Journal articles on the topic 'Eating disorders in film and television'

Research on body image has neglected a number of factors that seem likely to influence individuals’ eating disorders. This study looks at eating disorder relationships with age, cultural background, physical and psychological factors, amount and type of media exposure, and body image processing (i.e., comparing and endorsing thin ideals). Survey results from a sample of 376 Korean adolescent and college-aged females confirmed the mediating effect body image processing had on eating disorder indicators. Although striking age differences were found in the relationship between media use and eating disorders, there were also similarities between the two age groups. Comparing and endorsing thin ideals played a more important role among adolescent girls than among college-aged women. Contrary to previous research reported in the U.S., exposure to television “thin drama” was not a significant predictor of Korean females’ body image disturbance. Instead, exposure to foreign media had direct and indirect impacts on eating disorders among Korean females. Implications of the age and cross-cultural differences were discussed.

Objective:To determine the representation of Tourette Syndrome (TS) in fictional movies and television programs by investigating recurrent themes and depictions.Background:Television and film can be a source of information and misinformation about medical disorders. Tourette Syndrome has received attention in the popular media, but no studies have been done on the accuracy of the depiction of the disorder.Methods:International internet movie databases were searched using the terms “Tourette’s”, “Tourette’s Syndrome”, and “tics” to generate all movies, shorts, and television programs featuring a character or scene with TS or a person imitating TS. Using a grounded theory approach, we identified the types of characters, tics, and co-morbidities depicted as well as the overall representation of TS.Results:Thirty-seven television programs and films were reviewed dating from 1976 to 2010. Fictional movies and television shows gave overall misrepresentations of TS. Coprolalia was overrepresented as a tic manifestation, characters were depicted having autism spectrum disorder symptoms rather than TS, and physicians were portrayed as unsympathetic and only focusing on medical therapies. School and family relationships were frequently depicted as being negatively impacted by TS, leading to poor quality of life.Conclusions:Film and television are easily accessible resources for patients and the public that may influence their beliefs about TS. Physicians should be aware that TS is often inaccurately represented in television programs and film and acknowledge misrepresentations in order to counsel patients accordingly.

Broadly speaking, television is regarded as a mass media array providing information and entertainment. From a scientific perspective it also involves artistic features and counts as a highly influential socio-cultural phenomenon. While in this context also pathogenic and pathological aspects have been discussed and studied, health promoting and therapeutic factors of television are still greatly underrepresented in the realm of TV-sciences. On the basis of a random sample of qualitative data and meta-synthetic construction, the present article suggests a preliminary eight-dimensional theoretical framework of TV-therapy: (i) identity fusion and introjection, (ii) parallel worlds and escapism, (iii) subliminal mirroring and self-exploration, (iv) biographical work and self-integration, (v) therapeutic transference and creative coping, (vi) self-administration and self-regulation, (vii) social adjustment and virtual networking and (viii) TV as a source of topics and an incentive for people to communicate. Regarding psychodynamic impacts of television, the article encourages further studies on the interaction between television and individuals with mental conditions such as schizophrenia or eating disorders, as well as health-related TV-education. Television may become an important tool in public health, which calls television programme creators and television production companies into play.

The connection between images and anorexia, orthorexia, bulimia, binge eating, and other forms of food consumption deemed ‘disordered’ is controversial and often over-simplified. Frequently it is reduced to the idea that glamorous images, particularly the heroin chic style of the 1990s, create a dangerous imaginary that young women - statistically the main target of eating disorders - emulate. This article wants to challenge this issue by exploring three aspects of the intricate relationship between eating disorders and images: 1) The fear of contagion that haunts images exposing bodies that suffer by eating disorders; 2) As a time-based medium, film offers a privileged set of perceptive tools to account for the ways eating disorders interfere with time – as perceived, lived, shared; 3) One more aspect that is relevant to observe since it predominately occupies the current debate is the question of the right way to represent certain medical conditions and their experience. The reasons at the core of this debate are extremely vital and prove how photos and moving images have tragically contributed to building and constructing gender and racial bias as well as the stigmatization of certain diseases. Though when speaking of misrepresentation there is the risk of embracing a deceptive idea of good mimesis at the cost of the ambivalence that the experience of certain conditions inherently carry and which should not disappear in the fictional dimension.

For some time, advertising has been the object of much public debate about eating disorders, such as concerns about its role in fostering body image. More recently, attention has turned towards the degree to which advertising is implicated in what has become a bona fide public health issue in the developed countries, namely obesity — especially amongst children. This is both a local issue, in that it has mobilised concerned parents’ groups in the community, and a global one, in that it raises questions about fast food practices and the commercialisation of food in general within global culture. While corporations have pursued ever more intricate ways to penetrate their target markets, they also have had to respond concretely to public concerns. This paper outlines the dimensions of the debate about the social and cultural impacts attributed to advertising in the public discourse about obesity, identifying the various positions, and seeks to assess the mode and degree to which advertising plausibly can be held responsible.

During the past several decades, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been widely represented in novels, memoirs, film, television, and other genres and media. What distinguishes representations of OCD from depictions of other mental disorders is the frequency with which OCD is treated with humor and levity. Drawing on genre theory, disability studies, and philosophies of humor, this essay explains why OCD symptomatology evokes laughter and resonates with contemporary popular culture. The essay focuses on the ways in which popular portrayals of OCD distort the actual experience of the disorder.

Introduction It has been just 50 years since the syndrome of autism was named and described by Leo Kanner. In 1943, he wrote about a small group of children in his child psychiatric practice who shared clinical characteristics of extreme social isolation, severe language abnormalities, and unusual responses to their environment. Since that time, many earlier concepts have given way to a newer, biologically based understanding of autism as a developmental disability that has an underlying neurologic basis. An expanding body of research has revealed insights into the broad clinical range of autism, the possible nature of the underlying defects, and useful approaches to helping children who have the disorder. Autism also has become part of the public consciousness. Television talk shows frequently feature autism-related topics, and autobiographies by adults who have autism have become best sellers (see Grandin and Williams on the Resources list). Perhaps the event that most solidified autism as a subject of popular interest was Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of Raymond Babbitt, a young adult who had high functioning autism, in Barry Levinson's 1988 film Rain Man. Once considered to be encountered only rarely in practice, autism now is thought to be part of a spectrum of related conditions that are much more common than previously thought.

A series of 22 patients was consecutively diagnosed with hypnic headache (HH) from June 2007 to June 2008 in two headache specialty centres participating in the French Observatory of Migraine and Headaches. Patients and headache characteristics were compared with the 2004 International Classification of Headache Disorders, 2nd edn (ICHD-II) criteria for HH and published series of HH patients. One-third of HH patients reported migraine-like headaches (pulsating/unilateral/stabbing) and > 20% were aged < 50 years at symptom onset. Of note, HH patients displayed typical motor activities during the headache (getting up, eating/drinking especially a cup of coffee, reading/ watching television) that differentiate HH from migraine and suggest relationships between HH and trigeminal autonomic cephalalgias. The functional and emotional impact of HH appears low and similar to that of migraine in patients consulting in primary care practice. Improvements in ICHD-II criteria are suggested, especially to introduce the typical motor behaviour acted out by HH patients.

Aspects of print, broadcast, film and ‘new media’ are related to their interactions with psychiatry. Frequent representations of mental health issues are paralleled by the adoption of psychological theories into media studies. Key areas are covered where psychiatric items diverge from other medical specialities, such as the depiction of suicide, the dominance of ‘human interest’ stories and negative representation of people with mental illness. Although the language of mental disorders is important, the power of the image needs to be examined. Media items also have implications for public mental health (children as vulnerable viewers) and the clinical practice of psychiatry that are not uniformly negative. Television has limitations and clinicians are encouraged to participate in radio and other media. Resources and practical advice for media contact are provided.

In recent years, there has been a worldwide increase in the extent of overweight and obesity as well as other eating disorders, especially among youths. Alongside genetic and biological factors that can explain some aspects of these phenomena and the psychological outcomes associated with them, researchers attributed an important role to social and cultural factors, including the mass media. This study examined the relationship between media exposure and early adolescents’ body image. It applied social comparison theory to the study of favorite television characters, an original extension of past research on general social comparison processes. Specifically, the parasocial relationships and motivations for self-comparison with the characters were examined. Based on a survey among 391 seventh and eighth graders, the study found that media exposure negatively predicted body image both directly and through a mediation process involving parasocial relationships with favorite characters, motivations to self-compare, and engagement in social comparison with them. Further, social comparison with favorite characters was found to positively predict an actual/ideal body shape discrepancy which negatively predicted body image. The findings are discussed in light of theory, developmental considerations associated with this unique age group, past research, and educational and policy implications.

Growing consciousness about ideal body image leads to dietary modifications and consequent eating disorders among girls in developing countries like India. The present study aims to (i) assess the prevalence of body weight consciousness and related behaviours among a group of adolescent girls; (ii) assess the sociodemographic correlates of weight related behaviours; and (iii) compare weight related behaviours of the girls of two religious groups residing in Howrah. The study is the outcome of a cross-sectional school based survey involving 280 (159 Hindu and 121 Muslim) girls from standards 8 to 11. Significant differences exist between two religious groups with respect to their family size, socioeconomic profile, and media exposures (in terms of watching television). Consciousness about body weight among girls shows significant difference with respect to religion, family size (χ2=64.77), father’s occupation (χ2=60.28), level of education of both the parents, and media exposure (P<0.05). Consciousness about body weight drives them to adopt several behavioural measures like calorie restriction, food avoidance, and dieting. Sociodemographic correlates of all these behaviours have been analyzed. The study documents that concern over body image and weight loss is quite important among these urban girls.

Background Fictional portrayals of multiple sclerosis (MS) in film and on television have remained largely unexamined to date. The aim of this review is consequently to catalog and analyse every available film with an MS motif. Method The author has identified relevant productions by means of international film databases and by handsearch. Each film is systematically evaluated along neurological and cinematic lines. Results Between 1941 and 2006 MS appeared as a theme in 23 films. Because screenplay writers often make use of medical knowledge, from a neurological perspective many films present a largely accurate picture of this disease's symptoms. The visual character of the medium and the effects of dramatic composition result in the prominence of certain symptoms. Ataxia, paralysis, blurred vision and fatigue are found in films with the same frequency as in epidemiological studies whereas sensory symptoms, eye movement disorders, incontinence and difficulties with sexual function were underrepresented. These films thematize the effects of MS on patients' self-image, the psychological adaptation process and their relations with proxy in a special way. Parallel with improvements in therapy and changing social attitudes toward the handicapped, these films have progressed from the earlier `disaster' to modern `coping' stories. Conclusion The often life-like portrayal of MS distinguishes these films from the stereotypic representation of other neurological diseases. Because representations of MS in popular media have an immediate effect on an audience of millions, they deserve greater attention from professional neurology. Multiple Sclerosis 2008; 14: 530—540. http://msj.sagepub.com

Eating Disorders (ED) and obesity are a pandemic in developed and developing societies. In 2018, Spanish Ministry of Health and Consumption reported data on obesity (15%) and ED (12%). Spain thus ranks fifth among European countries in childhood obesity, with the highest incidence in the 6–12-year-age group. Many studies point to media as one of the contributing elements to this growth. In this sense, it should be noted that Spanish children are exposed to an average of 9000 television commercials per year and the vast majority of these are for food and beverage products of little or no nutritional value. Educommunication becomes essential here, since media have the capacity to educate, prevent and influence the behaviour as part of their social marketing strategies and within the happiness management philosophy. The aim of this paper is to analyse food and beverage advertising on mobile devices aimed at children. The methodology used includes a content analysis, a survey, and focus groups. The results show that many of the food products are bought or ordered as a direct result of advertising. The main conclusions point to the need to regulate the messages transmitted in order to guide the social function of media so that public health and happiness can be improved.

Abstract The L.E.A.D. (Locate, Evaluate, and Assemble Evidence to Inform Decisions) framework of the Institute of Medicine guided the assembly of transdisciplinary evidence for this comprehensive, updated review of family meal research, conducted with the goal of informing continued work in this area. More frequent family meals are associated with greater consumption of healthy foods in children, adolescents, and adults. Adolescents and children who consume fewer family meals consume more unhealthy food. School-aged children and adolescents who consume more family meals have greater intakes of typically underconsumed nutrients. Increased family meal frequency may decrease risk of overweight or obesity in children and adolescents. Frequent family meals also may protect against eating disorders and negative health behaviors in adolescents and young adults. Psychosocial benefits include improved perceptions of family relationships. However, the benefits of having a family meal can be undermined if the family consumes fast food, watches television at the meal, or has a more chaotic atmosphere. Although these findings are intriguing, inconsistent research methodology and instrumentation and limited use of validation studies make comparisons between studies difficult. Future research should use consistent methodology, examine these associations across a wide range of ages, clarify the effects of the mealtime environment and feeding styles, and develop strategies to help families promote healthful mealtime habits.

Northwestern University has a vibrant and interdisciplinary community of acousticians. Of the 13 ASA technical areas, 3 have strong representation at Northwestern: Speech Communication, Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, and Musical Acoustics. Sound-related work is conducted across a wide range of departments including Linguistics (in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences), Communication Sciences & Disorders, and Radio/Television/Film (both in the School of Communication), Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (in the McCormick School of Engineering), Music Theory & Cognition (in the Bienen School of Music), and Otolaryngology (in the Feinberg School of Medicine). In addition, The Knowles Hearing Center involves researchers and labs across the university dedicated to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of hearing disorders. Acoustics research topics across the university include speech perception and production across the lifespan and across languages, dialects and socio-indexical properties of speech; sound art and design; social and cultural history of the sonic world; machine processing of music; musical communication; auditory perceptual learning; auditory aspects of conditions such as concussion, HIV, and autism; neurophysiology of hearing; and the cellular, molecular, and genetic bases of hearing function. We invite you to visit our poster to learn more about the “sonic boom” at Northwestern University!

Acute gastric dilatation is the radiological finding of a massively enlarged stomach as seen on plain film X-ray or a computerized tomography scan of the abdomen. It is a rare entity with high mortality if not treated promptly and is often not reported due to a lack of physician awareness. It can occur due to both mechanical obstruction of the gastric outflow tract, or due to nonmechanical causes, such as eating disorders and gastroparesis. Acute hyperglycemia without diagnosed gastroparesis, such as in patients with diabetic ketoacidosis, may also predispose to acute gastric dilatation. Prompt placement of a nasogastric tube can help deter its serious complications of gastric emphysema, ischemia, and/or perforation. We present our experience of 2 patients who presented with severe hyperglycemia and were found to have acute gastric dilation on imaging. Only one of the patients was treated with nasogastric tube placement for decompression and eventually made a full recovery.

Purpose – A large number of food advertisements are broadcast during children ' s programs which influence their food consumption habits. Globally, consumption of these foods is linked to increased incidence of obesity and other health-related disorders in children. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the nature and extent of food advertising directed at Indian children. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected by recording programs and advertisements aired on five popular children ' s networks from 9:00 am until 9:00 pm for ten weekdays and weekends each. On an average, total recording of 242 hours for both weekdays and weekends was done. All data were screened and both program and non-program content (advertisements) were identified and analyzed. Data were further analyzed through descriptive statistics. Findings – Out of 4,219 and 4,750 television advertisements broadcast on children ' s networks during weekdays and weekends, 43.33 and 47.62 percent are food advertisements, respectively. “Confectionery” and “sugared and salty snacks” comprise half of total foods advertised during weekdays. Whereas, advertisements for “health drinks and supplements” are most frequently aired during children ' s programs on weekends. A classification of all food advertisements into healthy and unhealthy categories according to “Food Pyramid” given by National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), India in 2010 shows that almost all the advertised foods are unhealthy. Practical implications – This study will benefit the parents by helping them understand the media content (food advertisements) offered to their children. They may then control television viewing by children, monitor food purchase behavior and take some mealtime actions to control eating habits of their children. Such awareness is critical to force the food marketers to recognize the need to self-regulate food advertising directed at children. Government may also feel the need to formulate a suitable policy for placing time and content restrictions for advertising foods to children. Originality/value – As no such study has already been conducted in India (to the best of researcher ' s knowledge), this study potentially helps in abridging gaps in literature.

Vivien Theodore Thomas (1910–1985) was an African-American laboratory technician and instructor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He was born as the grandson of a slave in Lousiana, working as a carpenter and subsequently as a laboratory technician after the great depression and the loss of his savings derailed his plans to become a doctor. In his role as a laboratory technician, he overcame challenging personal circumstances to become an innovator in paediatric cardiac surgery, despite having no formal college education. He played an important role in assisting Alfred Blalock and Helen Taussig in the development of the ‘Blalock-Taussig’ shunt, a procedure used to improve the survival of children with cyanotic congenital heart defects. He also contributed to major breakthroughs in research covering a spectrum of disorders such as traumatic shock, coarctation of the aorta and transposition of the great arteries. He acted as a teacher and mentor to a generation of surgical residents and technicians who went on to become leaders in their field across the USA. A television film based on his life was premiered by HBO in 2004 titled ‘Something the Lord made’.

Data concerning overweight and obesity in children and adolescent populations are alarming and represent one of the most serious public health problems of our time. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the school environment may play an important role in health promotion with regard to nutritional aspects. This article reports the results of a study conducted in the Apulia region (Southern Italy), aimed at providing an integrated surveillance of the behaviors related to nutrition habits in students and the hygienic and nutritional conditions of the school’s canteens attended by enrolled students. To this purpose, a sample of 501 students attending primary school (third class—children approximately eight years old) replied to a validated questionnaire, and official controls (OC), of both food and nutritional safety, were performed in 22 primary schools. A team of healthcare professionals carried out the study, and the implementation of all the prescribed improvement actions were subsequently verified through follow-up OC. The results of our study show a critical situation in the student sample, with 41.3% of children having a weight excess (overweight or obesity). With regard to the children’s behaviors, only 59.8% of children ate at least one fruit or had a fruit juice for breakfast, and 10.8% did not have breakfast at all. Overall, 40.1% of the total children played outdoors the afternoon before the survey and 45% reported going to school on foot or by bicycle. During the afternoon, 83.5% of the sample watched television or used video games/tablets/mobile phones, while 42.3% played sports. The schools had an internal canteen with on-site preparation of meals in 36.4%, the remaining 63.6% received meals from external food establishments. With regard to OC, for the hygienic–sanitary section, eleven prescriptions were issued, in the great part related to the structure and organization of the canteen. For the nutritional section, nine corrective actions were prescribed, mainly related to official documents and management. The follow-up OC showed that all prescriptions were subsequently addressed. Eating at school was less frequent among obese and overweight students compared with those with normal weight. Although this evidence needs to be further confirmed, it highlights the potential role that the school canteens may play in health promotion and prevention of nutritional disorders. On the other hand, in order to fulfill its health promotion task, the school canteens have to comply with official regulations and guidelines; therefore, OC during the management of the food service at school are needed.

In recent years it has become increasingly common in the United States and in the United Kingdom for newspapers and other media to expose problematic aspects of the private lives of political (and other public) figures; or, since the facts may already be in the public domain, to draw wider attention to them and to make them the subject of commentary. These “problematic aspects” may include past or continuing physical or psychological illness, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse or dependence, financial difficulties, family conflict, infidelity, or certain sexual proclivities of both the political figures themselves and of their family members or intimates. In the United States, the most prominent cases are probably those of President Bill Clinton in relation to a series of alleged extramarital affairs leading up to the scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky, and of President John F. Kennedy, also in relation to marital infidelities. The latter exposure was, of course retrospective, as were revelations of similar matters concerning other presidents and holders of high office. Up until the mid-1960s, while it was sometimes known to the press that politicians had “problems” in their private lives, it was rare for these to be made public. Sometimes it might be reported, or more likely hinted, that a figure had a “complex” or “difficult” personal life, and the public was left to infer whatever it might from this (generally concluding that infidelity, alcoholism, or both, were probably at issue). The recent culture of exposure results from a combination of factors, including changed attitudes toward public discussion of sexual conduct, changed standards of sexual behavior, recognition of the scale of Cold War espionage and of its practice of blackmail, a general decline in social deference, a threat to the print media posed by the growth of television, and the rise of satirical entertainment. All of these elements were present in the case that marked the establishment of the culture of exposure in the U.K.: the ‘Profumo scandal’ of 1963. For those unaware of this episode, it may be sufficient to say that it involved the then-secretary of state for war, members of the British aristocracy, a Soviet naval attaché, and a number of “society” call girls, and that it contributed to the resignation of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the subsequent fall from power of the Conservative Party. In the United States, the culture of exposure developed somewhat later and took shape in the period of the Watergate scandal, which damaged the American public's perception of the governing classes just as the Profumo scandal had in Britain.

Background. Iodine deficiency is a global public health concern as it leads to inadequate production of thyroid hormone in the body, causing too many destructive consequences on the roles and functions of different human organs and muscles including brain growth and can manifest into many damaging effects such as intestinal cerebral impedance, cancer of intestine, breast disorders, and physical deformities like goitre and cretinism to one’s body. Despite all these negative effects, there are several important public health programs including universal salt iodization (USI) to improve on households’ iodine intake, notwithstanding this, countless families are still eating foods containing less iodine or no iodine at all. Hence, this study examined the intake of iodized salt after years of universal salt iodization and the knowledge on iodized salt among households in the Sissala East Municipality. Method. A descriptive cross-sectional study was adopted to collect data for the study. Data were collected from women in charge of household meal preparation using a semistructured questionnaire and rapid field iodine test kits. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 was used for the data analysis and presented in tables and graphs. p value <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Findings. Only 41.4% of the households have good knowledge on benefits of iodized salt and dangers associated with iodine deficiency. It was realized that the health workers (46.6%) and television were the main sources of information on iodized salt. Household salt usage with adequate (>15 ppm) levels of iodine was 44.0%; however 85.9% of the salts were stored in covered containers. The study showed significant associations between knowledge on iodized salt and educational level (p≤0.001), occupation (p=0.043), religion (p=0.027), and ethnic lineage (p=0.046). Also, the use of iodized salt showed associations with the educational level (p≤0.001), occupation (p=0.003), religion (p=0.042), and knowledge on iodized salt (p≤0.001). Conclusions. Only about 4 in 10 households were consuming salt with adequate iodine, and this coverage is very low compared with the 90% or more coverage recommended by WHO/UNICEF/ICCIDD. Having secondary and tertiary education and having good knowledge of iodized salt has a great influence on the use of iodized salt; however, with this low level of knowledge of importance of iodized salt among women responsible for house food preparations, there is the need for health professionals to intensify education and promotion on iodized salt in the area and to monitor and verify iodine content of salts produced and sold in the market all times, as the source of the salt might have contributed to the low levels of iodine in the household salt.

Abstract Background : Patients (pts) with hematological disorders such as transfusion-dependent thalassemia (TDT) and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) require long-term supportive therapy with iron chelation therapy (ICT) to remove excess iron and prevent organ failure. Adherence to ICT can affect survival, so a well-tolerated and effective chelation regimen is required. The once-daily dispersible tablet (DT) formulation of the iron chelator deferasirox (DFX) has been available since 2005, offering an alternative to parenteral deferoxamine, yet barriers remain to pt adherence including the need to take the drug in a fasting state, palatability and GI tolerability. A DFX film-coated tablet (FCT) was developed that can be taken orally, once-daily with or after a light meal, and is potentially less burdensome to pts than the DT formulation. Here we report pt-reported outcomes, during the 24-week (wk) study. Methods :ICT-naïve or pre-treatedpts aged ≥10 yrs, requiring ICT at DFX DT ≥30 mg/kg/day (TDT) or ≥20 mg/kg/day (MDS), with serum ferritin (SF) >1000 ng/mL, were enrolled. ICT-naïve pts received either DFX DT 20 mg/kg/day or DFX FCT 14 mg/kg/day. ICT pre-treated pts received a DT or FCT dose equivalent to their pre-washout dose. Dose was adjusted based on SF and investigator's judgment after wk 4 for ICT-naïve pts and after 3 months for ICT pre-treated pts (±5-10 mg/kg/day, maximum 40 mg/kg/day [DT]; ±3.5-7 mg/kg/day, maximum 28 mg/kg/day [FCT]); dose adjustments for safety reasons permitted at any time. The modified satisfaction with iron chelation therapy (modified SICT; 5-point response scales to assess adherence (six questions), satisfaction/preference (two questions), and concern (three questions) domain scores) and palatability (taste, aftertaste, ability to consume medicine, perception of medicine) questionnaires were completed at wks 2, 3, 13, and end of treatment. The GI symptom diary consisted of five items (pain in your belly, nausea, vomiting, constipation, diarrhea) rated on an 11-point scale and was completed daily. Results: In total, 173 pts were enrolled; 87 were treated with FCT and 86 were treated with DT. Completion rates for questionnaires (~80% at the start reducing to ~70% by wk 24) and GI daily diary (~70% at the start reducing to ~35% by wk 24) were similar for each formulation. Throughout the 24-wk study period, FCT pts consistently reported greater adherence (attributable to: easier to remember to take medication, thinking less about stopping medication, instructions from doctor followed more closely, medication easier to take, less bothered by time taken to prepare medication and waiting time before eating), greater satisfaction/preference (in general and with administration of medicine), and fewer concerns (attributable to: less worry about not swallowing enough medication, fewer limitations in daily activities, less concern about side effects), than DT pts (Figure 1). Pts assessed which medication for iron overload they would like best, choosing between: FCT, DT, powder to sprinkle on food, and 'I don't know'. At end of treatment, 53/60 (88.3%) evaluable pts receiving FCT indicated that they preferred the FCT and 41/63 (65.1%) evaluable pts receiving DT indicated they would prefer FCT. FCT pts reported higher satisfaction on palatability scores than DT pts (Figure 1), reporting no taste or aftertaste and that they are able to swallow the full amount of medicine with the right amount of liquid. The difference in score between DT and FCT was >1 point (minimal important difference) for all domains and palatability at most visits, indicating a clinically meaningful difference between formulations. Overall GI summary scores were low for both formulations indicating pts experience very little trouble/concern associated with GI symptoms; DT pts reported more trouble/concern than those receiving FCT (Figure 2). Conclusions: These results show a clear preference in favor of DFX FCT in all domains for the modified SICT. Pts were satisfied with their medicine during the study period and more pts were satisfied with DFX FCT compared with DT at all visits. DFX FCT offers pts an improved formulation that does not require administration in a fasting state, has better palatability, and very little concern associated with GI tolerability. Enhanced pt satisfaction with the new DFX FCT formulation may improve adherence, thereby, reducing iron overload-related complications. Disclosures Taher: Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding; Celgene: Research Funding. Origa:Novartis: Honoraria; Apopharma: Honoraria. Kouraklis:Novartis: Honoraria; Amgen: Honoraria; Janssen: Honoraria; Gilead: Consultancy; Roche: Consultancy; Celegene: Consultancy. Kattamis:Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding; ApoPharma: Honoraria. Cortoos:Novartis: Employment. Huang:Novartis: Employment. Weill:Novartis: Employment. Herranz:Novartis: Employment. Porter:Bluebird Bio: Consultancy; Agios Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Honoraria; Celegene: Consultancy; Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding.

Uji kompetensi merupakan salah satu tekanan akademik yang harus dilewati mahasiswa semester akhir. Proses yang dialami mahasiswa dalam menghadapi uji kompetensi membuat mahasiswa rentan untuk mengalami stress. Mekanisme koping yang digunakan mahasiswa sangat menentukan keberhasilan mahasiswa dalam menghadapi uji kompetensi. Tujuan penelitian untuk mengetahui gambaran stress, tanda dan gejala stress, dan mekanisme koping dalam menghadapi uji kompetensi pada mahasiswa DIII Keperawatan Fakultas Kesehatan Universitas Samawa. Metode yang digunakan adalah kualitatif dengan pendekatan naratif. Sampel penelitian adalah mahasiswa semester VI Program Studi DIII Keperawatan Fakultas Kesehatan Universitas Samawa. Teknik sampling secara purposive sampling dengan kriteria mahasiswa semester VI berjumlah 15 orang, dan partisipan yang mengalami stress dalam menghadapi uji kompetensi. Teknik analisis data menggunakan model interaktif. Hasil menunjukkan gambaran stres karena factor internal yaitu motivasi rendah. Tanda dan gejala stress mahasiswa ditunjukkan seperti sulit makan, sulit tidur, dan konstipasi. Gangguan mental adanya rasa takut, cemas, gelisah, depresi, pusing, dan tidak semangat belajar. Sumber stress pada mahasiswa karena susah dalam mengatur waktu. Koping mahasiswa dalam menghadapi stress antara lain dengan cara share atau berdiskusi dengan teman atau keluarga, menghibur diri dilakukan dengan; shoping, jalan-jalan, main game, dan nonton film, mencari referensi belajar.selain itu juga berdoa, sholat dan sabar. Kata kunci: stress; mekanisme koping; uji kompetensi; mahasiswa DIII keperawatan; STRESS AND COOPING MECHANISM IN FACING COMPETENCY TEST IN D3 NURSING STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF HEALTH, UNIVERSITY OF SAMAWA ABSTRACT Nursing Competency Test is one of the academic pressures that must be passed by final semester students. The process experienced by students in facing competency tests makes students vulnerable to experiencing stress. The coping mechanism used by students will determine the success of students in facing the competency test. The purpose of the study was to determine the description of stress, signs and symptoms of stress, and coping mechanisms in the face of competency tests on Diploma Nursing students, Faculty of Health, Samawa University. The method used qualitative with a narrative approach. The research sample was the sixth semester students of the Diploma Nursing Study Program, Faculty of Health, Samawa University. The sampling technique was purposive sampling with the criteria of 15 semester VI students, and participants who experienced stress in facing the competency test. The data analysis technique used an interactive model. The results show a picture of stress due to internal factors, namely low motivation. Signs and symptoms of student stress are shown such as difficulty eating, difficulty sleeping, and constipation. Mental disorders are such as fear, anxiety, depression, dizziness, and lack of enthusiasm for learning. The stress cause is difficult to manage time. Student coping in dealing with stress, among others, by sharing or discussing with friends or family, entertaining themselves is done by; shopping, sightseeing, playing games, and watching movies, looking for learning references. Moreover.they do spiritual ritual, such as praying. Keywords: stress; coping mechanisms; competence test; diploma nursing students

List of abstacts and authors:1. Integrating the art and science of psychiatryEugene Allers2. Chronic pain as a predictor of outcome in an inpatient Psychiatric populationEugene Allers and Gerhard Grundling3. Recent advances in social phobiaChrister Allgulander4. Clinical management of patients with anxiety disordersChrister Allgulander5. Do elephants suffer from Schizophrenia? (Or do the Schizophrenias represent a disorder of self consciousness?) A Southern African perspectiveSean Exner Baumann6. Long term maintenance treatment of Bipolar Disorder: Preventing relapseCharles L. Bowden7. Predictors of response to treatments for Bipolar DisorderCharles L. Bowden8. Aids/HIV knowledge and high risk behaviour: A Geo-graphical comparison in a schizophrenia populationP Buckley, S van Vuuren, L Koen, J E Muller, C Seller, H Lategan, D J H Niehaus9. Does Marijuana make you go mad?David J Castle10. Understanding and management of Treatment Resistant SchizophreniaDavid J Castle11. Workshop on research and publishingDavid J Castle12. From victim to victor: Without a self-help bookBeatrix Jacqueline Coetzee13. The evaluation of the Gender Dysphoric patientFranco Colin14. Dissociation: A South African modelA M Dikobe, C K Mataboge, L M Motlana, B F Sokudela, C Kruger15. Designated smoking rooms...and other "Secret sins" of psychiatry: Tobacco cessation approaches in the severely mentally illCharl Els16. Dual diagnosis: Implications for treatment and prognosisCharl Els17. Body weight, glucose metabolism and the new generation antipsychoticsRobin Emsley18. Neurological abnormalities in first episode Schizophrenia: Temporal stability and clinical and outcome correlatesRobin Emsley, H Jadri Turner, Piet P Oosthuizen, Jonathan Carr19. Mythology of depressive illnesses among AfricansSenathi Fisha20. Substance use and High school dropoutAlan J. Flisher, Lorraine Townsend, Perpetual Chikobvu, Carl Lombard, Gary King21. Psychosis and Psychotic disordersA E Gangat 22. Vulnerability of individuals in a family system to develop a psychiatric disorderGerhard Grundling and Eugene Allers23. What does it Uberhaupt mean to "Integrate"?Jürgen Harms24. Research issues in South African child and adolescent psychiatryS M Hawkridge25. New religious movements and psychiatry: The Good NewsV H Hitzeroth26. The pregnant heroin addict: Integrating theory and practice in the development and provision of a service for this client groupV H Hitzeroth, L Kramer27. Autism spectrum disorderErick Hollander28. Recent advances and management in treatment resistanceEric Hollander29. Bipolar mixed statesM. Leigh Janet30. Profile of acute psychiatric inpatients tested for HIV - Helen Jospeh Hospital, JohannesburgA B R Janse van Rensburg31. ADHD - Using the art of film-making as an education mediumShabeer Ahmed Jeeva32. Treatment of adult ADHD co-morbiditiesShabeer Ahmed Jeeva33. Needs and services at ward one, Valkenberg HospitalDr J. A. Joska, Prof. A.J. Flisher34. Unanswered questions in the adequate treatment of depressionModerator: Dr Andre F JoubertExpert: Prof. Tony Hale35. Unanswered questions in treatment resistant depressionModerator: Dr Andre F JoubertExpert: Prof. Sidney Kennedy36. Are mentally ill people dangerous?Sen Z Kaliski37. The child custody circusSean Z. Kaliski38. The appropriatenes of certification of patients to psychiatric hospitalsV. N. Khanyile39. HIV/Aids Psychosocial responses and ethical dilemmasFred Kigozi40. Sex and PsychiatryB Levinson41. Violence and abuse in psychiatric in-patient institutions: A South African perspectiveMarilyn Lucas, John Weinkoove, Dean Stevenson42. Public health sector expenditure for mental health - A baseline study for South AfricaE N Madela-Mntla43. HIV in South Africa: Depression and CD4 countM Y H Moosa, F Y Jeenah44. Clinical strategies in dealing with treatment resistant schizophreniaPiet Oosthuizen, Dana Niehaus, Liezl Koen45. Buprenorphine/Naloxone maintenance in office practice: 18 months and 170 patients after the American releaseTed Parran Jr, Chris Adelman46. Integration of Pharmacotherapy for Opioid dependence into general psychiatric practice: Naltrexone, Methadone and Buprenorphine/ NaloxoneTed Parran47. Our African understanding of individulalism and communitarianismWillie Pienaar48. Healthy ageing and the prevention of DementiaFelix Potocnik, Susan van Rensburg, Christianne Bouwens49. Indigenous plants and methods used by traditional African healers for treatinf psychiatric patients in the Soutpansberg Area (Research was done in 1998)Ramovha Muvhango Rachel50. Symptom pattern & associated psychiatric disorders in subjects with possible & confirmed 22Q11 deletional syndromeJ.L. Roos, H.W. Pretorius, M. Karayiorgou51. Duration of antidepressant treatment: How long is long enough? How long is too longSteven P Roose52. A comparison study of early non-psychotic deviant behaviour in the first ten years of life, in Afrikaner patients with Schizophrenia, Schizo-affective disorder and Bipolar disorderMartin Scholtz, Melissa Janse van Rensburg, J. Louw Roos53. Treatment, treatment issues, and prevention of PTSD in women: An updateSoraya Seedat54. Fron neural networks to clinical practiceM Spitzer55. Opening keynote presentation: The art and science of PsychiatryM Spitzer56. The future of Pharmacotherapy for anxiety disordersDan J. Stein57. Neuropsychological deficits pre and post Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) thrice a week: A report of four casesUgash Subramaney, Yusuf Moosa58. Prevalence of and risk factors for Tradive Dyskinesia in a Xhosa population in the Eastern CapeDave Singler, Betty D. Patterson, Sandi Willows59. Eating disorders: Addictive disorders?Christopher Paul Szabo60. Ethical challenges and dilemmas of research in third world countriesGodfrey B. Tangwa61. The interface between Neurology and Psychiatry with specific focus on Somatoform dissociative disordersMichael Trimble62. Prevalence and correlates of depression and anxiety in doctors and teachersH Van der Bijl, P Oosthuizen63. Ingrid Jonker: A psychological analysisL. M. van der Merwe64. The strange world we live in, and the nature of the human subjectVasi van Deventer65. Art in psychiatry: Appendix or brain stem?C W van Staden66. Medical students on what "Soft skills" are about before and after curriculum reformC W van Staden, P M Joubert, A-M Bergh, G E Pickworth, W J Schurink, R R du Preez, J L Roos, C Kruger, S V Grey, B G Lindeque67. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) - Medical management. Methylphenidate (Ritalin) or Atomoxetine (Strattera)Andre Venter68. A comprehensive guide to the treatment of adults with ADHDW J C Verbeeck69. Treatment of Insomnia: Stasis of the Art?G C Verster70. Are prisoners vulnerable research participants?Merryll Vorster71. Psychiatric disorders in the gymMerryl Vorster72. Ciprales: Effects on anxiety symptoms in Major Depressive DisorderBruce Lydiard

BackgroundSialosis is a non inflammatory nor neoplastic expansion of the salivary glands. it is a common mimicker for obstructive, inflammatory and malignant salivary gland disorders.(1) It had been described in acromegaly, vitamin A, and Thiamin deficiency and in amylophagia and bulimia.(2-5) Imaging should be normal in Sialosis(6) Here we describe a case of Sialosis due to Vitamin deficiency who was treated for a few months with anti-tuberculous and anti inflammatory drugs.ObjectivesTo raise awareness about this cause of parotid swelling and encourage practice of exclusion prior to treatment.MethodsA 30 year old lady with no significant past medical history presented to us with 2 years of slowly progressive, non tender bilateral facial swellings, with no excess or reduced salivation and no pain upon eating, she had negative history of preceding upper respiratory tract infection. the condition was associated with feeling a lump in her right axilla, and cervical region, there was no fever or systemic manifestations. she consulted a surgeon during that period, an exisional biopsy of the lump revealed the presence of fatty lumps, she was then prescribed antituberculosis medications since her symptoms were vague and because TB is quite common in Iraq. She denied any improvement with these medications. She then was prescribed treatment with hydroxyChloroquin and prednisolone by another physician assuming she had sjogren’s syndrome. When we saw the patient she was extremely distressed and depressed, had bilateral diffused parotid swellings, along with submandibular swelling, no mass could be felt during the exam, her mandibles and neck appeared large, she had normal tear film production and negative eye test, with no articular or muscular abnormalities.ResultsHer Labs were negative, and ultrasound for the parotids revealed enlarged glands with normal texture, MRI showed enlarged both parotids and submandibular glands with no other abnormality, minor salivary gland biopsy showed normal tissue with no inflammatory cell infiltrates. she had normal thyroid, parathyroid and growth hormone levels, normal metabolic panel and denied history of Alcohol consumption of Bulimia, but rarely consumed meat. a trial of Vitamin A, Thiamin and pilocarpine was started, the patient reported regression in the size of the swellings after 2 weeks of therapy but then developed mucosal dryness, afterwards, Vitamin A was stopped, she developed bone pain with normal bone markers and for that reason, pilocarpine was stopped. despite stopping these medicines, the size continued to regress on thiamin supplement alone, and she was prescribed anxiolytics and antidepressants by a Neurologist.Figure 1.Showing the appearance A, before and B after one month of treatment.ConclusionSialosis can be a manifestation of variable metabolic and endocrine conditions and it should be kept in mind when facing a patient with parotid swelling being a potentially treatable cause.References[1]References in Sialosis: 35 cases of persistent parotid swelling from two countries - British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery [Internet]. [cited 2022 Jan 20]. Available from: https://www.bjoms.com/article/S0266-4356(08)00040-5/references[2]Salivary Swelling | Iowa Head and Neck Protocols [Internet]. [cited 2022 Jan 20]. Available from: https://medicine.uiowa.edu/iowaprotocols/salivary-swelling[3]Yu YH, Park YS, Kim SH, Son BK, Jun DW, Jo YJ, et al. Sialadenosis in a Patient with Alcoholic Fatty Liver Developing after Heavy Alcohol Drinking. Korean J Gastroenterol. 2009 Jul 31;54(1):50–4.[4]Scully C, Eveson J. Sialosis and necrotising sialometaplasia in bulimia; a case report. International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. 2004 Dec 1;33(8):808–10.[5]Scully C, Bagán JV, Eveson JW, Barnard N, Turner FM. Sialosis: 35 cases of persistent parotid swelling from two countries. British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. 2008 Sep;46(6):468–72.[6]Sialosis | Radiology Reference Article | Radiopaedia.org [Internet]. [cited 2022 Jan 20]. Available from: https://radiopaedia.org/articles/sialosis-1Disclosure of InterestsNone declared

Abstract Objective Technological and economic globalisation has been suggested as a cause of increasing rates of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders globally, especially as regards the impact of mass media on internalised body ideals. This process is rarely observed in action, however. The current work investigates multiple aspects of body ideals, body image, sociocultural attitudes and eating attitudes in 62 Creole and Mestizo women living in communities at differing stages of technological development on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua Method/results In Study 1, women used 3D avatar software to create their own ‘ideal’ body without the constraints of ready-made stimuli. Analyses of resulting avatars showed that components of the ideal body shape (upper and lower body curvaceousness) but not body size (body mass) were associated with levels of film and television consumption. In Study 2, women completed measures of variables in the sociocultural model of eating disorder risk. As expected, body dissatisfaction mediated the relationship between internalisation of sociocultural body ideals and pathological eating attitudes. In contrast, body appreciation reduced pathological eating attitudes, via reduced body dissatisfaction. Finally, Study 3 measured sociocultural influences, body image and eating attitudes at 2 or 3 timepoints per woman; body dissatisfaction covaried with pathological eating attitudes across time. Ethnicity varied in its effects across studies. Discussion Together these data show that even at early stages of media acculturation, women may show similar patterns of association between sociocultural internalisation, body dissatisfaction and eating disorder risk as in high income nations. However, they also demonstrate unique aspects of this population’s body shape ideals, and the independent protective effect of body appreciation.

In a field of study as well-established as the Gothic, it is surprising how much contention there is over precisely what that term refers to. Is Gothic a genre, for example, or a mode? Should it be only applicable to literary and film texts that deal with tropes of haunting and trauma set in a gloomy atmosphere, or might it meaningfully be applied to other cultural forms of production, such as music or animation? Can television shows aimed at children be considered Gothic? What about food? When is something “Gothic” and when is it “horror”? Is there even a difference? The Gothic as a phenomenon is commonly identified as beginning with Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), which was followed by Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1778), the romances of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796). Nineteenth-century Gothic literature was characterised by “penny dreadfuls” and novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Frequently dismissed as sensational and escapist, the Gothic has experienced a critical revival in recent decades, beginning with the feminist revisionism of the 1970s by critics such as Ellen Moers, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. With the appearance of studies such as David Punter’s The Literature of Terror (1980), Gothic literature became a reputable field of scholarly research, with critics identifying suburban Gothic, imperial Gothic, postcolonial Gothic and numerous national Gothics, including Irish Gothic and the Gothic of the American South. Furthermore, as this special edition on Gothic shows, the Gothic is by no means limited to literature, with film, television, animation and music all partaking of the Gothic inflection. Indeed, it would be unwise to negate the ways in which the Gothic has developed to find fertile ground beyond the bounds of literature. In our media-centred twenty-first century, the Gothic has colonised different forms of expression, where the impact left by literary works, that were historically the centre of the Gothic itself, is all but a legacy. Film, in particular, has a close connection to the Gothic, where the works of, for instance, Tim Burton, have shown the representative potential of the Gothic mode; the visual medium of film, of course, has a certain experiential immediacy that marries successfully with the dark aesthetics of the Gothic, and its connections to representing cultural anxieties and desires (Botting). The analysis of Gothic cinema, in its various and extremely international incarnations, has now established itself as a distinct area of academic research, where prominent Gothic scholars such as Ken Gelder—with the recent publication of his New Vampire Cinema (2012)—continue to lead the way to advance Gothic scholarship outside of the traditional bounds of the literary.As far as cinema is concerned, one cannot negate the interconnections, both aesthetic and conceptual, between traditional Gothic representation and horror. Jerrold Hogle has clearly identified the mutation and transformation of the Gothic from a narrative solely based on “terror”, to one that incorporates elements of “horror” (Hogle 3). While the separation between the two has a long-standing history—and there is no denying that both the aesthetics and the politics of horror and the Gothic can be fundamentally different—one has to be attuned to the fact that, in our contemporary moment, the two often tend to merge and intersect, often forming hybrid visions of the Gothic, with cinematic examples such as Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) playing testament to this. Indeed, the newly formed representations of “Gothic Horror” and “Gothic Terror” alerts us to the mutable and malleable nature of the Gothic itself, an adaptable mode that is always contextually based. Film is not, however, the only non-literary medium that has incorporated elements of the Gothic over the years. Other visual representations of the Gothic abound in the worlds of television, animation, comics and graphic novels. One must only think here of the multiple examples of recent television series that have found fruitful connections with both the psychologically haunting aspects of Gothic terror, and the gory and grisly visual evocations of Gothic horror: the list is long and diverse, and includes Dexter (2006-2013), Hannibal (2013-), and Penny Dreadful (2014-), to mention but a few. The animation front —in its multiple in carnations —has similarly been entangled with Gothic tropes and concerns, a valid interconnection that is visible both in cinematic and television examples, from The Corpse Bride (2005) to Coraline (2009) and Frankenweeinie (2012). Comics and graphics also have a long-standing tradition of exploiting the dark aesthetics of the Gothic mode, and its sensationalist connections to horror; the instances from this list pervade the contemporary media scope, and feature the inclusion of Gothicised ambiences and characters in both singular graphic novels and continuous comics —such as the famous Arkham Asylum (1989) in the ever-popular Batman franchise. The inclusion of these multi-media examples here is only representative, and it is an almost prosaic accent in a list of Gothicised media that extends to great bounds, and also includes the worlds of games and music. The scholarship, for its part, has not failed to pick up on the transformations and metamorphoses that the Gothic mode has undergone in recent years. The place of both Gothic horror and Gothic terror in a multi-media context has been critically evaluated in detail, and continues to attract academic attention, as the development of the multi-genre and multi-medium journey of the Gothic unfolds. Indeed, this emphasis is now so widespread that a certain canonicity has developed for the study of the Gothic in media such as television, extending the reach of Gothic Studies into the wider popular culture scope. Critical texts that have recently focused on identifying the Gothic in media beyond not only literature, but also film, include Helen Wheatley’s Gothic Television (2007), John C. Tibbetts’ The Gothic Imagination: Conversation of Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction in the Media (2011), and Julia Round’s Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels (2014). Critics often suggest that the Gothic returns at moments of particular cultural crisis, and if this is true, it seems as if we are in such a moment ourselves. Popular television shows such as True Blood and The Walking Dead, books such as the Twilight series, and the death-obsessed musical stylings of Lana Del Ray all point to the pertinence of the Gothic in contemporary culture, as does the amount of submissions received for this edition of M/C Journal, which explore a wide range of Gothic texts. Timothy Jones’ featured essay “The Black Mass as Play: Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out” suggests that although scholarly approaches to the Gothic tend to adopt the methodologies used to approach literary texts and applied them to Gothic texts, yielding readings that are more-or-less congruous with readings of other sorts of literature, the Gothic can be considered as something that tells us about more than simply ourselves and the world we live in. For Jones, the fact that the Gothic is a production of popular culture as much as “highbrow” literature suggests there is something else happening with the way popular Gothic texts function. What if, Jones asks, the popular Gothic were not a type of work, but a kind of play? Jones uses this approach to suggest that texts such as Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out might direct readers not primarily towards the real, but away from it, at least for a time. Wheatley’s novel is explored by Jones as a venue for readerly play, apart from the more substantial and “serious” concerns that occupy most literary criticism. Samantha Jane Lindop’s essay foregrounds the debt David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive owes to J. Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) thus adding to studies of the film that have noted Lynch’s intertextual references to classic cinema such as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966). Lindop explores not just the striking similarity between Carmilla and Mulholland Drive in terms of character and plot, but also the way that each text is profoundly concerned with the uncanny. Lorna Piatti-Farnell’s contribution, “What’s Hidden in Gravity Falls: Strange Creatures and the Gothic Intertext” is similarly interested in the intertextuality of the Gothic mode, noting that since its inception this has taken many and varied incarnations, from simple references and allusions to more complicated uses of style and plot organisation. Piatti-Farnell suggests it is unwise to reduce the Gothic text to a simple master narrative, but that within its re-elaborations and re-interpretations, interconnections do appear, forming “the Gothic intertext”. While the Gothic has traditionally found fertile ground in works of literature, other contemporary media, such as animation, have offered the Gothic an opportunity for growth and adaptation. Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls is explored by Piatti-Farnell as a visual text providing an example of intersecting monstrous creatures and interconnected narrative structures that reveal the presence of a dense and intertextual Gothic network. Those interlacings are connected to the wider cultural framework and occupy an important part in unravelling the insidious aspects of human nature, from the difficulties of finding “oneself” to the loneliness of the everyday. Issues relating to identity also feature in Patrick Usmar’s “Born To Die: Lana Del Rey, Beauty Queen or Gothic Princess?”, which further highlights the presence of the Gothic in a wide range of contemporary media forms. Usmar explores the music videos of Del Rey, which he describes as Pop Gothic, and that advance themes of consumer culture, gender identity, sexuality and the male gaze. Jen Craig’s “The Agitated Shell: Thinspiration and the Gothic Experience of Eating Disorders” similarly focuses on contemporary media and gender identity, problematising these issues by exploring the highly charged topic of “thinspiration” web sites. Hannah Irwin’s contribution also focuses on female experience. “Not of this earth: Jack the Ripper and the development of Gothic Whitechapel” focuses on the murder of five women who were the victims of an assailant commonly referred to by the epithet “Jack the Ripper”. Irwin discusses how Whitechapel developed as a Gothic location through the body of literature devoted to the Whitechapel murders of 1888, known as “Ripperature”. The subject of the Gothic space is also taken up by Donna Brien’s “Forging Continuing Bonds from the Dead to the Living: Gothic Commemorative Practices along Australia’s Leichhardt Highway.” This essay explores the memorials along Leichhardt’s highway as Gothic practice, in order to illuminate some of the uncanny paradoxes around public memorials, as well as the loaded emotional terrain such commemorative practices may inhabit. Furthering our understanding of the Australian Gothic is Patrick West’s contribution “Towards a Politics & Art of the Land: Gothic Cinema of the Australian New Wave and its Reception by American Film Critics.” West argues that many films of the Australian New Wave of the 1970s and 1980s can be defined as Gothic and that international reviews of such films tended to overlook the importance of the Australian landscape, which functions less as a backdrop and more as a participating element, even a character, in the drama, saturating the mise-en-scène. Bruno Starrs’ “Writing My Indigenous Vampires: Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic” is dedicated to illuminating a new genre of creative writing: that of the “Aboriginal Fantastic”. Starrs’ novel That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! is part of this emerging genre of writing that is worthy of further academic interrogation. Similarly concerned with the supernatural, Erin Mercer’s contribution “‘A Deluge of Shrieking Unreason’: Supernaturalism and Settlement in New Zealand Gothic Fiction” explores the absence of ghosts and vampires in contemporary Gothic produced in New Zealand, arguing that this is largely a result of a colonial Gothic tradition utilising Maori ghosts that complicates the processes through which contemporary writers might build on that tradition. Although there is no reason why the Gothic must include supernatural elements, it is an enduring feature that is taken up by Jessica Balanzategui in “‘You Have a Secret that You Don’t Want To Tell Me’: The Child as Trauma in Spanish and American Horror Film.” This essay explores the uncanny child character and how such children act as an embodiment of trauma. Sarah Baker’s “The Walking Dead and Gothic Excess: The Decaying Social Structures of Contagion” focuses on the figure of the zombie as it appears in the television show The Walking Dead, which Baker argues is a way of exploring themes of decay, particularly of family and society. The essays contained in this special Gothic edition of M/C Journal highlight the continuing importance of the Gothic mode in contemporary culture and how that mode is constantly evolving into new forms and manifestations. The multi-faceted nature of the Gothic in our contemporary popular culture moment is accurately signalled by the various media on which the essays focus, from television to literature, animation, music, and film. The place occupied by the Gothic beyond representational forms, and into the realms of cultural practice, is also signalled, an important shift within the bounds of Gothic Studies which is bound to initiate fascinating debates. The transformations of the Gothic in media and culture are, therefore, also surveyed, so to continue the ongoing critical conversation on not only the place of the Gothic in contemporary narratives, but also its duplicitous, malleable, and often slippery nature. It is our hope that the essays here stimulate further discussion about the Gothic and we will hope, and look forward, to hearing from you. References Botting, Fred. Gothic: The New Critical Idiom. 2nd edition. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014. Hogle, Jerrold. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture”. The Cambridge Companion of Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 1-20.

Abstract Advertising conveys an aesthetic model that seems to have a negative influence on young women. However, it is unclear whether the media are the cause, or only act as a reinforcement of disorders related to body image, such as those associated with eating behavior (anorexia or bulimia). This study measures the influence that advertising (measured by recall scores) during a television program has on women with eating disorders (anorexia or bulimia) compared to healthy women. Experimental study of exploratory nature performed on a sample of young women with eating disorders and a control group. The influence of advertising was estimated by recall scores, obtained after viewing a real television program, which included two commercial breaks containing two kinds of ads: body cult advertising (showing thinness or promoting it) and neutral advertising. Young women with eating disorders better recall advertisements showing thinness and products for weight loss and pay less attention to other types targeted at their age and gender group. Television advertising seems to be more of a reinforcement for these women who are already dissatisfied with their body, rather than a direct cause of their body image disorder.

In this study, we explored how eating and identities of individuals diagnosed with eating disorders are constructed on a popular television talk show, Dr. Phil. Informed by conversation analytic and discursive psychological research traditions, we show how Dr. Phil, jointly with guests, constitutes guests as mentally ill and accountable for their illness. Specifically, we highlight Dr. Phil’s unilateral pursuit of a solution to the “puzzle” of the eating disorder, including its origins and meanings, as he enlists the guests’ endorsement of his versions of their situations and experiences. We examine broader implications of such a framing for societal understandings of the subjectivity of individuals diagnosed with eating disorders.

Background: Today, adolescents are prone to concerns about their weight, shape, size and body image, and as a result, diet to lose weight. This increases the risk of eating disorders. Aim: This study was designed to identify the knowledge and attitude of adolescents regarding eating disorders. Settings and design: A descriptive study design was adopted to assess the knowledge and attitude of the adolescents studying in a general college in Kolkata. Methods and materials: A structured questionnaire to assess the knowledge and an attitude scale to assess the attitude of 100 adolescents of age group 16-21 were administered. Statistical analysis used: Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to calculate the frequency and percentage of knowledge and attitude and correlation between knowledge and attitude. Results: 8% subjects had adequate knowledge and 86% had moderately adequate knowledge. 12% subjects were aware of characteristics of anorexia nervosa whereas 71% knew the characteristics of bulimia nervosa. 66% subjects were acquainted with the adverse effects of eating disorders. 46% agreed that they should not follow film models blindly. 71% strongly agreed that binge eating causes obesity. Significant correlation between knowledge and attitude was found in attitude towards healthy life style, following film models and positive parenting behavior. Conclusion: This study reflects the lack of knowledge and inappropriate attitude of adolescents towards the eating disorders which poses threat to this vulnerable population of the society and thus increasing the burden of eating disorder.

Background: Greater vulnerability to negative emotions appears associated with the development and maintenance of eating disorders (EDs). A systematic review of psychophysiological studies using emotion-eliciting film clips reveals that there are no studies examining the effect of standardized validated film clips on psychophysiological response across a range of EDs.Methods: Using standardized validated film clips without ED-specific content, the present study examined self-reported emotions and psychophysiological responses of women with Binge-Eating Disorder (BED; n = 57), Anorexia Nervosa (AN; n = 16), Bulimia Nervosa (BN; n = 34), and Healthy Controls (HCs; n = 26) at Baseline, during Neutral, Sad, Happy, and Fear-inducing film clips, and at Recovery.Results: Throughout the protocol, the ED groups reported significantly greater sadness and anxiety than HCs. Additionally, the AN group reported more fear, the BED group more frustration, and the BED and BN groups more tension than HCs. Compared to HCs, the BED group reported stronger urges to binge throughout the protocol, whereas BN group reported stronger urges to binge relative to the HC group only at Baseline and Recovery. The BN and BED groups experienced decreased urges to binge during all film clips compared to Baseline. Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia levels were significantly lower in the BED group compared to HCs and the BN group throughout the protocol.Discussion: Standardized validated film clips can be used to elicit expected self-reported emotion and skin conductance responses in ED groups, although individuals with EDs compared HCs report greater negative emotions. Interestingly, film clips appeared to reduce urges to binge in binge-eating groups.

Abstract Objective: Although emotional eating is positively associated with serious health problems such as obesity and eating disorders, it is rarely investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of emotional eating among urban adolescents in Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world. Methods: A multistage stratified sampling method was used to select adolescents aged 14–18 years from governmental schools in Khartoum State, the capital of Sudan. The total sample selected was 945 (507 males, 438 females). A self-reported validated questionnaire was used to collect the data. Results: Of the males, 57% eat mostly or sometimes while watching television, compared with 62% of females (p<0.036). Females were more likely to eat when angered than males (9.6% and 5.7%, eat mostly when angered, respectively, p<0.02). There were no statistically significant differences between males and females regarding eating late at night, eating when bored and eating when anxious. Conclusion: The findings revealed that emotional eating is a growing problem among urban adolescents in Sudan. This creates the need to incorporate emotional eating in any prevention plan to promote healthy eating among these adolescents.

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has achieved success as “the new Rain Man” or “the new definitive, popular account of the autistic condition” (Burks-Abbott 294). Integral to its favourable reception is the way it conflates the autistic main character, the fifteen-year-old narrator Christopher Boone, with the savant, or individual who exhibits both neurological problems and giftedness, thereby engaging with the way autism is presented in popular culture. In a variety of contemporary films and television series, autism has been transformed from a disability to a form of giftedness by relating it to abilities associated in contemporary media with a genius, in particular by invoking the metaphor of an autistic mind as a type of computer. As a result, the book engages with the current association of giftedness in mathematics and science with social awkwardness and isolation as constructed in popular culture: in idiomatic terms, the genius “nerd” figure characterised by an uncertain, adolescent approach to social contact (Kendall 353). The disablement of the character is, then, lessened so that the idea of being “special,” continually evoked throughout the text, has a transformative function that is related less to the special needs of those with a disability and more to the common element in adolescent fiction of longing for extraordinary power and control through being a special, gifted individual. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time relates the protagonist, Christopher, to Sherlock Holmes and his methods of detection, specifically through the title being taken from a story by Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze,” in which the “curious incident” referred to is that the dog did nothing in the night. In the original story, that the dog did not bark or react to an intruder was a clue that the person was known to the animal, so allowing Holmes to solve the crime by a process of deduction. Christopher copies these traditional methods of the classical detective to solve his personal mystery, that of who killed a neighbour’s dog, Wellington. The adoption of this title allows a double irony to emerge. Christopher’s attempts to emulate Holmes in his approach to crime are predicated on his assumption of his likeness to the model of the classical detective as he states, “I think that if I were a proper detective he is the kind of detective I would be,” pointing out the similarity of their powers of observation and his ability, like Holmes, to “detach his mind at will” as well as his capacity to find patterns in events (92). Through the novel, these attributes are aligned with his autism, constructing a trope of his disability conferring extraordinary abilities that are predicated on a computer-like detachment and precision in his method of thinking. The accessible narrative of the autistic Christopher gives the reader the impression of being able to understand the perspective of an individual with a spectrum disorder. In this way, the text not only engages with, but contributes to the construction of this disability in current popular culture as merely an extension of giftedness, especially in mathematics, and an associated unwillingness to communicate. Indeed, according to Raoul Eshelman, “one of its most engaging narrative devices is to make us identify with a mentally impaired narrator who is manifestly not interested in identifying either with us or anyone else” (1). The main character’s reference to mathematical and scientific ideas exploits an interest in giftedness already established by popular literature and film, and engages with a transformation effected in popular culture of the genius as autistic, and its corollary of an autistic person as potentially a genius. Such a construction ranges from fictional characters like Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, Charlie and his physicist colleagues in Numb3rs, and Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man, to real life characters or representative figures in reality series and feature films such as x + y, The Imitation Game, The Big Short, and the television program Beauty and the Geek. While never referring specifically to autism, all the real or fictional representations contribute to the construction of a stereotype in which behaviours on the autistic spectrum are linked to a talent in mathematics and the sciences. In addition to this, detectives in the classical crime fiction alluded to in the novel typically exhibit traits of superhuman powers of deduction, pattern making, and problem solving that engage with the popular notion of genius in general and mathematics in particular by possessing a mind like a computer. Such detectives from current television series as Saga from The Bridge and Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds exhibit distance, coldness, and lack of social awareness or empathy with others, and this is presented as the basis of their extraordinary ability to discern patterns and solve crime. Spencer Reid, for example, has three PhDs in Science disciplines and Mathematics. Charlie in the television series Numb3rs is also a genius who uses his mathematical abilities to not only find the solution to crime but also explain the maths behind it to his FBI colleagues, and, in conjunction, the audience. But the character with the clearest association to Christopher is, naturally, Sherlock Holmes, both as constructed in Conan Doyle’s original text and the current adaptations and transformations of it. The television series Sherlock and Elementary, as well as the films Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows all invoke a version of Holmes in which his powers of deduction are associated with symptoms to be found in a spectrum disorder.Like Christopher, the classical detective is characterised by being cold, emotionless, distant, socially inept, and isolated, but also keenly observant, analytical, and scientific; one who approaches the crime as a puzzle to be solved (Cawelti 43) with computer-like precision. In what is considered to be the original detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Poe included a “pseudo-mathematical logic in his literary scenario” (Platten 255). In Conan Doyle’s stories, Holmes, too, adopts a mathematical and scientific approach to construct patterns from clues that he alone can discern, and thereby solve the crime. The depiction of investigators in contemporary media such as Charlie in Numb3rs engages with these origins so that he is objective, dispassionate, and able to relate to real-world problems only through the filter of mathematical formulae. Christopher is presented similarly by engaging with the idea of the detective as implied savant and relying on an ability to discern patterns for successful crime solving.The book links the disabling behaviours of autism with the savant, so that the stereotype of the mystic displaying both disability and giftedness in fiction of earlier ages has been transformed in contemporary literature to a figure with extraordinary powers related both to autism and to the contemporary form of mysticism: innate mathematical ability and computer-style calculation. Allied with what Murray terms the “unknown and ambiguous nature” of autism, it is characterised as “the alien within the human, the mystical within the rational, the ultimate enigma” (25) in a way that is in keeping with the current fascination with the nature of genius and its association with being “special,” a term continually evoked and discussed throughout the book by the main character. The chapters on scientific ideas relate to Christopher’s world view, filtered through a mathematical and analytical approach to life and relationships with other people. Christopher examines beliefs such as the concept of humanity as superior to other animals, and the idea of religion and creationism, that is, the idea of humanity itself as special, with a cold and logical approach. He similarly discusses the idea of the individual person as special, linking this to a metaphor of the human mind being a computer (203, 148). Christopher’s narrow perspective as a result of his autism is not presented as disabling so much as protective, because the metaphorical connection of his viewpoint to a computer provides him with distance. Although initially Christopher fails to realise the significance of events, this allows him to be “switched off” (103) from events that he finds traumatising.The transformative metaphor of an autistic individual thinking like a computer is also invoked through Christopher’s explanation of “why people think that their brains are special, and different from computers” (147). Indeed, both in terms of his tendency to retreat or by “pressing CTRL + ALT + DEL and shutting down programs and turning the computer off and rebooting” (178) in times of stress, Christopher metaphorically views himself as a computer. Such a perspective invokes yet another popular cultural reference through the allusion to the human brain as “Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation, sitting in his captain’s seat looking at a big screen” (147). But more importantly, the explanation refers to the basic premise of the book, that the text offers access to a condition that is inherently unknowable, but able to be understood by the reader through metaphor, often based on computers or technology as a result of a popular construction of autism that “the condition is the product of a brain in which the hard drive is incorrectly formatted” (Murray 25).Throughout the novel, the notion of “special” is presented as a trope for those with a disability, but as the protagonist, Christopher, points out, everyone is special in some way, so the whole idea of a disability as disabling is problematised throughout the text, while its associations of giftedness are upheld. Christopher’s disability, never actually designated as Asperger’s Syndrome or any type of spectrum disorder, is transformed into a protective mechanism that shields him from problematic social relationships of which he is unaware, but that the less naïve reader can well discern. In this way, rather than a limitation, the main character’s disorder protects him from a harsh reality. Even Christopher’s choice of Holmes as a role model is indicative of his desire to impose an eccentric order on his world, since this engages with a character in popular fiction who is famous not simply for his abilities, but for his eccentricity bordering on a form of autism. His aloof personality and cold logic not only fail to hamper him in his investigations, but these traits actually form the basis of them. The majority of recent adaptations of Conan Doyle’s stories, especially the BBC series Sherlock, depict Holmes with symptoms associated with spectrum disorder such as lack of empathy, difficulty in communication, and limited social skills, and these are clearly shown as contributing to his problem-solving ability. The trope of Christopher as detective also allows a parodic, postmodern comment on the classical detective form, because typically this fiction has a detective that knows more than the reader, and therefore the goal for the reader is to find the solution to the crime before it is revealed by the investigator in the final stages of the text (Rzepka 14). But the narrative works ironically in the novel since the non-autistic reader knows more than a narrator who is hampered by a limited worldview. From the beginning of the book, the narrative as focalised through Christopher’s narrow perspective allows a more profound view of events to be adopted by the reader, who is able to read clues that elude the protagonist. Christopher is well aware of this as he explains his attraction to the murder mystery novel, even though he has earlier stated he does not like novels since his inability to imagine or empathise means he is unable to relate to their fiction. For him, the genre of murder mystery is more akin to the books on maths and science that he finds comprehensible, because, like the classical detective, he views the crime as primarily a puzzle to be solved: as he states, “In a murder mystery novel someone has to work out who the murderer is and then catch them. It is a puzzle. If it is a good puzzle you can sometimes work out the answer before the end of the book” (5). But unlike Christopher, Holmes invariably knows more about the crime, can interpret the clues, and find the pattern, before other characters such as Watson, and especially the reader. In contrast, in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, the reader has more awareness of the probable context and significance of events than Christopher because, like a computer, he can calculate but not imagine. The reader can interpret clues within the plot of the story, such as the synchronous timing of the “death” of Christopher’s mother with the breakdown of the marriage of a neighbour, Mrs Shears. The astute reader is able to connect these events and realise that his mother has not died, but is living in a relationship with the neighbour’s husband. The construction of this pattern is denied Christopher, since he fails to determine their significance due to his limited imagination. Such a failure is related to Simon Baron-Cohen’s Theory of Mind, in which he proposes that autistic individuals have difficulty with social behaviour because they lack the capacity to comprehend that other people have individual mental states, or as Christopher terms it, “when I was little I didn’t understand about other people having minds” (145). Haddon utilises fictional licence when he allows Christopher to overcome such a limitation by a conscious shift in perspective, despite the specialist teacher within the text claiming that he would “always find this very difficult” (145). Christopher has here altered his view of events through his modelling both on the detective genre and on his affinity with mathematics, since he states, “I don’t find this difficult now. Because I decided that it was a kind of puzzle, and if something is a puzzle there is always a way of solving it” (145). In this way, the main character is shown as transcending symptoms of autism through the power of his giftedness in mathematics to ultimately discern a pattern in human relationships thereby adopting a computational approach to social problems.Haddon similarly explains the perspective of an individual with autism through a metaphor of Christopher’s memory being like a DVD recording. He is able to distance himself from his memories, choosing “Rewind” and then “Fast Forward” (96) to retrieve his recollection of events. This aspect of the precision of his memory relates to his machine-like coldness and lack of empathy for the feelings of others. But it also refers to the stereotype of the nerd figure in popular culture, where the nerd is able to relate more to a computer than to other people, exemplified in Sheldon from the television series The Big Bang Theory. Thus the presentation of Christopher’s autism relates to his giftedness in maths and science more than to areas that relate to his body. In general, descriptions of inappropriate or distressing bodily functions associated with disorders are mainly confined to other students at Christopher’s school. His references to his fellow students, such as Joseph eating his poo and playing in it (129) and his unsympathetic evaluation of Steve as not as clever or interesting as a dog because he “needs help to eat his food and could not even fetch a stick” (6), make a clear distinction between him and the other children, who despite being termed “special needs” are “special” in a different way from Christopher, because, according to him, “All the other children at my school are stupid” (56). While some reference is made to Christopher’s inappropriate behaviour in times of stress, such as punching a fellow student, wetting himself while on the train, and vomiting outside the school, in the main the emphasis is on his giftedness as a result of his autism, as displayed in the many chapters where he explains scientific and mathematical concepts. This is extrapolated into a further mathematical metaphor underlying the book, that he is like one of the prime numbers he finds so fascinating, because prime numbers do not fit neatly into the pattern of the number system, but they are essential and special nevertheless. Moreover, as James Berger suggests, prime numbers can “serve as figures for the autistic subject,” because like autistic individuals “they do not mix; they are singular, indivisible, unfactorable” yet “Mathematics could not exist without these singular entities that [. . .] are only apparent anomalies” (271).Haddon therefore offers a transformation by confounding autism with a computer-like ability to solve mathematical problems, so that the text is, as Haddon concedes, “as much about a gifted boy with behavior problems as it is about anyone on the autism spectrum” (qtd. in Burks-Abbott 291). Indeed, the word “autism” does not even appear in the book, while the terms “genius,” (140) “clever,” (32, 65, 252) and the like are continually being invoked in descriptions of Christopher, even if ironically. More importantly, the reader is constantly being shown his giftedness through the reiteration of his study of A Level Mathematics, and his explanation of scientific concepts. Throughout, Christopher explains aspects of mathematics, astrophysics, and other sciences, referring to such well-known puzzles in popular culture as the Monty Hall problem, as well as more obscure formulae and their proofs. They function to establish Christopher’s intuitive grasp of complex mathematical and scientific principles, as well as providing the reader with insight into both his perspective and the paradoxical nature of an individual who is at once able to solve quadratic equations in his head, yet is incapable of understanding the simple instruction, “Take the tube to Willesden Junction” (211).The presentation of Christopher is that of an individual who displays an extension of the social problems established in popular literature as connected to a talent for mathematics, therefore engaging with a depiction already existing in popular mythology: the isolated and analytical nerd or genius social introvert. Indeed, much of Christopher’s autistic behaviour functions to protect him from unsettling or traumatic information, since he fails to realise the significance of the information he collects or the clues he is given. His disability is therefore presented as not limiting so much as protective, and so the notion of disability is subsumed by the idea of the savant. The book, then, engages with a contemporary representation within popular culture that has transformed spectrum disability into mathematical giftedness, thereby metaphorically associating the autistic mind with the computer. ReferencesBaron-Cohen, Simon. Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1995. Berger, James. “Alterity and Autism: Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident in the Neurological Spectrum.” Autism and Representation. Ed. Mark Osteen. Hoboken: Routledge, 2007. 271–88. Burks-Abbott, Gyasi. “Mark Haddon’s Popularity and Other Curious Incidents in My Life as an Autistic.” Autism and Representation. Ed. Mark Osteen. Hoboken: Routledge, 2007. 289–96. Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery, and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976. Eshelman, Raoul. “Transcendence and the Aesthetics of Disability: The Case of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.” Anthropoetics: The Journal of Generative Anthropology 15.1 (2009). Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. London: Random House Children’s Books, 2004. Kendall, Lori. “The Nerd Within: Mass Media and the Negotiation of Identity among Computer-Using Men.” Journal of Men’s Studies 3 (1999): 353–67. Murray, Stuart. “Autism and the Contemporary Sentimental: Fiction and the Narrative Fascination of the Present.” Literature and Medicine 25.1 (2006): 24–46. Platten, David. “Reading Glasses, Guns and Robots: A History of Science in French Crime Fiction.” French Cultural Studies 12 (2001): 253–70. Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2005.

Cardiometabolic risk (CMR) factor clustering has its roots in childhood and the presence of multiple cardiovascular risk factors in younger populations has been linked with early vascular dysfunction. A DASH-style eating pattern has been shown to reduce blood pressure and other selected cardiometabolic outcomes, primarily in adults, but its role in the development of CMR clustering during adolescence has not been studied. Data from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s Growth and Health Study (NGHS) will be used to evaluate the relation between early-to-mid adolescent dietary intake and CMR clustering at the end of adolescence. The NGHS began in 1987-1988 with the enrollment of 2,379 adolescent girls (with approximately equal numbers of blacks and whites), ages 9-10 years. Diet was assessed using 3-day diet records during eight of 10 years of follow up. A total of 1,369 girls had complete data on diet, all potential confounding variables, and follow-up over 10 years for all CMR factors of interest. Risk factor clustering scores were created by summing individual CMR outcomes defined as follows: waist circumference ≥88 cm, systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure ≥90th percentile for age, sex and height, LDL ≥110 mg/dL, HDL <50 mg/dL, serum TG ≥110mg/dl, and HOMA-IR ≥4. Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to estimate the impact of a DASH-style pattern on the relative risk (odds ratio) of CMR clustering at the end of adolescence, defined as having ≥ 2 or ≥ 3 of the above risk factors at 18-20 years of age. The proportion of white and black girls with CMR clustering was very similar. However, the types of risk factors differed by race with blacks being nearly twice as likely to have an increased waist size, elevated BP, or insulin resistance and white girls being much more likely to have abnormal lipid levels, particularly elevated triglyceride levels. By the end of adolescence, only 30.1% of girls had no abnormal CMR factors and 34.9% had a single risk factor; 16.6% of girls had two risk factors and 18.4% had between 3-6 prevalent risk factors. Higher intakes of fruit and non-starchy vegetables, dairy, and grains were independently associated with less CMR clustering. After adjusting for age, race, socio-economic status, height, physical activity, and television watching, girls with a DASH-style eating pattern during early-to-mid adolescence were nearly 50% less likely to have three or more CMR factors (O.R.=0.52; 95% CI: 0.30, 0.89) by late adolescence (at 18-20 years of age). These results suggest a DASH-style eating pattern during adolescence, characterized by higher intakes of fruit, non-starchy vegetables, and dairy, may lower risk for the development of subsequent cardiometabolic disorders.

“I’m fat–and it’s okay! It doesn’t mean I’m stupid, or ugly, or lazy, or selfish. I’m fat!” so proclaims Joy Nash in her YouTube video, A Fat Rant. “Fat! It’s three little letters–what are you afraid of?!” This is the question I pose to my class on day one of Fat Studies. Sadly, many college students do fear fat, and negative attitudes toward fat people are quite prevalent in this population (Ambwani et al. 366). As I teach it, Fat Studies is cross-listed between Psychology and Gender Studies. However, most students who enrol have majors in Psychology or other behavioural health science fields in which weight bias is particularly pronounced (Watkins and Concepcion 159). Upon finding stronger bias among third- versus first-year Physical Education students, O’Brien, Hunter, and Banks (308) speculated that the weight-centric curriculum that typifies this field actively engenders anti-fat attitudes. Based on their exploration of textbook content, McHugh and Kasardo (621) contend that Psychology too is complicit in propagating weight bias by espousing weight-centric messages throughout the curriculum. Such messages include the concepts that higher body weight invariably leads to poor health, weight control is simply a matter of individual choice, and dieting is an effective means of losing weight and improving health (Tylka et al.). These weight-centric tenets are, however, highly contested. For instance, there exists a body of research so vast that it has its own name, the “obesity paradox” literature. This literature (McAuley and Blair 773) entails studies that show that “obese” persons with chronic disease have relatively better survival rates and that a substantial portion of “overweight” and “obese” individuals have levels of metabolic health similar to or better than “normal” weight individuals (e.g., Flegal et al. 71). Finally, the “obesity paradox” literature includes studies showing that cardiovascular fitness is a far better predictor of mortality than weight. In other words, individuals may be both fit and fat, or conversely, unfit and thin (Barry et al. 382). In addition, Tylka et al. review literature attesting to the complex causes of weight status that extend beyond individual behaviour, ranging from genetic predispositions to sociocultural factors beyond personal control. Lastly, reviews of research on dieting interventions show that these are overwhelmingly ineffective in producing lasting weight loss or actual improvements in health and may in fact lead to disordered eating and other unanticipated adverse consequences (e.g., Bacon and Aphramor; Mann et al. 220; Salas e79; Tylka et al.).The newfound, interdisciplinary field of scholarship known as Fat Studies aims to debunk weight-centric misconceptions by elucidating findings that counter these mainstream suppositions. Health At Every Size® (HAES), a weight-neutral approach to holistic well-being, is an important facet of Fat Studies. The HAES paradigm advocates intuitive eating and pleasurable physical activity for health rather than restrictive dieting and regimented exercise for weight loss. HAES further encourages body acceptance of self and others regardless of size. Empirical evidence shows that HAES-based interventions improve physical and psychological health without harmful side-effects or high dropout rates associated with weight loss interventions (Bacon and Aphramor; Clifford et al. “Impact of Non-Diet Approaches” 143). HAES, like the broader field of Fat Studies, seeks to eradicate weight-based discrimination, positioning weight bias as a social justice issue that intersects with oppression based on other areas of difference such as gender, race, and social class. Much like Queer Studies, Fat Studies seeks to reclaim the word, fat, thus stripping it of its pejorative connotations. As Nash asserts in her video, “Fat is a descriptive physical characteristic. It’s not an insult, or an obscenity, or a death sentence!” As an academic discipline, Fat Studies is expanding its visibility and reach. The Fat Studies Reader, the primary source of reading for my course, provides a comprehensive overview of the field (Rothblum and Solovay 1). This interdisciplinary anthology addresses fat history and activism, fat as social inequality, fat in healthcare, and fat in popular culture. Ward (937) reviews this and other recently-released fat-friendly texts. The field features its own journal, Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society, which publishes original research, overview articles, and reviews of assorted media. Both the Popular Culture Association and National Women’s Studies Association have special interest groups devoted to Fat Studies, and the American Psychological Association’s Division on the Psychology of Women has recently formed a task force on sizism (Bergen and Carrizales 22). Furthermore, Fat Studies conferences have been held in Australia and New Zealand, and the third annual Weight Stigma Conference will occur in Iceland, September 2015. Although the latter conference is not necessarily limited to those who align themselves with Fat Studies, keynote speakers include Ragen Chastain, a well-known member of the fat acceptance movement largely via her blog, Dances with Fat. The theme of this year’s conference, “Institutionalised Weightism: How to Challenge Oppressive Systems,” is consistent with Fat Studies precepts:This year’s theme focuses on the larger social hierarchies that favour thinness and reject fatness within western culture and how these systems have dictated the framing of fatness within the media, medicine, academia and our own identities. What can be done to oppose systemised oppression? What can be learned from the fight for social justice and equality within other arenas? Can research and activism be united to challenge prevailing ideas about fat bodies?Concomitantly, Fat Studies courses have begun to appear on college campuses. Watkins, Farrell, and Doyle-Hugmeyer (180) identified and described four Fat Studies and two HAES courses that were being taught in the U.S. and abroad as of 2012. Since then, a Fat Studies course has been taught online at West Virginia University and another will soon be offered at Washington State University. Additionally, a new HAES class has been taught at Saint Mary’s College of California during the last two academic years. Cameron (“Toward a Fat Pedagogy” 28) describes ways in which nearly 30 instructors from five different countries have incorporated fat studies pedagogy into university courses across an array of academic areas. This growing trend is manifested in The Fat Pedagogy Reader (Russell and Cameron) due out later this year. In this article, I describe content and pedagogical strategies that I use in my Fat Studies course. I then share students’ qualitative reactions, drawing upon excerpts from written assignments. During the term reported here, the class was comprised of 17 undergraduate and 5 graduate students. Undergraduate majors included 47% in Psychology, 24% in Women Studies, 24% in various other College of Liberal Arts fields, and 6% in the College of Public Health. Graduate majors included 40% in the College of Public Health and 60% in the College of Education. Following submission of final grades, students provided consent via email allowing written responses on assignments to be anonymously incorporated into research reports. Assignments drawn upon for this report include weekly reading reactions to specific journal articles in which students were to summarise the main points, identify and discuss a specific quote or passage that stood out to them, and consider and discuss applicability of the information in the article. This report also utilises responses to a final assignment in which students were to articulate take-home lessons from the course.Despite the catalogue description, many students enter Fat Studies with a misunderstanding of what the course entails. Some admitted that they thought the course was about reducing obesity and the presumed health risks associated with this alleged pathological condition (Watkins). Others understood, but were somewhat dubious, at least at the outset, “Before I began this class, I admit that I was skeptical of what Fat Studies meant.” Another student experienced “a severe cognitive dissonance” between the Fat Studies curriculum and that of a previous behavioural health class:My professor spent the entire quarter spouting off statistics, such as the next generation of children will be the first generation to have a lower life expectancy than their parents and the ever increasing obesity rates that are putting such a tax on our health care system, and I took her words to heart. I was scared for myself and for the populations I would soon be working with. I was worried that I was destined to a chronic disease and bothered that my BMI was two points above ‘normal.’ I believed everything my professor alluded to on the danger of obesity because it was things I had heard in the media and was led to believe all my life.Yet another related, “At first, I will be honest, it was hard for me to accept a lot of this information, but throughout the term every class changed my mind about my view of fat people.” A few students have voiced even greater initial resistance. During a past term, one student lamented that the material represented an attack on her intended behavioural health profession. Cameron (“Learning to Teach Everybody”) describes comparable reactions among students in her Critical Obesity course taught within a behavioural health science unit. Ward (937) attests that, even in Gender Studies, fat is the topic that creates the most controversy. Similarly, she describes students’ immense discomfort when asked to entertain perspectives that challenge deeply engrained ideas inculcated by our culture’s “obesity epidemic.” Discomfort, however, is not necessarily antithetical to learning. In prompting students to unlearn “the biomedically-informed truth of obesity, namely that fat people are unfit, unhealthy, and in need of ‘saving’ through expert interventions,” Moola at al. recommend equipping them with an “ethics of discomfort” (217). No easy task, “It requires courage to ask our students to forgo the security of prescriptive health messaging in favour of confusion and uncertainty” (221). I encourage students to entertain conflicting perspectives by assigning empirically-based articles emanating from peer-reviewed journals in their own disciplines that challenge mainstream discourses on obesity (e.g., Aphramor; Bombak e60; Tomiyama, Ahlstrom, and Mann 861). Students whose training is steeped in the scientific method seem to appreciate having quantitative data at their disposal to convince themselves–and their peers and professors–that widely held weight-centric beliefs and practices may not be valid. One student remarked, “Since I have taken this course, I feel like I am prepared to discuss the fallacy of the weight-health relationship,” citing specific articles that would aid in the effort. Likewise, Cameron’s (“Learning to Teach Everybody”) students reported a need to read research reports in order to begin questioning long-held beliefs.In addition, I assign readings that provide students with the opportunity to hear the voices of fat people themselves, a cornerstone of Fat Studies. Besides chapters in The Fat Studies Reader authored by scholars and activists who identify as fat, I assign qualitative articles (e.g., Lewis et al.) and narrative reports (e.g., Pause 42) in which fat people describe their experiences with weight and weight bias. Additionally, I provide positive images of fat people via films and websites (Clifford et al. HAES®; Watkins; Watkins and Doyle-Hugmeyer 177) in order to counteract the preponderance of negative, dehumanising portrayals in popular media (e.g., Ata and Thompson 41). In response, a student stated:One of the biggest things I took away from this term was the confidence I found in fat women through films and stories. They had more confidence than I have seen in any tiny girl and owned the body they were given.I introduce “normal” weight allies as well, most especially Linda Bacon whose treatise on thin privilege tends to set the stage for viewing weight bias as a form of oppression (Bacon). One student observed, “It was a relief to be able to read and talk about weight oppression in a classroom setting for once.” Another appreciated that “The class did a great job at analysing fat as oppression and not like a secondhand oppression as I have seen in my past classes.” Typically, fat students were already aware of weight-based privilege and oppression, often painfully so. Thinner students, however, were often astonished by this concept, several describing Bacon’s article as “eye-opening.” In reaction, many vowed to act as allies:This class has really opened my eyes and prepared me to be an ally to fat people. It will be difficult for some time while I try to get others to understand my point of view on fat people but I believe once there are enough allies, people’s minds will really start changing and it will benefit everyone for the better.Pedagogically, I choose to share my own experiences as they relate to course content and encourage students, at least in their written assignments, to do the same. Other instructors refrain from this practice for fear of reinforcing traditional discourses or eliciting detrimental reactions from students (Watkins, Farrell, and Doyle-Hugmeyer 191). Nevertheless, this tack seems to work well in my course, with many students opting to disclose their relevant circumstances during classroom discussions: Throughout the term I very much valued and appreciated when classmates would share their experiences. I love listening and hearing to others experiences and I think that is a great way to understand the material and learn from one another.It really helped to read different articles and hear classmates discuss and share stories that I was able to relate to. The idea of hearing people talk about issues that I thought I was the only one who dealt with was so refreshing and enlightening.The structure of this class allowed me to learn how this information is applicable to my life and made it deeper than just memorising information.Thus far, across three terms, no student has described iatrogenic effects from this process. In fact, most attribute positive transformations to the class. These include enhanced body acceptance of self and others: This class decreased my fat phobia towards others and gave me a better understanding about the intersectionality of one’s weight. For example, I now feel that I no longer view my family in a fat phobic way and I also feel responsible for educating my brother and helping him develop a strong self-esteem regardless of his size.I never thought this class would change my life, almost save my life. Through studies shown in class and real life people following their dreams, it made my mind completely change about how I view my body and myself.I can only hope that in the future, I will be more forgiving, tolerant, and above all accepting of myself, much less others. Regardless of a person’s shape and size, we are all beautiful, and while I’m just beginning to understand this, it can only get better from here.Students also reported becoming more savvy consumers of weight-centric media messages as well as realigning their eating and exercise behaviour in accordance with HAES: I find myself disgusted at the television now, especially with the amount of diet ads, fitness club ads, and exercise equipment ads all aimed at making a ‘better you.’ I now know that I would never be better off with a SlimFast shake, P90X, or a Total Gym. I would be better off eating when I’m hungry, working out because it is fun, and still eating Thin Mints when I want to. Prior to this class, I would work out rigorously, running seven miles a day. Now I realise why at times I dreaded to work out, it was simply a mathematical system to burn the energy that I had acquired earlier in the day. Instead what I realise I should do is something I enjoy, that way I will never get tired of whatever I am doing. While I do enjoy running, other activities would bring more joy while engaging in a healthy lifestyle like hiking or mountain biking.I will never go on another diet. I will stop choosing exercises I don’t love to do. I will not weigh myself every single day hoping for the number on the scale to change.A reduction in self-weighing was perhaps the most frequent behaviour change that students expressed. This is particularly valuable in that frequent self-weighing is associated with disordered eating and unhealthy weight control behaviours (Neumark-Sztainer et al. 811):I have realised that the number on the scale is simply a number on the scale. That number does not define who you are. I have stopped weighing myself every morning. I put the scale in the storage closet so I don’t have to look at it. I even encouraged my roommate to stop weighing herself too. What has been most beneficial for me to take away from this class is the notion that the number on the scale has so much less to do with fitness levels than most people understand. Coming from a numbers obsessed person like myself, this class has actually gotten me to leave the scales behind. I used to weigh myself every single day and my self-confidence reflected whether I was up or down in weight from the day before. It seems so silly to me now. From this class, I take away a new outlook on body diversity. I will evaluate who I am for what I do and not represent myself with a number. I’m going to have my cake this time, and actually eat it too!Finally, students described ways in which they might carry the concepts from Fat Studies into their future professions: I want to go to law school. This model is something I will work toward in the fight for social justice.As a teacher and teacher of teachers, I plan to incorporate discussions on size diversity and how this should be addressed within the field of adapted physical education.I do not know how I would have gone forward if I had never taken this class. I probably would have continued to use weight loss as an effective measure of success for both nutrition and physical activity interventions. I will never be able to think about the obesity prevention movement in the same way.Since I am working toward being a clinical psychologist, I don’t want to have a client who is pursuing weight loss and then blindly believe that they need to lose weight. I’d rather be of the mindset that every person is unique, and that there are other markers of health at every size.Jones and Hughes-Decatur (59) call for increased scholarship illustrating and evaluating critical body pedagogies so that teachers might provide students with tools to critique dominant discourses, helping them forge healthy relationships with their own bodies in the process. As such, this paper describes elements of a Fat Studies class that other instructors may choose to adopt. It additionally presents qualitative data suggesting that students came to think about fat and fat people in new and divergent ways. Qualitative responses also suggest that students developed better body image and more adaptive eating and exercise behaviours throughout the term. Although no students have yet described lasting adverse effects from the class, one stated that she would have preferred less of a focus on health and more of a focus on issues such as fat fashion. Indeed, some Fat Studies scholars (e.g., Lee) advocate separating discussions of weight bias from discussions of health status to avoid stigmatising fat people who do experience health problems. While concerns about fostering healthism within the fat acceptance movement are valid, as a behavioural health professional with an audience of students training in these fields, I have chosen to devote three weeks of our ten week term to this subject matter. Depending on their academic background, others who teach Fat Studies may choose to emphasise different aspects such as media representations or historical connotations of fat.Nevertheless, the preponderance of positive comments evidenced throughout students’ assignments may certainly be a function of social desirability. Although I explicitly invite critique, and in fact assign readings (e.g., Welsh 33) and present media that question HAES and Fat Studies concepts, students may still feel obliged to articulate acceptance of and transformations consistent with the principles of these movements. As a more objective assessment of student outcomes, I am currently conducting a quantitative evaluation, in which I remain blind to students’ identities, of this year’s Fat Studies course compared to other upper division/graduate Psychology courses, examining potential changes in weight bias, body image and dieting behaviour, adherence to appearance-related media messages, and obligatory exercise behaviour. I postulate results akin to those of Humphrey, Clifford, and Neyman Morris (143) who found reductions in weight bias, improved body image, and improved eating behaviour among college students as a function of their HAES course. As Fat Studies pedagogy proliferates, instructors are called upon to share their teaching strategies, document the effects, and communicate these results within and outside of academic spheres.ReferencesAmbwani, Suman, Katherine M. Thomas, Christopher J. Hopwood, Sara A. Moss, and Carlos M. Grilo. “Obesity Stigmatization as the Status Quo: Structural Considerations and Prevalence among Young Adults in the U.S.” Eating Behaviors 15.3 (2014): 366-370. Aphramor, Lucy. “Validity of Claims Made in Weight Management Research: A Narrative Review of Dietetic Articles.” Nutrition Journal 9 (2010): n. pag. 15 May 2015 ‹http://www.nutritionj.com/content/9/1/30›.Ata, Rheanna M., and J. 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Norman, LeAnne Petherick, and Shaelyn Strachan. “Teaching across the Lines of Fault in Psychology and Sociology: Health, Obesity and Physical Activity in the Canadian Context.” Sociology of Sport Journal 31.2 (2014): 202-227.Nash, Joy. “A Fat Rant.” YouTube, 17 Mar. 2007. 23 Apr. 2015 ‹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUTJQIBI1oA›.Neumark-Sztainer, Dianne, Patricia van den Berg, Peter J. Hannan, and Mary Story. “Self-Weighing in Adolescents: Helpful or Harmful? Longitudinal Associations with Body Weight Changes and Disordered Eating.” Journal of Adolescent Health 39.6 (2006): 811–818.O’Brien, K.S., J.A. Hunter, and M. Banks. “Implicit Anti-Fat Bias in Physical Educators: Physical Attributes, Ideology, and Socialization.” International Journal of Obesity 31.2 (2007): 308-314.Pause, Cat. “Live to Tell: Coming Out as Fat.” Somatechnics 2.1 (2012): 42-56.Rothblum, Esther, and Sondra Solovay, eds. The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press, 2009.Russell, Connie, and Erin Cameron, eds. The Fat Pedagogy Reader: Challenging Weight-Based Oppression in Education. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, in press. Salas, Ximena Ramos. “The Ineffectiveness and Unintended Consequences of the Public Health War on Obesity.” Canadian Journal of Public Health 106.2 (2015): e79-e81. Tomiyama, A. Janet, Britt Ahlstrom, and Traci Mann. “Long-Term Effects of Dieting: Is Weight Loss Related to Health?” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 7.12 (2013): 861-877.Tylka, Tracy L., Rachel A. Annunziato, Deb Burgard, Sigrun Daníelsdóttir, Ellen Shuman, Chad Davis, and Rachel M. Calogero. “The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss.” Journal of Obesity (2014). 23 Apr. 2015 ‹http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jobe/2014/983495/›.Ward, Anna E. “The Future of Fat.” American Quarterly 65.4 (2013): 937-947.Watkins, Patti Lou. “Inclusion of Fat Studies in a Difference, Power, and Discrimination Curriculum.” The Fat Pedagogy Reader: Challenging Weight-Based Oppression in Education. Eds. Erin Cameron and Connie Russell. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, in press. Watkins, Patti Lou, and Rebecca Y. Concepcion. “Teaching HAES to Health Care Students and Professionals.” Wellness Not Weight: Motivational Interviewing and a Non-Diet Approach. Ed. Ellen Glovsky. San Diego: Cognella Academic Publishing, 2014: 159-169. Watkins, Patti Lou, and Andrea Doyle-Hugmeyer. “Teaching about Eating Disorders from a Fat Studies Perspective. Transformations 23.2 (2013): 147-158. Watkins, Patti Lou, Amy E. Farrell, and Andrea Doyle Hugmeyer. “Teaching Fat Studies: From Conception to Reception. Fat Studies 1.2 (2012): 180-194. Welsh, Taila L. “Healthism and the Bodies of Women: Pleasure and Discipline in the War against Obesity.” Journal of Feminist Scholarship 1 (2011): 33-48. Weight Stigma Conference. 23 Apr. 2015 ‹http://stigmaconference.com/›.

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

In the contemporary era, media spectacle organizes and mobilizes economic life, political conflict, social interactions, culture, and everyday life. My recently published book Media Spectacle explores a profusion of developments in hi-tech culture, media-driven society, and spectacle politics. Spectacle culture involves everything from film and broadcasting to Internet cyberculture and encompasses phenomena ranging from elections to terrorism and to the media dramas of the moment. For ‘Logo’, I am accordingly sketching out briefly a terrain I probe in detail in the book from which these examples are taken.1 During the past decades, every form of culture and significant forms of social life have become permeated by the logic of the spectacle. Movies are bigger and more spectacular than ever, with high-tech special effects expanding the range of cinematic spectacle. Television channels proliferate endlessly with all-day movies, news, sports, specialty niches, re-runs of the history of television, and whatever else can gain an audience. The rock spectacle reverberates through radio, television, CDs, computers networks, and extravagant concerts. The Internet encircles the world in the spectacle of an interactive and multimedia cyberculture. Media culture excels in creating megaspectacles of sports championships, political conflicts, entertainment, "breaking news" and media events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the Death of Princess Diana, or the sex or murder scandal of the moment. Megaspectacle comes as well to dominate party politics, as the political battles of the day, such as the Clinton sex scandals and impeachment, the 36 Day Battle for the White House after Election 2000, and the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent Terror War. These dramatic media passion plays define the politics of the time, and attract mass audiences to their programming, hour after hour, day after day. The concept of "spectacle" derives from French Situationist theorist Guy Debord's 1972 book Society of the Spectacle. "Spectacle," in Debord's terms, "unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena" (Debord 1970: #10). In one sense, it refers to a media and consumer society, organized around the consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles. Spectacles are those phenomena of media culture which embody contemporary society's basic values, and dreams and nightmares, putting on display dominant hopes and fears. They serve to enculturate individuals into its way of life, and dramatize its conflicts and modes of conflict resolution. They include sports events, political campaigns and elections, and media extravaganzas like sensational murder trials, or the Bill Clinton sex scandals and impeachment spectacle (1998-1999). As we enter a new millennium, the media are becoming ever more technologically dazzling and are playing an increasingly central role in everyday life. Under the influence of a postmodern image culture, seductive spectacles fascinate the denizens of the media and consumer society and involve them in the semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, a semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, and drama, which deeply influence thought and action. For Debord: "When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present day society" (#18). Today, however, I would maintain it is the multimedia spectacle of sight, sound, touch, and, coming to you soon, smell that constitutes the multidimensional sense experience of the new interactive spectacle. For Debord, the spectacle is a tool of pacification and depoliticization; it is a "permanent opium war" (#44) which stupefies social subjects and distracts them from the most urgent task of real life -- recovering the full range of their human powers through creative praxis. The concept of the spectacle is integrally connected to the concept of separation and passivity, for in passively consuming spectacles, one is separated from actively producing one's life. Capitalist society separates workers from the products of their labor, art from life, and consumption from human needs and self-directing activity, as individuals passively observe the spectacles of social life from within the privacy of their homes (#25 and #26). The situationist project by contrast involved an overcoming of all forms of separation, in which individuals would directly produce their own life and modes of self-activity and collective practice. Since Debord's theorization of the society of the spectacle in the 1960s and 1970s, spectacle culture has expanded in every area of life. In the culture of the spectacle, commercial enterprises have to be entertaining to prosper and as Michael J. Wolf (1999) argues, in an "entertainment economy," business and fun fuse, so that the E-factor is becoming major aspect of business.2 Via the "entertainmentization" of the economy, television, film, theme parks, video games, casinos, and so forth become major sectors of the national economy. In the U.S., the entertainment industry is now a $480 billion industry, and consumers spend more on having fun than on clothes or health care (Wolf 1999: 4).3 In a competitive business world, the "fun factor" can give one business the edge over another. Hence, corporations seek to be more entertaining in their commercials, their business environment, their commercial spaces, and their web sites. Budweiser ads, for instance, feature talking frogs who tell us nothing about the beer, but who catch the viewers' attention, while Taco Bell deploys a talking dog, and Pepsi uses Star Wars characters. Buying, shopping, and dining out are coded as an "experience," as businesses adopt a theme-park style. Places like the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues are not renowned for their food, after all; people go there for the ambience, to buy clothing, and to view music and media memorabilia. It is no longer good enough just to have a web site, it has to be an interactive spectacle, featuring not only products to buy, but music and videos to download, games to play, prizes to win, travel information, and "links to other cool sites." To succeed in the ultracompetitive global marketplace, corporations need to circulate their image and brand name so business and advertising combine in the promotion of corporations as media spectacles. Endless promotion circulates the McDonald’s Golden Arches, Nike’s Swoosh, or the logos of Apple, Intel, or Microsoft. In the brand wars between commodities, corporations need to make their logos or “trademarks” a familiar signpost in contemporary culture. Corporations place their logos on their products, in ads, in the spaces of everyday life, and in the midst of media spectacles like important sports events, TV shows, movie product placement, and wherever they can catch consumer eyeballs, to impress their brand name on a potential buyer. Consequently, advertising, marketing, public relations and promotion are an essential part of commodity spectacle in the global marketplace. Celebrity too is manufactured and managed in the world of media spectacle. Celebrities are the icons of media culture, the gods and goddesses of everyday life. To become a celebrity requires recognition as a star player in the field of media spectacle, be it sports, entertainment, or politics. Celebrities have their handlers and image managers to make sure that their celebrities continue to be seen and positively perceived by publics. Just as with corporate brand names, celebrities become brands to sell their Madonna, Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, or Jennifer Lopez product and image. In a media culture, however, celebrities are always prey to scandal and thus must have at their disposal an entire public relations apparatus to manage their spectacle fortunes, to make sure their clients not only maintain high visibility but keep projecting a positive image. Of course, within limits, “bad” and transgressions can also sell and so media spectacle contains celebrity dramas that attract public attention and can even define an entire period, as when the O.J. Simpson murder trials and Bill Clinton sex scandals dominated the media in the mid and late 1990s. Entertainment has always been a prime field of the spectacle, but in today's infotainment society, entertainment and spectacle have entered into the domains of the economy, politics, society, and everyday life in important new ways. Building on the tradition of spectacle, contemporary forms of entertainment from television to the stage are incorporating spectacle culture into their enterprises, transforming film, television, music, drama, and other domains of culture, as well as producing spectacular new forms of culture such as cyberspace, multimedia, and virtual reality. For Neil Gabler, in an era of media spectacle, life itself is becoming like a movie and we create our own lives as a genre like film, or television, in which we become "at once performance artists in and audiences for a grand, ongoing show" (1998: 4). On Gabler’s view, we star in our own "lifies," making our lives into entertainment acted out for audiences of our peers, following the scripts of media culture, adopting its role models and fashion types, its style and look. Seeing our lives in cinematic terms, entertainment becomes for Gabler "arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time--a force so overwhelming that it has metastasized into life" to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish between the two (1998: 9). As Gabler sees it, Ralph Lauren is our fashion expert; Martha Stewart designs our sets; Jane Fonda models our shaping of our bodies; and Oprah Winfrey advises us on our personal problems.4 Media spectacle is indeed a culture of celebrity who provide dominant role models and icons of fashion, look, and personality. In the world of spectacle, celebrity encompasses every major social domain from entertainment to politics to sports to business. An ever-expanding public relations industry hypes certain figures, elevating them to celebrity status, and protects their positive image in the never-ending image wars and dangers that a celebrity will fall prey to the machinations of negative-image and thus lose celebrity status, and/or become figures of scandal and approbation, as will some of the players and institutions that I examine in Media Spectacle (Kellner 2003). Sports has long been a domain of the spectacle with events like the Olympics, World Series, Super Bowl, World Soccer Cup, and NBA championships attracting massive audiences, while generating sky-high advertising rates. These cultural rituals celebrate society's deepest values (i.e. competition, winning, success, and money), and corporations are willing to pay top dollar to get their products associated with such events. Indeed, it appears that the logic of the commodity spectacle is inexorably permeating professional sports which can no longer be played without the accompaniment of cheerleaders, giant mascots who clown with players and spectators, and raffles, promotions, and contests that feature the products of various sponsors. Sports stadiums themselves contain electronic reproduction of the action, as well as giant advertisements for various products that rotate for maximum saturation -- previewing environmental advertising in which entire urban sites are becoming scenes to boost consumption spectacles. Arenas, like the United Center in Chicago, America West Arena in Phoenix, on Enron Field in Houston are named after corporate sponsors. Of course, after major corporate scandals or collapse, like the Enron spectacle, the ballparks must be renamed! The Texas Ranger Ballpark in Arlington, Texas supplements its sports arena with a shopping mall, office buildings, and a restaurant in which for a hefty price one can watch the athletic events while eating and drinking.5 The architecture of the Texas Rangers stadium is an example of the implosion of sports and entertainment and postmodern spectacle. A man-made lake surrounds the stadium, the corridor inside is modeled after Chartes Cathedral, and the structure is made of local stone that provides the look of the Texas Capitol in Austin. Inside there are Texas longhorn cattle carvings, panels of Texas and baseball history, and other iconic signifiers of sports and Texas. The merging of sports, entertainment, and local spectacle is now typical in sports palaces. Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, Florida, for instance, "has a three-level mall that includes places where 'fans can get a trim at the barber shop, do their banking and then grab a cold one at the Budweiser brew pub, whose copper kettles rise three stories. There is even a climbing wall for kids and showroom space for car dealerships'" (Ritzer 1998: 229). Film has long been a fertile field of the spectacle, with "Hollywood" connoting a world of glamour, publicity, fashion, and excess. Hollywood film has exhibited grand movie palaces, spectacular openings with searchlights and camera-popping paparazzi, glamorous Oscars, and stylish hi-tech film. While epic spectacle became a dominant genre of Hollywood film from early versions of The Ten Commandments through Cleopatra and 2001 in the 1960s, contemporary film has incorporated the mechanics of spectacle into its form, style, and special effects. Films are hyped into spectacle through advertising and trailers which are ever louder, more glitzy, and razzle-dazzle. Some of the most popular films of the late 1990s were spectacle films, including Titanic, Star Wars -- Phantom Menace, Three Kings, and Austin Powers, a spoof of spectacle, which became one of the most successful films of summer 1999. During Fall 1999, there was a cycle of spectacles, including Topsy Turvy, Titus, Cradle Will Rock, Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, and Magnolia, with the latter featuring the biblical spectacle of the raining of frogs in the San Fernando Valley, in an allegory of the decadence of the entertainment industry and deserved punishment for its excesses. The 2000 Academy Awards were dominated by the spectacle Gladiator, a mediocre film that captured best picture award and best acting award for Russell Crowe, thus demonstrating the extent to which the logic of the spectacle now dominates Hollywood film. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular films of 2001 are also hi-tech spectacle, such as Moulin Rouge, a film spectacle that itself is a delirious ode to spectacle, from cabaret and the brothel to can-can dancing, opera, musical comedy, dance, theater, popular music, and film. A postmodern pastiche of popular music styles and hits, the film used songs and music ranging from Madonna and the Beatles to Dolly Parton and Kiss. Other 2001 film spectacles include Pearl Harbor, which re-enacts the Japanese attack on the U.S. that propelled the country to enter World War II, and that provided a ready metaphor for the September 11 terror attacks. Major 2001 film spectacles range from David Lynch’s postmodern surrealism in Mulholland Drive to Steven Spielberg’s blending of his typically sentimental spectacle of the family with the formalist rigor of Stanley Kubrick in A.I. And the popular 2001 military film Black-Hawk Down provided a spectacle of American military heroism which some critics believed sugar-coated the actual problems with the U.S. military intervention in Somalia, causing worries that a future U.S. adventure by the Bush administration and Pentagon would meet similar problems. There were reports, however, that in Somalian cinemas there were loud cheers as the Somalians in the film shot down the U.S. helicopter, and pursued and killed American soldiers, attesting to growing anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world against Bush administration policies. Television has been from its introduction in the 1940s a promoter of consumption spectacle, selling cars, fashion, home appliances, and other commodities along with consumer life-styles and values. It is also the home of sports spectacle like the Super Bowl or World Series, political spectacles like elections (or more recently, scandals), entertainment spectacle like the Oscars or Grammies, and its own spectacles like breaking news or special events. Following the logic of spectacle entertainment, contemporary television exhibits more hi-tech glitter, faster and glitzier editing, computer simulations, and with cable and satellite television, a fantastic array of every conceivable type of show and genre. TV is today a medium of spectacular programs like The X-Files or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and spectacles of everyday life such as MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, or the globally popular Survivor and Big Brother series. Real life events, however, took over TV spectacle in 2000-2001 in, first, an intense battle for the White House in a dead-heat election, that arguably constitutes one of the greatest political crimes and scandals in U.S. history (see Kellner 2001). After months of the Bush administration pushing the most hardright political agenda in memory and then deadlocking as the Democrats took control of the Senate in a dramatic party re-affiliation of Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, the world was treated to the most horrifying spectacle of the new millennium, the September 11 terror attacks and unfolding Terror War that has so far engulfed Afghanistan and Iraq. These events promise an unending series of deadly spectacle for the foreseeable future.6 Hence, we are emerging into a new culture of media spectacle that constitutes a novel configuration of economy, society, politics, and everyday life. It involves new cultural forms, social relations, and modes of experience. It is producing an ever-proliferating and expanding spectacle culture with its proliferating media forms, cultural spaces, and myriad forms of spectacle. It is evident in the U.S. as the new millennium unfolds and may well constitute emergent new forms of global culture. Critical social theory thus faces important challenges in theoretically mapping and analyzing these emergent forms of culture and society and the ways that they may contain novel forms of domination and oppression, as well as potential for democratization and social justice. Works Cited Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1967. Gabler, Neil. Life the Movie. How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Kellner, Douglas. Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. Thousand Oaks, Cal. and London: Sage, 1998. Wolf, Michael J. Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces are Transforming Our Lives. New York: Times Books, 1999. Notes 1 See Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 2 Wolf's book is a detailed and useful celebration of the "entertainment economy," although he is a shill for the firms and tycoons that he works for and celebrates them in his book. Moreover, while entertainment is certainly an important component of the infotainment economy, it is an exaggeration to say that it drives it and is actually propelling it, as Wolf repeatedly claims. Wolf also downplays the negative aspects of the entertainment economy, such as growing consumer debt and the ups and downs of the infotainment stock market and vicissitudes of the global economy. 3 Another source notes that "the average American household spent $1,813 in 1997 on entertainment -- books, TV, movies, theater, toys -- almost as much as the $1,841 spent on health care per family, according to a survey by the US Labor Department." Moreover, "the price we pay to amuse ourselves has, in some cases, risen at a rate triple that of inflation over the past five years" (USA Today, April 2, 1999: E1). The NPD Group provided a survey that indicated that the amount of time spent on entertainment outside of the home –- such as going to the movies or a sport event – was up 8% from the early to the late 1990s and the amount of time in home entertainment, such as watching television or surfing the Internet, went up 2%. Reports indicate that in a typical American household, people with broadband Internet connections spend 22% more time on all-electronic media and entertainment than the average household without broadband. See “Study: Broadband in homes changes media habits” (PCWORLD.COM, October 11, 2000). 4 Gabler’s book is a synthesis of Daniel Boorstin, Dwight Macdonald, Neil Poster, Marshall McLuhan, and other trendy theorists of media culture, but without the brilliance of a Baudrillard, the incisive criticism of an Adorno, or the understanding of the deeper utopian attraction of media culture of a Bloch or Jameson. Likewise, Gabler does not, a la cultural studies, engage the politics of representation, or its economics and political economy. He thus ignores mergers in the culture industries, new technologies, the restructuring of capitalism, globalization, and shifts in the economy that are driving the impetus toward entertainment. Gabler does get discuss how new technologies are creating new spheres of entertainment and forms of experience and in general describes rather than theorizes the trends he is engaging. 5 The project was designed and sold to the public in part through the efforts of the son of a former President, George W. Bush. Young Bush was bailed out of heavy losses in the Texas oil industry in the 1980s by his father's friends and used his capital gains, gleaned from what some say as illicit insider trading, to purchase part-ownership of a baseball team to keep the wayward son out of trouble and to give him something to do. The soon-to-be Texas governor, and future President of the United States, sold the new stadium to local taxpayers, getting them to agree to a higher sales tax to build the stadium which would then become the property of Bush and his partners. This deal allowed Bush to generate a healthy profit when he sold his interest in the Texas Rangers franchise and to buy his Texas ranch, paid for by Texas tax-payers (for sources on the scandalous life of George W. Bush and his surprising success in politics, see Kellner 2001 and the further discussion of Bush Jr. in Chapter 6). 6 See Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kellner, Douglas. "Engaging Media Spectacle " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>. APA Style Kellner, D. (2003, Jun 19). Engaging Media Spectacle . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>

Introduction It is very common for children’s films to adapt, rework, or otherwise re-imagine existing cultural material. Such re-imaginings are potential candidates for fidelity criticism: a mode of analysis whereby an adaptation is judged according to its degree of faithfulness to the source text. Indeed, it is interesting that while fidelity criticism is now considered outdated and problematic by adaptation theorists (see Stam; Leitch; and Whelehan) the issue of fidelity has tended to linger in the discussions that form around material adapted for children. In particular, it is often assumed that the re-imagining of cultural material for children will involve a process of “dumbing down” that strips the original text of its complexity so that it is more easily consumed by young audiences (see Semenza; Kellogg; Hastings; and Napolitano). This is especially the case when children’s films draw from texts—or genres—that are specifically associated with an adult readership. This paper explores such an interplay between children’s and adult’s culture with reference to the re-imagining of the horror genre in children’s animated film. Recent years have seen an inrush of animated films that play with horror tropes, conventions, and characters. These include Frankenweenie (2012), ParaNorman (2012), Hotel Transylvania (2012), Igor (2008), Monsters Inc. (2001), Monster House (2006), and Monsters vs Aliens (2009). Often diminishingly referred to as “kiddie horror” or “goth lite”, this re-imagining of the horror genre is connected to broader shifts in children’s culture, literature, and media. Anna Jackson, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis, for instance, have written about the mainstreaming of the Gothic in children’s literature after centuries of “suppression” (2); a glance at the titles in a children’s book store, they tell us, may suggest that “fear or the pretence of fear has become a dominant mode of enjoyment in literature for young people” (1). At the same time, as Lisa Hopkins has pointed out, media products with dark, supernatural, or Gothic elements are increasingly being marketed to children, either directly or through product tie-ins such as toys or branded food items (116-17). The re-imagining of horror for children demands our attention for a number of reasons. First, it raises questions about the commercialisation and repackaging of material that has traditionally been considered “high culture”, particularly when the films in question are seen to pilfer from sites of the literary Gothic such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The classic horror films of the 1930s such as James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) also have their own canonical status within the genre, and are objects of reverence for horror fans and film scholars alike. Moreover, aficionados of the genre have been known to object vehemently to any perceived simplification or dumbing down of horror conventions in order to address a non-horror audience. As Lisa Bode has demonstrated, such objections were articulated in many reviews of the film Twilight, in which the repackaging and simplifying of vampire mythology was seen to pander to a female, teenage or “tween” audience (710-11). Second, the re-imagining of horror for children raises questions about whether the genre is an appropriate source of pleasure and entertainment for young audiences. Horror has traditionally been understood as problematic and damaging even for adult viewers: Mark Jancovich, for instance, writes of the long-standing assumption that horror “is moronic, sick and worrying; that any person who derives pleasure from the genre is moronic, sick and potentially dangerous” and that both the genre and its fans are “deviant” (18). Consequently, discussions about the relationship between children and horror have tended to emphasise regulation, restriction, censorship, effect, and “the dangers of imitative violence” (Buckingham 95). As Paul Wells observes, there is a “consistent concern […] that horror films are harmful to children, but clearly these films are not made for children, and the responsibility for who views them lies with adult authority figures who determine how and when horror films are seen” (24). Previous academic work on the child as horror viewer has tended to focus on children as consumers of horror material designed for adults. Joanne Cantor’s extensive work in this area has indicated that fright reactions to horror media are commonly reported and can be long-lived (Cantor; and Cantor and Oliver). Elsewhere, the work of Sarah Smith (45-76) and David Buckingham (95-138) has indicated that children, like adults, can gain certain pleasures from the genre; it has also indicated that children can be quite media savvy when viewing horror, and can operate effectively as self-censors. However, little work has yet been conducted on whether (and how) the horror genre might be transformed for child viewers. With this in mind, I explore here the re-imagining of horror in two children’s animated films: Frankenweenie and ParaNorman. I will consider the way horror tropes, narratives, conventions, and characters have been reshaped in each film with a child’s perspective in mind. This, I argue, does not make them simplified texts or unsuitable objects of pleasure for adults; instead, the films demonstrate that the act of re-imagining horror for children calls into question long-held assumptions about pleasure, taste, and the boundaries between “adult” and “child”. Frankenweenie and ParaNorman: Rewriting the Myth of Childhood Innocence Frankenweenie is a stop-motion animation written by John August and directed by Tim Burton, based on a live-action short film made by Burton in 1984. As its name suggests, Frankenweenie re-imagines Shelley’s Frankenstein by transforming the relationship between creator and monster into that between child and pet. Burton’s Victor Frankenstein is a young boy living in a small American town, a creative loner who enjoys making monster movies. When his beloved dog Sparky is killed in a car accident, young Victor—like his predecessor in Shelley’s novel—is driven by the awfulness of this encounter with death to discover the “mysteries of creation” (Shelley 38): he digs up Sparky’s body, drags the corpse back to the family home, and reanimates him in the attic. This coming-to-life sequence is both a re-imagining of the famous animation scene in Whale’s film Frankenstein and a tender expression of the love between a boy and his dog. The re-imagined creation scene therefore becomes a site of negotiation between adult and child audiences: adult viewers familiar with Whale’s adaptation and its sense of electric spectacle are invited to rethink this scene from a child’s perspective, while child viewers are given access to a key moment from the horror canon. While this blurring of the lines between child and adult is a common theme in Burton’s work—many of his films exist in a liminal space where a certain childlike sensibility mingles with a more adult-centric dark humour—Frankenweenie is unique in that it actively re-imagines as “childlike” a film and/or work of literature that was previously populated by adult characters and associated with adult audiences. ParaNorman is the second major film from the animation studio Laika Entertainment. Following in the footsteps of the earlier Laika film Coraline (2009)—and paving the way for the studio’s 2014 release, Boxtrolls—ParaNorman features stop-motion animation, twisted storylines, and the exploration of dark themes and spaces by child characters. The film tells the story of Norman, an eleven year old boy who can see and communicate with the dead. This gift marks him as an outcast in the small town of Blithe Hollow, which has built its identity on the historic trial and hanging of an “evil” child witch. Norman must grapple with the town’s troubled past and calm the spirit of the vengeful witch; along the way, he and an odd assortment of children battle zombies and townsfolk alike, the latter appearing more monstrous than the former as the film progresses. Although ParaNorman does not position itself as an adaptation of a specific horror text, as does Frankenweenie, it shares with Burton’s film a playful intertextuality whereby references are constantly made to iconic films in the horror genre (including Halloween [1978], Friday the 13th [1980], and Day of the Dead [1985]). Both films were released in 2012 to critical acclaim. Interestingly, though, film critics seemed to disagree over who these texts were actually “for.” Some reviewers described the films as children’s texts, and warned that adults would likely find them “tame and compromised” (Scott), “toothless” (McCarthy) or “sentimental” (Bradshaw). These comments carry connotations of simplification: the suggestion is that the conventions and tropes of the horror genre have been weakened (or even contaminated) by the association with child audiences, and that consequently adults cannot (or should not) take pleasure in the films. Other reviewers of ParaNorman and Frankenweenie suggested that adults were more likely to enjoy the films than children (O’Connell; Berardinelli; and Wolgamott). Often, this suggestion came together with a warning about scary or dark content: the films were deemed to be too frightening for young children, and this exclusion of the child audience allowed the reviewer to acknowledge his or her own enjoyment of and investment in the film (and the potential enjoyment of other adult viewers). Lou Lumenick, for instance, peppers his review of ParaNorman with language that indicates his own pleasure (“probably the year’s most visually dazzling movie so far”; the climax is “too good to spoil”; the humour is “deliciously twisted”), while warning that children as old as eight should not be taken to see the film. Similarly, Christy Lemire warns that certain elements of Frankenweenie are scary and that “this is not really a movie for little kids”; she goes on to add that this scariness “is precisely what makes ‘Frankenweenie’ such a consistent wonder to watch for the rest of us” (emphasis added). In both these cases a line is drawn between child and adult viewers, and arguably it is the film’s straying into the illicit area of horror from the confines of a children’s text that renders it an object of pleasure for the adult viewer. The thrill of being scared is also interpreted here as a specifically adult pleasure. This need on the part of critics to establish boundaries between child and adult viewerships is interesting given that the films themselves strive to incorporate children (as characters and as viewers) into the horror space. In particular, both films work hard to dismantle the myths of childhood innocence—and associated ideas about pleasure and taste—that have previously seen children excluded from the culture of the horror film. Both the young protagonists, for instance, are depicted as media-literate consumers or makers of horror material. Victor is initially seen exhibiting one of his home-made monster movies to his bemused parents, and we first encounter Norman watching a zombie film with his (dead) grandmother; clearly a consummate horror viewer, Norman decodes the film for Grandma, explaining that the zombie is eating the woman’s head because, “that’s what they do.” In this way, the myth of childhood innocence is rewritten: the child’s mature engagement with the horror genre gives him agency, which is linked to his active position in the narrative (both Norman and Victor literally save their towns from destruction); the parents, meanwhile, are reduced to babbling stereotypes who worry that their sons will “turn out weird” (Frankenweenie) or wonder why they “can’t be like other kids” (ParaNorman). The films also rewrite the myth of childhood innocence by depicting Victor and Norman as children with dark, difficult lives. Importantly, each boy has encountered death and, for each, his parents have failed to effectively guide him through the experience. In Frankenweenie Victor is grief-stricken when Sparky dies, yet his parents can offer little more than platitudes to quell the pain of loss. “When you lose someone you love they never really leave you,” Victor’s mother intones, “they just move into a special place in your heart,” to which Victor replies “I don’t want him in my heart—I want him here with me!” The death of Norman’s grandmother is similarly dismissed by his mother in ParaNorman. “I know you and Grandma were very close,” she says, “but we all have to move on. Grandma’s in a better place now.” Norman objects: “No she’s not, she’s in the living room!” In both scenes, the literal-minded but intelligent child seems to understand death, loss, and grief while the parents are unable to speak about these “mature” concepts in a meaningful way. The films are also reminders that a child’s first experience of death can come very young, and often occurs via the loss of an elderly relative or a beloved pet. Death, Play, and the Monster In both films, therefore, the audience is invited to think about death. Consequently, there is a sense in each film that while the violent and sexual content of most horror texts has been stripped away, the dark centre of the horror genre remains. As Paul Wells reminds us, horror “is predominantly concerned with the fear of death, the multiple ways in which it can occur, and the untimely nature of its occurrence” (10). Certainly, the horror texts which Frankenweenie and ParaNorman re-imagine are specifically concerned with death and mortality. The various adaptations of Frankenstein that are referenced in Frankenweenie and the zombie films to which ParaNorman pays homage all deploy “the monster” as a figure who defies easy categorisation as living or dead. The othering of this figure in the traditional horror narrative allows him/her/it to both subvert and confirm cultural ideas about life, death, and human status: for monsters, as Elaine Graham notes, have long been deployed in popular culture as figures who “mark the fault-lines” and also “signal the fragility” of boundary structures, including the boundary between human and not human, and that between life and death (12). Frankenweenie’s Sparky, as an iteration of the Frankenstein monster, clearly fits this description: he is neither living nor dead, and his monstrosity emerges not from any act of violence or from physical deformity (he remains, throughout the film, a cute and lovable dog, albeit with bolts fixed to his neck) but from his boundary-crossing status. However, while most versions of the Frankenstein monster are deliberately positioned to confront ideas about the human/machine boundary and to perform notions of the posthuman, such concerns are sidelined in Frankenweenie. Instead, the emphasis is on concerns that are likely to resonate with children: Sparky is a reminder of the human preoccupation with death, loss, and the question of why (or whether, or when) we should abide by the laws of nature. Arguably, this indicates a re-imagining of the Frankenstein tale not only for child audiences but from a child’s perspective. In ParaNorman, similarly, the zombie–often read as an articulation of adult anxieties about war, apocalypse, terrorism, and the deterioration of social order (Platts 551-55)—is re-used and re-imagined in a childlike way. From a child’s perspective, the zombie may represent the horrific truth of mortality and/or the troublesome desire to live forever that emerges once this truth has been confronted. More specifically, the notion of dealing meaningfully with the past and of honouring rather than silencing the dead is a strong thematic undercurrent in ParaNorman, and in this sense the zombies are important figures who dramatise the connections between past and present. While this past/present connection is explored on many levels in ParaNorman—including the level of a town grappling with its dark history—it is Norman and his grandmother who take centre stage: the boundary-crossing figure of the zombie is re-realised here in terms of a negotiation with a presence that is now absent (the elderly relative who has died but is still remembered). Indeed, the zombies in this film are an implicit rebuke to Norman’s mother and her command that Norman “move on” after his grandmother’s death. The dead are still present, this film playfully reminds us, and therefore “moving on” is an overly simplistic and somewhat disrespectful response (especially when imposed on children by adult authority figures.) If the horror narrative is built around the notion that “normality is threatened by the Monster”, as Robin Wood has famously suggested, ParaNorman and Frankenweenie re-imagine this narrative of subversion from a child’s perspective (31). Both films open up a space within which the child is permitted to negotiate with the destabilising figure of the monster; the normality that is “threatened” here is the adult notion of the finality of death and, relatedly, the assumption that death is not a suitable subject for children to think or talk about. Breaking down such understandings, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman strive not so much to play with death (a phrase that implies a certain callousness, a problematic disregard for human life) but to explore death through the darkness of play. This is beautifully imaged in a scene from ParaNorman in which Norman and his friend Neil play with the ghost of Neil’s recently deceased dog. “We’re going to play with a dead dog in the garden,” Neil enthusiastically announces to his brother, “and we’re not even going to have to dig him up first!” Somewhat similarly, film critic Richard Corliss notes in his review of Frankenweenie that the film’s “message to the young” is that “children should play with dead things.” Through this intersection between “death” and “play”, both films propose a particularly child-like (although not necessarily child-ish) way of negotiating horror’s dark territory. Conclusion Animated film has always been an ambiguous space in terms of age, pleasure, and viewership. As film critic Margaret Pomeranz has observed, “there is this perception that if it’s an animated film then you can take the little littlies” (Pomeranz and Stratton). Animation itself is often a signifier of safety, fun, nostalgia, and childishness; it is a means of addressing families and young audiences. Yet at the same time, the fantastic and transformative aspects of animation can be powerful tools for telling stories that are dark, surprising, or somehow subversive. It is therefore interesting that the trend towards re-imagining horror for children that this paper has identified is unfolding within the animated space. It is beyond the scope of this paper to fully consider what animation as a medium brings to this re-imagining process. However, it is worth noting that the distinctive stop-motion style used in both films works to position them as alternatives to Disney products (for although Frankenweenie was released under the Disney banner, it is visually distinct from most of Disney’s animated ventures). The majority of Disney films are adaptations or re-imaginings of some sort, yet these re-imaginings look to fairytales or children’s literature for their source material. In contrast, as this paper has demonstrated, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman open up a space for boundary play: they give children access to tropes, narratives, and characters that are specifically associated with adult viewers, and they invite adults to see these tropes, narratives, and characters from a child’s perspective. Ultimately, it is difficult to determine the success of this re-imagining process: what, indeed, does a successful re-imagining of horror for children look like, and who might be permitted to take pleasure from it? Arguably, ParaNorman and Frankenweenie have succeeded in reshaping the genre without simplifying it, deploying tropes and characters from classic horror texts in a meaningful way within the complex space of children’s animated film. References Berardinelli, James. “Frankenweenie (Review).” Reelviews, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=2530›. Bode, Lisa. “Transitional Tastes: Teen Girls and Genre in the Critical Reception of Twilight.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 24.5 (2010): 707-19. Bradshaw, Peter. “Frankenweenie: First Look Review.” The Guardian, 11 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/oct/10/frankenweenie-review-london-film-festival-tim-burton›. Buckingham, David. Moving Images: Understanding Children’s Emotional Responses to Television. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996. Cantor, Joanne. “‘I’ll Never Have a Clown in My House’ – Why Movie Horror Lives On.” Poetics Today 25.2 (2004): 283-304. Cantor, Joanne, and Mary Beth Oliver. “Developmental Differences in Responses to Horror”. The Horror Film. Ed. Stephen Prince. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2004. 224-41. Corliss, Richard. “‘Frankenweenie’ Movie Review: A Re-Animated Delight”. Time, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/04/tim-burtons-frankenweenie-a-re-animated-delight/›. Frankenweenie. Directed by Tim Burton. Walt Disney Pictures, 2012. Graham, Elaine L. Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002. Hastings, A. Waller. “Moral Simplification in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.” The Lion and the Unicorn 17.1 (1993): 83-92. Hopkins, Lisa. Screening the Gothic. Austin: U of Texas P, 2005. Jackson, Anna, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis. “Introduction.” The Gothic in Children’s Literature: Haunting the Borders. Eds. Anna Jackson, Karen Coats, and Roderick McGillis. New York: Routledge, 2008. 1-14. Jancovich, Mark. “General Introduction.” Horror: The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London: Routledge, 2002. 1-19. Kellogg, Judith L. “The Dynamics of Dumbing: The Case of Merlin.” The Lion and the Unicorn 17.1 (1993): 57-72. Leitch, Thomas. “Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory.” Criticism 45.2 (2003): 149-71. Lemire, Christy. “‘Frankenweenie’ Review: Tim Burton Reminds Us Why We Love Him.” The Huffington Post, 2 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/frankenweenie-review-tim-burton_n_1935142.html›. Lumenick, Lou. “So Good, It’s Scary (ParaNorman Review)”. New York Post, 17 Aug. 2012. 3 Jun. 2015 ‹http://nypost.com/2012/08/17/so-good-its-scary/›. McCarthy, Todd. “Frankenweenie: Film Review.” The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Sep. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie/frankenweenie/review/372720›. Napolitano, Marc. “Disneyfying Dickens: Oliver & Company and The Muppet Christmas Carol as Dickensian Musicals.” Studies in Popular Culture 32.1 (2009): 79-102. O’Connell, Sean. “Middle School and Zombies? Awwwkward!” Washington Post, 17 Aug. 2012. 3 Jun. 2015 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/movies/paranorman,1208210.html›. ParaNorman. Directed by Chris Butler and Sam Fell. Focus Features/Laika Entertainment, 2012. Platts, Todd K. “Locating Zombies in the Sociology of Popular Culture”. Sociology Compass 7 (2013): 547-60. Pomeranz, Margaret, and David Stratton. “Igor (Review).” At the Movies, 14 Dec. 2008. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s2426109.htm›. Scott, A.O. “It’s Aliiiive! And Wagging Its Tail: ‘Frankenweenie’, Tim Burton’s Homage to Horror Classics.” New York Times, 4 Oct. 2012. 6 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/movies/frankenweenie-tim-burtons-homage-to-horror-classics.html›. Semenza, Gregory M. Colón. “Teens, Shakespeare, and the Dumbing Down Cliché: The Case of The Animated Tales.” Shakespeare Bulletin 26.2 (2008): 37-68. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions, 1993 [1818]. Smith, Sarah J. Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Stam, Robert. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Eds. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. 1-52. Wells, Paul. The Horror Genre: From Beelzebub to Blair Witch. London: Wallflower, 2000. Whelehan, Imelda. “Adaptations: the Contemporary Dilemmas.” Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text. Eds. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan. London: Routledge, 1999. 3-19. Wolgamott, L. Kent. “‘Frankenweenie’ A Box-Office Bomb, But Superior Film.” Lincoln Journal Star, 10 Oct. 2012. 18 Aug. 2014 ‹http://journalstar.com/entertainment/movies/l-kent-wolgamott-frankenweenie-a-box-office-bomb-but-superior/article_42409e82-89b9-5794-8082-7b5de3d469e2.html›. Wood, Robin. “The American Nightmare: Horror in the 70s.” Horror: The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London: Routledge, 2002. 25-32.

Dégueulasse is French slang for “disgusting,” derived in 1867 from the French verb dégueuler, to vomit. Despite its vulgar status, it is frequently used by almost every French speaker, including foreigners and students. It is also a term that has often been employed to describe the 1973 cult film, La Grande bouffe [Blow Out], by Marco Ferreri, which recounts in grotesque detail the gastronomic suicide of four male protagonists. This R-rated French-Italian production was booed, and the director spat on, at the 26th Cannes Film Festival—the Jury President, Ingrid Bergman, said it was the most “sordid” film she’d ever seen, and is even reported to have vomited after watching it (Télérama). Ferreri nevertheless walked away with the Prix FIPRESCI, awarded by the Federation of International Critics, and it is apparently the largest grossing release in the history of Paris with more than 700,000 entries in Paris and almost 3 million in France overall. Scandal sells, and this was especially seemingly so 1970s, when this film was avidly consumed as part of an unholy trinity alongside Bernardo Bertolucci’s Le Dernier Tango à Paris [Last Tango in Paris] (1972) and Jean Eustache’s La Maman et la putain [The Mother and the Whore] (1973). Fast forward forty years, though, and at the very moment when La Grande bouffe was being commemorated with a special screening on the 2013 Cannes Film Festival programme, a handful of University of Melbourne French students in a subject called “Matters of Taste” were boycotting the film as an unacceptable assault to their sensibilities. Over the decade that I have been showing the film to undergraduate students, this has never happened before. In this article, I want to examine critically the questions of taste that underpin this particular predicament. Analysing firstly the intradiegetic portrayal of taste in the film, through both gustatory and aesthetic signifiers, then the choice of the film as a key element in a University subject corpus, I will finally question the (dis)taste displayed by certain students, contextualising it as part of an ongoing socio-cultural commentary on food, sex, life, and death. Framed by a brief foray into Bourdieusian theories of taste, I will attempt to draw some conclusions on the continual renegotiation of gustatory and aesthetic tastes in relation to La Grande bouffe, and thereby deepen understanding of why it has become the incarnation of dégueulasse today. Theories of Taste In the 1970s, the parameters of “good” and “bad” taste imploded in the West, following political challenges to the power of the bourgeoisie that also undermined their status as the contemporary arbiters of taste. This revolution of manners was particularly shattering in France, fuelled by the initial success of the May 68 student, worker, and women’s rights movements (Ross). The democratization of taste served to legitimize desires different from those previously dictated by bourgeois norms, enabling greater diversity in representing taste across a broad spectrum. It was reflected in the cultural products of the 1970s, including cinema, which had already broken with tradition during the New Wave in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and became a vector for political ideologies as well as radical aesthetic choices (Smith). Commonly regarded as “the decade that taste forgot,” the 1970s were also a time for re-assessing the sociology of taste, with the magisterial publication of Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979, English trans. 1984). As Bourdieu refuted Kant’s differentiation between the legitimate aesthetic, so defined by its “disinterestedness,” and the common aesthetic, derived from sensory pleasures and ordinary meanings, he also attempted to abolish the opposition between the “taste of reflection” (pure pleasure) and the “taste of sense” (facile pleasure) (Bourdieu 7). In so doing, he laid the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding the apparently incommensurable choices that are not the innate expression of our unique personalities, but rather the product of our class, education, family experiences—our habitus. Where Bourdieu’s theories align most closely with the relationship between taste and revulsion is in the realm of aesthetic disposition and its desire to differentiate: “good” taste is almost always predicated on the distaste of the tastes of others. Tastes (i.e. manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance (“sick-making”) of the tastes of others. “De gustibus non est disputandum”: not because “tous les goûts sont dans la nature,” but because each taste feels itself to be natural—and so it almost is, being a habitus—which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes (Bourdieu). Although today’s “Gen Y” Melbourne University students are a long way from 1970s French working class/bourgeois culture clashes, these observations on taste as the corollary of distaste are still salient tools of interpretation of their attitudes towards La Grande bouffe. And, just as Bourdieu effectively deconstructed Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and the 18th “century of taste” notions of universality and morality in aesthetics (Dickie, Gadamer, Allison) in his groundbreaking study of distinction, his own theories have in turn been subject to revision in an age of omnivorous consumption and eclectic globalisation, with various cultural practices further destabilising the hierarchies that formerly monopolized legitimate taste (Sciences Humaines, etc). Bourdieu’s theories are still, however, useful for analysing La Grande bouffe given the contemporaneous production of these texts, as they provide a frame for understanding (dis)taste both within the filmic narrative and in the wider context of its reception. Taste and Distaste in La Grande bouffe To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it’s a physiological act, it’s urban guerrilla […] Enough with feelings, I want to make a physiological film (Celluloid Liberation Front). Marco Ferreri’s statements about his motivations for La Grande bouffe coincide here with Bourdieu’s explanation of taste: clearly the director wished to depart from psychological cinema favoured by contemporary critics and audiences and demonstrated his distaste for their preference. There were, however, psychological impulses underpinning his subject matter, as according to film academic Maurizio Viano, Ferrari had a self-destructive, compulsive relation to food, having been forced to spend a few weeks in a Swiss clinic specialising in eating disorders in 1972–1973 (Viano). Food issues abound in his biography. In an interview with Tullio Masoni, the director declared: “I was fat as a child”; his composer Phillipe Sarde recalls the grand Italian-style dinners that he would organise in Paris during the film; and, two of the film’s stars, Marcello Mastroianni and Ugo Tognazzi, actually credit the conception of La Grande bouffe to a Rabelaisian feast prepared by Tognazzi, during which Ferreri exclaimed “hey guys, we are killing ourselves!” (Viano 197–8). Evidently, there were psychological factors behind this film, but it was nevertheless the physiological aspects that Ferreri chose to foreground in his creation. The resulting film does indeed privilege the physiological, as the protagonists fornicate, fart, vomit, defecate, and—of course—eat, to wild excess. The opening scenes do not betray such sordid sequences; the four bourgeois men are introduced one by one so as to establish their class credentials as well as display their different tastes. We first encounter Ugo (Tognazzi), an Italian chef of humble peasant origins, as he leaves his elegant restaurant “Le Biscuit à soupe” and his bourgeois French wife, to take his knives and recipes away with him for the weekend. Then Michel (Piccoli), a TV host who has pre-taped his shows, gives his apartment keys to his 1970s-styled baba-cool daughter as he bids her farewell, and packs up his cleaning products and rubber gloves to take with him. Marcello (Mastroianni) emerges from a cockpit in his aviator sunglasses and smart pilot’s uniform, ordering his sexy airhostesses to carry his cheese and wine for him as he takes a last longing look around his plane. Finally, the judge and owner of the property where the action will unfold, Philippe (Noiret), is awoken by an elderly woman, Nicole, who feeds him tea and brioche, pestering him for details of his whereabouts for the weekend, until he demonstrates his free will and authority, joking about his serious life, and lying to her about attending a legal conference in London. Having given over power of attorney to Nicole, he hints at the finality of his departure, but is trying to wrest back his independence as his nanny exhorts him not to go off with whores. She would rather continue to “sacrifice herself for him” and “keep it in the family,” as she discreetly pleasures him in this scene. Scholars have identified each protagonist as an ideological signifier. For some, they represent power—Philippe is justice—and three products of that ideology: Michel is spectacle, Ugo is food, and Marcello is adventure (Celluloid Liberation Front). For others, these characters are the perfect incarnations of the first four Freudian stages of sexual development: Philippe is Oedipal, Michel is indifferent, Ugo is oral, and Marcello is impotent (Tury & Peter); or even the four temperaments of Hippocratic humouralism: Philippe the phlegmatic, Michel the melancholic, Ugo the sanguine, and Marcello the choleric (Calvesi, Viano). I would like to offer another dimension to these categories, positing that it is each protagonist’s taste that prescribes his participation in this gastronomic suicide as well as the means by which he eventually dies. Before I develop this hypothesis, I will first describe the main thrust of the narrative. The four men arrive at the villa at 68 rue Boileau where they intend to end their days (although this is not yet revealed). All is prepared for the most sophisticated and decadent feasting imaginable, with a delivery of the best meats and poultry unfurling like a surrealist painting. Surrounded by elegant artworks and demonstrating their cultural capital by reciting Shakespeare, Brillat-Savarin, and other classics, the men embark on a race to their death, beginning with a competition to eat the most oysters while watching a vintage pornographic slideshow. There is a strong thread of masculine athletic engagement in this film, as has been studied in detail by James R. Keller in “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism,” and this is exacerbated by the arrival of a young but matronly schoolmistress Andréa (Ferréol) with her students who want to see the garden. She accepts the men’s invitation to stay on in the house to become another object of competitive desire, and fully embraces all the sexual and gustatory indulgence around her. Marcello goes further by inviting three prostitutes to join them and Ugo prepares a banquet fit for a funeral. The excessive eating makes Michel flatulent and Marcello impotent; when Marcello kicks the toilet in frustration, it explodes in the famous fecal fountain scene that apparently so disgusted his then partner Catherine Deneuve, that she did not speak to him for a week (Ebert). The prostitutes flee the revolting madness, but Andréa stays like an Angel of Death, helping the men meet their end and, in surviving, perhaps symbolically marking an end to the masculinist bourgeoisie they represent.To return to the role of taste in defining the rise and demise of the protagonists, let me begin with Marcello, as he is the first to die. Despite his bourgeois attitudes, he is a modern man, associated with machines and mobility, such as the planes and the beautiful Bugatti, which he strokes with greater sensuality than the women he hoists onto it. His taste is for the functioning mechanical body, fast and competitive, much like himself when he is gorging on oysters. But his own body betrays him when his “masculine mechanics” stop functioning, and it is the fact that the Bugatti has broken down that actually causes his death—he is found frozen in driver’s seat after trying to escape in the Bugatti during the night. Marcello’s taste for the mechanical leads therefore to his eventual demise. Michel is the next victim of his own taste, which privileges aesthetic beauty, elegance, the arts, and fashion, and euphemises the less attractive or impolite, the scatological, boorish side of life. His feminized attire—pink polo-neck and flowing caftan—cannot distract from what is happening in his body. The bourgeois manners that bind him to beauty mean that breaking wind traumatises him. His elegant gestures at the dance barre encourage rather than disguise his flatulence; his loud piano playing cannot cover the sound of his loud farts, much to the mirth of Philippe and Andréa. In a final effort to conceal his painful bowel obstruction, he slips outside to die in obscene and noisy agony, balanced in an improbably balletic pose on the balcony balustrade. His desire for elegance and euphemism heralds his death. Neither Marcello nor Michel go willingly to their ends. Their tastes are thwarted, and their deaths are disgusting to them. Their cadavers are placed in the freezer room as silent witnesses to the orgy that accelerates towards its fatal goal. Ugo’s taste is more earthy and inherently linked to the aims of the adventure. He is the one who states explicitly: “If you don’t eat, you won’t die.” He wants to cook for others and be appreciated for his talents, as well as eat and have sex, preferably at the same time. It is a combination of these desires that kills him as he force-feeds himself the monumental creation of pâté in the shape of the Cathedral of Saint-Peter that has been rejected as too dry by Philippe, and too rich by Andréa. The pride that makes him attempt to finish eating his masterpiece while Andréa masturbates him on the dining table leads to a heart-stopping finale for Ugo. As for Philippe, his taste is transgressive. In spite of his upstanding career as a judge, he lies and flouts convention in his unorthodox relationship with nanny Nicole. Andréa represents another maternal figure to whom he is attracted and, while he wishes to marry her, thereby conforming to bourgeois norms, he also has sex with her, and her promiscuous nature is clearly signalled. Given his status as a judge, he reasons that he can not bring Marcello’s frozen body inside because concealing a cadaver is a crime, yet he promotes collective suicide on his premises. Philippe’s final transgression of the rules combines diabetic disobedience with Oedipal complex—Andréa serves him a sugary pink jelly dessert in the form of a woman’s breasts, complete with cherries, which he consumes knowingly and mournfully, causing his death. Unlike Marcello and Michel, Ugo and Philippe choose their demise by indulging their tastes for ingestion and transgression. Following Ferreri’s motivations and this analysis of the four male protagonists, taste is clearly a cornerstone of La Grande bouffe’s conception and narrative structure. It is equally evident that these tastes are contrary to bourgeois norms, provoking distaste and even revulsion in spectators. The film’s reception at the time of its release and ever since have confirmed this tendency in both critical reviews and popular feedback as André Habib’s article on Salo and La Grande bouffe (2001) meticulously demonstrates. With such a violent reaction, one might wonder why La Grande bouffe is found on so many cinema studies curricula and is considered to be a must-see film (The Guardian). Corpus and Corporeality in Food Film Studies I chose La Grande bouffe as the first film in the “Matters of Taste” subject, alongside Luis Bunuel’s Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, and Laurent Bénégui’s Au Petit Marguery, as all are considered classic films depicting French eating cultures. Certainly any French cinema student would know La Grande bouffe and most cinephiles around the world have seen it. It is essential background knowledge for students studying French eating cultures and features as a key reference in much scholarly research and popular culture on the subject. After explaining the canonical status of La Grande bouffe and thus validating its inclusion in the course, I warned students about the explicit nature of the film. We studied it for one week out of the 12 weeks of semester, focusing on questions of taste in the film and the socio-cultural representations of food. Although the almost ubiquitous response was: “C’est dégueulasse!,” there was no serious resistance until the final exam when a few students declared that they would boycott any questions on La Grande bouffe. I had not actually included any such questions in the exam. The student evaluations at the end of semester indicated that several students questioned the inclusion of this “disgusting pornography” in the corpus. There is undoubtedly less nudity, violence, gore, or sex in this film than in the Game of Thrones TV series. What, then, repulses these Gen Y students? Is it as Pasolini suggests, the neorealistic dialogue and décor that disturbs, given the ontologically challenging subject of suicide? (Viano). Or is it the fact that there is no reason given for the desire to end their lives, which privileges the physiological over the psychological? Is the scatological more confronting than the pornographic? Interestingly, “food porn” is now a widely accepted term to describe a glamourized and sometimes sexualized presentation of food, with Nigella Lawson as its star, and hundreds of blog sites reinforcing its popularity. Yet as Andrew Chan points out in his article “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography,” this film is where it all began: “the genealogy reaches further back, as brilliantly visualized in Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film La Grande bouffe, in which four men eat, screw and fart themselves to death” (47). Is it the overt corporeality depicted in the film that shocks cerebral students into revulsion and rebellion? Conclusion In the guise of a conclusion, I suggest that my Gen Y students’ taste may reveal a Bourdieusian distaste for the taste of others, in a third degree reaction to the 1970s distaste for bourgeois taste. First degree: Ferreri and his entourage reject the psychological for the physiological in order to condemn bourgeois values, provoking scandal in the 1970s, but providing compelling cinema on a socio-political scale. Second degree: in spite of the outcry, high audience numbers demonstrate their taste for scandal, and La Grande bouffe becomes a must-see canonical film, encouraging my choice to include it in the “Matters of Taste” corpus. Third degree: my Gen Y students’ taste expresses a distaste for the academic norms that I have embraced in showing them the film, a distaste that may be more aesthetic than political. Oui, c’est dégueulasse, mais … Bibliography Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1984. Calvesi, M. “Dipingere all moviola” (Painting at the Moviola). Corriere della Sera, 10 Oct. 1976. Reprint. “Arti figurative e il cinema” (Cinema and the Visual Arts). Avanguardia di massa. Ed. M. Calvesi. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978. 243–46. Celluloid Liberation Front. “Consumerist Ultimate Indigestion: La Grande Bouffe's Deadly Physiological Pleasures.” Bright Lights Film Journal 60 (2008). 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://brightlightsfilm.com/60/60lagrandebouffe.php#.Utd6gs1-es5›. Chan, Andrew. “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 3.4 (2003): 47–53. Dickie, George. The Century of Taste: The Philosophical Odyssey of Taste in the Eighteenth Century. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Ebert, Roger, “La Grande bouffe.” 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-grande-bouffe-1973›. Ferreri, Marco. La Grande bouffe. Italy-France, 1973. Freedman, Paul H. Food: The History of Taste. U of California P, 2007. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Winsheimer and Donald C. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1999. Habib, André. “Remarques sur une ‘réception impossible’: Salo and La Grande bouffe.” Hors champ (cinéma), 4 Jan. 2001. 11 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/cinema/030101/salo-bouffe.html›. Keller, James R. “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism.” Food, Film and Culture: A Genre Study. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2006: 49–59. Masoni, Tullio. Marco Ferreri. Gremese, 1998. Pasolini, P.P. “Le ambigue forme della ritualita narrativa.” Cinema Nuovo 231 (1974): 342–46. Ross, Kristin. May 68 and its Afterlives. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Smith, Alison. French Cinema in the 1970s: The Echoes of May. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Télérama: “La Grande bouffe: l’un des derniers grands scandales du Festival de Cannes. 19 May 2013. 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.telerama.fr/festival-de-cannes/2013/la-grande-bouffe-l-un-des-derniers-grands-scandales-du-festival-de-cannes,97615.php›. The Guardian: 1000 films to see before you die. 2007. 17 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/film/series/1000-films-to-see-before-you-die› Tury, F., and O. Peter. “Food, Life, and Death: The Film La Grande bouffe of Marco Ferreri in an Art Psychological Point of View.” European Psychiatry 22.1 (2007): S214. Viano, Maurizio. “La Grande Abbuffata/La Grande bouffe.” The Cinema of Italy. Ed. Giorgio Bertellini. London: Wallflower Press, 2004: 193–202.

Me? "I" am everywhere. The 'self' permeates contemporary culture. Through capitalist individualism and conservative politics, 'self' must be considered first above the needs of the group - "looking after no. 1". In therapeutic, religious and consumerist discourses of self-improvement, self-help or self-actualisation, 'self' is obscured; an entity which needs to be sought and found, changed or accommodated, an entity which one needs to become "in touch with". Within these permutations "self" carries the assumption of its own existence, as either a stable, unchanging entity or as a contextually sensitive and dynamic identity. We invited submissions on the broad subject of "self" and were overwhelmed by the range and ambition of responses tendered. As a result, the "Self" issue of M/C contains a Feature Article and three sub-sections: 1. Performances and the Public Self, 2. The Self and the Physical, and 3. Representing Selves, Consuming Selves. We are very pleased to have Michael Clyne as the feature writer for this issue. "Saving Us From Them -- The Discourse of Exclusion on Asylum Seekers" is a timely and relevant critique of the rhetoric currently being adopted by Australian political leaders and the media around asylum seekers. Clyne discusses the negative construction of asylum seekers through this public discourse, particularly focussing on various events such as the "children overboard" affair. The use of such terms as "queue jumpers" and "border protection" are examined to reveal an exclusionary and damaging discourse which both reflects and is enacted in public attitudes and ultimately political policy. The first of our sections, "Performance and the Public Self" investigates manifestations of self across film, television, theatre and writing. Sandy Carmago, in "'Mind the Gap': The Multi-Protagonist Film Genre, Soap Opera, and the Emotive Blockbuster" explores the self in American cinema, and more particularly, in "multi-protagonist" or "emotive blockbuster" films, using the example of Magnolia. Carmago argues that although these films represent very different selves to those in mainstream (single-protagonist) action blockbusters, principally via their use of multiple protagonists, ultimately "[t]he emotive blockbuster supports rather than critiques the view of the self as isolated, solipsistic, and focused on personal rather than social distress." "Performing the Self", by Deidre Heddon, surveys performances of self, focusing on performance artists. Counter to critical claims that such autobiographical performances are solipsistic, Heddon seeks to unveil why such criticisms are so commonly levelled at performances of self, using autobiographical criticism and questions of performativity to offer alternative readings. Heddon reveals the politics and complexities of self-performativity through an exploration of personas, multiple selves and self-parody. In "Modernity and the Self: Explorations of the (Non-) Self-determining Subject in South Korean TV Dramas", Angel Lin explores the cultural constructions of self/self-determining subject in popular South Korean television programmes. Lin argues that the programmes create spaces for the contestation of contemporary notions of self, particularly the conflicts between traditional culture and the influences of Western notions of self. "What is Real? Where Fact Ends and Fiction Begins in the Writing of Paul Theroux" is Andie Miller's examination of Paul Theroux's construction of truth and self within his travel writings, particularly Fresh-Air Fiend and My Secret History. Miller describes Theroux's ability to perplex his readers by mixing fact within fiction and fantasy with non-fiction, which then influences the manner in which he is described within reviews and comments on his own public self. The first section concludes with Mark Peterson's "Choosing the Wasteland: The Social Construction of Self as Viewer in the U.S.". In this piece, Peterson attempts to resolve the contradiction between the high level of television consumption in the U.S. and the criticism of television content in individual and public discourse. Peterson suggests that the term "veging out" and its associated discourse provides a window into this paradox by allowing American consumers to construct themselves as "sensible, choice-making persons" whilst also watching large amounts of television. The second section of articles, "The Self and the Physical" revisits the mind/body dichotomy which has perplexed philosophers for thousands of years. This section begins with Paula Gardner's "The Perpetually Sick Self: The Cultural Promotion and Self-Management of Mood Illness". In this article she investigates the cultural promotion of a 'script' that assumes sick moods are possible, encouraging the self-assessment of risk and self-management of dysfunctional mood. Gardner suggests that this form of self assessment has helped to create a new, adjustable subject. Continuing the theme of self health management, Nadine Henley, in her article "The Healthy vs the Empty Self: Protective vs Paradoxical Behaviour", looks at behaviours, such as smoking, and the effectiveness of health promotions based on models which falsely assume that people are motivated to protect themselves from harm. Henley uses Cushman's concept of the hungry, empty self to explain why some people are more susceptible to cravings than others. Kerry Kid brings us back to the self's sickness in "Called to Self-care, or to Efface Self? Self-interest and Self-splitting in the Diagnostic Experience of Depression". She examines one of the primary disorders of self, clinical depression. She suggests that depression is being seen more as a "a trivial, socially manageable adjunct to the human condition of being", resulting in this condition and its drug-focussed becoming normalised. Kid is interested in the dilemma of the mind/body divide and how that affects the self/diagnosis and treatment of depressive disorders. In Derek Wallace's " 'Self' and the Problem of Consciousness" the issue of the link between the physical and cerebral is again examined. Wallace succinctly links the writings of philosophers and neuroscientists on 'self', explicating the emerging view that self is "a biologically generated but illusory construction, an effect of the operation of what are called 'neural correlates of consciousness' ". Wallace supplements this view with a term he coins 'verbal correlates of consciousness' which takes into account much of the recent post-structuralist work on self. The third section of articles, "Representing Selves, Consuming Selves" traverses issues such as self-reflexivity, the socially constructed self, self-identification, consumption and photographic selves. Matt Adams, in "Ambiguity: The Reflexive Self & Alternatives" examines the attention given to reflexivity in recent theoretical accounts of contemporary selfhood, as an "increasingly central organising phenomenon in being a self." Focusing on Anthony Giddens in particular, Adams critically explores this interest in self-reflexivity. He argues that although such accounts reveal important aspects of modern self-identity, they neglect "many areas of experience relevant to the contemporary self - tradition, culture and concepts of fate, the unconscious and emotions". Adams suggests that selves are far more complex and "ambiguous" than Giddens and others suggest. Moving from contemporary selves to Victorian selves -- in "Portrait of the Self: Victorian Technologies of Identity Invention" Gabrielle Dean uses the 19th century daguerreotype to provide a captivating context for examining notions of self. Dean investigates how the photograph affects notions of self – particularly notions of authorship, objectivity, truthfulness and the public self. As Dean suggests, "[w]hat photography mummifies, distorts and murders, among other things, is the sense that the reality of the self resides in the body, the corporeal and temporal boundaries of personhood." The conception of death is irrevocably connected to questions of self. Back in the 21st century, Lelia Green begins her article "Who is Being Helped When We Help Our Self?" by revisiting the continuing dilemma of whether self-deception is possible. Green then examines the plethora of self help literature now available at most bookshops, which she links to the need to cater for "our sense of accelerating change". The final two articles in this section explore questions of self, identity and autonomy. Simone Pettigrew, in "Consumption and the Self-Concept", considers the notion of self via the self that is reflected in "consumption decisions". Pettigrew reviews the research on consumer behaviour that suggests consumer autonomy in consumption decisions. She argues that this research is "simplistic and fails to appreciate the extent to which culture influences individuals' perceptions of the desirability of different 'ways to be'; certain objects are required to communicate particular selves. In "Conflicting Concepts of Self and The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival" Ianto Ware uses the Michigan Womym's Music Festival as a context to explore the difficult socio-biological constructions of gendered selves. Ware explores the gender/identity politics inherent within notions of "collective selves" and assumptions of shared identity. In problematising the continuous creation of new social identities, Ware argues that new approaches are needed for addressing and communicating identities as fluid entities. What this collection of articles succeeds in doing is to demonstrate that the self is multitudinous and changing, along with the various stakeholders invested in these selves. Just as philosophers, social scientists, behavioural and medical scientists have been investigating the existence and significance of individual consciousness, self-perception, self-promotion and other notions of "the self" for centuries, the research included in this feature demonstrates the continuing need to do so. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Douglas, Kate and Meakins, Felicity. "Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Editorial.html &gt. Chicago Style Douglas, Kate and Meakins, Felicity, "Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Editorial.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Douglas, Kate and Meakins, Felicity. (2002) Editorial. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Editorial.html &gt ([your date of access]).

Introduction: Serial Space“It feels …like the edge of the world; far more remote than it actually is, perhaps because it looks at such immensity” (Godden “Black,” 38). This is the priest’s warning to Sister Clodagh in Rumer Godden’s 1939 novel Black Narcissus. The young, inexperienced Clodagh leads a group of British nuns through the Indian Himalayas and onto a remote mountain top above Mopu. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger adapted Godden’s novel into the celebrated feature film, Black Narcissus (1947). Following the novel, the film narrates the nuns’ mission to establish a convent, school, and hospital for the local population. Yet, immensity moves in mysterious ways. Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) loses her managerial grip. Sister Philippa (Flora Robson) cultivates wild flowers instead of vegetables. Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) sheds nun’s attire for red lipstick and a Parisian dress. The young Indian woman Kanchi (Jean Simmons) becomes a force of libidinous disturbance. At the twilight of the British Empire, white, western nuns experience the psychical effects of colonialism at the precipice. Taking such cues from Pressburger and Powell’s film, Michelle Williams Gamaker, an artist, filmmaker, and scholar, responds to Black Narcissus, both film and novel. She does so through a radical interpretation of her own. Gamaker William’s 24-minute film, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten (forthcoming, London 2018) is a longer “short,” which breaks the mould of what scholar Linda Hutcheon would term an “adaptation” (2006). For Hutcheon, there is a double “mode of engagement” between an original work and its adapted form (22). On the one hand, there is a “transcoding” (22). This involves “transporting” characters from a precedent work to its adapted form (11). On the other, there is an act of “creative interpretation” (22). The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten transports yet recreates the Indian “beggar girl” Kanchi, played by a “blacked up” white Hollywood actor Jean Simmons (Black Narcissus), into Williams Gamaker’s contemporary Kanchi, played by Krishna Istha. In this 2018 instalment, Kanchi is an Asian and transgender protagonist of political articulacy. Hence, Williams Gamaker’s film engages a double tactic of both transporting yet transforming Kanchi, as well as Sisters Clodagh and Philippa, from the feature film into The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten. To analyse Williams Gamaker’s film, I will make a theoretical jump off the precipice, stepping from Hutcheon’s malleable concept of adaptation into a space of “trans-serial” narrative.In what follows, I shall read The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten as an “episode” in a serial. The prior episodes, Williams Gamaker’s House of Women (London 2017, Berlin 2018) is a short, fictional, and surreal documentary about casting the role of Kanchi. It can be read as the next episode in Kanchi’s many incarnations. The relationship between Sister Clodagh (Kelly Hunter as voiceover) and Kanchi in House of Women develops from one of confrontation to a transgender kiss in the climatic beat of The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten. Williams Gamaker’s film can be read as one of a series which is itself inflected with the elements of a “trans-serial.” Henry Jenkins argues that “transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels” (emphasis in original, “Transmedia”). I use the word “trans” to define the gap between novelistic texts and film. Throughout Williams Gamaker’s series, she uses many textual citations from Godden’s novel, and dialogue from Pressburger and Powell’s film. In other words, verbal elements as well as filmic images are adapted in Hutcheon’s sense and transmediated in Jenkins’s sense. To build the “serial” concept for my analysis requires re-working concepts from television studies. Jason Mittell introduces “narrative complexity” as the “redefinition of episodic forms under serial narration” (“Narrative,” 32). In serial TV, characters and narratives develop over a sequence of episodes and seasons. In serial TV, missing one episode can thwart the viewer’s reception of later ones. Mittell’s examples reveal the plasticity of the narrative complexity concept. He mentions TV series that play games with the audience’s expectations. As Mittell points out, Seinfeld has reflexive qualities (“Narrative,” 35) and Twin Peaks mixes genres (“Narrative,” 33). I would add that Lynch’s creative liberties offered characters who could appear and disappear while leaving their arcs hanging intriguingly unresolved. The creative possibilities of reflexivity via seriality, of characters who appear and disappear or return in different guises, are strategies that underpin William’s Gamaker’s short film serial. The third in her trilogy, The Eternal Return (in post-production 2018) fictionalises the life of Sabu, the actor who played the General’s son in Black Narcissus. Once again, the protagonist, this time male, is played by Krishna Istha, a non-binary transgender actor who, by taking all the lead roles in William’s Gamaker’s trilogy, grows over the serial as a malleable ethnic and transgender subject. Importantly, The Eternal Return carries residues of the characters from The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten by casting the same team of actors again (Charlotte Gallagher and myself Catherine Lord), and switching their genders. Istha played Kanchi in the previous two episodes. The General’s son, played by Sabu, courted Kanchi in Black Narcissus. In The Eternal Return, Istha crosses the character and gender boundary by playing Sabu. Such casting tactics subvert the gender and colonial hegemonies inherent in Pressburger and Powell’s film.The reflexive and experimental approach of Williams Gamaker’s filmmaking deploys serial narrative tactics for its political goals. Yet, the use of “serial” needs to be nuanced. Glen Creeber sets out three terms: “episodic,” “series” and “serial.” For Creeber, a series provides continuous storylines in which the connection between episodes is strong. In the serial format, the connection between the episodes is less foregrounded. While it is not possible to enjoy stand-alone episodes in a serial, at the same time, serials produce inviting gaps between episodes. Final resolutions are discouraged so that there are greater narrative possibilities for later seasons and the audience’s own game of speculative storytelling (11).The emerging “serial” gaps between Williams Gamaker’s episodes offer opportunities for political interpretation. From House of Women and The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten, Kanchi develops an even stronger political voice. Kanchi’s character arc moves from the wordless obedience of Pressburger and Powell’s feature to the transgender voice of post-colonial discourse in House of Women. In the next episode, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten, Kanchi becomes Clodagh’s guide both politically, spiritually, and erotically.I will read The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten as both my primary case-study and as the third episode in what I shall theorise to be a four-part serial. The first is the feature film Black Narcissus. After this is Williams Gamaker’s House of Women, which is then followed by The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten, my central case study here. There may be immediate objections to my argument that Williams Gamaker’s series can be read by treating Pressburger and Powell’s feature as the first in the series. After all, Godden’s novel could be theorised as the camouflaged pilot. Yet, a series or serial is defined as such when it is in the same medium. Game of Thrones (2011-) is a TV series that adapts George R.R. Martin’s novel cycle, but the novels are not episodes. In this regard, I follow Hutcheon’s emphasis on theorising adapted works as forged between different media, most commonly novels to films. The adaptive “deliveries” scatter through The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten with an ecological precision.Eco SeriesEcological descriptions from Godden’s novel and Pressburger and Powell’s mise-en-scene are performed in The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten through Kelly Hunter’s velvety voiceover as it enjoys a painterly language: butterflies daub the ferns with “spots of ochre, scarlet, and lemon sherbet.” Hutcheon’s term transcoding usefully describes the channelling of particles from the novelist’s text into an intensified, ecological language and cinematic mise-en-scene. The intensification involves an ingestion of Godden’s descriptive prose, which both mimics and adds an adjectival and alliterative density. The opening descriptions of the nuns’ arrival in Mopu is a case in point. In the novel, the grooms joke about the nuns’ habits appearing as “snows, tall and white” (Godden “Black,” 1). One man remarks that they look like “a row of teeth” (Godden “Black,” 2). Williams Gamaker resists shots of nuns as Godden described them, namely on Bhotiya ponies. Rather, projected onto a white screen is an image of white and red flowers slowly coming into focus. Kelly Hunter’s voiceover describes the white habits as a set of “pearly whites” which are “hungry for knowledge” and “eat into the landscape.” White, western nuns in white habits are metaphorically implied to be like a consuming mouth, eating into Indian territories and Indian people.This metaphor of colonial consumption finds its corollary in Godden’s memoirs where she describes the Pressburger, Powell, and Simons representation of Kanchi as “a basket of fruit, piled high and luscious and ready to eat” (“A House,” 24-5; 52). The nun’s quest colonially consumes Mopu’s natural environment. Presumably, nuns who colonially eat consume the colonised Other like fruit. The Kanchi of the feature film Black Narcissus is a supporting character, performed by Simmons as mute, feral and objectified. If Kanchi is to release herself from the “fruity” projections of sexism and racism, it will be through the filmmaker’s aesthetic and feminist tactic of ensuring that planets, trees, fruits and flowers become members of the film cast. If in episode 1 (Black Narcissus), plants and Asian subalterns are colonised, in episode 2, House of Women, these fruits and flowers turn up as smart, young Asian women actors with degrees in law and photography, ready to hold their own in the face of a faceless interviewer. In episode 3, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten, it is important that Krishna Istha’s Kanchi, turning up like a magical character from another time and space (transformed from episode 1), commands the film set amidst an excess of flowers, plants and fruits. The visual overflow correlates with Kanchi’s assertiveness. Flowers and Kanchi know how to “answer back.”Like Black Narcissus the feature, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten relies heavily on a mise-en-scene of horticultural and mountain ecology. Just as Michael Powell filmed at Pinewood and Leonardslee Gardens in East Sussex, Williams Gamaker used Rotherhithe’s Brunel Museum roof Gardens and Sands Film Studios. The lusciousness of Leonardslee is film-intertextually echoed in the floral exuberance of the 2018 shots of Rotherhithe. After the crew have set up the classroom, interwoven with Kelly Hunter’s voiceover, there is a hard cut to a full, cinematic shot of the Leonardslee garden (fig. 1).Then cutting back to the classroom, we see Kanchi calmly surveying the set, of which she is the protagonist, with a projection of an encyclopaedic display of the flowers behind her. The soundtrack plays the voices of young women students intoning the names of flowers from delphinium to lupens.These meta-filmic moments are supported by the film’s sharp juxtaposition between classroom and outdoor scenes. In Pressburger and Powell’s school scenes, Sister Ruth attempts to teach the young General how to conjugate the French verb “recevoir.” But the lesson is not successfully received. The young General becomes aphasic, Kanchi is predictably mute and the children remain demure. Will colonialism let the Other speak? One way to answer back in episode 3 is through that transgressive discourse, the language of flowers.In The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten, the young women study under Sister Clodagh and Sister Philippa (myself, Catherine Lord). The nuns teach botanical lists and their ecological contexts through rote learning. The young women learn unenthusiastically. What is highlighted is the ludicrous activity of repetition and abstractions. When knowledge becomes so objectified, so do natural environments, territories and people. Clodagh aligns floral species to British locations. The young women are relatively more engaged in the garden with Sister Philippa. They study their environment through sketching and painting a diverse range of flowers that could grow in non-British territory. Philippa is the now the one who becomes feral and silent, stroking stalks and petals, eschewing for the time being, the game of naming (fig. 2).However, lessons with colonial lexicons will be back. The young women look at screen projections of flowers. Sister Philippa takes the class through an alphabet: “D is for Dogbright … L is for Ladies’ Fingers.” Clodagh whirls through a list of long, Latin names for wild flowers in British Woodlands. Kanchi halts Clodagh’s act of associating the flowers with the British location, which colonizes them. Kanchi asks: “How many of us will actually travel, and which immigration border will test our botanical knowledge?” Kanchi then presents a radically different alphabet, including “Anne is African … Ian is Intersex … Lucy loves Lucy.” These are British names attributed to Africans, Arabs, and Asians, many of their identities revealed to be LGBQT-POC, non-binary, transgender, and on the move. Clodagh’s riposte is “How do you know you are not travelling already?” The flowers cannot be pinned down to one location. They cannot be owned by one nation.Like characters who travel between episodes, the travelling flowers represent a collision of spaces that undermine the hegemonies of race, gender and sexuality. In episode 1, Black Narcissus the feature film, the western nuns face the immensities of mountain atmosphere, ecology and an unfamiliar ethnic group. In episode 2, House of Women, the subalterns have transformed their role, achieving educational and career status. Such political and dramatic stakes are raised in episode 3, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten. There is a strong focus on the overlapping oppressions of racial, colonial and ecological exploitation. Just as Kanchi has a character arc and serial development, so do plants, fauna, fruits, flowers and trees. ‘Post’-Space and Its AtmosphereThe British Empire colonised India’s ecological space. “Remember you and your God aren't on British Territory anymore” declares the auditioning Krishna Istha in House of Women. Kanchi’s calm, civil disobedience continues its migration into The Fruit is There to be Eaten between two simultaneously existing spaces, Mopu and Rotherhithe, London. According to literature scholar Brian McHale, postmodern worlds raise ontological questions about the dramatic space into which we are drawn. “Which” worlds are we in? Postmodern worlds can overlap between separate spaces and different temporalities (McHale 34-35). As McHale notes, “If entities can migrate across the semipermeable membrane that divides a fictional world from the real, they can also migrate between two different fictional worlds” (35).In The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten, the semipermeable membrane between it and Black Narcissus folds together the temporalities of 1947 and 2018, and the terrains of India and London. Sister Philippa tells a Kanchi seeking Mopu, that “My dear, you are already here.” This would seem odd as Sister Philippa describes the death of a young man close to Saint Mary’s Church, London. The British capital and woodlands and the Himalayas co-exist as intensified, inter-crossing universes that disrupt the membranes between both colonial and ecological space-time, or what I term “post-space.”Williams Gamaker’s post-spaces further develop Pressburger and Powell’s latent critique of post-colonialism. As film scholar Sarah Street has observed, Black Narcissus the film performs a “post-colonial” exploration of the waning British Empire: “Out of the persistence of the colonial past the present is inflected with a haunting resonance, creating gaps and fissures” (31). This occurs in Powell’s film in the initial Calcutta scenes. The designer Alfred Junge made “God shots” of the nuns at dinner, creating from them the iconic shape of a cross. This image produces a sense of over-exactness. Once in the mountains, it is the spirit of exactitude that deteriorates. In contrast, Williams Gamaker prefers to reveal the relative chaos of setting up her world. We watch as the crew dress the school room. Un-ceremoniously, Kanchi arrives in shorts before she picks up a floral dress bearing the label “Kanchi.” There is then a shot in which Kanchi purveys the organised set, as though she is its organiser (fig. 3).Post-spaces are rich in atmosphere. The British agent Dean tells Clodagh in Black Narcissus the film that the mountain “is no place to put a nunnery” due its “atmosphere.” In the climactic scene of The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten, Kanchi and Clodagh face two screens revealing the atmospheric projection of the high mountains, the black cut between them visible, like some shadowy membrane. Such aesthetic strategies continue Powell’s use of technical artifice. Street details the extensive labour of technical and craft work involved in creating the artificial world of Black Narcissus, its mountains, artificial colours, and hence atmosphere, all constructed at Pinewood studios. There was a vast amount of matte painting and painting on glass for special effects (19).William Gamaker’s screens (projection work by Sophie Bramley and Nick Jaffe) reflexively emphasise atmosphere as artifices. The atmosphere intensifies with the soundscape of mountain air and Wayne Urquhart’s original and haunting music. In Powell and Pressburger’s feature, Brian Easdale’s music also invokes a sense of mystery and vastness. Just as TV series and serials maintain musical and mise-scene-scene signatures from one episode to another, so too does Williams Gamaker reframe her precursor’s cinematic aesthetics with that of her own episode. Thus, serial as stylistic consistency is maintained between episodes and their post-spaces.At the edge of such spaces, Kanchi will scare Clodagh by miming a tight-rope walk across the mountain: it is both real and pretend, dramatic, but reflexively so. Kanchi walks a membrane between colliding worlds, between colonialism and its transgression. In this episode of extreme spirituality and eroticism, Kanchi reaches greater heights than in previous episodes, discoursing on the poetics of atmosphere: “… in the midst of such peaks, one can draw near what is truly placeless … the really divine.” Here, the membrane between the political and cultural regions and the mountains that eschew even the human, is about to be breached. Kanchi relates the legend of those who go naked in the snow. These “Abominable Men” are creatures who become phantoms when they merge with the mountain. If the fractures between locations are too spacious, as Kanchi warns, one can go mad. In this episode 3, Kanchi and Clodagh may have completed their journeys. In Powell and Pressburger’s interpretation, Sister Ruth discards nun’s attire for a Parisian, seductive dress and red lipstick. Yet, she does so for a man, Dean. However, the Sister Clodagh of 2018 is filmed in a very long take as she puts on an elegant dress and does her make-up. In a scene of philosophical intimacy with Kanchi, the newly dressed Clodagh confesses her experience of “immensity.” As they break through the erotic membrane separating their identities, both immersed in their full, queer, transgender kiss, all racial hierarchies melt into atmosphere (fig. 4).Conclusion: For a Pitch By making a film as one episode in a series, Williams Gamaker’s accomplishment is to enhance the meeting of narrative and political aims. As an arthouse film serial, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten has enabled definitions of “serial” to migrate from the field of television studies. Between Hutcheon’s “adaptation” and Mittell and Creeber’s articulations of “narrative complexity,” a malleable concept for arthouse seriality has emerged. It has stretched the theoretical limits of what can be meant by a serial in an arthouse context. By allowing the notion of works “adapted” to occur between different media, Henry Jenkins’ broader term of “transmedia storytelling” (Convergence) can describe how particles of Godden’s work transmigrate through episodes 1, 2, and 3, where the citational richness emerges most in episodes 3, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten.Because one novel informs all the episodes while each has entirely different narratives and genres, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten is not a serial adaptation, as is Game of Thrones. It is an experimental serial inflected with trans-serial properties. Kanchi evolves into a postcolonial, transgender, ecological protagonist who can traverse postmodern worlds. Perhaps the witty producer in a pitch meeting might say that in its serial context, The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten is like a cross between two fantasy TV serials, still to be written: Transgender Peaks meets Kanchi Is the New Black. The “new black” is multifaceted and occupies multi-worlds in a post-space environment. ReferencesCreeber, Glen. Serial Television: Big Drama on the Small Screen. London: BFI, 2004.Godden, Rumer. 1939. Black Narcissus: A Virago Modern Classic. London: Hatchette Digital, 2013.———. A House with Four Rooms. New York: William Morrow, 1989. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed. New York: New York University Press, 2012.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006.———. “Transmedia, 202: Further Reflections.” Confessions of an Aca-Fan 1 Aug. 2011. 1 May 2012 <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2011/08/defining_transmedia_further_re.html>.McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. London: Routledge, 1987.Powell, Michael. A Life in Movies: An Autobiography. London: Heinemann, 1986.Mittell, Jason. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.” The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall 2006): 29-40. Street, Sarah. Black Narcissus. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005.FilmographyBlack Narcissus. Dirs. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Pinewood Studios, 1947.House of Women. Dir. Michelle Williams Gamaker. Cinema Suitcase, 2017.The Fruit Is There to Be Eaten. Dir. Michelle Williams Gamaker. Cinema Suitcase, 2018.The Eternal Return. Dir. Michelle Williams Gamaker. Cinema Suitcase, 2018-2019.

I can remember setting up the dish, all the excitement of assembling it [...] and then putting the motor on. And in the late afternoon, you position the dish and kind of turn it, to find the right spot, and all of a sudden on this blank television screen there was an image that came on. And it was shocking knowing that this noise and this thing would be there, and begin to infiltrate – because I see it as an infiltration, I see it as invasion – I’m not mad on television, very choosy really about what I watch – and I see it as an invasion, and there was GWN as well as the ABC. I just thought ‘by golly, I’m in the process of brain-washing people to accept stuff without thinking about it, like consciously considering either side of any case’ [...] The one thing that protected you from having it on at all times was the need to put on the generator in order to power it. I felt a bit sad actually. (Savannah Kingston, Female, 55+ – name changed – homestead respondent) This paper addresses the huge communications changes that occurred over the past fifty years in outback Western Australia. (What happened in WA also has parallels with equivalent events in the Northern Territory, Queensland, in the larger properties in western New South Wales and northern South Australia.) Although the ‘coming of television’ – associated in remote areas with using a satellite dish to scan for the incoming signal – is typically associated with a major shift in community and cultural life, the evidence suggests that the advent of the telephone had an equivalent or greater impact in remote areas. With the introduction of the telephone, the homestead family no longer had to tune into (or scan) the radio frequencies to check on predicted weather conditions, to respond to emergencies, to engage in roll call or to hold a ‘public meeting’. As the scanning of the radio frequencies ended, so the scanning of the satellite signals began. As Sandstone resident Grant Coleridge (pseudonym, male, 40-54) said, only half ironically, “We got the telephone and the telly at the same time, so civilisation sort of hit altogether actually.” The scale and importance of changes to the technological communications infrastructure in remote WA within a single life-time spans pre-2-way radio to video livestock auctions by satellite. It comes as a surprise to most Australians that these changes have occurred in the past generation. As recent viewers of the unexpectedly-successful Mongolian film The Story of the Weeping Camel (2004) would know, one of the themes of the Oscar-nominated movie is the coming of television and its impact upon a traditional rural life. The comparative availability of television outside the rural areas of Mongolia – and its attraction to, particularly, the younger family members in the Weeping Camel household – is a motif that is explored throughout the narrative, with an unspoken question about the price to be paid for including television in the cultural mix. It’s easy to construct this story as a fable about the ‘exotic other’, but the same theme was played out comparatively recently in remote Western Australia, where the domestic satellite service AUSSAT first made television an affordable option just under twenty years ago. This paper is about the people in remote Western Australia who started scanning for the satellite signal in 1986, and stopped scanning for the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) 2-way radio phone messages at about the same time. Savannah Kingston (name changed), who in 1989 generously agreed to an in-depth interview discussing the impact of satellite broadcasting upon her outback life, was a matriarch on a rural property with four grown children. She had clear views upon ways in which life had changed dramatically in the generation before the satellite allowed the scanning of the television signal. Her recollection of the weft and warp of the tapestry of life in outback WA started thirty-five years previously, with her arrival on the station as a young wife: When I went there [mid-1950s], we had a cook and we ate in the dining room. The cook and anyone who worked in the house ate in the kitchen and the men outside ate in the outside. So, with the progress of labour away from the bush, and the cost of labour becoming [prohibitive] for a lot of people, we got down to having governesses or house-girls. If the house-girls were white, they ate at the table with us and the governesses ate with us. If the house-girls were Aboriginal, they didn’t like eating with us, and they preferred to eat in the kitchen. The kids ate with them. Which wasn’t a good idea because two of my children have good manners and two of them have appalling manners. The availability of domestic help supported a culture of hospitality reminiscent of British between-the-wars country house parties, recreated in Agatha Christie novels and historically-based films such as The Remains of the Day (1993): In those early days, we still had lots of visitors [...] People visited a lot and stayed, so that you had people coming to stay for maybe two or three days, five days, a week, two weeks at a time and that required a lot of organisation. [int:] WHERE DID YOUR VISITORS COME FROM? City, or from the Eastern states, occasionally from overseas. [Int:] WOULD THEY BE RELATIVES? Sometimes relatives, friends or someone passing through who’d been, you know, someone would say ‘do visit’ and they’d say ‘they’d love to see you’. But it was lovely, it was good. It’s a way of learning what’s going on. (Savannah Kingston.) The ‘exotic other’ of the fabled hospitality of station life obscures the fact that visitors from the towns, cities and overseas were a major source of news and information in a society where radio broadcasts were unpredictable and there was no post or newspaper delivery. Visitors were supplemented by a busy calendar of social events that tied together a community of settlements in gymkhanas, cricket fixtures and golf tournaments (on a dirt course). Shifts in the communications environment – the introduction of television and telephone – followed a generation of social change witnessing the metamorphosis of the homestead from the hub of a gentrified lifestyle (with servants, governesses, polo and weekends away) to compact, efficient business-units, usually run by a skeleton staff with labour hired in at the peak times of year. Over the years between the 1960s-1980s isolation became a growing problem. Once Indigenous people won the fight for award-rate wages their (essentially) unpaid labour could no longer support the lifestyle of the station owners and the absence of support staff constrained opportunities for socialising off the property, and entertaining on it, and the communication environment became progressively poorer. Life on the homestead was conceived of as being more fragile than that in the city, and more economically vulnerable to a poor harvest or calamities such as wildfire. The differences wrought by the introduction of newer communication technologies were acknowledged by those in the country, but there was a clear resistance to city-dwellers constructing the changes as an attack upon the romance of the outback lifestyle. When the then Communications Minister Tony Staley suggested in 1979 that a satellite could help “dispel the distance – mental as well as geographical – between urban and regional dwellers, between the haves and the have-nots in a communication society”, he was buying into a discourse of rural life which effectively disempowered those who lived in rural and remote areas. He was also ignoring the reality of a situation where the Australian outback was provided with satellite communication a decade after it was made available to Canadians, and where the king-maker in the story – Kerry Packer – stood to reap a financial windfall. There was a mythological dimension to Australia (finally) having a domestic satellite. Cameron Hazelhurst’s article on ‘The Dawn of the Satellite Era in Australia’ includes a colourful account of Kerry Packer’s explanation to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser of the capacity of domestic satellites to bring television, radio and telephone services to isolated communities in arctic Canada: And I [Packer] went and saw the Prime Minister and I explained to him my understanding of what was happening in those areas, and to his undying credit he grasped on to it immediately and said ‘Of course, it’s what we want. It’s exactly the sort of thing we need to stop the drift of people into urban areas. We can keep them informed. We can allow them to participate in whatever’s happening around the nation (Day 7, cited in Hazelhurst). Fraser here, as someone with experience of running a rural property in Victoria, propounds a pro-country rhetoric as a rationale for deployment of the satellite in terms of the Australian national policy agenda. (The desire of Packer to network his television stations and couple efficiency with reach is not addressed in this mythological reconstruction.) It is difficult, sometimes, to appreciate the level of isolation experienced on outback properties at the time. As Bryan Docker (male, 40-54), a resident of Broome at the time of the interviews, commented, “Telegrams, in those days, were the life-blood of the stations, through the Flying Doctor Service. But at certain times of the year the sun spots would interfere with the microwave links and we were still on morse from Broome to Derby during those periods.” Without reliable shortwave radio; with no television, newspapers or telephone; and with the demands of keeping the RFDS (Royal Flying Doctor Service) 2-way radio channel open for emergencies visitors were one of the ways in which station-dwellers could maintain an awareness of current events. Even at the time of the interviews, after the start of satellite broadcasting, I never travelled to an outback property without taking recent papers and offering to pick up post. (Many of the stations were over an hour’s journey from their nearest post office.) The RFDS 2-way radio service offered a social-lifeline as well as an emergency communication system: [Int:] DO YOU MISS THE ROYAL FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE AT ALL? Yes, I do actually. It’s – I think it’s probably more lonely now because you used to switch it on and – you know if you’re here on your own like I am a lot – and you’d hear voices talking, and you used to know what everybody was doing – sort of all their dramas and all their [...] Now you don’t know anything that’s going on and unless somebody rings you, you don’t have that communication, where before you used to just hop over to another channel and have a chat [...] I think it is lonelier on the telephone because it costs so much to ring up. (Felicity Rohrer, female, 40-54, homestead.) Coupled with the lack of privacy of 2-way radio communication, and the lack of broadcasting, was the particular dynamic of a traditional station family. Schooled at home, and integrated within their homestead lifestyle, station children spent most of their formative years in the company of one or other of their parents (or, in previous decades, the station staff). This all changed at secondary school age when the children of station-owners and managers tended to be sent away to boarding school in the city. Exposure of the next generation to the ways of city life was seen as a necessary background to future business competence, but the transitions from ‘all’ to ‘next-to-nothing’ in terms of children’s integration within family life had a huge socio-emotional cost which was aggravated, until the introduction of the phone service, by the lack of private communication channels. Public Relations and news theory talk about the importance of the ‘environmental scan’ to understand how current events are going to impact upon a business and a family: for many years in outback Australia the environmental scan occurred when families got together (typically in the social and sporting rounds), on the RFDS radio broadcasts and ‘meetings’, in infrequent visits to the closest towns and through the giving and receiving of hospitality. Felicity Rohrer, who commented (above) about how she missed the RFDS had noted earlier in her interview: “It’s made a big difference, telephone. That was the most isolating thing, especially when your children were away at school or your parents are getting older [...] That was the worst thing, not having a phone.” Further, in terms of the economics of running a property, Troy Bowen (male, 25-39, homestead respondent) noted that the phone had made commercial life much easier: I can carry out business on the phone without anyone else hearing [...] On the radio you can’t do it, you more or less have to say ‘well, have you got it – over’. ‘Yeah – over’. ‘Well, I’ll take it – over’. That’s all you can do [...] Say if I was chasing something [...] the cheapest I might get it down to might be [...] $900. Well I can go to the next bloke and I can tell him I got it down to $850. If you can’t do any better than that, you miss out. ‘oh, yes, alright $849, that’s the best I can do.’ So I’ll say ‘alright, I’ll take it’. But how can you do that on the radio and say that your best quote is [$850] when the whole district knows that ‘no, it isn’t’. You can’t very well do it, can you? This dynamic occurs because, for many homestead families prior to the telephone, the RFDS broadcasts were continuously monitored by the women of the station as a way of keeping a finger on the pulse of the community. Even – sometimes, especially – when they were not part of the on-air conversation, the broadcast could be received for as far as reception was possible. The introduction of the phone led to a new level of privacy, particularly appreciated by parents who had children away at school, but also introduced new problems. Fran Coleridge, (female, 40-54, Sandstone) predicted that: The phone will lead to isolation. There’s an old lady down here, she’s about 80, and she housekeeps for her brother and she’s still wearing – her mother died 50 years ago – but she’s still wearing her clothes. She is so encapsulated in her life. And she used to have her [RFDS] transceiver. Any time, Myrtle would know anything that’s going on. Anything. Birthday party at [local station], she’d know about it. She knew everything. Because she used to have the transceiver on all the time. And now there’s hardly any people on, and she’s a poor little old lonely lady that doesn’t hear anything now. Can you see that? Given the nuances of the introduction of the telephone (and the loss of the RFDS 2-way), what was the perceived impact of satellite broadcasting? Savannah Kingston again: Where previously we might have sat around the table and talked about things – at least the kids and I would – with television there is now more of a habit of coming in, showering and changing for dinner, putting on the motor and the men go and sit in front of the television during [...] six o’clock onwards, news programs and whatnot and um, I find myself still in the kitchen, getting the meal and then whoever was going to eat it, wanting to watch whatever was on the television. So it changed quite appreciably. Felicity Rohrer agrees: [Int:] DO YOU THINK THERE HAVE BEEN CHANGES IN THE TIME THAT YOU SPEND WITH EACH OTHER? Yes, I think so. They [the homestead household] come home and they – we all sit down here and look at the news and have a drink before tea whereas people used to be off doing their own tea. [Int] SO YOU THINK IT’S INCREASED THE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU SPEND TOGETHER? Yes, I think so – well, as a family. They all try and be home by 6 to see the [GWN] news. If they miss that, we look at the 7 o’clock [ABC], but they like the Golden West because it’s got country news in it. But the realities of everyday life, as experienced in domestic contexts, are sometimes ignored by commentators and analysts, except insofar as they are raised by interviewees. Thus the advent of the satellite might have made Savannah Kingston feel “a bit sad actually”, but it had its compensations: It was definitely a bit of a peace-maker. It sort of meant there wasn’t the stress that we had previously when going through [...] at least people sitting and watching something, you’re not so likely to get into arguments or [...] It definitely had value there. In fact, when I think about it, that might be one of its major applications, ’cos a lot of men in the bush tend to come in – if they drink to excess they start drinking in the evening, and that can make for very uncomfortable company. For film-makers like the Weeping Camel crew – and for audiences and readers of historical accounts of life in outback Australia – the changes heralded by the end of scanning the RFDS channels, and the start of scanning for satellite channels, may seem like the end of an era. In some ways the rhythms of broadcasting helped to homogenise life in the country with life in the city. For many families in remote homes, as well as the metropolis, the evening news became a cue for the domestic rituals of ‘after work’. A superficial evaluation of communications changes might lead to a consideration of how some areas of life were threatened by improved broadcasting, while others were strengthened, and how some of the uniqueness of a lifestyle had been compromised by an absorption into the communication patterns of urban life. It is unwise for commentators to construct the pre-television past as an uncomplicated romantic prior-time, however. Interviews with those who live such changes as their reality become a more revealing indicator of the nuances and complexities of communications environments than a quick scan from the perspective of the city-dweller. References Day, C. “Packer: The Man and the Message.” The Video Age (February 1983): 7 (cited in Hazelhurst). Hazelhurst, Cameron. “The Dawn of the Satellite Era.” Media Information Australia 58 (November 1990): 9-22. Staley, Tony. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates. Canberra: House of Representatives Hansard (18 October 1979): 2225, 2228-9. The Remains of the Day. 1993. The Story of the Weeping Camel. Thinkfilm and National Geographic, 2004. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Green, Lelia. "Scanning the Satellite Signal in Remote Western Australia." M/C Journal 8.4 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/01-green.php>. APA Style Green, L. (Aug. 2005) "Scanning the Satellite Signal in Remote Western Australia," M/C Journal, 8(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/01-green.php>.

Closer examination of contemporary art forms including music videos in addition to the Gothic’s literature legacy is essential, “as it is virtually impossible to ignore the relationship the Gothic holds to popular culture” (Piatti-Farnell ii). This article critically examines how Gothic themes and modes are used in the music videos of Lana Del Rey; particularly the “ways in which Gothic is dispersed through contemporary non-literary media” (Spooner and McEvoy 2). This work follows the argument laid down by Edwards and Monnet who describe Gothic’s assimilation into popular culture —Pop Gothic— as a powerful pop cultural force, not merely a subcultural or cult expression. By interpreting Del Rey’s work as a both a component of, and a contributor to, the Pop Gothic advance, themes of social climate, consumer culture, gender identity, sexuality and the male gaze can be interrogated. Indeed the potential for a collective crisis of these issues in early 21st Century western culture is exposed, “the façade of carnivalised surfaces is revealed to hide the chaos and entropy of existential emptiness.” (Yeo 17). Gothic modes have been approximated by Pop Gothic into the mainstream (Edwards and Monnet) as a driving force behind these contradictions and destabilisations. The Gothic has become ubiquitous within popular culture and continues to exert influence. This is easily reflected in the $392 million the first Twilight movie grossed at the box office (Edwards and Monnet). Examples are abundant in pop culture across music, film and television. Edwards and Monnet cite the movies Zombieland and Blade in the Pop Gothic march, along with TV shows including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Being Human, True Blood as well as Lady Gaga’s Fame Monster music album. Edwards and Monnet observe that the Gothic aesthetics of the 1980s and 1990s, “melancholy and imagery associated with death, dying and the undead” (3), shifted from the corners of subculture to the mainstream of millennial popular culture. With this shift comes the rebelliousness and melancholy that characterises Gothic texts. This is evident when a pop star of Lana Del Rey’s popularity —her Summertime Sadness video alone has over 160 million views on youtube.com (YouTube)— narratively represents themes of death and suicide repeatedly in her videos. In two of Lana Del Rey’s music videos —Blue Jeans and Born to Die— either she or a representation of her persona dies. In a third video, Summertime Sadness, her companion takes her own life and Lana ultimately follows suit. Themes of death and loss are just the most obvious of Gothic elements present in Del Rey’s work. Del Rey’s songs and videos speak of the American dream, of aestheticised beauty, of being immaculately presented, well dressed and having hair “beauty queen style”, as in Summertime Sadness. She depicts an excess of hedonistic consumption and love that knows no bounds, not even death. Much of the delivery has resonance with the Gothic; performatively, visually and musically, and shows a subversion and fatalism that juxtaposes, contests and contradicts pop cultural tropes (Macfarlane). This contrary nature of the Gothic, as characterised by Botting, can provoke a sense of otherness; the uncanny, including “displays of uncontrolled passion, violent emotion or flights of fancy to portrayals of perversion or obsession” (Gothic 2). It is argued that these characteristics have been commodified into merchandisable and mainstream stylistic representations (Edwards and Monnet). Del Rey’s visual work uses this otherness and representation of repressed darkness as subversion or contestation to the bubble gum consumerist, fairy tale sexualisation of the Katy Perry brand of neo-liberal pop music that floods the mainstream (Macfarlane). Del Rey also harnesses the Gothic mode in her music, underscoring social anxieties through moments of sound which act as “a sonic imp, this music enters perception through the back door, and there it does its destabilising work” (van Elferen 137). As potential psychosocial sources of this otherness in the Gothic (Botting, Gothic), Jung argued that as a collective consciousness by repressing our darkest side, we can be dislocated from it. Further he argued that many modern ills —conflict, war, disenfranchisement, poverty— stem from culturally rationalised divisions of ‘good vs evil’ (Tacey). Providing a space for these dark sides to surface, Swirski comments that cultural product can act "as a social barometer and a cultural diagnostic tool. It identifies social trends and cultural patterns and weaves elaborate counterfactuals- literary fictions- that hang human faces on large-scale human abstractions such as society and culture" (1). Jung proposes the large-scale social abstraction; that to truly live with ourselves we need embrace the otherness inside us— to learn to live with it (Tacey). The Gothic may enable this living with, rather than living without. Jung asserts that we now rely so much on what we can touch, taste and own, that western culture has become a “creed without substance” (Tacey 32). In more concrete terms, Hoffie argues that popular media today tells stories: in terms of disaster and crisis: weather patterns: disastrous. Climate Change: disastrous. Global Financial Crisis: disastrous. Political situations: disastrous. Unemployment: disastrous. And so on. The high-pitched wail of this lament corrodes the peaks and troughs of potential emotional responsiveness; the vapours of benumbing apathy steam upwards like a bewitching spell. All stands still. Action, like in a bad dream, seems impossible. (14) This apathy in the face of crisis or disaster is well expressed in Del Rey’s work through the Gothic influenced lyrics and videos; she describes her partner as so good looking as to be “sick as cancer” in Blue Jeans and that her lover left her because he was “chasing paper”. Represented here is the social current that the need to acquire goods in late capitalism’s climate “of unrestrained consumerism” (Heine and Thakur 2) is her lover’s priority over companionship. Revealing more of the Gothic aesthetic is that her videos and songs represent this loss, they depict “disturbances of sanity and security” (Botting, Gothic 2) and thematically reflect the social climate of “disaster and crisis” (Hoffie 14). This sense of otherness through Gothic influences of the uncanny, death and melancholy have a significant impact on creative expression creating music videos that play like a kind of half remembered nightmare (Botting, Love Your Zombie; Macfarlane). In the black and white video for Blue Jeans the opening shot shows an image of Del Rey rippling and blurred, framed by circular waves of water as black as oil. The powerful Gothic aesthetic of the abyss is rendered here, “to convey the figurative meaning of a catastrophic situation seen as likely to occur whereby the individual will sink to immeasurable intellectual, ethical or moral depths” (Edwards and Monnet 9). This abyss is represented as Del Rey sings to her ghostly tattooed lover that she will love him until “the end of time” and climaxes in the suggestion that he drowns her. As in Edwards and Monnet‘s description of zombie films, Del Rey’s videos narratively “suggest that the postmodern condition is itself a form of madness that disseminates cultural trauma and erases historical memory” (8). This view is evident in contrasting Del Rey’s interview comment that she finds conversations about feminism boring (Cooper). Yet in her song delivery and lyrics she retains an ironic tone regards feminine power. This combination helps “produce a darkly funny and carnivalesque representation of sex and waste under late capitalism” (Edwards and Monnet 8). Further evidence of these ironies and distorted juxtapositions of loss and possession are evident in the song Radio. The video —a bricolage of retrospective fashion imagery— and lyrics hint at the persistent desire for goods in US western culture (Heine and Thakur). Simultaneously in her song Radio, she is corruptibly engorged by consumption and being consumed (Mulvey) as she sings that life is “sweet like cinnamon, a fucking dream on Ritalin”. The video itself represents distorted dreams hyper-real on Ritalin. Del Rey’s work speaks of an excess; the overflow of sensations, sexual excess, of buying, of having, of owning, and at the same time the absence; of loss or not knowing what to have (Botting, Love Your Zombie). Exemplified by the lyrics in What Makes Us Girls, “do I know what I want?” and again in Radio “American dreams came true somehow, I swore I’d chase until I was dead”. Increasingly it is evident that Del Rey sings “as a woman who does not know what she wants” (Vigier 5). She illustrates the “endemic narcissism” (Hoffie 15) of contemporary western culture. Del Rey therefore clearly delineates much of “the loneliness, emptiness, and alienation that results from rampant consumerism and materialism under advanced capitalism” (Edwards and Monnet 8). As a theme of this representation, Del Rey implies a sense of commodified female sexual energy through the male gaze (Mulvey), along with a sense of wasted youth and opportunity in the carnivalesque National Anthem. The video, shot as if on Super 8 film, tells the story of Del Rey’s ‘character’ married to a hedonistic style of president. It is reminiscent of the JFK story including authentic and detailed presentation of costume —especially Del Rey’s Jackie Onassis fashions— the couple posing in presidential gardens with handsome mixed-race children. Lavish lifestyles are depicted whilst the characters enjoy drinking, gambling and consumerist excess, Del Rey sings "It's a love story for the new age, For the six page, We're on a quick sick rampage, Wining and dining, Drinking and driving, Excessive buying, Overdose and dyin'". In National Anthem sexual excess is one of the strongest themes communicated. Repeatedly depicted are distinct close up shots of his hand on her thigh, and vice versa. Without being sexually explicit in itself, it is an overtly sexual reference, communicating something of sexual excess because of the sheer number of times it is highlighted in close-up shots. This links to the idea of the Gothic use of jouissance, a state of: excessive energies that burst in and beyond circuits of pleasure: intensities are read in relation to a form of subjectivity that finds itself briefly and paradoxically in moments of extreme loss. (Botting, Love Your Zombie 22) Del Rey represents these moments of loss —of herself, of her man, of her power, of her identity being subsumed by his— as intense pleasure, indicated in the video through sexual referencing. Botting argues that these excesses create anxieties; that in the pursuit of postmodern excess, of ownership, of consumption: the subject internalises the inconsistencies and contradictions of capitalism, manifesting pathologies not of privation but overabundance: stress, eating disorders, self-harming, and a range of anxieties. (Love Your Zombie 22) These anxieties are further expressed in National Anthem. Del Rey sings to her lover that he cannot keep his “pants on” and she must “hold you like a python”. The python in this tale simultaneously symbolises the exotic, erotic and dangerous entrapment by her male suitor. Edwards and Monnet argue for the Gothic monster, whose sign is further referenced as Del Rey swims with crocodiles in Blue Jeans. Here the male power, patriarchy and dominance is represented as monstrous. In the video she shares the pool with her beau yet we only see Del Rey swim and writhe with the crocodiles. Analogous of her murderous lover, this adds a powerful otherness to the scene and reinforces the symbols of threatening masculinity and impeding disaster. This expression of monstrousness creates a cathartic tension as it “puts the ‘pop’ in Pop Goth: its popularity is based on the frisson of selling simultaneous aversion from and attraction to self-destruction and cultural taboo” (Edwards and Monnet 9). In a further representation of anxieties Del Rey conforms to the sexual object persona in large part through her retro pin-up iconography —meticulous attention to costume, continuous posing and pouting— and song lyrics (Buszek). As in National Anthem her lyrics talk of devotion and male strength to protect and to “keep me safe in his bell tower”. Her videos, whilst they may show some of her strength, ultimately reside in patriarchal resolution (Mulvey). She is generally confounded by the male figures in her videos appearing to be very much alone and away from them: most notably in Blue Jeans, Born to Die and Video Games. In two cases it is suggested she is murdered by the male figures of her love. Her costume and appearance —iconic 1960’s swimsuits, pantsuits and big hairstyles in National Anthem— portray something of the retro pin-up. Buszek argues that at one time “young feminists may poke fun at the pin-up, but they do so in ways that betray affinities with, even affection for, the genre itself” (3). Del Rey simultaneously adheres to and confronts these normative gender roles, as is characteristic of the Gothic mode (Botting, Gothic). These very Gothic contradictions are also evident in Del Rey’s often ironic or mocking song delivery, undermining apparent heteronormative sexual and gender positioning. In National Anthem she sings, as if parodying women who might sincerely ask, “do you think he’ll buy me lots of diamonds?”. Her conformity is however, subverted. In Del Rey’s videos, clear evidence exists in her facial expressions where she consistently portrays Gothic elements of uncertainty, sorrow, grief and a pervading sense that she does not belong in this world (Botting, Gothic). Whilst depicted as a brooding and mourning widow —simultaneously playing the mistress luxuriating on a lion skin rug— in National Anthem Del Rey sings, “money is the anthem of success” without a smile or sense of any attachment to the lyrics. In the same song she sings “God you’re so handsome” without a trace of glee, pleasure or optimism. In the video for Blue Jeans she sings, “I will love you til the end of time” staring sorrowfully into the distance or directly at the camera. This confident yet ‘dead stare’ emphasises the overall juxtaposition of the largely positive lyrical expression, with the sorrowful facial expression and low sung notes. Del Rey signifies repeatedly that something is amiss; that the American dream is over and that even with apparent success within this sphere, there exists only emptiness and isolation (Botting, Love Your Zombie). Further contradictions exist as Lana Del Rey walks this blurred line —as is the Gothic mode— between heteronormative and ambiguous gender roles (Botting, Gothic; Edwards and Monnet). Lana Del Rey oscillates between positions of strength and independence —shown in her deadpan to-camera delivery— to that of weakness and subjugation. As she plays narrator, Del Rey symbolically reclaims some power as she retells the tragic story of Born to Die from her throne. Represented here Del Rey’s persona exerts a troubled malevolence, with two tigers calmly sat by her side: her benevolent pets, or symbols of contrived excess. She simultaneously presents the angelic —resplendent in sheer white dress and garland ‘crown’ headdress of the spurned bride in the story— and the stoic as she stares down the camera. Del Rey is powerful and in many senses threatening. At one point she draws a manicured thumbnail across her neck in a cut-throat gesture; a movement echoed later by her lover. Her character ultimately walks symbolically —and latently— to her death. She neither remedies her position as subservient, subordinate female nor revisits any kind of redemption for the excessive male dominance in her videos. The “excess is countered by greater excess” (Botting Love Your Zombie 27) and leads to otherness. In this reading of Del Rey’s work, there are representations that remain explicitly Pop Gothic, eliciting sensations of paranoia and fear, overloading her videos with these signs (Yeo). These signs elicit the otherness of the Gothic mode; expressed in visual symbols of violence, passion or obsession (Botting, Gothic). In our digital visual age, subjecting an eager viewer to this excess of signs creates the conditions for over-reading of a growing gender or consumerist paranoia, enabled by the Gothic, “paranoia stems from an excessive over-reading of signs and is a product of interpretation, misinterpretation and re-interpretation based on one’s knowledge or lack of it” (Yeo 22). Del Rey stimulates these sensations of paranoia partly through interlaying intertextual references. She does this thematically —Gothic melancholy— and pop culturally channelling Marilyn Monroe and other fashion iconography, as well as through explicit textual references, as in her most recent single Ultraviolence. In Ultraviolence, Del Rey sings “He hit me and it felt like a kiss”. Effortlessly and simultaneously she celebrates and lays bare her pain; however the intertextual reference to the violent controversy of the film A Clockwork Orange serves to aestheticise the domestic violence she describes. With Del Rey it may be that as meaning is sought amongst the texts as Macfarlane wrote about Lady Gaga, Del Rey’s “truth is ultimately irrelevant in the face of its interlayed performance” (130). Del Rey’s Gothic mode of ambiguity, of transgressed boundaries and unclear lines, shows “this ambience of perpetually deferred climax is no stranger to contemporary culture” (Hoffie 15) and may go some way to expressing something of the “lived experience of her audience” (Vigier 1). Hermes argues that in post-feminist pop culture, strong independent post-feminist women can be characterised by their ability to break traditional taboos, question or hold up for interrogation norms and traditions, but that ultimately narrative arches tend to restore the patriarchal norm. Edwards and Monnet assert that the Gothic in Pop Gothic cultural representation can become “post-race, post-sexuality, post-gender” (6). In places Del Ray exhibits this postmodernism but through the use of Gothic mode goes outside political debates and blurs clear lines of feminist discourse (Botting, Love Your Zombie). Whilst a duality in the texts exists; comments on consumerism, the emptiness of capitalist society and a suicidal expression of hopelessness, are undermined as she demonstrates conformity to subservient gender roles and her ambiguously ironic need to be “young and beautiful”. To be consumed by her man thus defines her value as an object within a consumerist neo-liberal trope (Jameson). This analysis goes some way to confirming Hermes’ assertion that in this post-feminist climate there has been a “loss of a political agenda, or the foundation for a new one, where it signposts the overcoming of unproductive old distinctions between feminist and feminine” (79). Hermes further argues, with reference to television shows Ally McBeal and Sex and the City, that presentation of female characters or personas has moved forward; the man is no longer the lone guarantor of a woman’s happiness. Yet many of the tropes in Del Rey’s work are familiar; overwhelming love for her companion equal only to the emphasis on physical appearance. Del Rey breaks taboos —she is powerful, sexual and a romantic predator, without being a demon seductress— and satirises consumerist excess and gender inequality; yet she remains sexually and politically subservient to the whim and sometimes violently expressed or implied male gaze (Mulvey). Del Rey may well represent something of Vigier’s assertion that whilst society has clear direction for the ‘success’ of women, “that real liberation and genuine satisfaction elude them” (1). In closing, there is no clear answer as to whether Del Rey is a Beauty Queen or Gothic Princess; she is neither and she is both. In Vigier’s words, “self-exploitation or self-destruction cannot be the only choices open to young women today” (13). Del Rey’s work is provocative on multiple levels. It hints at the pull of rampant consumerism and the immediacy of narcissistic desires, interlinked with contradictions which indicate the potential for social crises. This is shown in Del Rey’s use of the Gothic — otherness, the monstrous, darkness and death— and its juxtaposition with heteronormative gender representations which highlights the persistent commodification of the female body, its subjugation to male power and the potential for deep anxieties in 21st-century identity. References Blue Jeans. Dir. Yoann Lemoine. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2012. Botting, Fred. Gothic. New York: Routledge, 2014. Botting, Fred. "Love Your Zombie." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Ed. Edwards, Justin and Agnieszka Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 19-36. Buszek, Maria. Pin-Up Grrrls Feminism, Sexuality and Popular Culture. London: Duke University Press, 2006. Cooper, Duncan. "Lana Del Rey Cover Interview." Fader, June 2014. Edwards, Justin, and Agnieszka Monnet. "Introduction." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Eds. Justin Edwards and A. Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 1-18. Heine, Jorge, and Ramesh Thakur. The Dark Side of Globalisation. New York: UN UP, 2011. Hermes, Joke. "The Tragic Success of Feminism." Feminism in Popular Culture. Eds. Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley. New York: Berg, 2006. 79-95. Hoffie, Pat. "Deadly Ennui." Artlink Magazine 32.4 (2012): 15-16. Jameson, Fredric. "Globalisation and Political Strategy." New Left Review 2.4 (2000): 49-68. Lana Del Rey. "Radio." Born To Die. Interscope Records, 2012. "Lana Del Rey - Summertime Sadness" YouTube, n.d. 12 June 2014 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVjsGKrE6E8›. Lana Del Rey. "This Is What Makes Us Girls." Born To Die. Interscope Records, 2012. Macfarlane, K. "The Monstrous House of Gaga." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Ed. Justin Edwards and A. Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 114-134. Mestrovic, Stjepan. Postemotional Society. London: Sage, 1997. Mulvey, Laura. Visual and other Pleasures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. National Anthem. Dir. Anthony Mandler. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2012. Paglia, Camille. Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex. 12 Sep. 2010. 2 June 2014 ‹http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/magazine/article389697.ece›. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. "Introduction: a Place for Contemporary Gothic." Aeternum: the Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies 1.1 (2014): i-iv. Spooner, Catherine, and Emma McEvoy. The Routledge Companion to Gothic. New York: Routledge, 2007. Summertime Sadness. Dir. Chris Sweeney. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2013. Swirski, Peter. American Utopia and Social Engineering in Literature, Social Thought, and Political History. New York: Routledge, 2011. Tacey, David. The Jung Reader. New York: Routledge, 2012. Van Elferen, Isabella. "Spectural Liturgy, Transgression, Ritual and Music in Gothic." The Gothic in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture. Eds. Justin Edwards and A. Monnet. New York: Routledge, 2012. 135-147. Vigier, Catherine. "The Meaning of Lana Del Rey." Zeteo: The Journal of Interdisciplinary Writing Fall (2012): 1-16. Yeo, David. "Gothic Paranoia in David Fincher's Seven, The Game and Fight Club." Aeternum: The Journal Of Contemporary Gothic Studies 1.1 (2014): 16-25. Young and Beautiful. Dir. Chris Sweeney. Perf. Lana Del Rey. Interscope Records, 2013.

“What if we were to go into culture tongue-first to see how things taste?” (Jenkins 5) Released in June of 2005, Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has all the ingredients of a blockbuster success; a well known story-line, a target youth demographic, a nostalgic adult audience and a multi-million dollar synergy between media giants AOL Time Warner and transnational food corporation Nestlé. Yet, when it comes to discussing the affect-oriented components of the marketing campaign behind this film, much contemporary academic scholarship falls short of offering a substantial framework for theoretical analysis. Defined broadly as a subjective, felt experience, the notion of affect has traditionally fought an uphill battle for scholarly recognition within media studies. Against a backdrop of objective rationality and quantitative analysis, the touching, smelling and tasting components of media consumption have been systematically disregarded in favour of the audio-visual pleasures of the filmic medium. However, as the recent cross-promotional strategies underpinning Charlie and the Chocolate Factory reveal, the tactile, olfactory and gustatory components of moviegoing are often central to global media consumption practices. The synergised marketing initiatives between AOL/Time-Warner and Nestlé confectionary exemplify the significance of affect within globalised media consumption. Drawing on Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s classic of the same name, the recent revamping of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory explicitly utilises Nestlé confectionary as a nexus between the seemingly incommensurate realms of transnational media distribution/commerce and the consuming, sentient bodies of actual movie-goers. In direct contrast to Stuart’s 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which offered audiences an audio-visual representation of hedonistic indulgence, the Warner/Nestlé agreement effectively ensures an edible cinematic adventure, in which audiences are enticed to consume “actual” (Nestlé) Wonka bars as part of the movie experience. The following enticement from a recent Nestlé press release is explicit in this regard: “You dreamt of them in the book, you will yearn for them in the film and now you can finally taste scrumptiously sumptuous Wonka Bars” (Drew 1). In keeping with this cross-promotion, the majority of Wonka products seen in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory have identical wrappings to the merchandise currently being promoted in retail outlets across the United States, Canada, Europe and Australasia. In thus establishing distinct syntagmatic relationships between the film’s diegisis and its “real world” marketing campaign Warner and Nestlé have ensured a form of media consumption that moves beyond ocularcentric understandings of “spectatorship” and into the uncharted realms of the emotional and the visceral. Nestlé’s use of the enigmatic character Wonka and his extraordinary confectionary provides another palpable demonstration of this politics of affect: Willy Wonka, the world’s most eminent chocolatier, has created a scrumdiddlyumptious selection of delectable treats to choose from. The enticing Wonka Bars tempt you in three tantalisingly tasty flavours: Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight, Nutty Crunch Surprise (the surprise is that it contains no nuts!) and Triple Dazzle Caramel (Drew 1). In terms of media affect, the implications of this phenomenon are significant. Far from being confined to the audio-visual specificities of the filmic medium, contemporary audiences are being lured into an entertainment experience that can not only be seen and heard, but also smelled, touched and tasted. These sense-oriented marketing strategies are indicative of what John Hannigan has identified as “eatertainment”, an affective synapse of consumer activity “in which the former boundaries between eating and play are collapsed and recast into something new” (93). In offering audiences an edible cinematic experience, the Nestlé -Warner cross-promotion not only ensures a potentially novel trip to the cinemas, but also a repeat purchase scenario, whereby Wonka-themed confectionary is able to be purchased several times after just one viewing of Burton’s film. The notion of eatertainment is certainly paying off for Nestlé. With a product placement deal in excess of nine million U.S. dollars, Nestlé’s Wonka confectionery range is given optimum exposure throughout the film. According to The Atlanta Journal, the preparation for this placement required Nestlé to produce and wrap over 110,000 fake chocolate bars; most of which were used in the scene in Mr Salt’s factory where hundreds of his employees are seen ripping open Wonka bars in the hope of finding a golden ticket for Mr. Salt’s infamous daughter Veruca (Bookman 8). In tandem with this placement, Nestlé UK also launched a £1.5m television advertising campaign replete with a “golden ticket” promotion, which promised several ‘lucky consumers’ the chance to win a golden ticket: Everybody has a chance of finding one of the most sought after tickets underneath their Wonka Bar wrapper, as featured in the film. The lucky golden ticket winners will be treated to a trip of a lifetime to visit a chocolate factory and Warner Bros Studios in America (Drew 1). The Nestlé/Wonka connection was forged in 1999 after Nestlé purchased Rowntree confectionary. Taking its incentive from both the novel and the subsequent 1971 film, Nestlé re-launched Rowntree’s relatively underdeveloped Wonka range and transformed it into a major brand which now has an annual income of over $121 million U.S (Jardine 8). To date, there are over two dozen products in the Wonka range and all of them manage to tie in with Roald Dahl’s earlier discourses of mischief, eccentricity and gustatory bliss. Included amongst the Wonka range are products such as Laffy Taffy, Nerds, Oompahs, and Wonka Bars, with nearly all of the existing products carrying the tag-line; “Wonka, what will he think of next?”. Discussing the evolution of the Wonka brand, Frank Arthofer, CEO of Nestlé chocolate and confections, noted that “the tag-line is intended to capture the innovation and unpredictability of the brand and further the image of Willy Wonka as an inventor” (Thompson 14). In fortifying this agenda, Nestlé also hosts a Wonka Website in which children are encouraged to play interactive Wonka games such as ‘Oompahs Outrageous Rush’ and ‘Gobstopper Gobbler”. Of course, this is not the first time that media giants have aggressively marketed food as an integral component to the cinematic experience. In 1996, Disney and McDonalds collaborated on a $US four billion cross-promotional exercise (Howard 2). Since then, McDonalds and Disney have launched numerous “McDisney” packages, many of which have included film-specific foods such as banana-flavoured sundaes and “jungle burgers” to tie in with Disney’s 1999 animated film Tarzan. However, unlike the McDonalds/Disney agreement, in which the food operates as an indexical signifier of the film (and not vice-versa), the Nestlé /Warner promotion takes the politics of affect one step further and encourages a mutually beneficial process of signification whereby the food signifies the film and the film signifies the food. It’s a scenario that blatantly ensures a form of visceral connectivity between the audience, the film and the tangible product. To this end, an analysis of the synergised marketing campaign behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory reveals a persistent and efficient politics of affect in which the neo-liberal agendas of both Nestlé and Time-Warner are affectively absorbed into the sensual and desiring bodies of media audiences. Such initiatives signal a significant departure from traditional audio-visual marketing campaigns in as much as audiences are now being expected to literally swallow the saccharine-tinged marketing agendas of not one, but two, multinational corporations. While prevailing theoretical analysis of media consumption struggles against the traditional confines of rational objectivity, transnational media networks are productively utilising the audiences’ desire to be affectively engaged in the cinematic experience. As the cross-promotional tie-in deals behind Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory clearly reveal, the contemporary media-scape is one which deliberately lures audiences on the basis of their sensuous, emotional and subjective capacities. References Bookman, Julie. “News for Kids.” The Atlanta Journal 18 July 2005: B8. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Directed by Tim Burton. 2005. Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. London: Penguin, 1964. Drew, Cathy. “The Marvellously Mouth-Watering Wonka Bars.” Nestlé UK Wonka Press Release 26 July 2005. 24 Aug. 2005 http://www.nestle.co.uk/PressOffice/MediaKit/PressReleases/ ConfectioneryNews/Mouth-wateringWonkaBars.htm>. Howard, Thomas. “Disney Alliance Shows Brute Force.” Nations Restaurant News: The Weekly Newspaper of the Food Industry 2 Dec. 1996. Jardine, Alice. “Nestlé Plans Wonka Push in the UK.” Marketing 29 Apr. 1999: 8. Jenkins, Emily. Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture. New York: Virago Press, 1998. Tarzan. Directed by C. Buck. 1999. Thompson, Stephanie. “Nestlé Works to Build Wonka Brand.” Advertising Age 15 Nov. 1999: 14. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Directed by M. Stuart. 1971. Wonka Website. http://www.wonka.com>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Downing, Leanne. "Media Synergies and the Politics of Affect in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/11-downing.php>. APA Style Downing, L. (Dec. 2005) "Media Synergies and the Politics of Affect in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/11-downing.php>.

Introduction The aim of this paper is to examine whether recent catastrophic tsunamis have driven a cultural shift in the awareness of Australians to the danger associated with this natural hazard and whether the media have contributed to the emergence of “tsunami” as a new Australian catastrophe. Prior to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami disaster (2004 IOT), tsunamis as a type of hazard capable of generating widespread catastrophe were not well known by the general public and had barely registered within the wider scientific community. As a university based lecturer who specialises in natural disasters, I always started my public talks or student lectures with an attempt at a detailed description of what a tsunami is. With little high quality visual and media imagery to use, this was not easy. The Australian geologist Ted Bryant was right when he named his 2001 book Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard. That changed on 26 December 2004 when the third largest earthquake ever recorded occurred northwest of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggering the most catastrophic tsunami ever experienced. The 2004 IOT claimed at least 220,000 lives—probably more—injured tens of thousands, destroyed widespread coastal infrastructure and left millions homeless. Beyond the catastrophic impacts, this tsunami was conspicuous because, for the first time, such a devastating tsunami was widely captured on video and other forms of moving and still imagery. This occurred for two reasons. Firstly, the tsunami took place during daylight hours in good weather conditions—factors conducive to capturing high quality visual images. Secondly, many people—both local residents and westerners who were on beachside holidays and at the coast at multiple locations impacted by the tsunami—were able to capture images of the tsunami on their cameras, videos, and smart phones. The extensive media coverage—including horrifying television, video, and still imagery that raced around the globe in the hours and days after the tsunami, filling our television screens, homes, and lives regardless of where we lived—had a dramatic effect. This single event drove a quantum shift in the wider cultural awareness of this type of catastrophe and acted as a catalyst for improved individual and societal understanding of the nature and effects of disaster landscapes. Since this event, there have been several notable tsunamis, including the March 2011 Japan catastrophe. Once again, this event occurred during daylight hours and was widely captured by multiple forms of media. These events have resulted in a cascade of media coverage across television, radio, movie, and documentary channels, in the print media, online, and in the popular press and on social media—very little of which was available prior to 2004. Much of this has been documentary and informative in style, but there have also been numerous television dramas and movies. For example, an episode of the popular American television series CSI Miami entitled Crime Wave (Season 3, Episode 7) featured a tsunami, triggered by a volcanic eruption in the Atlantic and impacting Miami, as the backdrop to a standard crime-filled episode ("CSI," IMDb; Wikipedia). In 2010, Warner Bros Studios released the supernatural drama fantasy film Hereafter directed by Clint Eastwood. In the movie, a television journalist survives a near-death experience during the 2004 IOT in what might be the most dramatic, and probably accurate, cinematic portrayal of a tsunami ("Hereafter," IMDb; Wikipedia). Thus, these creative and entertaining forms of media, influenced by the catastrophic nature of tsunamis, are impetuses for creativity that also contribute to a transformation of cultural knowledge of catastrophe. The transformative potential of creative media, together with national and intergovernmental disaster risk reduction activity such as community education, awareness campaigns, community evacuation planning and drills, may be indirectly inferred from rapid and positive community behavioural responses. By this I mean many people in coastal communities who experience strong earthquakes are starting a process of self-evacuation, even if regional tsunami warning centres have not issued an alert or warning. For example, when people in coastal locations in Samoa felt a large earthquake on 29 September 2009, many self-evacuated to higher ground or sought information and instruction from relevant authorities because they expected a tsunami to occur. When interviewed, survivors stated that the memory of television and media coverage of the 2004 IOT acted as a catalyst for their affirmative behavioural response (Dominey-Howes and Thaman 1). Thus, individual and community cultural understandings of the nature and effects of tsunami catastrophes are incredibly important for shaping resilience and reducing vulnerability. However, this cultural shift is not playing out evenly.Are Australia and Its People at Risk from Tsunamis?Prior to the 2004 IOT, there was little discussion about, research in to, or awareness about tsunamis and Australia. Ted Bryant from the University of Wollongong had controversially proposed that Australia had been affected by tsunamis much bigger than the 2004 IOT six to eight times during the last 10,000 years and that it was only a matter of when, not if, such an event repeated itself (Bryant, "Second Edition"). Whilst his claims had received some media attention, his ideas did not achieve widespread scientific, cultural, or community acceptance. Not-with-standing this, Australia has been affected by more than 60 small tsunamis since European colonisation (Dominey-Howes 239). Indeed, the 2004 IOT and 2006 Java tsunami caused significant flooding of parts of the Northern Territory and Western Australia (Prendergast and Brown 69). However, the affected areas were sparsely populated and experienced very little in the way of damage or loss. Thus they did not cross any sort of critical threshold of “catastrophe” and failed to achieve meaningful community consciousness—they were not agents of cultural transformation.Regardless of the risk faced by Australia’s coastline, Australians travel to, and holiday in, places that experience tsunamis. In fact, 26 Australians were killed during the 2004 IOT (DFAT) and five were killed by the September 2009 South Pacific tsunami (Caldwell et al. 26). What Role Do the Media Play in Preparing for and Responding to Catastrophe?Regardless of the type of hazard/disaster/catastrophe, the key functions the media play include (but are not limited to): pre-event community education, awareness raising, and planning and preparations; during-event preparation and action, including status updates, evacuation warnings and notices, and recommendations for affirmative behaviours; and post-event responses and recovery actions to follow, including where to gain aid and support. Further, the media also play a role in providing a forum for debate and post-event analysis and reflection, as a mechanism to hold decision makers to account. From time to time, the media also provide a platform for examining who, if anyone, might be to blame for losses sustained during catastrophes and can act as a powerful conduit for driving socio-cultural, behavioural, and policy change. Many of these functions are elegantly described and a series of best practices outlined by The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency in a tsunami specific publication freely available online (CDEMA 1). What Has Been the Media Coverage in Australia about Tsunamis and Their Effects on Australians?A manifest contents analysis of media material covering tsunamis over the last decade using the framework of Cox et al. reveals that coverage falls into distinctive and repetitive forms or themes. After tsunamis, I have collected articles (more than 130 to date) published in key Australian national broadsheets (e.g., The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald) and tabloid (e.g., The Telegraph) newspapers and have watched on television and monitored on social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, the types of coverage given to tsunamis either affecting Australia, or Australians domestically and overseas. In all cases, I continued to monitor and collect these stories and accounts for a fixed period of four weeks after each event, commencing on the day of the tsunami. The themes raised in the coverage include: the nature of the event. For example, where, when, why did it occur, how big was it, and what were the effects; what emergency response and recovery actions are being undertaken by the emergency services and how these are being provided; exploration of how the event was made worse or better by poor/good planning and prior knowledge, action or inaction, confusion and misunderstanding; the attribution of blame and responsibility; the good news story—often the discovery and rescue of an “iconic victim/survivor”—usually a child days to weeks later; and follow-up reporting weeks to months later and on anniversaries. This coverage generally focuses on how things are improving and is often juxtaposed with the ongoing suffering of victims. I select the word “victims” purposefully for the media frequently prefer this over the more affirmative “survivor.”The media seldom carry reports of “behind the scenes” disaster preparatory work such as community education programs, the development and installation of warning and monitoring systems, and ongoing training and policy work by response agencies and governments since such stories tend to be less glamorous in terms of the disaster gore factor and less newsworthy (Cox et al. 469; Miles and Morse 365; Ploughman 308).With regard to Australians specifically, the manifest contents analysis reveals that coverage can be described as follows. First, it focuses on those Australians killed and injured. Such coverage provides elements of a biography of the victims, telling their stories, personalising these individuals so we build empathy for their suffering and the suffering of their families. The Australian victims are not unknown strangers—they are named and pictures of their smiling faces are printed or broadcast. Second, the media describe and catalogue the loss and ongoing suffering of the victims (survivors). Third, the media use phrases to describe Australians such as “innocent victims in the wrong place at the wrong time.” This narrative establishes the sense that these “innocents” have been somehow wronged and transgressed and that suffering should not be experienced by them. The fourth theme addresses the difficulties Australians have in accessing Consular support and in acquiring replacement passports in order to return home. It usually goes on to describe how they have difficulty in gaining access to accommodation, clothing, food, and water and any necessary medicines and the challenges associated with booking travel home and the complexities of communicating with family and friends. The last theme focuses on how Australians were often (usually?) not given relevant safety information by “responsible people” or “those in the know” in the place where they were at the time of the tsunami. This establishes a sense that Australians were left out and not considered by the relevant authorities. This narrative pays little attention to the wide scale impact upon and suffering of resident local populations who lack the capacity to escape the landscape of catastrophe.How Does Australian Media Coverage of (Tsunami) Catastrophe Compare with Elsewhere?A review of the available literature suggests media coverage of catastrophes involving domestic citizens is similar globally. For example, Olofsson (557) in an analysis of newspaper articles in Sweden about the 2004 IOT showed that the tsunami was framed as a Swedish disaster heavily focused on Sweden, Swedish victims, and Thailand, and that there was a division between “us” (Swedes) and “them” (others or non-Swedes). Olofsson (557) described two types of “us” and “them.” At the international level Sweden, i.e. “us,” was glorified and contrasted with “inferior” countries such as Thailand, “them.” Olofsson (557) concluded that mediated frames of catastrophe are influenced by stereotypes and nationalistic values.Such nationalistic approaches preface one type of suffering in catastrophe over others and delegitimises the experiences of some survivors. Thus, catastrophes are not evenly experienced. Importantly, Olofsson although not explicitly using the term, explains that the underlying reason for this construction of “them” and “us” is a form of imperialism and colonialism. Sharp refers to “historically rooted power hierarchies between countries and regions of the world” (304)—this is especially so of western news media reporting on catastrophes within and affecting “other” (non-western) countries. Sharp goes much further in relation to western representations and imaginations of the “war on terror” (arguably a global catastrophe) by explicitly noting the near universal western-centric dominance of this representation and the construction of the “west” as good and all “non-west” as not (299). Like it or not, the western media, including elements of the mainstream Australian media, adhere to this imperialistic representation. Studies of tsunami and other catastrophes drawing upon different types of media (still images, video, film, camera, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and the like) and from different national settings have explored the multiple functions of media. These functions include: providing information, questioning the authorities, and offering a chance for transformative learning. Further, they alleviate pain and suffering, providing new virtual communities of shared experience and hearing that facilitate resilience and recovery from catastrophe. Lastly, they contribute to a cultural transformation of catastrophe—both positive and negative (Hjorth and Kyoung-hwa "The Mourning"; "Good Grief"; McCargo and Hyon-Suk 236; Brown and Minty 9; Lau et al. 675; Morgan and de Goyet 33; Piotrowski and Armstrong 341; Sood et al. 27).Has Extensive Media Coverage Resulted in an Improved Awareness of the Catastrophic Potential of Tsunami for Australians?In playing devil’s advocate, my simple response is NO! This because I have been interviewing Australians about their perceptions and knowledge of tsunamis as a catastrophe, after events have occurred. These events have triggered alerts and warnings by the Australian Tsunami Warning System (ATWS) for selected coastal regions of Australia. Consequently, I have visited coastal suburbs and interviewed people about tsunamis generally and those events specifically. Formal interviews (surveys) and informal conversations have revolved around what people perceived about the hazard, the likely consequences, what they knew about the warning, where they got their information from, how they behaved and why, and so forth. I have undertaken this work after the 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 New Zealand, 2009 South Pacific, the February 2010 Chile, and March 2011 Japan tsunamis. I have now spoken to more than 800 people. Detailed research results will be presented elsewhere, but of relevance here, I have discovered that, to begin with, Australians have a reasonable and shared cultural knowledge of the potential catastrophic effects that tsunamis can have. They use terms such as “devastating; death; damage; loss; frightening; economic impact; societal loss; horrific; overwhelming and catastrophic.” Secondly, when I ask Australians about their sources of information about tsunamis, they describe the television (80%); Internet (85%); radio (25%); newspaper (35%); and social media including YouTube (65%). This tells me that the media are critical to underpinning knowledge of catastrophe and are a powerful transformative medium for the acquisition of knowledge. Thirdly, when asked about where people get information about live warning messages and alerts, Australians stated the “television (95%); Internet (70%); family and friends (65%).” Fourthly and significantly, when individuals were asked what they thought being caught in a tsunami would be like, responses included “fun (50%); awesome (75%); like in a movie (40%).” Fifthly, when people were asked about what they would do (i.e., their “stated behaviour”) during a real tsunami arriving at the coast, responses included “go down to the beach to swim/surf the tsunami (40%); go to the sea to watch (85%); video the tsunami and sell to the news media people (40%).”An independent and powerful representation of the disjunct between Australians’ knowledge of the catastrophic potential of tsunamis and their “negative” behavioral response can be found in viewing live television news coverage broadcast from Sydney beaches on the morning of Sunday 28 February 2010. The Chilean tsunami had taken more than 14 hours to travel from Chile to the eastern seaboard of Australia and the ATWS had issued an accurate warning and had correctly forecast the arrival time of the tsunami (approximately 08.30 am). The television and radio media had dutifully broadcast the warning issued by the State Emergency Services. The message was simple: “Stay out of the water, evacuate the beaches and move to higher ground.” As the tsunami arrived, those news broadcasts showed volunteer State Emergency Service personnel and Surf Life Saving Australia lifeguards “begging” with literally hundreds (probably thousands up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia) of members of the public to stop swimming in the incoming tsunami and to evacuate the beaches. On that occasion, Australians were lucky and the tsunami was inconsequential. What do these responses mean? Clearly Australians recognise and can describe the consequences of a tsunami. However, they are not associating the catastrophic nature of tsunami with their own lives or experience. They are avoiding or disallowing the reality; they normalise and dramaticise the event. Thus in Australia, to date, a cultural transformation about the catastrophic nature of tsunami has not occurred for reasons that are not entirely clear but are the subject of ongoing study.The Emergence of Tsunami as a “New Australian Catastrophe”?As a natural disaster expert with nearly two decades experience, in my mind tsunami has emerged as a “new Australian catastrophe.” I believe this has occurred for a number of reasons. Firstly, the 2004 IOT was devastating and did impact northwestern Australia, raising the flag on this hitherto, unknown threat. Australia is now known to be vulnerable to the tsunami catastrophe. The media have played a critical role here. Secondly, in the 2004 IOT and other tsunamis since, Australians have died and their deaths have been widely reported in the Australian media. Thirdly, the emergence of various forms of social media has facilitated an explosion in information and material that can be consumed, digested, reimagined, and normalised by Australians hungry for the gore of catastrophe—it feeds our desire for catastrophic death and destruction. Fourthly, catastrophe has been creatively imagined and retold for a story-hungry viewing public. Whether through regular television shows easily consumed from a comfy chair at home, or whilst eating popcorn at a cinema, tsunami catastrophe is being fed to us in a way that reaffirms its naturalness. Juxtaposed against this idea though is that, despite all the graphic imagery of tsunami catastrophe, especially images of dead children in other countries, Australian media do not and culturally cannot, display images of dead Australian children. Such images are widely considered too gruesome but are well known to drive changes in cultural behaviour because of the iconic significance of the child within our society. As such, a cultural shift has not yet occurred and so the potential of catastrophe remains waiting to strike. Fifthly and significantly, given the fact that large numbers of Australians have not died during recent tsunamis means that again, the catastrophic potential of tsunamis is not yet realised and has not resulted in cultural changes to more affirmative behaviour. Lastly, Australians are probably more aware of “regular or common” catastrophes such as floods and bush fires that are normal to the Australian climate system and which are endlessly experienced individually and culturally and covered by the media in all forms. The Australian summer of 2012–13 has again been dominated by floods and fires. 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