World War I treated Champagne harshly, with battle lines stuck through the area for years (Guy 187). The battle went on also in the lobbying front. In 1935, a new appellation regime was brought into law, which came to be the basis for all European systems, and the Comité National des appellations d'origine (CNAO) was founded (Colman 1922). Champagne’s protection became increasingly international, and continues to be so today under EU law and trade deals (European Commission). The post-war recovery of champagne relied on strategies used already in the “golden years” – marketing and lobbying. Advertising continued to embrace “luxury, celebration, transport (extending from air travel to the increasingly popular automobile), modernity, sports” (Guy 188). Such advertisement must have responded accurately to the mood of post-war, pre-depression Europe. Even in the prohibition US it was known that the “frivolous” French women might go as far as bathe in champagne, like the popular actress Mistinguett (Young 63). Curiously, in the 1930s Soviet Russia, “champagne” (not produced in Champagne) was declared a sign of good living, symbolising the standard of living that any Soviet worker had access to (at least in theory) (Gronow). Today, the reputation of champagne is fiercely defended in legal terms. This is not only in terms of protection against other sparkling wine making areas, but also in terms of exploitation of champagne’s reputation by actors in other commercial fields, and even against mass market products containing genuine champagne (Mahy and d’Ath; Schneider and Nam). At the same time, champagne has been widely “democratised” by mass production, enabled partly by increasing mechanisation and scientification of champagne production from the 1950s onwards (Leszczyńska 266). Yet champagne retains its association with prestige, luxury, and even royalty. This has required some serious adaptation and flexibility. In what follows, I look into three cultural phenomena that illuminate processes of such adaptation: Formula One (F1) champagne spraying, the 1990s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the Cristal racism scandal in 2006. The first champagne bottle is said to have been presented to F1 grand prix winner in Champagne in 1950 (Wheels24). Such a gesture would have been fully in line with champagne’s association with cars, sport, and modernity. But what about the spraying? Surely that is not in line with the prestige of the wine? The first spraying is attributed to Jo Siffert in 1966 and Dan Gurney in 1967, the former described as accidental, the latter as a spontaneous gesture of celebration (Wheels24; Dobie). Moët had become the official supplier of F1 champagnes in 1966, and there are no signs that the new custom would have been problematic for them, as their sponsorship continued until 1999, after which Mumm sponsored the sport for 15 years. Today, the champagne to be popped and sprayed is Chanson, in special bottles “coated in the same carbon fibre that F1 cars are made of” (Wheels24). Such an iconic status has the spraying gained that it features in practically all TV broadcasts concerning F1, although non-alcoholic substitute is used in countries where sale of alcohol is banned (Barker et al., “Quantifying”; Barker et al., “Alcohol”). As disturbing as the champagne spraying might look for a wine snob, it is perfectly in line with champagne’s marketing history and entrepreneurial spirit shown since the nineteenth century. Nor is it unheard of to let champagne spray. The “art” of sabrage, opening champagne bottle with a sable, associated with glamour, spectacle, and myth – its origin is attributed to Napoleon and his officers – is perfectly acceptable even for the snob. Sparkling champagne was always bound up with joy and celebration, not a solemn drink, and the champagne bubble was able to accommodate middle classes as well as aristocrats. This brings us to our second example, the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. The show, first released in 1992, featured two women, “Eddy” (Jennifer Saunders) and “Patsy” (Joanna Lumley), who spent their time happily smoking, taking drugs, and drinking large quantities of “Bolly” (among other things). Bollinger champagne may have initially experienced “a bit of a shock” for being thus addressed, but soon came to see the benefits of fame (French). In 2005, they hired PR support to make better use of the brand’s “Ab Fab” recognisability, and to improve its prestige reputation in order to justify their higher price range (Cann). Saunders and Lumley were warmly welcomed by the Bollinger house when filming for their champagne tour Absolutely Champers (2017). It is befitting indeed that such controversial fame came from the UK, the first country to discover sparkling champagne outside France (Simon 48), and where the aspirational middle classes were keen to consume it already in the nineteenth century (Harding). More controversial still is the case of Cristal (made by Louis Roederer) and the US rap world. Enthusiastically embraced by the “bling-bling” world of (black) rappers, champagne seems to fit their ethos well. Cristal was long favoured as both a drink and a word in rap lyrics. But in 2006, the newly appointed managing director at the family owned Roederer, Frédéric Rouzaud, made comments considered racist by many (Woodland). Rouzard told in an interview with The Economist that the house observed the Cristal-rap association “with curiosity and serenity”. He reportedly continued: “but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business”. It was indeed those two brands that the rapper Jay-Z replaced Cristal with, when calling for a boycott on Cristal. It would be easy to dismiss Rouzard’s comments as snobbery, or indeed as racism, but they merit some more reflection. Cristal is the premium wine of a house that otherwise does not enjoy high recognisability. While champagne’s history involves embracing new sorts of clientele, and marketing flexibly to as many consumer groups as possible (Rokka), this was the first spectacular crossing of racial boundaries. It was always the case that different houses and their different champagnes were targeted at different clienteles, and it is apparent that Cristal was not targeted at black rap artists. Whereas Bollinger was able to turn into a victory the questionable fame brought by the white middle-class association of Absolutely Fabulous, the more prestigious Cristal considered the attention of the black rapper world more threatening and acted accordingly. They sought to defend their own brand bubble, not the larger champagne bubble. Cristal’s reputation seems to have suffered little – its 2008 vintage, launched in 2018, was the most traded wine of that year (Schultz). Jay-Z’s purchase of his own champagne brand (Armand de Brignac, nicknamed Ace of Spades) has been less successful reputation-wise (Greenburg). It is difficult to break the champagne bubble, and it may be equally difficult to break into it. Conclusion In this article, I have looked into the various dilemmas the “bubble-makers” of Champagne encountered when fabricating what is today known as “champagne”. There have been moments of threat to the bubble they formed, such as in the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and eras of incomparable success, such as from the 1860s to 1880s. The discussion has demonstrated the remarkable flexibility with which the makers and defenders of champagne have responded to challenges, and dealt with material, socio-cultural, economic, and other problems. It feels appropriate to end with a note on the current challenge the champagne industry faces: Covid-19. The pandemic hit champagne sales exceptionally hard, leaving around 100 million bottles unsold (Micallef). This was not very surprising, given the closure of champagne-selling venues, banning of public and private celebrations, and a general mood not particularly prone to (or even likely to frown upon) such light-hearted matters as glamour and champagne. Champagne has survived many dramatic drops in sales during the twentieth century, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the post-financial crisis collapse in 2009. Yet they seem to be able to make astonishing recoveries. 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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). 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Introduction Automated or semi-automated software agents, better known as bots, have become an integral part of social media platforms. Reportedly, bots now generate twenty-four per cent of all posts on Twitter (Orlean “Man”), yet we know very little about who these bots are, what they do, or how to attend to these bots. This article examines one particular prominent exemplar: @Horse_ebooks, a much beloved Twitter bot that turned out not to be a “proper” bot after all. By examining how people responded to the revelations that the @Horse_ebooks account was in fact a human and not an automated software program, the intention here is not only to nuance some of the more common discourses around Twitter bots as spam, but more directly and significantly, to use the concept of persona as a useful analytical framework for understanding the relationships people forge with bots. Twitter bots tend to be portrayed as annoying parasites that generate “fake traffic” and “steal identities” (Hill; Love; Perlroth; Slotkin). According to such news media presentations, bots are part of an “ethically-questionable industry,” where they operate to provide an (false) impression of popularity (Hill). In a similar vein, much of the existing academic research on bots, especially from a computer science standpoint, tends to focus on the destructive nature of bots in an attempt to design better spam detection systems (Laboreiro et.al; Weiss and Tscheligi; Zangerle and Specht). While some notable exceptions exist (Gehl; Hwang et al; Mowbray), there is still an obvious lack of research on Twitter bots within Media Studies. By examining a case of “bot fakeness”—albeit in a somewhat different manner—this article contributes an understanding of Twitter bots as medium-specific personas. The case of @Horse_ebooks does show how people treat it as having a distinct personality. More importantly, this case study shows how the relationship people forge with an alleged bot differs from how they would relate to a human. To understand the ambiguity of the concept of persona as it applies to bots, this article relies on para-social interaction theory as developed by Horton and Wohl. In their seminal article first published in 1956, Horton and Wohl understood para-social interaction as a “simulacrum of conversational give and take” that takes place particularly between mass media users and performers (215). The relationship was termed para-social because, despite of the nonreciprocal exposure situation, the viewer would feel as if the relationship was real and intimate. Like theater, an illusory relationship would be created between what they called the persona—an “indigenous figure” presented and created by the mass media—and the viewer (Horton and Wohl 216). Like the “new types of performers” created by the mass media—”the quizmasters, announcers or ‘interviewers’” —bots too, seem to represent a “special category of ‘personalities’ whose existence is a function of the media themselves” (Horton and Wohl 216). In what follows, I revisit the concept of para-social interaction using the case of @Horse_ebooks, to show that there is potential to expand an understanding of persona to include non-human actors as well. Everything Happens So Much: The Case of @Horse_ebooks The case of the now debunked Twitter account @Horse_ebooks is interesting for a number of reasons, not least because it highlights the presence of what we might call botness, the belief that bots possess distinct personalities or personas that are specific to algorithms. In the context of Twitter, bots are pieces of software or scripts that are designed to automatically or semi-automatically publish tweets or make and accept friend requests (Mowbray). Typically, bots are programmed and designed to be as humanlike as possible, a goal that has been pursued ever since Alan Turing proposed what has now become known as the Turing test (Gehl; Weiss and Tschengeli). The Turing test provides the classic challenge for artificial intelligence, namely, whether a machine can impersonate a human so convincingly that it becomes indistinguishable from an actual human. This challenge is particularly pertinent to spambots as they need to dodge the radar of increasingly complex spam filters and detection algorithms. To avoid detection, bots masquerade as “real” accounts, trying to seem as human as possible (Orlean “Man”). Not all bots, however, pretend to be humans. Bots are created for all kinds of purposes. As Mowbray points out, “many bots are designed to be informative or otherwise useful” (184). For example, bots are designed to tweet news headlines, stock market quotes, traffic information, weather forecasts, or even the hourly bell chimes from Big Ben. Others are made for more artistic purposes or simply for fun by hackers and other Internet pundits. These bots tell jokes, automatically respond to certain keywords typed by other users, or write poems (i.e. @pentametron, @ProfJocular). Amidst the growing bot population on Twitter, @Horse_ebooks is perhaps one of the best known and most prominent. The account was originally created by Russian web developer Alexey Kouznetsov and launched on 5 August 2010. In the beginning, @Horse_ebooks periodically tweeted links to an online store selling e-books, some of which were themed around horses. What most people did not know, until it was revealed to the public on 24 September 2013 (Orlean “Horse”), was that the @Horse_ebooks account had been taken over by artist and Buzzfeed employee Jacob Bakkila in September 2011. Only a year after its inception, @Horse_ebooks went from being a bot to being a human impersonating a bot impersonating a human. After making a deal with Kouznetsov, Bakkila disabled the spambot and started generating tweets on behalf of @Horse_ebooks, using found material and text strings from various obscure Internet sites. The first tweet in Bakkila’s disguise was published on 14 September 2011, saying: “You will undoubtedly look on this moment with shock and”. For the next two years, streams of similar, “strangely poetic” (Chen) tweets were published, slowly giving rise to a devoted and growing fan base. Over the years, @Horse_ebooks became somewhat of a cultural phenomenon—an Internet celebrity of sorts. By 2012, @Horse_ebooks had risen to Internet fame; becoming one of the most mentioned “spambots” in news reports and blogs (Chen). Responses to the @Horse_ebooks “Revelation” On 24 September 2013, journalist Susan Orlean published a piece in The New Yorker revealing that @Horse_ebooks was in fact “human after all” (Orlean “@Horse_ebooks”). The revelation rapidly spurred a plethora of different reactions by its followers and fans, ranging from indifference, admiration and disappointment. Some of the sadness and disappointment felt can be seen clearly in the many of media reports, blog posts and tweets that emerged after the New Yorker story was published. Meyer of The Atlantic expressed his disbelief as follows: @Horse_ebooks, reporters told us, was powered by an algorithm. [...] We loved the horse because it was the network talking to itself about us, while trying to speak to us. Our inventions, speaking—somehow sublimely—of ourselves. Our joy was even a little voyeuristic. An algorithm does not need an audience. To me, though, that disappointment is only a mark of the horse’s success. We loved @Horse_ebooks because it was seerlike, childlike. But no: There were people behind it all along. We thought we were obliging a program, a thing which needs no obliging, whereas in fact we were falling for a plan. (Original italics) People felt betrayed, indeed fooled by @Horse_ebooks. As Watson sees it, “The internet got up in arms about the revelation, mostly because it disrupted our desire to believe that there was beauty in algorithms and randomness.” Several prominent Internet pundits, developers and otherwise computationally skilled people, quickly shared their disappointment and even anger on Twitter. As Jacob Harris, a self-proclaimed @Horse_ebooks fan and news hacker at the New York Times expressed it: Harris’ comparisons to the winning chess-playing computer Deep Blue speaks to the kind of disappointment felt. It speaks to the deep fascination that people feel towards the mysteries of the machine. It speaks to the fundamental belief in the potentials of machine intelligence and to the kind of techno-optimism felt amongst many hackers and “webbies.” As technologist and academic Dan Sinker said, “If I can’t rely on a Twitter bot to actually be a bot, what can I rely on?” (Sinker “If”). Perhaps most poignantly, Sinker noted his obvious disbelief in a blog post tellingly titled “Eulogy for a horse”: It’s been said that, given enough time, a million monkeys at typewriters would eventually, randomly, type the works of Shakespeare. It’s just a way of saying that mathematically, given infinite possibilities, eventually everything will happen. But I’ve always wanted it literally to be true. I’ve wanted those little monkeys to produce something beautiful, something meaningful, and yet something wholly unexpected.@Horse_ebooks was my monkey Shakespeare. I think it was a lot of people’s…[I]t really feels hard, like a punch through everything I thought I knew. (Sinker “Eulogy”) It is one thing is to be fooled by a human and quite another to be fooled by a “Buzzfeed employee.” More than anything perhaps, the question of authenticity and trustworthiness seems to be at stake. In this sense, “It wasn’t the identities of the feed’s writers that shocked everyone (though one of the two writers works for BuzzFeed, which really pissed people off). Rather, it was the fact that they were human in the first place” (Farago). As Sinker put it at the end of the “Eulogy”: I want to believe this wasn’t just yet another internet buzz-marketing prank.I want to believe that @Horse was as beautiful and wonderful today as it was yesterday.I want to believe that beauty can be assembled from the randomness of life all around us.I want to believe that a million monkeys can make something amazingGod.I really, really do want to believe.But I don’t think I do.And that feels even worse. Bots as Personae: Revisiting Horton and Wohl’s Concept of Para-Social Relations How then are we to understand and interpret @Horse_ebooks and peoples’ responses to the revelations? Existing research on human-robot relations suggest that machines are routinely treated as having personalities (Turkle “Life”). There is even evidence to suggest that people often imagine relationships with (sufficiently responsive) robots as being better than relationships with humans. As Turkle explains, this is because relationships with machines, unlike humans, do not demand any ethical commitments (Turkle “Alone”). In other words, bots are oftentimes read and perceived as personas, with which people forge affective relationships. The term “persona” can be understood as a performance of personhood. In a Goffmanian sense, this performance describes how human beings enact roles and present themselves in public (Goffman). As Moore puts it, “the persona is a projection, a puppet show, usually constructed by an author and enlivened by the performance, interpretation, or adaptation”. From Marcel Mauss’ classic analysis of gifts as objects thoroughly personified (Scott), through to the study of drag queens (Stru¨bel-Scheiner), the concept of persona signifies a masquerade, a performance. As a useful concept to theorise the performance and doing of personhood, persona has been used to study everything from celebrity culture (Marshall), fiction, and social networking sites (Zhao et al.). The concept also figures prominently in Human Computer Interaction and Usability Studies where the creation of personas constitutes an important design methodology (Dong et al.). Furthermore, as Marshall points out, persona figures prominently in Jungian psychoanalysis where it exemplifies the idea of “what a man should appear to be” (166). While all of these perspectives allow for interesting analysis of personas, here I want to draw on an understanding of persona as a medium specific condition. Specifically, I want to revisit Horton and Wohl’s classic text about para-social interaction. Despite the fact that it was written almost 60 years ago and in the context of the then emerging mass media – radio, television and movies – their observations are still relevant and useful to theorise the kinds of relations people forge with bots today. According to Horton and Wohl, the “persona offers, above all, a continuing relationship. His appearance is a regular and dependable event, to be counted on, planned for, and integrated into the routines of daily life” (216). The para-social relations between audiences and TV personas are developed over time and become more meaningful to the audience as it acquires a history. Not only are devoted TV audiences characterized by a strong belief in the character of the persona, they are also expected to “assume a sense of personal obligation to the performer” (Horton and Wohl 220). As Horton and Wohl note, “the “fan” - comes to believe that he “knows” the persona more intimately and profoundly than others do; that he “understands” his character and appreciates his values and motives (216). In a similar vein, fans of @Horse_ebooks expressed their emotional attachments in blog posts and tweets. For Sinker, @Horse_ebooks seemed to represent the kind of dependable and regular event that Horton and Wohl described: “Even today, I love @Horse_ebooks. A lot. Every day it was a gift. There were some days—thankfully not all that many—where it was the only thing I looked forward to. I know that that was true for others as well” (Sinker “Eulogy”). Judging from searching Twitter retroactively for @Horse_ebooks, the bot meant something, if not much, to other people as well. Still, almost a year after the revelations, people regularly tweet that they miss @Horse_ebooks. For example, Harris tweets messages saying things like: “I’m still bitter about @Horse_ebooks” (12 November 2013) or “Many of us are still angry and hurt about @Horse_ebooks” (27 December 2013). Twitter user @third_dystopia says he feels something is missing from his life, realizing “horse eBooks hasn’t tweeted since September.” Another of the many messages posted in retrospect similarly says: “I want @Horse_ebooks back. Ever since he went silent, Twitter hasn’t been the same for me” (Lockwood). Indeed, Marshall suggests that affect is at “the heart of a wider persona culture” (162). In a Deleuzian understanding of the term, affect refers to the “capacity to affect and be affected” (Steward 2). Borrowing from Marshall, what the @Horse_ebooks case shows is “that there are connections in our culture that are not necessarily coordinated with purposive and rational alignments. They are organised around clusters of sentiment that help situate people on various spectra of activity and engagement” (162). The concept of persona helps to understand how the performance of @Horse_ebooks depends on the audience to “contribute to the illusion by believing in it” (Horton and Wohl 220). “@Horse_ebooks was my monkey” as Sinker says, suggests a fundamental loss. In this case the para-social relation could no longer be sustained, as the illusion of being engaged in a relation with a machine was taken away. The concept of para-social relations helps not only to illuminate the similarities between how people reacted to @Horse_ebooks and the way in which Horton and Wohl described peoples’ reactions to TV personas. It also allows us to see some crucial differences between the ways in which people relate to bots compared to how they relate to a human. For example, rather than an expression of grief at the loss of a social relationship, it could be argued that the responses triggered by the @Horse_ebooks revelations was of a more general loss of belief in the promises of artificial intelligence. To a certain extent, the appeal of @Horse_ebooks was precisely the fact that it was widely believed not to be a person. Whereas TV personas demand an ethical and social commitment on the part of the audience to keep the masquerade of the performer alive, a bot “needs no obliging” (Meyer). Unlike TV personas that depend on an illusory sense of intimacy, bots do “not need an audience” (Meyer). Whether or not people treat bots in the same way as they treat TV personas, Horton and Wohl’s concept of para-social relations ultimately points towards an understanding of the bot persona as “a function of the media themselves” (Horton and Wohl 216). If quizmasters were seen as the “typical and indigenous figures” of mass media in 1956 (Horton and Wohl 216), the bot, I would suggest, constitutes such an “indigenous figure” today. The bot, if not exactly a “new type of performer” (Horton and Wohl 216), is certainly a pervasive “performer”—indeed a persona—on Twitter today. While @Horse_ebooks was somewhat paradoxically revealed as a “performance art” piece (Orlean “Man”), the concept of persona allows us to see the “real” performance of @Horse_ebooks as constituted in the doing of botness. As the responses to @Horse_ebooks show, the concept of persona is not merely tied to beliefs about “what man should appear to be” (Jung 158), but also to ideas about what a bot should appear to be. Moreover, what the curious case of @Horse_ebooks shows, is how bots are not necessarily interpreted and judged by the standards of the original Turing test, that is, how humanlike they are, but according to how well they perform as bots. 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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. 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On 17 January 2013, Wired chose the smart contact lens as one of “7 Massive Ideas That Could Change the World” describing a Google-led research project. Wired explains that the inventor, Dr. Babak Parviz, wants to build a microsystem on a contact lens: “Using radios no wider than a few human hairs, he thinks these lenses can augment reality and incidentally eliminate the need for displays on phones, PCs, and widescreen TVs”. Explained further in other sources, the technology entails an antenna, circuits embedded into a contact lens, GPS, and an LED to project images on the eye, creating a virtual display (Solve for X). Wi-Fi would stream content through a transparent screen over the eye. One patent describes a camera embedded in the lens (Etherington). Another mentions medical sensing, such as glucose monitoring of tears (Goldman). In other words, Google proposes an imagined future when we use contact lenses to search the Internet (and be searched by it), shop online, communicate with friends, work, navigate maps, swipe through Tinder, monitor our health, watch television, and, by that time, probably engage in a host of activities not yet invented. Often referred to as a bionic contact, the smart contact lens would signal a weighty shift in the way we work, socialize, and frame our online identities. However, speculative discussion over this radical shift in personal computing, rarely if ever, includes consideration of how the body, acting as a host to digital information, will manage to assimilate not only significant affordances, but also significant constraints and vulnerabilities. At this point, for most people, the smart contact lens is just an idea. Is a new medium of communication started when it is launched in an advertising campaign? When we Like it on Facebook? If we chat about it during a party amongst friends? Or, do a critical mass of people actually have to be using it to say it has started? One might say that Apple’s Macintosh computer started as a media platform when the world heard about the famous 1984 television advertisement aired during the American NFL Super Bowl of that year. Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad entails an athlete running down a passageway and hurling a hammer at a massive screen depicting cold war style rulers expounding state propaganda. The screen explodes freeing those imprisoned from their concentration camp existence. The direct reference to Orwell’s 1984 serves as a metaphor for IBM in 1984. PC users were made analogous to political prisoners and IBM served to represent the totalitarian government. The Mac became a something that, at the time, challenged IBM, and suggested an alternative use for the desktop computer that had previously been relegated for work rather than life. Not everyone bought a Mac, but the polemical ad fostered the idea that Mac was certainly the start of new expectations, civic identities, value-systems, and personal uses for computers. The smart contact lens is another startling start. News of it shocks us, initiates social media clicks and forwards, and instigates dialogue. But, it also indicates the start of a new media paradigm that is already undergoing popular adoption as it is announced in mainstream news and circulated algorithmically across media channels. Since 2008, news outlets like CNN, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Asian International News, United News of India, The Times of London and The Washington Post have carried it, feeding the buzz in circulation that Google intends. Attached to the wave of current popular interest generated around any technology claiming to be “wearable,” a smart contact lens also seems surreptitious. We would no longer hold smartphones, but hide all of that digital functionality beneath our eyelids. Its emergence reveals the way commercial models have dramatically changed. The smart contact lens is a futuristic invention imagined for us and about us, but also a sensationalized idea socializing us to a future that includes it. It is also a real device that Parviz (with Google) has been inventing, promoting, and patenting for commercial applications. All of these workings speak to a broader digital culture phenomenon. We argue that the smart contact lens discloses a process of nascent posthuman adaptation, launched in an era that celebrates wearable media as simultaneously astonishing and banal. More specifically, we adopt technology based on our adaptation to it within our personal, political, medial, social, and biological contexts, which also function in a state of flux. N. Katherine Hayles writes that “Contemporary technogenesis, like evolution in general, is not about progress ... rather, contemporary technogenesis is about adaptation, the fit between organisms and their environments, recognizing that both sides of the engagement (human and technologies) are undergoing coordinated transformations” (81). This article attends to the idea that in these early stages, symbolic acts of adaptation signal an emergent medium through rhetorical processes that society both draws from and contributes to. In terms of project scope, this article contributes a focused analysis to a much larger ongoing digital rhetoric project. For the larger project, we conducted a discourse analysis on a collection of international publications concerning Babak Parviz and the invention. We searched for and collected newspaper stories, news broadcasts, YouTube videos from various sources, academic journal publications, inventors’ conference presentations, and advertising, all published between January 2008 and May 2014, generating a corpus of more than 600 relevant artifacts. Shortly after this time, Dr. Parviz, a Professor at the University of Washington, left the secretive GoogleX lab and joined Amazon.com (Mac). For this article we focus specifically on the idea of beginnings or genesis and how digital spaces increasingly serve as the grounds for emergent digital cultural phenomena that are rarely recognized as starting points. We searched through the corpus to identify a few exemplary international mainstream news stories to foreground predominant tropes in support of the claim we make that smart contacts lenses are a startling idea. Content producers deliberately use astonishment as a persuasive device. We characterize the idea of a smart contact lens cast in rhetorical terms in order to reveal how its allure works as a process of adaptation. Rhetorician and philosopher, Kenneth Burke writes that “rhetorical language is inducement to action (or to attitude)” (42). A rhetorical approach is instrumental because it offers a model to explain how we deploy, often times, manipulative meaning as senders and receivers while negotiating highly complex constellations of resources and contexts. Burke’s rhetorical theory can show how messages influence and become influenced by powerful hierarchies in discourse that seem transparent or neutral, ones that seem to fade into the background of our consciousness. For this article, we also concentrate on rhetorical devices such as ethos and the inventor’s own appeals through different modes of communication. Ethos was originally proposed by Aristotle to identify speaker credibility as a persuasive tactic. Addressed by scholars of rhetoric for centuries, ethos has been reconfigured by many critical theorists (Burke; Baumlin Ethos; Hyde). Baumlin and Baumlin suggest that “ethos describes an audience’s projection of authority and trustworthiness onto the speaker ... ethos suggests that the ethical appeal to be a radically psychological event situated in the mental processes of the audience – as belonging as much to the audience as to the actual character of a speaker” (Psychology 99). Discussed in the next section, our impression of Parviz and his position as inventor plays a dramatic role in the surfacing of the smart contact lens. Digital Rhetoric is an “emerging scholarly discipline concerned with the interpretation of computer-generated media as objects of study” (Losh 48). In an era when machine-learning algorithms become the messengers for our messages, which have become commodity items operating across globalized, capitalist networks, digital rhetoric provides a stable model for our approach. It leads us to demonstrate how this emergent medium and invention, the smart contact lens, is born amid new digital genres of speculative communication circulated in the everyday forums we engage on a daily basis. Smart Contact Lenses, Sensationalism, and Identity One relevant site for exploration into how an invention gains ethos is through writing or video penned or produced by the inventor. An article authored by Parviz in 2009 discusses his invention and the technical advancements that need to be made before the smart contact lens could work. He opens the article using a fictional and sensationalized analogy to encourage the adoption of his invention: The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse. It can see millions of colors, adjust easily to shifting light conditions, and transmit information to the brain at a rate exceeding that of a high-speed Internet connection.But why stop there?In the Terminator movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character sees the world with data superimposed on his visual field—virtual captions that enhance the cyborg’s scan of a scene. In stories by the science fiction author Vernor Vinge, characters rely on electronic contact lenses, rather than smartphones or brain implants, for seamless access to information that appears right before their eyes. Identity building is made to correlate with smart contact lenses in a manner that frames them as exciting. Coming to terms with them often involves casting us as superhumans, wielding abilities that we do not currently possess. One reason for embellishment is because we do not need digital displays on the eyes, so the motive to use them must always be geared to transcending our assumed present condition as humans and society members. Consequently, imagination is used to justify a shift in human identity along a future trajectory.This passage above also instantiates a transformation from humanist to posthumanist posturing (i.e. “the cyborg”) in order to incent the adoption of smart contact lenses. It begins with the bold declarative statement, “The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse,” which is a comforting claim about our seemingly human superiority. Indexing abstract humanist values, Parviz emphasizes skills we already possess, including seeing a plethora of colours, adjusting to light on the fly, and thinking fast, indeed faster than “a high-speed Internet connection”. However, the text goes on to summon the Terminator character and his optic feats from the franchise of films. Filmic cyborg characters fulfill the excitement that posthuman rhetoric often seems to demand, but there is more here than sensationalism. Parviz raises the issue of augmenting human vision using science fiction as his contextualizing vehicle because he lacks another way to imbricate the idea. Most interesting in this passage is the inventor’s query “But why stop there?” to yoke the two claims, one biological (i.e., “The human eye is a perceptual powerhouse”) and one fictional (i.e. Terminator, Vernor Vinge characters). The query suggests, Why stop with human superiority, we may as well progress to the next level and embrace a smart contact lens just as fictional cyborgs do. The non-threatening use of fiction makes the concept seem simultaneously exciting and banal, especially because the inventor follows with a clear description of the necessary scientific engineering in the rest of the article. This rhetorical act signifies the voice of a technoelite, a heavily-funded cohort responding to global capitalist imperatives armed with a team of technologists who can access technological advancements and imbue comments with an authority that may extend beyond their fields of expertise, such as communication studies, sociology, psychology, or medicine. The result is a powerful ethos. The idea behind the smart contact lens maintains a degree of respectability long before a public is invited to use it.Parviz exhumes much cultural baggage when he brings to life the Terminator character to pitch smart contact lenses. The Terminator series of films has established the “Arnold Schwarzenegger” character a cultural mainstay. Each new film reinvented him, but ultimately promoted him within a convincing dystopian future across the whole series: The Terminator (Cameron), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Mostow), Terminator Salvation (McG) and Terminator Genisys (Taylor) (which appeared in 2015 after Parviz’s article). Recently, several writers have addressed how cyborg characters figure significantly in our cultural psyche (Haraway, Bukatman; Leaver). Tama Leaver’s Artificial Culture explores the way popular, contemporary, cinematic, science fiction depictions of embodied Artificial Intelligence, such as the Terminator cyborgs, “can act as a matrix which, rather than separating or demarcating minds and bodies or humanity and the digital, reinforce the symbiotic connection between people, bodies, and technologies” (31). Pointing out the violent and ultimately technophobic motive of The Terminator films, Leaver reads across them to conclude nevertheless that science fiction “proves an extremely fertile context in which to address the significance of representations of Artificial Intelligence” (63).Posthumanism and TechnogenesisOne reason this invention enters the public’s consciousness is its announcement alongside a host of other technologies, which seem like parts of a whole. We argue that this constant grouping of technologies in the news is one process indicative of technogenesis. For example, City A.M., London’s largest free commuter daily newspaper, reports on the future of business technology as a hodgepodge of what ifs: As Facebook turns ten, and with Bill Gates stepping down as Microsoft chairman, it feels like something is drawing to an end. But if so, it is only the end of the technological revolution’s beginning ... Try to look ahead ten years from now and the future is dark. Not because it is bleak, but because the sheer profusion of potential is blinding. Smartphones are set to outnumber PCs within months. After just a few more years, there are likely to be 3bn in use across the planet. In ten years, who knows – wearables? smart contact lenses? implants? And that’s just the start. The Internet of Things is projected to be a $300bn (£183bn) industry by 2020. (Sidwell) This reporting is a common means to frame the commodification of technology in globalized business news that seeks circulation as much as it does readership. But as a text, it also posits how individuals frame the future and their participation with it (Pedersen). Smart contacts appear to move along this exciting, unstoppable trajectory where the “potential is blinding”. The motive is to excite and scare. However, simultaneously, the effect is predictable. We are quite accustomed to this march of innovations that appears everyday in the morning paper. We are asked to adapt rather than question, consequently, we never separate the parts from the whole (e.g., “wearables? smart contact lenses? Implants”) in order to look at them critically.In coming to terms with Cary Wolf’s definition of posthumanism, Greg Pollock writes that posthumanism is the questioning that goes on “when we can no longer rely on ‘the human’ as an autonomous, rational being who provides an Archimedean point for knowing about the world (in contrast to “humanism,” which uses such a figure to ground further claims)” (208). With similar intent, N. Katherine Hayles formulating the term technogenesis suggests that we are not really progressing to another level of autonomous human existence when we adopt media, we are in effect, adapting to media and media are also in a process of adapting to us. She writes: As digital media, including networked and programmable desktop stations, mobile devices, and other computational media embedded in the environment, become more pervasive, they push us in the direction of faster communication, more intense and varied information streams, more integration of humans and intelligent machines, and more interactions of language with code. These environmental changes have significant neurological consequences, many of which are now becoming evident in young people and to a lesser degree in almost everyone who interacts with digital media on a regular basis. (11) Following Hayles, three actions or traits characterize adaptation in a manner germane to the technogenesis of media like smart contact lenses. The first is “media embedded in the environment”. The trait of embedding technology in the form of sensors and chips into external spaces evokes the onset of The Internet of Things (IoT) foundations. Extensive data-gathering sensors, wireless technologies, mobile and wearable components integrated with the Internet, all contribute to the IoT. Emerging from cloud computing infrastructures and data models, The IoT, in its most extreme, involves a scenario whereby people, places, animals, and objects are given unique “embedded” identifiers so that they can embark on constant data transfer over a network. In a sense, the lenses are adapted artifacts responding to a world that expects ubiquitous networked access for both humans and machines. Smart contact lenses will essentially be attached to the user who must adapt to these dynamic and heavily mediated contexts.Following closely on the first, the second point Hayles makes is “integration of humans and intelligent machines”. The camera embedded in the smart contact lens, really an adapted smartphone camera, turns the eye itself into an image capture device. By incorporating them under the eyelids, smart contact lenses signify integration in complex ways. Human-machine amalgamation follows biological, cognitive, and social contexts. Third, Hayles points to “more interactions of language with code.” We assert that with smart contact lenses, code will eventually govern interaction between countless agents in accordance with other smart devices, such as: (1) exchanges of code between people and external nonhuman networks of actors through machine algorithms and massive amalgamations of big data distributed on the Internet;(2) exchanges of code amongst people, human social actors in direct communication with each other over social media; and (3) exchanges of coding and decoding between people and their own biological processes (e.g. monitoring breathing, consuming nutrients, translating brainwaves) and phenomenological (but no less material) practices (e.g., remembering, grieving, or celebrating). The allure of the smart contact lens is the quietly pressing proposition that communication models such as these will be radically transformed because they will have to be adapted to use with the human eye, as the method of input and output of information. Focusing on genetic engineering, Eugene Thacker fittingly defines biomedia as “entail[ing] the informatic recontextualization of biological components and processes, for ends that may be medical or nonmedical (economic, technical) and with effects that are as much cultural, social, and political as they are scientific” (123). He specifies, “biomedia are not computers that simply work on or manipulate biological compounds. Rather, the aim is to provide the right conditions, such that biological life is able to demonstrate or express itself in a particular way” (123). Smart contact lenses sit on the cusp of emergence as a biomedia device that will enable us to decode bodily processes in significant new ways. The bold, technical discourse that announces it however, has not yet begun to attend to the seemingly dramatic “cultural, social, and political” effects percolating under the surface. Through technogenesis, media acclimatizes rapidly to change without establishing a logic of the consequences, nor a design plan for emergence. Following from this, we should mention issues such as the intrusion of surveillance algorithms deployed by corporations, governments, and other hegemonic entities that this invention risks. If smart contact lenses are biomedia devices inspiring us to decode bodily processes and communicate that data for analysis, for ourselves, and others in our trust (e.g., doctors, family, friends), we also need to be wary of them. David Lyon warns: Surveillance has spilled out of its old nation-state containers to become a feature of everyday life, at work, at home, at play, on the move. So far from the single all-seeing eye of Big Brother, myriad agencies now trace and track mundane activities for a plethora of purposes. Abstract data, now including video, biometric, and genetic as well as computerized administrative files, are manipulated to produce profiles and risk categories in a liquid, networked system. The point is to plan, predict, and prevent by classifying and assessing those profiles and risks. (13) In simple terms, the smart contact lens might disclose the most intimate information we possess and leave us vulnerable to profiling, tracking, and theft. Irma van der Ploeg presupposed this predicament when she wrote: “The capacity of certain technologies to change the boundary, not just between what is public and private information but, on top of that, between what is inside and outside the human body, appears to leave our normative concepts wanting” (71). The smart contact lens, with its implied motive to encode and disclose internal bodily information, needs considerations on many levels. Conclusion The smart contact lens has made a digital beginning. We accept it through the mass consumption of the idea, which acts as a rhetorical motivator for media adoption, taking place long before the device materializes in the marketplace. This occurrence may also be a sign of our “posthuman predicament” (Braidotti). We have argued that the smart contact lens concept reveals our posthuman adaptation to media rather than our reasoned acceptance or agreement with it as a logical proposition. By the time we actually squabble over the price, express fears for our privacy, and buy them, smart contact lenses will long be part of our everyday culture. References Baumlin, James S., and Tita F. Baumlin. “On the Psychology of the Pisteis: Mapping the Terrains of Mind and Rhetoric.” Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory. Eds. James S. 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