Journal articles on the topic 'Paul and Chicago Railway Company'

Paul Fierman, an American expatriate, was the General Director of the Vietnamese subsidiary of Chicago Food and Beverage Company (CFB Co.) in Haiphong. His three-year mandate consisted of preparing and executing, in collaboration with the Asia Pacific Regional Director, a strategy of creating synergy among three Asian subsidiaries, which should allow CFB Co. to conquer the three markets. Six months after his arrival, Paul was facing many problems, including a decrease in the sales of non-alcoholic beverages, the general lack of motivation of management in the subsidiary and unrest among the factory workers who wanted better wages and were threatening to unionize. Now, to save the subsidiary and also his career, Paul needed a rapid action plan to put the subsidiary back on track. He had to present and defend such an action plan during his next meeting with the Asia Pacific Regional Director of CFB Co. This case is useful in examining the challenges in managing in a foreign environment.

In 1933 and 1934, the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway Company and the government of the newly formed nation-state, Manchukuo, sponsored a Manchuria pavilion on the Japanese exhibition grounds of Chicago'sA Century of ProgressWorld Exposition. Though small, this pavilion bore immense political weight. Opening a year after the Japanese Kwantung Army declared the formation of the new state in Northeast Asia and just three months after the Japanese delegation announced Japan's withdrawal from the League of Nations, the Manchuria exhibit demonstrates how Japanese military and corporate interests attempted to sway international public opinion on the cultural world stage. This paper examines the ways in which the Manchuria displays functioned during this crucial diplomatic moment and how the visually dazzling American exhibit, the Golden Temple of Jehol, upset Japanese claims of dominance in the region.

For the residents of the former model town of Pullman, Illinois, 1994 was an important year. In May, 100 years earlier, a strike had broken out that pitted workers at the Pullman Car Works against George M. Pullman and the company that bore his name. Before the strike finally collapsed in August, it shutdown railroad traffic across much of America, brought federal troops into Chicago and cities as far away as Los Angeles, and led to the imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs, the president of the American Railway Union (ARU). It also brought to a close the long-standing debate on the most famous of the company’s social experiments: the model town located on Chicago’s far south side. Since 1880, George Pullman had trumpeted the architecturally and socially crafted town and life inside it as solutions for the problems of urban, industrial America, and large numbers of observers had concurred with that evaluation (Wright 1884; Smith 1995: 177–270; Reiff and Hirsch 1989: 104–6). For almost as long, its critics had excoriated the town as representing the worst excesses of a capitalist society where one man and his company could dominate every aspect of a worker’s life in their dual roles as landlord and employer (Ely 1885; Carwardine 1973 [1894]).

Alexandre Yakovlev was a famous Russian painter, graphic and theatre artist, a graduate from the Imperial Academy of Arts and a member of the “World of Art”. In 1917 by the order of the Academy (material collection to decorate interiors of the Kazanian railway station) Yakovlev went to Beijing, then he traveled a lot throughout China, Mongolia and Japan. He explored Chinese and Japanese theaters, as a result he made many ethnographic sketches, portraits and photographs. He arranged the exhibition of his drawings in Shanghai (in 1919). Finding out about the revolution in Russia he emigrated to France. Since 1919 he lived in Paris. He showed multiple works of Far Eastern cycle at personal exhibitions in Paris (Barbazanges Gallery, 1920 and 1921; together with V. Shuhaev), London (Grafton Gallery, 1920) and Chicago (Art Institute, 1922). In 1922 the pub-lisher Lucien Vogel published an album Drawings and paintings of the Far East, which included 50 reproductions of Yakovlev’s Far-East cycle (the book was designed by Shuhaev). At the same time the artist produced an album on the Chinese theater with accompanying text by a Chinese author Zhu Kim-Kim. In 1931–1932 Yakovlev took part in the “Yellow Cruise” arranged by the “Citroen” company. From this expedition he brought some new series of drawings. At the end of the cruise he presented his artworks in Paris and at foreign exhibitions. This background of the artist’s life is subject to be studied better in Russia.

SUMMARY Objectives This in vitro study evaluated the effect of two matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) inhibitors on the color stability of two shades of a nanofilled resin composite. Methods and Materials A total of 60 sound human molars were used in this study. Flat dentin surfaces were obtained by wet grinding the occlusal surfaces. Following acid etching, the molars were divided into three equal groups according to the MMP inhibitor used: Group 1: no inhibitor (control group), group 2: chlorhexidine digluconate based (CHX; Consepsis, Ultradent, South Jordan, UT, USA); group 3: doxycycline based (MTAD; Biopure, Dentsply TulsaDental, Johnson, TN, USA). Adper Single Bond 2 Adhesive (3M ESPE, St Paul, MN, USA) was applied to the treated dentin surfaces. Each group was then subdivided into two equal subgroups of 10 molars each, according to the shade of the resin composite (Filtek Z350 XT, 3M ESPE) used, either B1 or A3. The color was assessed for each subgroup at three times: baseline (after 24 hours); after aging using a total energy of 600 kJ/m2 (Weather-Ometer Ci35A, Atlas Electronic Devices Company, Chicago, IL, USA); and then after a second period of aging, for a total energy of 1200 kJ/m2. Color assessment was carried out using a spectrophotometer. Color change (ΔE) was calculated according to the Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage L*a* b* color scale, comparing each aging period with the baseline color measurement. Data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance and Tukey post hoc test. Results All tested subgroups showed greater discoloration than the clinically acceptable level (3.3). MTAD induced the highest statistically significant color change, followed by CHX, whereas the control groups showed the lowest statistical ΔE values with both tested shades. Shade B1 subgroups showed higher ΔE values when compared with shade A3 subgroups. Conclusion Accelerated aging caused color change in a nanofilled resin composite regardless of MMP inhibitor used. Furthermore, lighter shades showed less color stability when compared with darker shades.

-Charles V. Carnegie, W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the age of sail. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. xiv + 310 pp.-Stanley L. Engerman, Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch trade in the Caribbean, 1648-1795. Leiden: KITLV Press, 1998. xiv + 283 pp.-Luis Martínez-Fernández, Emma Aurora Dávila Cox, Este inmenso comercio: Las relaciones mercantiles entre Puerto Rico y Gran Bretaña 1844-1898. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1996. xxi + 364 pp.-Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Arturo Morales Carrión, Puerto Rico y la lucha por la hegomonía en el Caribe: Colonialismo y contrabando, siglos XVI-XVIII. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico y Centro de Investigaciones Históricas, 1995. ix + 244 pp.-Herbert S. Klein, Patrick Manning, Slave trades, 1500-1800: Globalization of forced labour. Hampshire, U.K.: Variorum, 1996. xxxiv + 361 pp.-Jay R. Mandle, Kari Levitt ,The critical tradition of Caribbean political economy: The legacy of George Beckford. Kingston: Ian Randle, 1996. xxvi + 288., Michael Witter (eds)-Kevin Birth, Belal Ahmed ,The political economy of food and agriculture in the Caribbean. Kingston: Ian Randle; London: James Currey, 1996. xxi + 276 pp., Sultana Afroz (eds)-Sarah J. Mahler, Alejandro Portes ,The urban Caribbean: Transition to the new global economy. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997. xvii + 260 pp., Carlos Dore-Cabral, Patricia Landolt (eds)-O. Nigel Bolland, Ray Kiely, The politics of labour and development in Trinidad. Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago: The Press University of the West Indies, 1996. iii + 218 pp.-Lynn M. Morgan, Aviva Chomsky, West Indian workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica, 1870-1940. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. xiii + 302 pp.-Eileen J. Findlay, Maria del Carmen Baerga, Genero y trabajo: La industria de la aguja en Puerto Rico y el Caribe hispánico. San Juan: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1993. xxvi + 321 pp.-Andrés Serbin, Jorge Rodríguez Beruff ,Security problems and policies in the post-cold war Caribbean. London: :Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's, 1996. 249 pp., Humberto García Muñiz (eds)-Alex Dupuy, Irwin P. Stotzky, Silencing the guns in Haiti: The promise of deliberative democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xvi + 294 pp.-Carrol F. Coates, Myriam J.A. Chancy, Framing silence: Revolutionary novels by Haitian women. New Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997. ix + 200 pp.-Havidán Rodríguez, Walter Díaz, Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz ,Island paradox: Puerto Rico in the 1990's. New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1996. xi + 198 pp., Carlos E. Santiago (eds)-Ramona Hernández, Alan Cambeira, Quisqueya la Bella: The Dominican Republic in historical and cultural perspective. Armonk NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. xi + 272 pp.-Ramona Hernández, Emilio Betances ,The Dominican Republic today: Realities and perspectives. New York: Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere studies, CUNY, 1996. 205 pp., Hobart A. Spalding, Jr. (eds)-Bonham C. Richardson, Eberhard Bolay, The Dominican Republic: A country between rain forest and desert. Wekersheim, FRG: Margraf Verlag, 1997. 456 pp.-Virginia R. Dominguez, Patricia R. Pessar, A visa for a dream: Dominicans in the United States. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. xvi + 98 pp.-Diane Austin-Broos, Nicole Rodriguez Toulis, Believing identity: Pentecostalism and the mediation of Jamaican ethnicity and gender in England. Oxford NY: Berg, 1997. xv + 304 p.-Mary Chamberlain, Trevor A. Carmichael, Barbados: Thirty years of independence. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 1996. xxxv + 294 pp.-Paul van Gelder, Gert Oostindie, Het paradijs overzee: De 'Nederlandse' Caraïben en Nederland. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1997. 385 pp.-Roger D. Abrahams, Richard D.E. Burton, Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean. Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. x + 297 pp.-Roger D. Abrahams, Joseph Roach, Cities of the dead: Circum-Atlantic performance. New York NY: Columbia University Press, 1996. xiii + 328 pp.-George Mentore, Peter A. Roberts, From oral to literate culture: Colonial experience in the English West Indies. Kingston, Jamaica: The Press University of the West Indies, 1997. xii + 301 pp.-Emily A. Vogt, Howard Johnson ,The white minority in the Caribbean. Princeton NJ: Markus Wiener, 1998. xvi + 179 pp., Karl Watson (eds)-Virginia Heyer Young, Sheryl L. Lutjens, The state, bureaucracy, and the Cuban schools: Power and participation. Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1996. xiii + 239 pp.

The paper presents the process of language socialization and acquisition of grammatical categories through the Roma oral culture in which metaphors are extensively used. Roma children who grow up in extended Roma families and community learn the language through communication with speakers of different registers. Research with 22 Roma children between three and six years of age from Croatia was carried in order to find out what grammatical categories are learned in this period of the life of children. The children were tested with a specially designed language assessment test in Romani (Kyuchukov & de Villiers, 2014b). The results show that Roma boys perform the test much better than Roma girls. Boys learn Romani from folkloristic genres which are rich in metaphors and this helps them to acquire complex grammatical categories. References Beller, S. (2008). Fostering Language Acquisition in Daycare Settings. The Hague:Bernard van Leer Foundation. Black, B. & Logan, A. (1995). Links between communication patterns in mother-child,father-child, and child-peer interactions and children’s social status. Child Development,66, 255–271. Bloom, L. et al. (1996). Early conversations and word learning: contributions form childand adult. Child Development, 67, 3154–3175. Blount, B. (1995). Parental speech and language acquisition: and anthropologicalperspective. In: Language, Culture, and Society. A book of Readings. Second edition, (pp.551–566). B. Blount (ed.). Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Bokus, B. & Garstka, T. (2009). Toward a shared metaphoric meaning in children’sdiscourse. The role of argumentation. Polish Psychological Bulletin, 40(4), 193–203. Bowdle, B. (1998) Alignment and Abstraction in Metaphor. In: Advances in AnalogyResearch: Integration of Theory and Data form the Cognitive, Computational and NeutralSciences, (pp. 300–307). K. Holiyok, D. Gentner & K. Kokinov (Eds.). Sofia: NewBulgarian University. Crystal, D. (1992). An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages. London:Penguin Dryll, E. (2009). Changes in metaphor comprehension in children. Polish PsychologicalBulletin, 40(4), 204 – 212. Elbers, E., Maier, R., Hoekstra, T., Hoogsteder, M. (1992) Internalization and adult-childinteraction. Learning and Instruction, 2, 101–118. Ervin, S. & Miller, W. (1972). Language Development. In: Readings in the Sociology ofLanguage, (pp. 68–98). J. Fishman (ed.). The Hague: Mouton. Gleason, J. Berko (1992). Language Acquisition and Socialization. University Lecture.Boston: Boston University Press. Granquist, K. (2012). Metaphors of Finish Roma in Finish and Romani. In: EndangeredMetaphors, (pp. 293–313). A. Idstrom, T. Falzett, E. Piirainen (eds.). Amsterdam: JohnBenjamins Publishing Company. Haslett, B. (1989). Communication and language acquisition within a cultural context. In:Language, Communication and Culture. Current Directions, (pp. 19–34). S. TingToomey & F. Korzenny (eds.). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications. Hoff, E. (2003). Language development in childhood. In: Handbook of Psychology. Vol.6. Developmental Psychology, (pp. 171– 193). R. Lerner, M.A. Easterbrooks, J. Mistry(eds.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &Sons. Kubanik, P. (2016). Using Romani in language socialization in a Czech family. In: Roma:Past, Present, Future, (pp. 238–249). H. Kyuchukov, E. Marushiakova & V. Popov (eds).Munich: Lincom, Kyuchukov, H. (2014a). Acquisition of Romani in a bilingual context. Psychology ofLanguage and Communication, 18, 211–225. Kyuchukov, H. (2014b). Romani language assessment of Roma children. Journal ofLanguage and Cultural Education, 2, 52–64. Kyuchukov, H. (2010). Romani language competence. In: Situation of Roma Minority inCzech, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, (pp. 427–465). J. Balvin and L. Kwadrants (eds.).Wroclaw: Prom. Kyuchukov, H. & de Villiers, J. (2014a). Roma children’s knowledge on Romani.Journal of Psycholinguistics, 19, 58–65. Kyuchukov, H. & de Villiers, J. (2014b) Addressing the rights of Roma children for alanguage assessment in their native language of Romani. Poster presented at the35th Annual Symposium on Research in Child Language Disorders. Madison,Wisconsin June 12–14. Kyuchukov, H., Kaleja, M. &Samko, M. (2016). Roma parents as educators of theirchildren. Intercultural Education, 26, 444–448. Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University ofChicago Press. Macwhinney, B. (2001) First language acquisition. In: The Handbook of Linguistics, (pp.466–489). M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller (eds.). Oxford: Blackwell Publisher. Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. (1983). Acquiring Conversational Competence. London:Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. (1995). Language acquisition and Socialization: Threedevelopmental stories and their implications. In: Language, Culture, and Society. A bookof Readings. Second edition, (pp. 470–512). B. Blount (ed.). Prospect Heights, IL:Waveland Press. Ozcaliskan, S. (2014). Development of metaphor. In: Encyclopedia of languagedevelopment, (pp. 374–375). P. Brookse, V. Kempe, & G.J. Golson (eds.). NY: SagePublishers. Penalosa, F. (1981). Introduction to the sociology of language. Rowley, MA: NewburyHouse Publishers. Rácová, A. & Samko, M. (2015). Structural Patterns and Functions of ReduplicativeConstructions in Slovak Romani. Asian and African Studies, 24, 165–189. Reger, Z. & Gleason, J. Berko (1991). Romani child-directed speech and children’slanguage among Gypsies in Hungary. Language in Society, 20(4), 601–617. Reger, Z. (1999). Teasing in the linguistic socialization of Gypsy children in Hungary.Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 46(3–4), 289–315. Rondal, J. (1985). Adult-Child Interaction and the Process of Language Acquisition. NewYork: Praeger Publishers. Samko, M. & Kapalková, S. (2014). Analýza naratívnej schopnosti rómskeho dieťaťa vrómčine a slovenčine. Psychológia a Patopsychológia Dieťaťa, 48, 372–384. Winner, E. (1988). The Point of Words. Children’s Understanding of Metaphor andIrony. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

An optimal freight train plan requires practitioners to find a balance between mainline and yard efficiencies by adjusting the complexity of the yard operation and evaluating trade-offs between the throughput volume, number of blocks and number of trains handled at a given classification (marshalling) yard. To increase knowledge of these trade-offs, YardSYM is used to model the Belt Railway Company of Chicago (BRC) Clearing Yard, a major gravity hump classification yard that processes approximately 3000 railcars per day. The experimental design specifies traffic patterns of varying complexity designed to determine the fundamental relationship between yard throughput volume, the total number of blocks assembled in the yard, and the level of service. Simulation results indicate that yard performance decreases as railcar volume increases and as the number of blocks increases. The simulation results also demonstrate the challenge of two diametrically opposed objectives for yard operators: maximizing railcar connections to outbound trains while departing outbound trains on schedule. Improved knowledge of these relationships can be implemented to advance network, traffic assignment, and blocking models, and allow practitioners to make more informed hump yard operating decisions that improve the efficiency of carload traffic and manifest train operations.

Disputations whether Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) assent to a certain normative system of Ethics in his philosophy has been an interminable topic. Despite his dispiriting claim that philosophy can never ‘guide conduct’ as well as the determinability of character raises the question of how there exists a moral dimension in his works. Indeed, he states explicitly that his views on morality are entirely in the spirit of Christianity, as well as being consistent with the doctrines and ethical precepts of the sacred books of India (The World as Will and Representation, Section 68). Through this, by way of synoptic assessment, many works on Schopenhauer focused on compassion as the basis of his ethics. This paper will then seek to underscore a different vantage point on the grounding of his ethics, i.e., one which is emerging from metaphysics and achieves its embodiment in action. Hence, the principal intent of this paper is to ascertain a possible normative exposition of Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy. This entails an elucidation on whether there is a framework of Ethics embedded in his metaphysics and a critical analysis on the plausibility of this moral philosophy. References Atwell, J. Schopenhauer: The Human Character, Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1990. __________. Schopenhauer on the Character of the World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Cartwright, David. “Scheler’s Criticisms of Schopenhauer’s Theory of Mitleid,” in Schopenhauer–Jahrbuch, (62), 1981. Cartwright, David E. Schopenhauer: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Copleston, Frederick. Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher of Pessimism. London: Barnes and Noble, 1975. Hamlyn, D.W. Schopenhauer. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Hübscher, Arthur, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in Its Intellectual Context: Thinker Against the Tide. Translated by Joachim T. Baer and David E. Cartwright. Lewiston, N.Y : Edwin Mellon Press, 1989. Jacquette, Dale, ed. Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Janaway, Christopher, ed. Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator. Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1998. Jonas, Hans. The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1929. _______________. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964. Madigan, Timothy J. Nietzsche & Schopenhauer On Compassion. Retrieved from https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Schopenhauer_On_Compassion, 2000. Magee, Bryan. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. Oxford: Carendon Press, 1983. Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea, 3 Vols., translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1883. _______________. The World as Will and Representation, Vols. I and II, translated by E. F. J. Payne, New York: Dover Publications, 1969. _______________. The World as Will and Presentation, Vol. I, translated by Richard Aquila in collaboration with David Carus, New York: Longman, 2007. _______________. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, translated by Judith Norman, Alistair Welchman, and Christopher Janaway, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. _______________. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. LaSalle: Open Court Press, 1997. ___________. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Indianapolis: The Bobbs Merrill Company, 1965. ___________. On the Will in Nature. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. New York: Berg Publishers, 1992.___________. The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims. Translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995. Taylor, Richard. “Schopenhauer”. Journal of Philosophy 61 (9),pp.288-289: 1964. Troxell, Mary. Arthur Schopenhauer. Retrieved on February 11, 2017 from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophyhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/schopenh/#SSH2bii 2011 Young, Julian, Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked. "What sort of things do you remember best?" Alice ventured to ask. "Oh, things that happened in the week after next," the Queen replied in a careless tone. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass. It would seem, odd as the notion may appear at first glance, that memory can in fact be thought of as working in two directions: both backwards and forwards. Take, for example, the commonly enough expressed sentiment that one should avail of every opportunity that life presents to "learn from experience". Isn't to do so, in fact, a projection into the future of the 'memory' that has been gained in the past, and stored in the present? Isn't the implication that, with a little careful observation of last week, one can begin to 'remember' what happened in the week after next? Consider now the development of a revolutionary new communications technology. Who are its pioneers? Experience has taught that there are at least three categories of person (or organisation) which are to be found wherever tomorrow is being actualised. They are the visionaries, the enthusiasts, and the entrepreneurs -- though some may argue that this last category would better be called economic opportunists. Of course, these are not, and shouldn't be thought of as, completely distinct categories, separated by impermeable barriers; one can be in all three as easily as not. The early days of Radio fit this model. As an infant technology it was fostered by visionaries like Marconi, enthusiasts like the many around the world who cobbled together their own home-made transmitters and receivers, and entrepreneur/opportunists like Frank Conrad of Westinghouse, whose 8XK transmitted periodically during the first world war to test equipment made by the company for the American military (Mishkind). The emergence of interactive networked computing, and ultimately of the Internet, fits this model too. There were early visionaries like Douglas Engelbart, and the MIT professor J.C.R. Licklider, who were among the first to see a potential for more than simply large scale number crunching in the fledgling electronic computing industry (Rheingold 65-89). Enthusiasts include the North Carolina students who created Usenet, and the Chicago hobbyists who "triggered the worldwide BBS movement because they wanted to transfer files from one PC to another without driving across town" (Rheingold 67). As for entrepreneur/opportunists, well, organisations like Netscape, Yahoo!, and Amazon.com leap to mind. When revolutionary development is underway the potential for change is seen to be boundless. Radio was quickly recognised as a means to cross vast distances, and difficult terrain. It became a lifeline to ships in distress, bridging the dreadful isolation of the unforgiving oceans. It was put to use as a public service: the US Agriculture Department's broadcasting of weather reports as early as 1912 being some of the earliest radio broadcasts in that country (White). Similarly, Westinghouse's 8XK, along with many other fledgling stations, broadcast the results of the US presidential election on the night of November 2nd, 1920 (Mishkind). The "wireless" telegraph helped to join that huge nation together, and having done so, went on to inform and entertain it with news, concerts, lectures and the like. The democratising potential of the new medium and its easily disseminated information was soon recognised and debated: "Will Radio Make People the Government" demanded a 1924 headline in Radio Broadcast, an early industry magazine (Lappin). All this inevitably gave rise to questions of control; for a free medium could also be seen, depending on one's point of view, as a dangerous, anarchic medium. Perhaps those who pay for it should control it; but who is to pay for it, and with what? For a long time there was no clear vision anywhere of how the medium could be made to turn a dollar. In England a tax on the sale of radio hardware was introduced to fund the newly formed, and government owned, British Broadcasting Corporation. Such a model was rejected in the US, however, where large corporations -- among them AT&T, Westinghouse and General Electric -- gradually gained the upper hand. The system they put in place at first involved the leasing of airtime on large networks to commercial 'sponsors', which subsequently grew into direct on-air advertising. It won't have escaped the notice of many, I'm sure, that much of this could just as easily be about the Internet in the 1990s as Radio in the 1920s. And this is where memory comes into play. Certainly there are many, and profound, differences between the two media. The very nature of the Internet may seem to many to be just too decentralised, too anarchic, to ever be effectively harnessed -- or hijacked if you prefer -- by commercial interests. But it was, at one time, also impossible to see how Radio could ever show a profit. And sure, commercial Radio isn't the only kind of Radio out there. Radio National in Australia, for example, is a publicly funded network that does many of the good things a relatively uncoerced technology can do; but is this aspect of the medium central or marginalised, and which do we want it to be? Robert Mc Chesney considers that "to answer the question of whither the Internet, one need only determine where the greatest profits are to be found". This is a fairly bleak view but it may well be true. To find out for yourself where the Internet is likely to go, exercise the memory of the past, and you might remember the future. References Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There: The Annotated Alice. Ed. Martin Gardner. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965. 166-345. Lappin, Todd. "Deja Vu All Over Again." Wired. 11 Aug. 1998 <http://www.wired.com/wired/3.05/features/dejavu.php>. McChesney, Robert. "The Internet and US Communication Policy-Making in Historical and Critical Perspective." Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 1.4 (1995). 30 May 1998 <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol1/issue4/mcchesney.php>. Mishkind, Barry. "Who's On First?" 20 Aug. 1995. 11 Aug. 1998 <http://www.oldradio.com/archives/general/first.php>. Radio Museum. 11 Aug. 1998 <http://home.luna.nl/~arjan-muil/radio/museum.php>. Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Surfing the Internet. London: Minerva, 1995. Surfing the Aether. 11 Aug. 1998 <http://www.northwinds.net/bchris/index.htm>. White, Thomas H. "United States Early Radio History." 25 Jul. 1998. 11 Aug. 1998 <http://www.ipass.net/~whitetho/index.php>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Paul Mc Cormack. "Remembering the Week after Next." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.2 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/week.php>. Chicago style: Paul Mc Cormack, "Remembering the Week after Next," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 2 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/week.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Paul Mc Cormack. (1998) Remembering the week after next. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9808/week.php> ([your date of access]).

Machinofacture, computer control and globalisation have created the appearance that in the relation between humanity and the machine the human possesses ever-deepening power. However, this is a very Whiggish view of the history of science and technology as a field of ever-expanding knowledge. History is littered with examples of technologies which have been abandoned as out-dated, then later attempts to revive them have failed because the expertise has been lost. Technology is not merely a reflection of human needs, but an embodiment of the human condition. Machines can be seen as products of their creator, but in the case of long-lived machines they can out-live their creator whilst embodying some of their expertise and their failings. If there is a human need for that lost experience contained within the machine, then there is a form of remote power exercised through the machine. Although the machine can be owned, and the owner 'controls' the machine, it is not a deity-subject (uni-directional) relation; the machine may fail -- because the master does not understand the processes of the machine, there is no way to enforce the power of ownership. This potential for control loss has resonances with the 'Frankenstein syndrome' where the fear is that humanity could unleash something beyond its control. This fear has found recent expression in the debate about genetically-modified (GM) foods in Europe, taking place not over the results of scientific tests; indeed the debate precedes those tests and concerns the effects of releasing them from the direct (space-time) control by humans in laboratories. Frankenstein's monster and GM-foods share the common trait that both are organic, and it makes more sense that a sentient or at least living object could upset the human-object power relation. The inanimate analogue of this (e.g. the golem of Jewish folklore) has a much weaker hold over popular consciousnesses. Asimov 'built' his robots with the laws of robotics to prevent upsetting the hegemony of human over machine. Even huge advances recently in computing power, neural networks and artificial intelligence have come nowhere near producing an Asimov robot with the freedom to have and exercise power over humanity. However, there are other more mundane and diffuse ways that machines can have power over humans. The company Joyce-Loebl, based in the North East of England, from the 1950s to the 1970s built thousands of microdensitometers, and through the effort of its sales teams sold them all over the world. The company was like a family; little was done in the way of formal drawings -- even the machinists were highly skilled and exercised great initiative; the 'secrets' of the machine were passed through incredibly elaborate apprenticeships, and were diffused into many individuals in a range of trades. The machine's inventor described it in correspondence thus: "many scientific measurements result in a series of darkened bars similar to a barcode. To interpret these bars it is necessary to measure their density. The microdensitometer does this by balancing the signal from the bars with light passing through an optical wedge. This balancing technique gives great accuracy". These machines did not embody absolute power of humans over machines; they came about only because the highly place-specific and combined efforts of a number of highly-skilled complementary craftsmen. At a time when the region was said to be "good for the nearest inch" (i.e. good at shipbuilding) the company made instruments that were "good to the nearest thousandth [of an inch]" (i.e. as precise as clockwork). Loebl, in his forthcoming memoirs, relates a number of examples where the microdensitometer conferred the power to influence human life even when it was notionally under anthropological control. It found a crashed moon probe from a lunar satellite photograph when all other analyses had failed, and allowed him, as a one-time refugee from the Nazis, to snub the apartheid regime by refusing to sell machines to South African firms. More palpably, it disproved the evidence in a murder appeal where the machine 'proved' that the rope submitted as evidence could not have produced the marks on the neck of the strangulated wife (legal power). Although the machine required an operator to use, in common with many technologies today, there is a separation between the knowledge necessary to manufacture the microdensitometer, and that required to make it carry out it designated functions. It appeared for a time as if microdensitometers were a commodity to be bought and sold; humans controlled them absolutely through determining where they were located. The appearance of absolute control only arose out of a particular techno-economic configuration particular to the 1960s, dependent on the mass-production and mass marketing of the machine. When this configuration disintegrated, so the balance of power shifted towards the machine. Joyce-Loebl broke up in the 1980s; technologies moved towards analytic software rather than electro-mechanical measurement; the skills of craftsmen were lost; the instrument teams drifted. Electronic instrument standardisation and the effects of the PC on software seemed to spell the end for analogue hardware. However, the microdensitometer remains the most precise instrument for the measurement of grey scale on photograph emulsions, yet the skills to produce microdensitometers have been lost. The Soviets tried for over a decade to reverse engineer the machine, even copying faults in a screw thread, but the machine steadfastly 'refused' to be copied, and the imitation would not work (geopolitical power). One film-manufacturing multi-national firm has paid thousands of pounds for the refurbishment of one such device from the 1970s (commercial power). The device is still in use in scientific, medical and engineering installations world-wide (technical power). Joyce-Loebl broke up in the 1980s; technologies moved towards analytic software rather than electro-mechanical measurement; the skills of craftsmen were lost; the instrument teams drifted. Electronic instrument standardisation and the effects of the PC on software seemed to spell the end for analogue hardware. However, the microdensitometer remains the most precise instrument for the measurement of grey scale on photograph emulsions, yet the skills to produce microdensitometers have been lost. The Soviets tried for over a decade to reverse engineer the machine, even copying faults in a screw thread, but the machine steadfastly 'refused' to be copied, and the imitation would not work (geopolitical power). One film-manufacturing multi-national firm has paid thousands of pounds for the refurbishment of one such device from the 1970s (commercial power). The device is still in use in scientific, medical and engineering installations world-wide (technical power). Value is not identical to power, but arises in the independence the machines have as bearers of the skills of their creators. It is not just the skill embodied in those machines, but the machines arise because of the particular contingency of their creation. Although design conventions can exist, machines are purposively designed and manufactured, the outcomes of these processes affecting their final state. The machine is not just the creature its maker desires, but like Frankenstein's Monster, emerges from a struggle to shape the raw materials to the designer's ends, and records that struggle for posterity. In the case of the micro-densitometer, understanding the reasons for the precise arrangement of the various optics, mechanisms, metal and electronics is impossible. However, in the machine lies a series of messages about the context of the creation of the machine. The North East of England is a declining industrial region; the machine can be read as a recipe for creating material success in a high-technology industry in the North East even given the absence of contemporary activity -- 'assemble a range of disparate craft skills, make a branded product, sell globally, find new avenues for your skill base'. Mythology has served a similar purpose in a number of ancient civilisations. To westerners raised on an abstract, Kiplingesque diet of 'native tales' providing neat explanations of natural phenomena, these myths might appear pointless, but even today, in their context of a particular location, contain highly encoded cultural information for survival and edification (e.g. Australian Aboriginal peoples). The power of these myths provided access to extensive micro-zoological and anthropological observation and understanding without necessarily understanding why. The Joyce-Loebl microdensitometer came out of particular situation in the economy of the North East of England which has materially all but vanished. Messrs. Joyce and Loebl built a company making branded equipment selling worldwide, in a way that was and is supposed to be impossible for a heavy industrial region, whose cultural traits of the industrial structure are supposed to endure in the communitarian and anti-entrepreneurial aspirations of the working classes. However, the microdensitometer challenges the notion that the North East was only a centre of heavy industry, but was once somewhere where instruments of beauty and purpose were fashioned and sold. The Joyce-Loebl microdensitometer came out of particular situation in the economy of the North East of England which has materially all but vanished. Messrs. Joyce and Loebl built a company making branded equipment selling worldwide, in a way that was and is supposed to be impossible for a heavy industrial region, whose cultural traits of the industrial structure are supposed to endure in the communitarian and anti-entrepreneurial aspirations of the working classes. However, the microdensitometer challenges the notion that the North East was only a centre of heavy industry, but was once somewhere where instruments of beauty and purpose were fashioned and sold. Just as the Story of the Dreaming explains that "storytelling, while explaining the past, helps young Indigenous Australians maintain dignity and self-respect in the present", there is a modern role for past machines in helping the inhabitants of declining industrial regions maintain their dignity and sustain themselves economically into the future. Much of the debate about industrial renewal in the UK has recently focussed around the notion of the knowledge economy in the abstract form; the microdensitometer is the embodiment of how a knowledge economy can be created. This suggests three potential ways of understanding a machine beyond the delivery of a piece of technological functionality within a production paradigm. A machine can at once have and exercise technological, political and cultural power when the constraints of its control are removed. This brings us back to the starting point of the article, the idea of the Frankenstein monster, who demonstrated a highly spectacular specific physical power; in a modern(-ist?) reality, the power of many 'rogue machines' (those beyond tight contextual control) is entirely more mundane, diffuse and abstract, yet represents a real influence on life experiences in the modern world. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Paul Benneworth. "The Machine as Mythology -- The Case of the Joyce-Loebl Microdensitometer." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/micro.php>. Chicago style: Paul Benneworth, "The Machine as Mythology -- The Case of the Joyce-Loebl Microdensitometer," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/micro.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Paul Benneworth. (1999) The machine as mythology -- the case of the Joyce-Loebl microdensitometer. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/micro.php> ([your date of access]).

There’s always this never-ending discussion about the curator who imposes meaning or imposes the concept of art, of what art is. I think this is the wrong opposition. Every artwork produces its concept, or a concept of what art is. And the role of the curator is not to produce a concept of art but to invent, to fabricate, elaborate reading grids or coexistence grids between them.(Nicolas Bourriaud quoted in Bourriaud, Lunghi, O’Neill, and Ruf 91–92)In 2010 at a conference in Rotterdam, Nicolas Bourriaud, Enrico Lunghi, Paul O’Neill, and Beatrix Ruf discussed the question, “Is the curator per definition a political animal?” This paper draws on their discussion when posing the reverse scenario—is the political animal per definition a curator in the context of the development of large-scale public policy? In exploring this question, I suggest that recent conceptual discussions centring on “the curatorial turn” in the arena of the creative arts provide a useful framework for understanding and managing opportunities and pitfalls in policymaking that is influenced by news media. Such a conceptual understanding is important. My empirical research has identified a transport policy arena that is changing due to news media scrutiny in Sydney, Australia. My findings are that the discourses arising and circulating in the public and the news media wield considerable influence. I posit in this paper the view that recent academic discussion of curatorial practices could identify more effective and successful approaches to policy development and implementation. I also question whether some of the key problems highlighted by commentary on the curatorial turn, such as the silencing of the voice of the artist, find parallels in policy as the influence of the bureaucrat or technical expert is diminished by the rise of the politician as curator in mediatised policy. The Political AnimalPaul O’Neill defines a political animal: “to be a passionate and human visionary—someone who bridges gaps, negotiates the impossible in order to generate change, even slight change, movements, a shivering” (Bourriaud et al. 90). O’Neill’s definition is a different definition from Aristotle’s famous assertion that humans (collectively) are the “political animal” because they are the only animals to possess speech (Danta and Vardoulakis 3). The essence of O’Neill’s definition shifts from the Aristotelian view that all humans are political, towards what Chris Danta and Dimitris Vardoulakis (4) refer to as “the consumption of the political by politics,” where the domain of the political is the realm of the elite few rather than innately human as Aristotle suggests. Moreover, there is a suggestion in O’Neill’s definition that the “political animal” is the consummate politician, creating change against great opposition. I suggest that this idea of struggle and adversity in O’Neill’s definition echoes policy development’s own “turn” of the early 1990s, “the argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning” (Fischer and Forester 43). The Argumentative Turn The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning is premised on the assertion that “policy is made of language” (Majone 1). It represents a seismic shift in previously championed academic conceptions of policy analysis—decisionism, rationality, the economic model of choice, and other models that advocate measured, rational, and objective policy development processes. The argumentative turn highlights the importance of communication in policy development. Prior to this turn, policy analysts considered formal communication to be something that happened after policy elites had completed the scientific, objective, analytical, and rational work. Communication was perceived as being the process of “seducing” or the “‘mere words’ that add gloss to the important stuff” (Throgmorton 117–19). Communication had meant selling or “spinning” the policy—a task often left to the devices of the public relations industry by the “less scrupulous” policymaker (Dryzek 227).The new line of inquiry posits the alternative view that, far from communication being peripheral, “the policy process is constituted by and mediated through communicative practices” (Fischer and Gottweis 2). Thanks largely to the work of Deborah Stone and Giandomenico Majone, academics began to ask, “What if our language does not simply mirror or picture the world but instead profoundly shapes our view of it in the first place?” (Fischer and Forester 1). The importance of this turn to the argument, I posit in this paper, is illustrated by Stone when she contends that the communication of conflicting views and interests create a world where paradoxical positions on policy are inevitable. Stone states, “Ask a politician to define a problem and he will probably draw a battlefield and tell you who stands on which side. The analytical language of politics includes ‘for and against,’ ‘supporters and enemies,’ ‘our side and their side’” (166). Stone describes a policymaking process that is inherently difficult. Her ideas echo O’Neill’s intonation that in order for movement or even infinitesimal change it is the negotiation of the impossible that makes a political animal. The Mediatisation of Sydney Transport Stone and Majone speak only cursorily of the media in policy development. However, in recent years academics have increasingly contended that “mediatisation” be recognised as referring to the increasing influence of media in social, cultural, and political spheres (Deacon and Stanyer; Strömbäck and Esser; Shehata and Strömbäck). My own research into the influence of mediatisation on transport policy and projects in Sydney has centred more specifically on the influence of news media. My focus has been a trend towards news media influence in Australian politics and policy that has been observed by academics for more than a decade (Craig; Young; Ward, PR State; Ward, Public Affair; Ward, Power). My research entailed two case study projects, the failed Sydney CBD Metro (SCM) rail line and a North West Rail Link (NWR) currently under construction. Data-gathering included a news media study of 180 relevant print articles; 30 expert interviews with respondents from politics, the bureaucracy, transport planning, news media, and public relations, whose work related to transport (with a number working on the case study projects); and surveys, interviews, and focus groups with 149 public respondents. The research identified projects whose contrasting fortunes tell a significant story in relation to the influence of news media. The SCM, despite being a project deemed to be of considerable merit by the majority of expert respondents, was, as stated by a transport planner who worked on the project, “poorly sold,” which “turned it into a project that was very easy to ridicule.” Following a resulting period of intense news media criticism, the SCM was abandoned. As a transport reporter for a daily newspaper asserts in an interview, the prevailing view in the news media is that the project “was done on the back of an envelope.” According to experts with knowledge of the SCM, that years of planning had been undertaken was not properly presented to the public. Conversely, the experts I interviewed deem the NWR to be a low-priority project for Sydney. As a former chief of staff within both federal and state government departments including transport states, “if you are going to put money into anything in Sydney it would not be the NWR.” However, in the project’s favour is an overwhelming dominant public and media discourse that I label The north-west of Sydney is overdue rail transport. A communications respondent contends in an interview that because the NWR has “been talked about for so long” it holds “the right sighting, if you like, in people’s minds,” in other words, the media and the public have become used to the idea of the project.Ultimately, my findings, dealt with in more detail elsewhere (Richardson), suggest that powerful news media and public discourses, if not managed effectively, can be highly problematic for policymaking. This was found to be the case for the failure of the SCM. It is with this finding that I assert that the concept of curating the discourses surrounding a policy arena could hold considerable merit as a conceptual framework for discourse management. The Curatorial Turn in Policy Development? I was alerted to the idea of curating mediatised policy development during an expert interview for my empirical research. The respondent, chief editor of a Sydney newspaper, stated that, with an overwhelming mountain of information, news, views, and commentary being generated daily through the likes of the Internet and social media, the public needs curators to sift and sort the most important themes and arguments. The expert suggested this is now part of a journalist’s role. The idea of journalists as curators is far from new (Bakker 596). Nor is it the purpose of this paper. However, what struck me in this notion of curating was the critical role of sifting, sorting and ultimately selecting which themes, ideas, or pieces of information are privileged in myriad choices. My own empirical research was indicating that the management of highly influential news media and public discourses surrounding transport infrastructure also involved a considerable level of selection. Therefore, I hypothesised that the concept of curating might aid the managing of discourses when it comes to communicating for successful policy and project development that is subject to news media scrutiny. Research into scholarship has indicated that the concept of “the curatorial turn” is significant to this hypothesis. Since the 1960s the role of curator in art exhibition has shifted from that of “caretaker” for a collection to the shaper of an exhibition (O’Neill, “Turn”; O’Neill, Culture). Central to this shift is “the changing perception of the curator as carer to a curator who has a more creative and active part to play within the production of art itself” (O’Neill, Turn 243). Some commentators go so far as to suggest that curators have become cultural agents that “participate in the production of cultural value” (244). The curator’s role in exhibition design has also been equated to that of an author or auteur that drives an exhibition’s meaning (251–52). Why is this important for policy development? It is my view that there is certainly merit to viewing a significant part of the role of the political animal in policymaking as the curator of public and media discourse. As Beatrix Ruf suggests, the role of the curator is to create a “freedom for things to happen” within “a societal context” that not only takes into account the needs of the “artist” but also the “audience” (Bourriaud et al. 91). If we were to substitute bureaucrat for artist and media/public for audience then Ruf’s suggestion seems particularly relevant for the communication of policy. To return to Bourriaud’s quote that began this paper, perhaps the role of the curator/policymaker is not solely to produce a policy “but to invent, to fabricate, elaborate reading grids or coexistence grids,” to manage the discourses that influence the policy arena (Bourriaud et al. 92). Furthermore, the answer to why the concept of the curatorial turn seems relevant to policy development requires consideration not only of the rise of the voice and influence of the curator/policymaker but also of those at whose expense this shift has occurred. Through the rise of the curator the voice of the artist has dimmed. As the exhibition is elevated to “the status of quasi-artwork,” individual artworks themselves become simply “a useful fragment” (O’Neill, “Turn” 253). One of the underlying tensions of the curatorial turn is the rise of actors that are not practicing artists themselves. In other words, the producers of art, the artists, have less influence over their own practice. In New South Wales (NSW), we have witnessed a similar scenario with the steady rise of the voice and influence of the politician (and political adviser), at the expense of the public service. This loss of bureaucratic power was embedded structurally in the mid-1970s when Premier Neville Wran established the Ministerial Advisory Unit (MAU) to oversee NSW state government decisions. A respondent for my research states that when he began his career as a public servant: politicians didn’t really have a lot of ideas about things … the public service really ran the place … [Premier Wran] said, ‘this isn’t good enough. I’m being manipulated by the government departments. I’m going to set up something called the MAU which is politically appointed as a countervailing force to the bureaucracy to get the advice that I want.’The respondent infers a power grab by political actors to stymie the influence of the bureaucracy. This view is shared by several expert respondents for my research, as well as being substantiated by historian John Gunn (503). One of the clear results of the structural change has been that a politically driven media focus is now embedded in the structure of government policy and project decision-making. Instead of taking its lead from priorities emanating from the community, the bureaucracy is instead left with little choice but to look to the minister for guidance. As a project management consultant to government states in an interview:I think today the bureaucrat who makes the hard administrative decisions, the management decisions, is basically outweighed by communications, public relations, media relations director … the politicians are poll driven not policy driven. The respondent makes a point with which former politician Lindsay Tanner (Tanner) and academic Ian Ward (Ward, Power) agree—Australian politicians are increasingly structuring their operations around news media. The bureaucracy has become less relevant to policymaking as a result. My empirical research indicates this. The SCM and the NWR were highly publicised projects where the views of transport experts were largely ignored. They represent cases where the voice of the experts/artists had been completely suppressed by the voice of the politician/curator. I contend that this is where key questions of the role of the politician and the curator converge. Experts interviewed for my research express concerns that policymaking has been altered by structural changes to the bureaucracy. Similarly, some academics concerned with the rise of the curator question whether the shift will change the very nature of art (O’Neill, Cultures). A shared concern of the art world and those witnessing the policy arena in NSW is that the thoughts and ideas of those that do are being overshadowed by the views of those who talk. In terms of curatorial practice, O’Neill (Cultures) cites the views of Mick Wilson, who speaks of the rise of the “Foucauldian moment” and the “ubiquitous appeal of the term ‘discourse’ as a word to conjure and perform power,” where “even talking is doing something.” As O’Neill contends, “at this extreme, the discursive stands in the place of ‘doing’ within discourses on curatorial practice” (43). O’Neill submits Wilson’s point as an extreme view within the curatorial turn. However, the concern for the art world should be similar to the one experienced in the policy arena. Technical advice from the bureaucracy (doers) to ministers (talkers) has changed. In an interview with me, a partner in one of Australia’s leading architectural and planning practices contends that the technical advice of the bureaucracy to ministers is not as “fearless and robust” as it once was. Furthermore, he is concerned that planners have lost their influence as ministers now look to political advisers rather than technical advisers for direction. He states, “now what happens is most advisors to ministers are political advisers and they will give political advice … the planning advice hasn’t come from the planners.” The ultimate concern is that, through a silencing of the technical expert, policymaking is losing a vital layer of experience and knowledge that can only be to the detriment of the practice and its beneficiaries, the public. The closer one looks, the more evident the similarities between curating and policy development become. Acute budgetary limitations exist. There is an increased reliance on public funding. Large-scale curating, like policy development, involves “a negotiation of the relationship between public and private interests” (Ruf in Bourriaud et al. 90). There is also a tension between short- and long-term outlooks as well as local and global perspectives (Lunghi in Bourriaud et al. 97). And, significantly for my argument for the privileging of the concept of curating of discourse in policy, curating has also been called “a battlefield of ideas in which the public (or audience) has become ‘the big Other’” in that “everything that cannot find its audience, its public, is highly suspicious or very problematic” (Bourriaud in Bourriaud et al. 96–97). The closer the inspection, the starker the similarities of each pursuit. Lessons, Ramifications and Conclusions What can policymakers learn from the curatorial turn? For policymaking, it seems that the argumentative turn, the rise of news mediatisation, the strengthening of power and influence of the politician, and the “Foucauldian moment” have seen the rise of the discursive in place of doing that some quarters identify as being the case with the curatorial turn (O’Neill, Cultures). Therefore, it would be pertinent for policymakers to heed Bourriaud’s statement that began this paper: “the role of the curator is not to produce a concept of art (or policy) but to invent, to fabricate, elaborate reading grids or coexistence grids between them” (Bourriaud et al. 92). Is such a method of curating discourse the way forward for the political animal that seeks to achieve the politically “impossible” in policymaking? Perhaps for policymaking the importance of the concept of curating holds both opportunity and a warning. The opportunity, exemplified by the success of the NWR and the failure of the SCM projects in Sydney, is in accepting the role of media and public discourses in policy development so that they may be more thoroughly investigated and understood before being more effectively folded into the policymaking process. The warning lies in the concerns the curatorial turn has raised over the demise of the artist in light of the rise of discourse. The voice of the technical expert appears to be fading. How do we effectively curate discourses as well as restore the bureaucrat to former levels of robust fearlessness? I dare say it will take a political animal to do either. ReferencesBakker, Piet. “Mr Gates Returns.” Journalism Studies 15.5 (2014): 596–606.Bourriaud, Nicolas, Enrico Lunghi, Paul O’Neill, and Beatrix Ruf. “Is the Curator per Definition a Political Animal?” Rotterdam Dialogues: The Critics, the Curators, the Artists. Eds. Zoe Gray, Miriam Kathrein, Nicolaus Schafhausen, Monika Szewczyk, and Ariadne Urlus. Rotterdam: Witte de With Publishers, 2010. 87–99. Craig, Geoffrey. The Media, Politics and Public Life. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 2004.Danta, Chris, and Dimitris Vardoulakis. “The Political Animal.” SubStance 37.3 (2008): 3–6. Dryzek, John S. “Policy Analysis and Planning: From Science to Argument.” The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Eds. Frank Fischer and John Forester. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993. 213–32.Fischer, Frank, and John Forester. “Editors’ Introduction.” The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Eds. Frank Fischer and John Forester. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993. 1–17.Fischer, Frank, and Herbert Gottweis. Argumentative Turn Revisited: Public Policy as Communicative Practice. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2012.Gunn, John. Along Parallel Lines: A History of the Railways of New South Wales. Carlton: Melbourne UP, 1989.Majone, Giandomenico. Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process. New Haven: Yale UP, 1989.O’Neill, Paul. “The Curatorial Turn: From Practice to Discourse.” The Biennial Reader. Eds. Elena Filipovic, Marieke Van Hal, and Solvig Øvstebø. Bergen, Norway: Bergen Kunsthall, 2007. 240–59.———. The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Cultures. Cambridge, MA: The MIT P, 2012.Richardson, Nicholas. “Political Upheaval in Australia: Media, Foucault and Shocking Policy.” Media International Australia. Forthcoming.Shehata, Adam, and Jesper Strömbäck. “Mediation of Political Realities: Media as Crucial Sources of Information.” Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies. Eds. Frank Esser and Jesper Strömbäck. Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 93–112. Stone, Deborah. Policy Paradox and Political Reason. Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1988.Strömbäck, Jesper, and Frank Esser. “Mediatization of Politics: Towards a Theoretical Framework.” Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies. Eds. Frank Esser and Jesper Strömbäck. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 3–28.Tanner, Lindsay. Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy. Carlton North, Victoria: Scribe, 2011.Throgmorton, James A. “Survey Research as Rhetorical Trope: Electric Power Planning in Chicago.” The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Eds. Frank Fischer and John Forester. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1993. 117–44.Ward, Ian. “An Australian PR State?” Australian Journal of Communication 30.1 (2003): 25–42. ———. “Lobbying as a Public Affair: PR and Politics in Australia.” Communication, Creativity and Global Citizenship. ANZCA: Brisbane, 2009. 1039–56. ‹http://www.anzca.net/documents/anzca-09-1/refereed-proceedings-2009-1/79-lobbying-as-a-public-affair-pr-and-politics-in-australia-1/file.html›.———. “The New and Old Media, Power and Politics.” Government, Politics, Power and Policy in Australia. Eds. Dennis Woodward, Andrew Parkin, and John Summers. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson, 2010. 374–93.Young, Sally. “Killing Competition: Restricting Access to Political Communication Channels in Australia.” AQ: Journal of Contemporary Analysis 75.3 (2003): 9–15.

Paul Theroux, like most writers, is far uglier in person than he is in photographs. For one thing, there's the matter of his bluntly-cut toupee, which tilts noticeably from side to side as he shifts in his chair. For another, there are Theroux's teeth, which are so badly stained they seem to be carved from the driftwood that dots the nearby Cape Cod shoreline. Never mind his unpleasant habit of hacking up massive gobs of phlegm, which he then expectorates into the Persian carpet at his visitor's feet. So begins the introduction to Dwight Garner's interview with the author in Salon in 1996. Though he continues… None of this is true, of course. I've never met Paul Theroux, and have no reason to believe that he wears a toupee, or has rotten teeth, or likes to spit into his carpet. But he has encouraged me, over the course of several telephone conversations, to make things up about him. In 1989 Theroux wrote a book called My Secret History. He declared quite emphatically that it was a work of fiction, and that his central character Andre Parent -- 'a writer, a world traveller, a lover of every kind of woman he chances to meet in a life as varied as a man can lead' -- while loosely based on his experiences, was a character that 'strolled out of my imagination'. Despite this, however, many critics continued to label it as a 'biographical work… couched as fiction to allow for creative license'. Partly in response to this, in 1996 Theroux wrote My Other Life 'about a fictional character named Paul Theroux, who has led a life quite similar to the author's own… But for the most part the 'truth' ends there' (Garner). In this novel Theroux aims to explore the 'wildly shifting nature of identities'. Did he really meet the Queen, interviewer Garner asks? 'Yes', says Theroux. But no, she didn't fart! Apart from his deliberate toying with the reader in this book (and perhaps an often misunderstood sense of humour/irony… he is often described as 'prickly', 'irascible', 'doesn't suffer fools gladly' and 'dyspeptic', while he says of himself 'I believe I have a sunny disposition and am not naturally a grouch') perhaps the confusion comes as a result -- unlike his friend and fellow travel writer Bruce Chatwin -- of his producing equal parts of fiction and travel writing, and drawing clear distinctions between the two. Unlike, as he describes: 'the highly imaginative works of someone like the late Bruce Chatwin, who was never quite sure if he was writing travel books or novels. Not that he cared much – the question nearly almost produced his loudest and most desperate laugh, as though he was being tickled in the ribs by a complete stranger' (Fresh-Air Fiend 37). In the cases of My Secret History and My Other Life, I suspect Theroux is having a similar laugh at our expense. Where Theroux does differ, however, is in his approach to travel writing, about which he states quite clearly: 'a travel writer must report faithfully about what he or she encounters in a country' (Fresh-Air Fiend 40). In fact telling the truth is a central theme of his Fresh-Air Fiend: Travel Writings 1985 – 2000. And he raised this with Chatwin. 'I think when you're writing a travel book you have to come clean', he said. 'This made Bruce laugh, and then he said something that I have always taken to be his motto…'I don't believe in coming clean!'' (Fresh-Air Fiend 388) But of course this begs the question as to whether there is really any such thing as 'fact', and if so, do the facts, in fact, accurately represent 'the truth'? Theroux is also quite clear that 'I have altered my memories in the way we all do -- simplified them, improved them, made them more orderly' (Fresh-Air Fiend 7). And he illustrates that 'the books are also, incidentally, the adventures of individuals. Ella Mailart's Forbidden Journey is exactly the same trip as Peter Flemming's in News From Tartary, since they were travelling companions. But the books read like different trips, as anyone who compares them will see. (Hers is clear-sighted and down to earth; his is often facetious.)' (Fresh-Air Fiend 38). As another fellow travel writer and friend of Theroux's, Jonathan Raban, puts it: In all my books, with the exception of Foreign Land, which very clearly sits in the category called 'novel,' I'm interested in the generic edge, the boundary between what is roughly called nonfiction and what is called fiction. I always want to remind people that the word fiction doesn't come from some imaginary Latin verb meaning I make things up as I go along. It actually comes from a real Latin verb which means I give shape to. The essence of fiction is shaping, patterning, and plotting, using symbols, handling narrative, all those things. In a recent article in the South African Sunday Times newspaper, about the Bessie Head Fellowship Award for 'narrative nonfiction', the reporter says: Looking for a way to hook readers into the human scale workings of the system and arrive at truth rather than only facts, [David] Simon took a year off to shadow a group of Baltimore homicide detectives at work and at play. Then he sat down and wrote a book. Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets… In the 21st century it is the challenge of nonfiction writers to make their real-life stories read like novels. But this of course also raises the issue of the practice in modern media of creative juxtaposition and editing. As Gary Carter, former Executive Director of a large international television company observed soberingly: Consider thirty-two seconds of footage of a child dying of AIDs somewhere in my native South Africa which flickers onto your screen at dinner time, while you eat your evening meal. Those thirty two seconds were part of a much longer sequence filmed by one of our famous objective journalists, who may film but not interfere in the child's plight, a notion so weird that it doesn't bear thinking about too closely. This sequence was transmitted back to London electronically at a cost which would have fed the child for the rest of its life by the standards of its own country. Back at the broadcaster, it was considered and edited by several people eating doughnuts, trying to establish which bits to show and for how long, to hold your attention for the maximum amount of time before some other attention grabbing symbol can be hurled at you in order to stop you flicking channels away from some advert. Do you think that these thirty seconds represent reality as the child experiences it? From the point of view of the child, is your life real? There is no doubt that many of the views expressed by -- and even the experiences of -- Andre Parent, the narrator of My Secret History, are those of Theroux, echoed in his travel book Fresh-Air Fiend. But I suspect that Andre Parent would agree with Theroux that 'fiction gives us the second chance that life denies us' (Fresh-Air Fiend 5). In the final section of My Secret History entitled Two of Everything -- in which Parent describes his arrival at the airport with just a book, no luggage and 'nothing to declare' because he has a house, a toothbrush, and a woman in both London (wife) and Cape Cod (mistress) -- he concludes: But this rainy morning passing through Hounslow I saw there was a third person. He was the observer, the witness to all this… This third man was the one who stood aside and made the notes and wrote the books. His life was lived within himself… He took long solitary walks. He made excuses about urgent meetings and hurried away from demanding friends to eat fish and chips in the park and feed the leavings to the ducks… He was a letter-writer. He killed time at the movies. He went to museums. He sat alone in concerts. He loitered in libraries… If there was a fight on the street, or an argument in the next room, or a crossed line, or someone punishing a child, he was transfixed, and he listened. He was alert, he was alive – not an actor waiting in the wings for a cue that would bring him onstage. This was his real existence, and there was no time to waste, because his life was passing and it was no more than a bubble the size of a seed pearl rising to break at the surface of the liquid in a tumbler, and then it would be over. But perhaps the final word should go to Paul Theroux 'himself', from his essay Memory and Creation: That is why it is often better to look at the past, or at the reality around us, through the window of fiction. A nation's literature is a truer repository of thought and experience, or reality and time, than the fickle and forgettable words of politicians. Anyone who wishes to be strong need only remember. Memory is power. I said earlier that in choosing to be a writer I felt that I was on the right road – but a narrow and lonely one. I remember most of the way, and now I see that it has been the long road home. (Fresh-Air Fiend 21) References Carter, Gary. Paper presented at the Nordic Film and Television Festival, 2002. Garner, Dwight. 'His Secret Life'. Salon 30 (1996).http://www.salon.com/weekly/interview960... [accessed 24 Aug. 2002]. Sunday Times Reporter. The Best in South African Writing. 21 July 2002. http://www.suntimes.co.za/2002/07/21/ins... [accessed 24 Aug. 2002]. Theroux, Paul. My Secret History. Penguin Books, 1989. Theroux, Paul. My Other Life. 1996. Theroux, Paul. Fresh-Air Fiend. Penguin Books, 2000. Weich, Dave. Interview with Jonathan Raban. 8 Nov. 2000.http://www.powells.com/authors/raban.html[accessed 24 Aug. 2002]. Links http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375725946/qid=1030269765/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/104-5316738-4517518?s=books http://www.salon.com/weekly/interview960902.html http://www.powells.com/authors/raban.html http://www.suntimes.co.za/2002/07/21/insight/in17.asp http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395877520/qid%3D1028236101/sr%3D1-11/ref%3Dsr%5F1%5F11/104-5316738-4517518 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0449912000/qid%3D1028235461/sr%3D1-3/ref%3Dsr%5F1%5F3/104-5316738-4517518 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0618126937/qid=103026/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-5316738-4517518?s=books Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Miller, Andie. "What is Real? " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Miller.html &gt. 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For those seeking a diversion from the drudgery of work there are a number of websites offering to take you away. Consider the case of wasteaminute.com. On the site there is everything from flash video games, soft-core pornography and animated nudity, to puzzles and parlour games like poker. In addition, the site offers links to video clips grouped in categories such as “funny,” “accidents,” or “strange.” With its bright yellow bubble letters and elementary design, wasteaminute will never win any Webby awards. It is also unlikely to be part of a lucrative initial public offering for its owner, a web marketing company based in Lexington, Kentucky. The internet ratings company Alexa gives wasteaminute a ranking of 5,880,401 when it comes to the most popular sites online over the last three months, quite some way behind sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, and Windows Live.Wasteaminute is not unique. There exists a group of websites, a micro-genre of sorts, that go out of their way to offer momentary escape from the more serious work at hand, with a similar menu of offerings. These include sites with names such as ishouldbeworking.com, i-am-bored.com, boredatwork.com, and drivenbyboredom.com. These web destinations represent only the most overtly named time-wasting opportunities. Video sharing sites like YouTube or France’s DailyMotion, personalised home pages like iGoogle, and the range of applications available on mobile devices offer similar opportunities for escape. Wasteaminute inspired me to think about the relationship between digital media technologies and waste. In one sense, the site’s offerings remind us of the Internet’s capacity to re-purpose old media forms from earlier phases in the digital revolution, like the retro video game PacMan, or from aspects of print culture, like crosswords (Bolter and Grusin; Straw). For my purposes, though, wasteaminute permits the opportunity to meditate, albeit briefly, on the ways media facilitate wasting time at work, particularly for those working in white- and no-collar work environments. In contemporary work environments work activity and wasteful activity exist on the same platform. With a click of a mouse or a keyboard shortcut, work and diversion can be easily interchanged on the screen, an experience of computing I know intimately from first-hand experience. The blurring of lines between work and waste has accompanied the extension of the ‘working day,’ a concept once tethered to the standardised work-week associated with modernity. Now people working in a range of professions take work out of the office and find themselves working in cafes, on public transportation, and at times once reserved for leisure, like weekends (Basso). In response to the indeterminate nature of when and where we are at work, the mainstream media routinely report about the wasteful use of computer technology for non-work purposes. Stories such as a recent one in the Washington Post which claimed that increased employee use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter led to decreased productivity at work have become quite common in traditional media outlets (Casciato). Media technologies have always offered the prospect of making office work more efficient or the means for management to exercise control over employees. However, those same technologies have also served as the platforms on which one can engage in dilatory acts, stealing time from behind the boss’s back. I suggest stealing time at work may well be a “tactic,” in the sense used by Michel de Certeau, as a means to resist the rules and regulations that structure work and the working life. However, I also consider it to be a tactic in a different sense: websites and other digital applications offer users the means to take time back, in the form of ‘quick hits,’ providing immediate visual or narrative pleasures, or through interfaces which make the time-wasting look like work (Wagman). Reading sites like wasteaminute as examples of ‘office entertainment,’ reminds us of the importance of workers as audiences for web content. An analysis of a few case studies also reveals how the forms of address of these sites themselves recognise and capitalise on an understanding of the rhythms of the working day, as well as those elements of contemporary office culture characterised by interruption, monotony and surveillance. Work, Media, Waste A mass of literature documents the transformations of work brought on by industrialisation and urbanisation. A recent biography of Franz Kafka outlines the rigors imposed upon the writer while working as an insurance agent: his first contract stipulated that “no employee has the right to keep any objects other than those belonging to the office under lock in the desk and files assigned for its use” (Murray 66). Siegfried Kracauer’s collection of writings on salaried workers in Germany in the 1930s argues that mass entertainment offers distractions that inhibit social change. Such restrictions and inducements are exemplary of the attempts to make work succumb to managerial regimes which are intended to maximise productivity and minimise waste, and to establish a division between ‘company time’ and ‘free time’. One does not have to be an industrial sociologist to know the efforts of Frederick W. Taylor, and the disciplines of “scientific management” in the early twentieth century which were based on the idea of making work more efficient, or of the workplace sociology scholarship from the 1950s that drew attention to the ways that office work can be monotonous or de-personalising (Friedmann; Mills; Whyte). Historian JoAnne Yates has documented the ways those transformations, and what she calls an accompanying “philosophy of system and efficiency,” have been made possible through information and communication technologies, from the typewriter to carbon paper (107). Yates evokes the work of James Carey in identifying these developments, for example, the locating of workers in orderly locations such as offices, as spatial in nature. The changing meaning of work, particularly white-collar or bureaucratic labour in an age of precarious employment and neo-liberal economic regimes, and aggressive administrative “auditing technologies,” has subjected employees to more strenuous regimes of surveillance to ensure employee compliance and to protect against waste of company resources (Power). As Andrew Ross notes, after a deep period of self-criticism over the drudgery of work in North American settings in the 1960s, the subsequent years saw a re-thinking of the meaning of work, one that gradually traded greater work flexibility and self-management for more assertive forms of workplace control (9). As Ross notes, this too has changed, an after-effect of “the shareholder revolution,” which forced companies to deliver short-term profitability to its investors at any social cost. With so much at stake, Ross explains, the freedom of employees assumed a lower priority within corporate cultures, and “the introduction of information technologies in the workplace of the new capitalism resulted in the intensified surveillance of employees” (12). Others, like Dale Bradley, have drawn attention to the ways that the design of the office itself has always concerned itself with the bureaucratic and disciplinary control of bodies in space (77). The move away from physical workspaces such as ‘the pen’ to the cubicle and now from the cubicle to the virtual office is for Bradley a move from “construction” to “connection.” This spatial shift in the way in which control over employees is exercised is symbolic of the liquid forms in which bodies are now “integrated with flows of money, culture, knowledge, and power” in the post-industrial global economies of the twenty-first century. As Christena Nippert-Eng points out, receiving office space was seen as a marker of trust, since it provided employees with a sense of privacy to carry out affairs—both of a professional or of a personal matter—out of earshot of others. Privacy means a lot of things, she points out, including “a relative lack of accountability for our immediate whereabouts and actions” (163). Yet those same modalities of control which characterise communication technologies in workspaces may also serve as the platforms for people to waste time while working. In other words, wasteful practices utilize the same technology that is used to regulate and manage time spent in the workplace. The telephone has permitted efficient communication between units in an office building or between the office and outside, but ‘personal business’ can also be conducted on the same line. Radio stations offer ‘easy listening’ formats, providing unobtrusive music so as not to disturb work settings. However, they can easily be tuned to other stations for breaking news, live sports events, or other matters having to do with the outside world. Photocopiers and fax machines facilitate the reproduction and dissemination of communication regardless of whether it is it work or non-work related. The same, of course, is true for computerised applications. Companies may encourage their employees to use Facebook or Twitter to reach out to potential clients or customers, but those same applications may be used for personal social networking as well. Since the activities of work and play can now be found on the same platform, employers routinely remind their employees that their surfing activities, along with their e-mails and company documents, will be recorded on the company server, itself subject to auditing and review whenever the company sees fit. Employees must be careful to practice image management, in order to ensure that contradictory evidence does not appear online when they call in sick to the office. Over time the dynamics of e-mail and Internet etiquette have changed in response to such developments. Those most aware of the distractive and professionally destructive features of downloading a funny or comedic e-mail attachment have come to adopt the acronym “NSFW” (Not Safe for Work). Even those of us who don’t worry about those things are well aware that the cache and “history” function of web browsers threaten to reveal the extent to which our time online is spent in unproductive ways. Many companies and public institutions, for example libraries, have taken things one step further by filtering out access to websites that may be peripheral to the primary work at hand.At the same time contemporary workplace settings have sought to mix both work and play, or better yet to use play in the service of work, to make “work” more enjoyable for its workers. Professional development seminars, team-building exercises, company softball games, or group outings are examples intended to build morale and loyalty to the company among workers. Some companies offer their employees access to gyms, to game rooms, and to big screen TVs, in return for long and arduous—indeed, punishing—hours of time at the office (Dyer-Witheford and Sherman; Ross). In this manner, acts of not working are reconfigured as a form of work, or at least as a productive experience for the company at large. Such perks are offered with an assumption of personal self-discipline, a feature of what Nippert-Eng characterises as the “discretionary workplace” (154). Of course, this also comes with an expectation that workers will stay close to the office, and to their work. As Sarah Sharma recently argued in this journal, such thinking is part of the way that late capitalism constructs “innovative ways to control people’s time and regulate their movement in space.” At the same time, however, there are plenty of moments of gentle resistance, in which the same machines of control and depersonalisation can be customised, and where individual expressions find their own platforms. A photo essay by Anna McCarthy in the Journal of Visual Culture records the inspirational messages and other personalised objects with which workers adorn their computers and work stations. McCarthy’s photographs represent the way people express themselves in relation to their work, making it a “place where workplace politics and power relations play out, often quite visibly” (McCarthy 214). Screen SecretsIf McCarthy’s photo essay illustrates the overt ways in which people bring personal expression or gentle resistance to anodyne workplaces, there are also a series of other ‘screen acts’ that create opportunities to waste time in ways that are disguised as work. During the Olympics and US college basketball playoffs, both American broadcast networks CBS and NBC offered a “boss button,” a graphic link that a user could immediately click “if the boss was coming by” that transformed the screen to something was associated with the culture of work, such as a spreadsheet. Other purveyors of networked time-wasting make use of the spreadsheet to mask distraction. The website cantyouseeimbored turns a spreadsheet into a game of “Breakout!” while other sites, like Spreadtweet, convert your Twitter updates into the form of a spreadsheet. Such boss buttons and screen interfaces that mimic work are the presentday avatars of the “panic button,” a graphic image found at the bottom of websites back in the days of Web 1.0. A click of the panic button transported users away from an offending website and towards something more legitimate, like Yahoo! Even if it is unlikely that boss keys actually convince one’s superiors that one is really working—clicking to a spreadsheet only makes sense for a worker who might be expected to be working on those kinds of documents—they are an index of how notions of personal space and privacy play out in the digitalised workplace. David Kiely, an employee at an Australian investment bank, experienced this first hand when he opened an e-mail attachment sent to him by his co-workers featuring a scantily-clad model (Cuneo and Barrett). Unfortunately for Kiely, at the time he opened the attachment his computer screen was visible in the background of a network television interview with another of the bank’s employees. Kiely’s inauspicious click (which made his the subject of an investigation by his employees) continues to circulate on the Internet, and it spawned a number of articles highlighting the precarious nature of work in a digitalised environment where what might seem to be private can suddenly become very public, and thus able to be disseminated without restraint. At the same time, the public appetite for Kiely’s story indicates that not working at work, and using the Internet to do it, represents a mode of media consumption that is familiar to many of us, even if it is only the servers on the company computer that can account for how much time we spend doing it. Community attitudes towards time spent unproductively online reminds us that waste carries with it a range of negative signifiers. We talk about wasting time in terms of theft, “stealing time,” or even more dramatically as “killing time.” The popular construction of television as the “boob tube” distinguishes it from more ‘productive’ activities, like spending time with family, or exercise, or involvement in one’s community. The message is simple: life is too short to be “wasted” on such ephemera. If this kind of language is less familiar in the digital age, the discourse of ‘distraction’ is more prevalent. Yet, instead of judging distraction a negative symptom of the digital age, perhaps we should reinterpret wasting time as the worker’s attempt to assert some agency in an increasingly controlled workplace. ReferencesBasso, Pietro. Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Lives in the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso, 2003. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000.Bradley, Dale. “Dimensions Vary: Technology, Space, and Power in the 20th Century Office”. Topia 11 (2004): 67-82.Casciato, Paul. “Facebook and Other Social Media Cost UK Billions”. Washington Post, 5 Aug. 2010. 11 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/05/AR2010080503951.html›.Cuneo, Clementine, and David Barrett. “Was Banker Set Up Over Saucy Miranda”. The Daily Telegraph 4 Feb. 2010. 21 May 2010 ‹http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/was-banker-set-up-over-saucy-miranda/story-e6frewz0-1225826576571›.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Vol. 1. Berkeley: U of California P. 1988.Dyer-Witheford, Nick, and Zena Sharman. "The Political Economy of Canada's Video and Computer Game Industry”. Canadian Journal of Communication 30.2 (2005). 1 May 2010 ‹http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/1575/1728›.Friedmann, Georges. Industrial Society. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1955.Kracauer, Siegfried. The Salaried Masses. London: Verso, 1998.McCarthy, Anna. Ambient Television. Durham: Duke UP, 2001. ———. “Geekospheres: Visual Culture and Material Culture at Work”. Journal of Visual Culture 3 (2004): 213-21.Mills, C. Wright. White Collar. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1951. Murray, Nicholas. Kafka: A Biography. New Haven: Yale UP, 2004.Newman, Michael. “Ze Frank and the Poetics of Web Video”. First Monday 13.5 (2008). 1 Aug. 2010 ‹http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2102/1962›.Nippert-Eng, Christena. Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life. Chicago: U. of Chicago P, 1996.Power, Michael. The Audit Society. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Ross, Andrew. No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004. Sharma, Sarah. “The Great American Staycation and the Risk of Stillness”. M/C Journal 12.1 (2009). 11 May 2010 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/122›. Straw, Will. “Embedded Memories”. Residual Media Ed. Charles Acland. U. of Minnesota P., 2007. 3-15.Whyte, William. The Organisation Man. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957. Wagman, Ira. “Log On, Goof Off, Look Up: Facebook and the Rhythms of Canadian Internet Use”. How Canadians Communicate III: Contexts for Popular Culture. Eds. Bart Beaty, Derek, Gloria Filax Briton, and Rebecca Sullivan. Athabasca: Athabasca UP 2009. 55-77. ‹http://www2.carleton.ca/jc/ccms/wp-content/ccms-files/02_Beaty_et_al-How_Canadians_Communicate.pdf›Yates, JoAnne. “Business Use of Information Technology during the Industrial Age”. A Nation Transformed by Information. Eds. Alfred D. Chandler & James W. Cortada. Oxford: Oxford UP., 2000. 107-36.

The causes of the environmental crisis are many and diverse, and so are the possible ways to handle and eventually resolve this crisis. This essay advances one of such possible ways which results from relating the following two considerations. On the one hand, a fundamental kind of cause attributed to this crisis, on a theoretical level, concerns the perspectives used to determine or weigh the value of nature for humans. The analysis of these perspectives is the primary task of environmental ethics. On the other hand, on a practical level, the usual causes of the environmental damages of great magnitude are the business acts of corporations. Corporations, for instance, are the ones extracting enormous resources from nature and likewise the ones dumping wastes into it on a large scale. These considerations give rise to the question of which theory in environmental ethics will appropriately serve as a moral guide for corporations in their dealings with the natural environment. In accordance with the type of ethical standing that can be attributed to corporations, this essay endorses a rationalist ethical perspective in the Kantian form to address the said question. References Callicot, J. Baird. “An Ecocentric Environmental Ethic.” Applying Ethics. 6th edition. Ed. Jeffrey Olen and Vincent Barry, 485-491. New York: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1999. Coates, John. “The Environmental Crisis: Implications for Social Work.” Journal of Progressive Human Services 16, no. 1 (2005): 25-49. _______. “Exploring the Roots of the Environmental Crisis: Opportunity for Social Transformation. Critical Social Work 4, no. 1 (2003). Retrieved from: <http://www1.uwindsor.ca/criticalsocialwork/exploring-the-roots-ofthe-environmental-crisis-opportunity-for-social-transformation.> Dobson, John. “Defending the Stakeholder Model: A Comment on Hasnas, and on a Dunfee’s MOM.” Business Ethics Quarterly 9, no. 2 (1999): 337-345. Elliot, Alexander, James Cullis, and Vinita Damodaran, eds. Climate Change and the Humanities: Historical, Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Contemporary Environmental Crisis. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. French, Peter. “The Corporation as a Moral Person.” In Business Ethics: A Philosophical Reader, edited by Thomas White, 228-235. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1993. __________. Corporate Ethics. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1995. Hoffman, Michael. “Business and Environmental Ethics.” In Business Ethics: A Philosophical Reader, edited by Thomas White, 830-839. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1993. Hollander, Jack. The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not affluence, is the Environment’s Number One Enemy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Jamieson, Dale. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy. Oxford: Balckwell, 2001. Kant, Immanuel. “The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals.” In Basic Writings of Kant, trans. Thomas Abbot, edited by Allan Wood, New York: The Modern Library, 2001. _________.“The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals.” In Great Books of the World. Vol. 42 Kant, edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952a. _________. Critique of Practical Reason. In Great Books of the Western World, edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins, Colorado: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952b. Leopold, Aldo. “The Land Ethic.” In Applying Ethics, 6th edition, edited by Jeffrey Olen and Vincent Barry, 460-469. New York: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1999. Mabaquiao, Napoleon Jr. “Ang Mabuting Kalooban at Sukdulang Prinsipyo ng Etika: Mula sa Pananaw ni Immanuel Kant.” Malay 17, no. 1 (2006): 25-39. _________. “Corporations and the Cause of Environmental Protection.” Eubios Journal of Asian and International Bioethics 12 (2002): 11-15. _________. “Ang Kapaligiran at mga Korporasyon: Mula sa Rasyonalismong Pananaw.” Malay 23, no. 1 (2010): 111-125. _________. Making Life Worth Living: An Introduction to the Philosophy of the Human Person. Quezon City: Phoenix Publishing House (2017). Meyers, Christopher. “The Corporation, its Members, and Moral Accountability.” In Business Ethics: A Philosophical Reader, edited by Thomas White. 251-260. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1993. Shaw, William, H. Business Ethics. California: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 2002. Singer, Peter. “The Place of Nonhumans in Environmental Issues.” In Business Ethics: A Philosophical Reader, edited by Thomas White. 849-854. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1993. __________. 2011. Practical Ethics. 3rd Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press. __________. “All animals are equal… or why supporters of liberation for blacks and women should support animal liberation too.” In Applying Ethics, 6th edition, edited by Jeffrey Olen and Vincent Barry, 411-423. New York: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1999. Steinbock, Bonnie. “Speciecism and the Idea of Equality.” In Applying Ethics, 6th edition, edited by Jeffrey Olen and Vincent Barry. 438-445. New York:Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1999. Taylor, Paul. “The Ethics of Respect for Nature.” Applying Ethics, 6th edition, edited by Jeffrey Olen and Vincent Barry. 469-480. New York: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1999. Velasquez, Manuel. Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases. New Jersey: PrenticeHall, 2000. Mula sa Internet “Marinduque Mining Disaster” <http://www.socialwatch.org/sites/default/files/pdf/en/marinduque2005_phi.pdf> “Top 10 Environmental Disasters”<http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1986457,00.html> “25 Biggest Man Made Environmental Disasters In History” <http://list25.com/25-biggest-man-made-environmental-disasters-in-history/>

'The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs.' -- Thomas de Quincey (1849), "The English Mail-Coach" For Thomas de Quincey, the thrust of speed is intimately linked with the thrust of the body. Subjectivity is formed by and through a corporeal experience of acceleration. In this way, De Quincey has the jump on those other lovers of automated speed: the Italian Futurists. That heady clash of bodies, speed and information, or the technological sublime, we characteristically associate with the development of twentieth-century communication is already articulated some sixty years before Marinetti imagines the 'divine fusion' of body and machine. Thomas de Quincey's 1849 ode to the postal service -- "The English Mail Coach" -- functions as a significant text in modernity's velocity culture. Specifically, de Quincey allows us to historicise the critical terms of 'speed', 'body' and 'circulation'. This paper makes some preliminary historical observations about the acceleration of communication and transport systems and how this rapidity might give rise to new forms of subjectivity or the emergence of what Jeffrey T. Schnapp calls 'the kinematic subject'. The perceptual reconfiguration of time and space is central to an understanding of modernity's preoccupation with speed. Rapid data circulation through digital information systems means that distance appears to shrink and time seems to collapse. Manuel Castells calls this a 'new time regime' (429). Temporality now functions according to a double logic: a simultaneous binary of 'the eternal and of the ephemeral'. The contemporary 'manipulation of time' turns on 'instantaneity and eternity: me and the universe, the self and the net' (462-3). For David Harvey the defining feature of postmodernity is 'time-space compression'. Capitalism is 'characterised by speed-up in the pace of life, while so overcoming spatial barriers that the world sometimes seems to collapse inwards upon us' (241). Castells and Harvey are not, of course, the first to notice the degree to which the changing rhythms of a communication vehicle might impact upon perceptions of time and space. In 1909 Marinetti announces its demise: 'Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed'. Yet this death is prefigured some 120 years before by the 18th century author Hannah More in a letter where, quoting Alexander Pope, she illustrates her reaction to the introduction of the mail coach: I have just been thinking that if the amorous poet, who modestly wished to annihilate time and space had lived to see our fortunate days, he would have seen his prophetic visions realised... cards having well-nigh accomplished the first, and mail-coaches the last. (Qtd. in Lewis 264) This letter is dated 1788, only four years after the establishment of the mail coach system. Initially the service ran between London and Bristol so that Hannah More writing from Somerset would complain of being bypassed by this new mode of information circulation: Of the other blessing, the annihilation of space, I cannot partake; mail-coaches, which come to others, come not to me. Letters and newspapers, now that they travel in coaches like gentlemen and ladies, come not within ten miles of my hermitage. (265) More here identifies an important historical factor in the transformation of information networks. It concerns the coupling of transportation and communication: information travels 'in coaches like gentlemen and ladies'. In More's 18th century account the two remain connected while, as James Carey has noted, the significance of the 19th century's invention of the telegraph is that it splits the two processes. The telegraph 'allowed symbols to move independently of geography and independently of and faster than transport' (213). For de Quincey, a pivotal feature of the mail coach is the way in which communication and transportation function coextensively. Recounting his travels on the coach as it distributes news from the Napoleonic wars he notes that 'the grandest chapter of our experience, within the whole mail-coach service, was on those occasions when we went down from London with the news of victory' (290). For de Quincey, as for other commentators, the mail coach is a political instrument. Through the increasing efficiency of its communication infrastructure, it 'binds the nation together' (Austen 361). As de Quincey puts it 'the mail-coach, as the national organ for publishing these mighty events, thus diffusively influential, became itself a spiritualised and glorified object to an impassioned heart' (272). What impresses de Quincey most, however, is the speed of this vehicle. Or perhaps, more accurately, it is a particular relation between the self and speed, which confers on the mail coach a 'glory of motion' (270). By the time he publishes his essay, postal and newspaper circulation by mail-coach is nearly at an end. The last mail coach ceases action in London in 1846 (Daunton 123) and postal distribution begins to be carried out by rail. De Quincey clearly mourns the loss of this form of communication. And his regret depends on the self's perception of speed. That is, to qualify as an authentic act of transportation (of the body, of the post or of language), one must, to some degree, be aware of the systems of circulation, the modes of delivery and the vehicle of communication. One ought to be able to experience the speed at which one travels or the mail is delivered. The body must remain in contact with the message. In de Quincey's view the railway communication system fails for these sorts of reasons: The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, not however as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence; as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles in the hour though we are far from feeling it as a personal experience ... . Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. (283, emphasis in the original) Perched atop the careening mail coach, the self needs no secondary evidence to confirm its propulsion: 'we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling'. But with the emergence of railway systems, the self somehow becomes cut off or distanced from the mode of transport: 'But now, on the new system of travelling, iron tubes and boilers have disconnected man's heart from the ministers of his locomotion' (284). To be sure, rail is faster. But that fails to impress de Quincey for the rail cannot offer him the same sublime effect. The mail coach is drawn by 'royal horses like cheetahs' (282) while the train lacks the power to raise even 'an extra bubble in a steam-kettle' (284). The sublimity of speed is also aural. But once again the railroad fails to inspire awe: 'the trumpet that once announced from afar the laurelled mail; heartshaking, when heard screaming on the wind ... has now given way for ever to the pot-wallopings of the boiler' (284). In Burke's formulation of the sublime there is danger and terror but there must also be a certain distance from this threat. It is 'simply painful' when we are aroused by causes that 'immediately affect us' but it is sublime when 'we have an idea of pain and danger, without being actually in such circumstances' (51) . For de Quincey sitting inside the carriage seems to offer too much safety and distance, the interior reserved as it is for the 'porcelain variety of the human race' (273). Instead, he travels aloft near the driver because of 'the air, the freedom of prospect, the proximity to the horses, the elevation of seat' (275). And he has the possibility of reining them in himself: 'the certain anticipation of purchasing occasional opportunities of driving' (275)1. The closer he is to the ministers of his locomotion, the better de Quincey likes it. The more he becomes the agent of his own speed, the more immediate, authentic and sublime seems his journey. For de Quincey, then, the superiority of the mail coach over the railroad lies not in terms of absolute speed but rather it concerns issues about the body's experience of and relation to that speed. As Matthew Schneider (1995) puts it 'the difference between the two with respect to their speed, privileges mail coaches by virtue of their violent immediacy, their ability to transmit the actual or living sensations rather than one that is intermediate or representational' (152)2. In a fascinating paper about the correlation between speed and subjectivity Jeffrey T. Schnapp identifies the mail coach in general and de Quincey in particular as emblematic of an 'inaugural moment' in the development of an 'anthropology of speed' (3). With a quick side swipe at the ahistorical and apocalyptic underpinning of Paul Virilio's Speed and Politics, Schnapp argues that although speed has always been 'an agent of individuation' it is with modernity that it begins to depend on the relation between self and vehicle: ... the mere experience of riding on horseback was not enough to establish a modern culture of velocity. Speed's rise as a cultural thematic, its move into an everyday realm of perceptibility, its adoption as sacrament of modern individualism, became possible only with the development of mechanical buffers between rider, horse, and roadway: buffers that enable new fantasies of attachment, first, between rider and engine, and, then, according to a more complex logic, between rider, engine, vehicle, and/or landscape. (10-1) What is particularly productive about Schnapp's account is that he schematises the history of transportation in terms of the relation between speed, body and vehicle. For Schnapp this is a pivotal dynamic. De Quincey's equestrian desire and his disdain for railroad travel, is part of a historical process where individuality comes to be 'identified with administration of one's own speed' (14). In Schnapp's model, there are 'two concurrent yet distinct experiences of velocity', one that he calls 'thrill-based' and the other 'commodity-based'. The first is experienced in modes such as on top of the mail-coach and later, cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes. 'Commodity-based' refers to train and bus travel. The difference between the two is that thrill-based transportation occurs when the passenger 'can envisage himself as the author of his velocity' while in 'commodity-based' forms the traveller is 'shielded from the natural environment and the engine, and passively submits himself to velocity' (18-9). De Quincey's essay is a valuable resource for communications historiography. Like Jacques Derrida, he recognises how the rhythms of the postal service function to construct identity. As a system of circulation and exchange, the post office institutionalises modes of correspondence, producing and regulating particular subjectivities. And like Postman Pat, de Quincey knows the corporeal pleasures of delivering the mail. Footnotes There are also issues of class at work here. Tickets were more expensive to sit inside the carriage which de Quincey, then a student at Oxford, could not afford. He attempts to reverse these class distinctions by arguing that 'inside which had been traditionally regarded as the only room tenantable by gentlemen, was, in fact, the coal-cellar in disguise' (187). The secondary material on de Quincey is quite extensive. In the last 15 years his work has been investigated from a number of different angles including poststructuralist approaches to language and his transitional status as a figure between Romanticism and Modernism. As well as Schneider, see Clej and Snyder. References Austen, Brian. British Mail-Coach Services 1784-1850. New York and London: Garland, 1986. Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. Ed. James T. Boulton. 2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Carey, James W. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Castells, Manuel. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. Volume 1: The Rise of the Network Society. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Clej, Alina. A Genealogy of the Modern Self: Thomas De Quincey and the Intoxication of Writing. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995. Daunton, M.J. Royal Mail: The Post Office since 1840. London: The Athlone Press, 1985. De Quincey, Thomas. "The English Mail-Coach." The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey. Ed. David Masson. Vol. 13. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1890. Derrida, Jacques. The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1987. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1990. Lewis, W.S., ed. Horace Walpole's Correspondence. Vol 31. New Haven: Yale UP, 1961. Marinetti, FT. "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism." First published 1909. Futurist Manifestos. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. Schnapp, Jeffrey T. "Crash (Speed as Engine of Individuation)." Modernism/Modernity 6.1 (1999): 1-49. Schneider, Matthew. Original Ambivalence: Autobiography and Violence in Thomas De Quincey. New York: Peter Lang, 1995. Snyder, Robert Lance, ed. Thomas De Quincey Bicentenary Studies. Norman: U of Oklahoma P, 1985. Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. New York: Semiotexte, 1986. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ester Milne. "'The Ministers of Locomotion': Some Historical Speculations on Velocity Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/ministers.php>. Chicago style: Ester Milne, "'The Ministers of Locomotion': Some Historical Speculations on Velocity Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/ministers.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ester Milne. (2000) 'The ministers of locomotion': some historical speculations on velocity culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/ministers.php> ([your date of access]).

Should ethical standards be enforced on performers or their critics? Asking such a question may stimulate memories of personal or professional censorship and fearful imaginings of oppressive, fascist regimes. Indeed, many of us might immediately respond by arguing that personal expression should never be inhibited since a person's right to free expression is an essential tenet of a democratic society. Yet this question raises issues that are not easily dismissed and it may remind us that it is equally important to remember that a number of responsibilities and repercussions can accompany the public expression of personal experiences and opinions. A short time ago, I was told that this journal had to grapple with similar considerations when a performer decided to pursue legal action after reading a critical account of his/her performance in M/C Reviews. When I was first asked to comment on this situation, I initially found myself considering familiar arguments that defend the right to free speech. However, upon reflection, I think there is more to be said about the long term causes and effects of such an action and I wish to explore how this incident illustrates the friction that can be generated when traditional and emergent value systems are adopted indiscriminately. To me, the dispute between the performer and M/C illustrates what seems to be a growing confusion surrounding interpretations of what is right (what is legal or permissible?), what is true (whose opinion?), and what is good (the performance or an audience's response?). Although definitions of what is right, true, and good have always had to negotiate shifting boundaries, the increasingly blurry usages of these terms are reflecting a waxing disregard for how these distinctions impact upon our judgements. Jon McKenzie has offered some explanation of this new social attitude in his recently published text Perform or Else. Throughout this text, he argues that 'performance' is now widely recognised in commercial industries as a conceptual tool for assessing human and technological standards and that this concept is fast becoming the dominant social model of evaluation. According to McKenzie, traditional philosophical distinctions are becoming less influential, while performance 'effectiveness' and 'efficiency' are increasingly being viewed as the new measurements of what is right, true, and good (178-79). McKenzie's assessment of the social demand to perform echoes the comments of other twentieth-century theorists who have warned us of the growing objectification and alienation of human labour. However, his message is timely and provocative and it offers some explanation of the confusion surrounding critical appraisals of performances and performer's experiences. There is certainly evidence of a growing demand for efficient and effective appraisal of all human performance as individuals, companies, and governments produce reports, conduct market research, and continue to try and predict what results will be produced before any investment of personal or financial energy is committed. Yet as our society continues to develop a dependency on critical opinion, it unfortunately seems to be distancing audiences and performers, devaluing personal interpretations, and encouraging fewer exchanges between groups with varying values. Such distinctive separations can, in turn, isolate social groups and identities and invite exclusivity and intolerance for other evaluations. This kind of alienation seems to have governed the dispute between the performer and the critic from M/C. Although these trends may have made it socially 'permissible' to pursue legal action against critics, performers, or anyone else who expresses negative or unpalatable opinions, I think it is essential that we continue to ask whether is it right, or good to do so. Is it right or good to penalise someone for expressing a personal opinion? Is it right or good to object to an evaluation when someone offers a performance for appraisal? These are, of course, ethical questions that can only be hinted at here. However, I believe it is important to remember that live performing art forms can physically bring together varying social demographics and that they are therefore in a unique position to provide conceptual bridges between social groups with differing opinions. I wish to emphasise this fact and to ask readers to consider whether they wish opinions to become more and more polarised, or whether they wish to finds ways to enable us to appreciate and evaluate the diverse interpretations of performances more harmoniously. It is true that the 'objective' certainties associated with the basic principles of aesthetic appreciation are sagging under the weight of arguments from critical theory and postmodernism. It may also be true that the only certainty that will soon enjoy popular appeal may be one that suggests that pragmatic considerations should govern what we view as right, true, and good. All of these developments introduce challenges that need to be addressed. However, I do not believe they exclude the possibility that a shared theoretical perspective can be developed that can allow us to build bridges of understanding between varying opinions and social demands. Philosophers and social theorists such as Michael Stocker, Alessandro Ferrara, and Linda Zagzebski all agree that the development of such a perspective is possible. They have also suggested that finding this shared view may require us to embrace a more malleable and less certain way of knowing what is good about our opinions. Instead, they encourage individuals to reinvestigate ancient views of 'wisdom' and 'understanding' and to review personal emotional responses to what we believe is true and good. I believe such advice is valuable and that arguments like these offer theoretical tools for those involved in the criticism and practice of the performing arts still wanting to find bridges between disparate views. While 'critical' reviews can often alienate performers from those who are evaluating their performance, if we are to initiate understanding and tolerance, and celebrate and value difference, the beliefs and emotional responses that accompany and drive each of our opinions do require further reflection, articulation, and discussion. Some theatre critics already appear to recognise how important emotional responses are to the expression and reworking of personal and traditional beliefs. For example, some have suggested that a theatre performance can "make you stop breathing" (Christofis) or be "breathtaking" (McCallum) or "poignant and powerful" (Lambert). Other critics have suggested that performances contain "images of emotional power" (Kelly) with which an "audience can empathise, [and] sympathise" because the subject is close to their hearts" (Hinde). As these kinds of responses clearly embellish and entwine the experiences of performers and critics, perhaps we can eventually discover how powerful, passionate, and, sometimes, visceral experiences contribute benefits that can be objectively defined and defended. Alternatively, perhaps the inclusion of negative emotional responses in performances and critical reviews can provide some impetus for personal and professional development. Many might dismiss emotional responses as theoretical tools because individuals' emotional experiences reveal different qualities and/or intensities and seem to contain no shared causal indicator that can be objectively defined and graded. Yet if these kinds of experiences are really so subjective, so capricious and diverse, why do some theatre reviewers continue to describe and record them? If such reactions are peculiar to each individual and there is no guarantee that they can be replicated in other individuals, personal views of emotional and physical responses would only be viewed as useless, superfluous information. However, it seems that critics sharing their experiences are suggesting that something in the performance is powerful enough to evoke similar emotions in others. Furthermore, they seem to be indicating that these experiences are important and worth pursuing. So, instead of viewing powerful emotional responses as completely subjective, perhaps it is more accurate and fruitful to recognise how they signal the presence of beliefs and values that are formed inter-subjectively. A purely subjective appraisal of a performance would require a subject that is capable of receiving, processing and evaluating impressions in social isolation. A number of influential theorists like Bourdieu, Foucault, and Eagleton have argued that such a view is misleading since 'individuals' are developed from class and power relations and subjects cannot extricate themselves from social discourses of some kind. As a result of adopting perspectives like these, it is plausible to suggest that audiences may value or dismiss the ideas and experiences of the person recommending the performance as well as ideas about the performance itself. Furthermore, a person's experiences or ideas may seem to relate to our own, or be regarded as more valuable or significant than our own, and this may affect the way we assess any descriptions provided by others. Since emotional responses experienced by others can sometimes influence our own affective states, it seems theatres, critics, and performers that establish public social identities do need to become aware of how these experiences are stimulated. Some theatre scholars have suggested that analyses of the emotive element of audience reception must record and defend emotional responses according to an objective set of logical criteria that can be judged relevant by experts (Martin and Sauter 34; de Toro 120). However, the logical criteria that many performance scholars suggest should determine such evaluations are often purely empirical and I would suggest that the study of emotions and feelings must also incorporate the often forgotten epistemic values of personal understanding and wisdom. If these approaches are explored and integrated, I believe critics and performers may be reconciled through the recognition that personal opinions can change and that our responses should be discussed and defended rather than feared, attacked, or penalised. References Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. Christofis, Lee. "Colour Amid Darkest Drama." Rev. of The Funniest Man in the World, by Daniel Keene. Keene/Taylor Theatre Project, Grant Street Theatre, Melbourne. The Australian. May 2000: F18 de Toro, Fernando. Theatre Semiotics: Text and Staging in Modern Theatre. Trans. John Lewis. Ed. Carole Hubbard. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1995. Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Ferrara, Alessandro. Reflective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity. London: Routledge, 1998. Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 270-87. Hinde, Suellen. "Play Oh So True." Rev. of Choking in the Comfort Zone, by Stephen Carleton. Darwin Theatre Company, Brown's Mart, Darwin. Northern Territory News 15 Sep. 2000: W26. Kelly, Veronica. "Pretty, But as Deep as a Shallow Puddle." Rev. of The Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder. Queensland Theatre Company, Optus Playhouse, Brisbane. The Australian 21 Feb. 2000: F18. Lambert, Catherine. "Revival of a Classic." Rev. of Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, Melbourne Theatre Company, Fairfax Theatre, Melbourne. Sunday Herald Sun, 23 July 2000: LH87. Martin, Jacqueline, and Willmar Sauter. Understanding Theatre. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1995. McCallum, John. "Don't Keep it Quiet." Rev. of Hollow Ground, by Nick Parsons. The NIDA Company, Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney. The Australian 27 Mar. 2000: F15. McKenzie, Jon. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London: Routledge, 2001. Stocker, Michael. Valuing Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kehoul, Gillian. "Performing Feeling Without Fear" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/perform.php>. Chicago Style Kehoul, Gillian, "Performing Feeling Without Fear" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/perform.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Kehoul, Gillian. (2002) Performing Feeling Without Fear. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/perform.php> ([your date of access]).

Memory depends on void, as void depends on memory, to think. -- Anne Carson Sunday, 26th December, 1999 It was a peculiar ritual to perform to bring a personal end to the twentieth century. A journey through the snow to visit Egypt, at the Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan. I took two books, the latest New Yorker and the New York Times to keep me company. Ancient Egyptian funeral art fascinates me. How unreadable it is. Perhaps it isn't meant to be read. If it is addressed to anyone, or anything, it isn't human. It addresses otherness itself, eternity. Serenity masks, and faces, nothingness. A reminder of how little a decade, or a century matters, even a millennium, compared to these fragments of monuments that could stare down handfuls of years in their thousands -- and still not blink. As Paul Valery wrote: "we later civilisations ... we too now know we are mortal. We had long heard tell of whole worlds that had vanished, of empires sunk without a trace, gone down with all their men and all their machines into the unexplorable depths of the centuries..." (23). Our ancestors may have conquered space, spread ourselves thin across the bread of the earth, but Egypt conquered time. Their empires of the dead will probably still be living when the last of ours are rat food. As Paul Valery wrote: "we later civilisations ... we too now know we are mortal. We had long heard tell of whole worlds that had vanished, of empires sunk without a trace, gone down with all their men and all their machines into the unexplorable depths of the centuries..." (23). Our ancestors may have conquered space, spread ourselves thin across the bread of the earth, but Egypt conquered time. Their empires of the dead will probably still be living when the last of ours are rat food. Thanks to universal standard time, everyone could know where they stood in relation to the planet's movement. Thanks to geopositioning, everyone could know the coordinates upon the map that corresponded to the patch of earth under foot. As the world turned, an arc of humans from one latitude to another could experience the arbitrary yet somehow convincing sensation of leaving the twentieth century. As the New Yorker reported: "in a daring act of multiculturalism, the good people of Tonga rose at midnight to sing the 'Hallelujah Chorus' from Handel's Messiah" (Lane 24). Meanwhile, in New York, the Caligula of capital George Soros offered his 250-odd guests bronze medallions featuring etched profiles of himself, and the inscription: "Enlightened by the Past. Embraced by the present. Empowered by the future" (Cassidy 26). Y2K kept bothering me. It was all a little too much data hitting the sensoria. I tried to ignore it, to think about Egypt. I thought that if I closed my eyes to the world's turning, it would go away. It won't go away. Not any more. There is nowhere left to hide. At twilight, in the desert, your satellite phone rings. It's a telemarketer. Egypt is exhausting, even at the Met. There's so many objects, so much information. I'd brought a book or two, so I could pause for coffee and make some notes. The books were by Harold Innis, that quirky old communication theorist. He's a detour, like Egypt, but he'll get us to where I want to go, to thinking media. Egypt is exhausting, even at the Met. There's so many objects, so much information. I'd brought a book or two, so I could pause for coffee and make some notes. The books were by Harold Innis, that quirky old communication theorist. He's a detour, like Egypt, but he'll get us to where I want to go, to thinking media. A simple observation. Consider what it makes it possible to think: "empires must be considered from the standpoint of two dimensions, those of space and time, and persist by overcoming the bias of media, which over-emphasise either dimension. They have tended to flourish under conditions in which civilisation reflects the influence of more than one medium and in which the bias of one medium toward decentralisation is offset by the bias of another toward centralisation" (Empire 7). Consider, for instance, Egypt, where: "a concern with problems of space and time appears to have marked the beginnings of civilisation... A change from a pre-dynastic to dynastic society, or a precise recognition of time... appears to have coincided with writing, monumental architecture and sculpture" (Bias 92). Kings and priests colonised time. "The permanence of death became a basis of continuity through the development of the idea of immortality, preservation of the body, and development of writing in the tombs by which the magical power of the spoken word was perpetuated in pictorial representation of the funeral ritual" (Bias 93). On the one hand, "the pyramids were an index to power over time" (Bias 135). On the other, "by escaping from the heavy medium of stone, thought gained lightness" (Empire 16). The papyrus document became the means for scribes and soldiers to colonise space. These different media, with their different properties, were the basis of a flexible continuity and integrity for the empire, but also a source of conflict within it. "The profound disturbances in Egyptian civilisation involved in the shift from absolute monarchy to a more democratic organisation coincides with a shift in emphasis on stone as a medium of communicating or as a basis of prestige, as shown in the pyramids, to an emphasis on papyrus" (Empire 15). But it was not to last. Egypt "failed to establish a stable compromise between a bias dependent on stone in the pyramids and a bias dependent on papyrus and hieroglyphics" (Bias 96). Failed, and yet succeeded, in replicating itself by virtue of the fascination those of us who, like Valery, see something strikingly different in the shape of this ancient space and time. There's some irony in monuments to eternity being themselves preserved at the Met. "The emphasis of a civilisation on means of extending its duration as in Egypt accompanied by reliance on permanence gives that civilisation a prominent position in periods such as the present when time is of little significance" (Bias 66). What can you say about a civilisation that gives itself an early mark and toddles into its second millennium a year early? One in which global empires grow and merge and collapse each week on the lone and level sands of the market. Or where Danny Hillis, Silicon Valley magus, is making a monument to last out the centuries -- and it's a clock. What is to become of it all? Consider this observation, by Innis, of what became of Egypt: "we can perhaps assume that the use of a medium of communication over a long period will to some extent determine the character of knowledge to be communicated and suggest that its pervasive influence will eventually create a civilisation in which life and flexibility will become exceedingly difficult to maintain and that the advantages of a new medium will become such as to lead to the emergence of a new civilisation" (Bias 34). The scribes and the priests, between them, ran things, and for centuries kept control of the skills to do so. This very facility became a limit, making the empire vulnerable to stagnation and conquest from without. Consider how this might work out in more recent times, when monopolies guard their source code and battle against open source technologies. Innis writes that "a simple flexible system of writing admits of adaptation to the vernacular but slowness of adaptation facilitates monopoly of knowledge and hierarchies" (Bias 4). Microsoft write twentieth century hieroglyphics. It is an empire with an Egyptian approach to source code intended to perpetuate itself through time, even at the risk of arresting flexible and adaptive approaches to creating communication tools anywhere else. Or take the lead story that greeted me over coffee in the Met's cafe: AMERICA ONLINE AGREES TO BUY TIME WARNER FOR $165 BILLION; MEDIA DEAL IS RICHEST MERGER (New York Times 11 Jan 2000). This is the way of things now. Vigorous new empires annex old Egypts in a burst of press release fireworks. Empires that straddle continents but are not built to last much longer than London's Millennium Dome, structures held aloft by tensed steel cables, built to be seen on television by distant cousins by not by any descendants. We may have left the twentieth century, but has it left us? Its ruins lie about us, persisting, insisting. Its miniature monuments lie in the landfill of memory. So many new ways that were discovered, during the century, for impressing the century on memory. Perhaps that's why so little of its architecture is built to last. The great pyramid of Las Vegas is an image preserved in a million snapshots. The monument has become something miniature, even molecular. Exotic pesticide residues now shop up in Antarctic penguins. As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari write: "a monument does not commemorate or celebrate something that happened but confides to the ear of the future the persistent sensations that embody the event" (176). Perhaps Innis is wrong about this civilisation. It looks like its bias is towards the colonising of space, but in its own way it has colonised time, too. It communicates its chaos, its blind will to creative destruction, through the pulverising of every last particle of the earth. The twentieth century's answer to the pyramids, it's ongoing contributions to civilisation, are the death factories of the Holocaust and the negative architecture of the bombing of Hiroshima. And yet, those memories aside, it was also the century in which for the first time one glimpses a possible life outside the monopoly of knowledge by priests and scribes, where no matter how hard they try, empires can no longer control for millennia the flows of information that allow them to colonise space and time. I'm tempted to say that if Egypt lives on in the Book of the Dead, our time will live on as a Book of the Undead. It left its mark by mummifying nothing except change itself. But the book is one of the things the twentieth century changed too. As Friedrich Kittler writes, "as long as the book was responsible for all serial data flows, words quivered with sensuality and memory" (10). But the book has lost its sovereignty. The scribes and priests and scholars who monopolised knowledge and prestige through mastery of textual codes are going the way of their Egyptian precursors, into the museums. References Cassidy, John. "The Well-Heeled and the Wonky Toast the Millennium." New Yorker 17 Jan. 2000: Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. What Is Philosophy? London: Verso, 1994. Innis, Harold A. The Bias of Communication. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1964. ---. Empire and Communications. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972. Friedrich A. Kittler. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999. Anthony Lane. "The New Year Stumbles In." New Yorker 17 Jan. 2000: 24. Paul Valery. The Outlook for Intelligence. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: McKenzie Wark. "Book of the Undead." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/undead.php>. Chicago style: McKenzie Wark, "Book of the Undead," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (200x), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/undead.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: McKenzie Wark. (2000) Book of the Undead. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/undead.php> ([your date of access]).

The past two decades have seen the publication of at least half a dozen books that consider the part that fairs, circuses, sideshows and freakshows play in the continuing cultural labour to define, categorise and control the human body, including Robert Bogdan’s Freakshow, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s Extraordinary Bodies, and her edited collection Freakery, and Rachel Adams’s Sideshow USA. These writers cast the freakshow as a theatre of culture, worthy of critical attention precisely because of the ways in which it has provided a popular forum for staging, solidifying and transforming ideas about the body and bodily difference, and because of its prominence in the project of modernity (Garland-Thomson “From Wonder to Error” 2-13). They point to the theatrical mechanisms by which the freakshow maps cultural anxieties about corporeal difference across ‘suitable’ bodies. For, as Bogdan (3) says, being a freak is far more than a fact of biology. The freak personae that populate the Western cultural imaginary—the fat lady, the bearded lady, the hermaphrodite and the geek—can only be produced by a performative isolation, manipulation and exaggeration of the peculiar characteristics of particular human bodies. These peculiarities have to be made explicit, in Rebecca Schneider’s (1) terms; the horror-inducing tropes of the savage, the bestial and the monstrous have to be cast across supposedly suitable and compliant flesh. The scopic mechanisms of the freakshow as a theatre, as a cabinet of corporeal curiosities in which spectators are excited, amazed and edified by the spectacle of the extraordinary body, thus support the specific forms of seeing and looking by which freak bodies are produced. It would, however, be a mistake to suggest that the titillating threat of this face-to-face encounter with the Levinasian other fully destabilises the space between signifier and signified, between the specific body and the symbolic framework in which it sits. In a somewhat paradoxical cultural manoeuvre, the ableist, sexist and racist symbolic frameworks of the freakshow unfold according to what Deleuze and Guattari (178) would call a logic of sameness. The roles, relationships and representational mechanisms of the freakshow—including the ‘talkers’ that frame the spectator’s engagement with the extraordinary body of the freak—in fact function to delineate “degrees of deviance” (178) or difference from an illusory bodily norm. So configured, the monstrous corporeality of the freak is also monstrously familiar, and is made more so by the freak spectacle’s frequent emphasis on the ways in which non-normative bodies accommodate basic functions such as grooming and eating. In such incarnations, the scenography and iconography of the freakshow in fact draws spectators into performative (mis)recognitions that manage the difference of other bodies by positioning them along a continuum that confirms the stability of the symbolic order, and the centrality of the able, white, male self in this symbolic order. Singular, specific, extraordinary bodies are subject to what might, in a Levinasian paradigm, be called the violence of categorisation and comprehension (“Is Ontology Fundamental?” 9). The circumstances of the encounter reduce the radical, unreadable difference of the other, transporting them “into the horizon of knowledge” (“Transcendence and Height” 12), and transforming them into something that serves the dominant cultural logic. In this sense, Petra Kuppers suggests, “the psychic effects of the freak spectacle have destabilizing effects, assaulting the boundaries of firm knowledge about self, but only to strengthen them again in cathartic effect” (45). By casting traits they abhor across the freak body (Garland-Thomson Extraordinary Bodies 55-56), spectators become complicit in this abhorrence; comforted, cajoled and strangely pleasured by a sense of distance from what they desire not to be. The subversive potential of the prodigious body evaporates (Garland-Thomson “From Wonder to Error” 3; Extraordinary Bodies 78). An evaporation more fully effected, writers on the freakshow explain, as the discursive construct of the freak was drawn into the sphere of medical spectacle in the late nineteenth century. As the symbolic framework for understanding disabled bodies ‘advances’ from the freak, the monster and the mutant to the medical specimen (Garland-Thomson “From Wonder to Error” 13; Extraordinary Bodies 70, 78-80; Synder and Mitchell 370-373; Stephens 492), the cultural trajectory away from extraordinary bodies with the capacity to expand the classes and categories of the human is complete. The medical profession finally fulfils the cultural compulsion to abstract peculiar bodily characteristics into symptoms, and, as Foucault says in The Birth of the Clinic, these symptoms become surveillable, and controllable, within an objective schema of human biology. Physical differences and idiosyncrasies are “enclosed within the singularity of the patient, in that region of ‘subjective symptoms’ that—for the doctor—defines not only the mode of knowledge, but the world of objects to be known” (xi). The freak body becomes no more than an example of human misfortune, to be examined, categorised and cared for by medical experts behind closed doors, and the freakshow fades from the stage of popular culture (Garland-Thomson Extraordinary Bodies 70). There can, of course, be no denying the need to protect people with disabilities from exploitation at the service of a cultural fetish that enacts a compulsion to define and control bodily difference. However, recent debates in disability, cultural and performance studies have been characterised by the desire to reconsider the freakshow as a site for contesting some of the cultural logics it enacts. Theorists like Synder and Mitchell argue that medical discourse “disarms the [disabled] body of its volatile potency” (378), in the process denying people with disabilities a potentially interesting site to contest the cultural logics by which their bodies are defined. The debate begins with Bogdan’s discussion of the ways in which well-meaning disability activists may, in their desire to protect people with disabilities from exploitative practices and producers, have overlooked the fact that freakshows provided people with disabilities a degree of independence and freedom otherwise impossible (280-81). After all, as disabled performer Mat Fraser says in his documentary Born Freak, The Victorian marvels found fame and some fortune, and this actually raised the visibility, even the acceptability, of disabled people in general during a time when you could be attacked on the streets just for looking different. These disabled performers found independence and commanded respect.… If I had been born a hundred years ago, given the alternatives of—what? living the life of a village monster or idiot or being poked or prodded for cataloguing by medical types—there’s no doubt about it, I would have wanted to be in show business. (Born Freak) This question of agency extends to discussion of whether disabled performers like Fraser can, by consciously appropriating the figures, symbols and scenography of the freakshow, start to deconstruct the mechanisms by which this contested sphere of cultural practice has historically defined them, confronting spectators with their own complicity in the construction of the freak. In her analysis of Coney Island’s Sideshows by the Seashore, Elizabeth Stephens reflects on this contemporary sideshow’s capacity to reclaim the political currency of the freak. For Stephens, sideshows are sites in which norms about the body, its limits and capabilities, are theatricalized and transformed into spectacle, but, in which, for this very reason, they can also be contested. Non-normative bodies are not simply exhibited or put on display on the sideshow stage, but are rather performed as the unstable—indeed, destabilising—product of the dynamic interrelationship between performer, audience and theatrical space. (486) Theorists like Stephens (487) point to disabled performers who manipulate the scopic and discursive mechanisms of the sideshow, street performance and circus, setting them against more or less personal accounts of the way their bodies have historically been seen, to disrupt the modes of subjection the freak spectacle makes possible and precipitate a crisis in prescribed categories of meaning. Stephens (485-498) writes of Mat Fraser, who reperformed the historical personal of the short-armed Sealo the Sealboy, and Jennifer Miller, who reperformed the persona of Zenobia the bearded lady, at Sideshows by the Seashore. Sharon Mazer (257-276) writes of Katy Dierlam, who donned a Dolly Dimples babydoll dress to reperform the clichéd fat lady figure Helon Melon, again at Sideshows by the Seashore, counterposing Melon’s monstrous obesity with comments affirming her body’s potent humanity, and quotes from feminist scholars and artists such as Suzy Orbach, Karen Finley and Annie Sprinkle. Sharon Synder and David Mitchell (383) write of Mary Duffy, who reperforms the armless figure of the Venus de Milo. These practices constitute performative interventions into the cultural sphere, aligned with a broader set of contemporary performance practices which contest the symbolic frameworks by which racial and gender characteristics are displayed on the popular stage in similar ways. Their confrontational performance strategies recall, for instance, the work of American performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, who reappropriates colonial and pop cultural figurations of the racialised body in works like Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit…, in which he and Coco Fusco cast themselves as two caged savages. In such works, Gómez-Peña and his collaborators use parallel performance strategies to engage the “spectacle of the Other-as-freak” (297). “The idea is to exaggerate the features of fear and desire in the Anglo imagination and ‘spectacularize’ our ‘extreme identities’, so to speak, with the clear understanding that these identities have been invented by the surgery of the global media” (297) Gómez-Peña says. These remobilisations of the monstrous operate within the paradigm of the explicit, a term Schneider coined a decade ago to describe the performance art practices of women who write the animalised, sexualised characteristics with which they are symbolically aligned across their own corporeally ‘suitable’ bodies, replaying their culturally assigned identities “with a voluble, ‘in your face’ vengeance” (100), “a literal vengeance” (109). Such practices reclaim the destablising potential of the freak spectacle, collapsing, complicating or exploding the space between signifier and signified to show that the freak is a discursive construct (22-23), and thus for Schneider, following Benjamin, threatening the whole symbolic system with collapse (2, 6). By positioning their bodies as a ground that manifestly fails to ground the reality they represent, these performers play with the idea that the reality of the freak is really just part of the order of representation. There is nothing behind it, nothing beyond it, nothing up the magician’s sleeve—identity is but a sideshow hall of mirrors in which the ‘blow off’ is always a big disappointment. Bodies marked by disability are not commodified, or even clearly visible, in the Western capitalist scopic economy in the same way as Schneider’s women performers. Nevertheless, disabled performers still use related strategies to reclaim a space for what Schneider calls a postmodern politics of transgression (4), exposing “the sedimented layers of signification themselves” (21), rather than establishing “an originary, true or redemptive body” (21) beneath. The contestational logic of these modes of practice notwithstanding, Stephens (486) notes that performers still typically cite a certain ambivalence about their potential. There are, after all, specific risks for people with disabilities working in this paradigm that are not fully drawn out in the broader debate about critical reappropriation of racist and sexist imagery in performance art. Mobilisations of the freak persona are complicated by the performer’s own corporeal ‘suitability’ to that persona, by the familiar theatrical mechanisms of recognition and reception (which can remain undertheorised in meta-level considerations of the political currency of the freakshow in disability and cultural—rather than performance—studies), and by a dominant cultural discourse that insists on configuring disability as an individual problem detached from the broader sphere of identity politics (Sandahl 598-99). In other words, the territory that still needs to be addressed in this emergent field of practice is the ethics of reception, and the risk of spectatorial (mis)recognitions that reduce the political potency of the freak spectacle. The main risk, of course, is that mobilisations of the freak persona may still be read by spectators as part of the phenomenon they are trying to challenge, the critical counterpositions failing to register, or failing to disrupt fully the familiar scopic and discursive framework. More problematically, the counterpositions themselves may be reduced by spectators to a rhetorical device that distances them from the corporeal reality of the encounter with the other, enabling them to interpret or explain the experience of disability as a personal experience by which an individual comes to accommodate their problems. Whilst the human desire to construct narrative and psychological contexts for traumatic experience cannot be denied, Carrie Sandahl (583) notes that there is a risk that the encounter with the disabled body will be interpreted as part of the broader phenomenon Synder and Mitchell describe in Narrative Prosthesis, in which disability is little more than a metaphor for the problems people have to get past in life. In this interpretative paradigm, disability enters a discursive and theoretical terrain that fails to engage fully the lived experience of the other. Perhaps most problematically, mobilisations of the freak persona may be read as one more manifestation of the distinctively postmodern desire to break free from the constraints of culturally condoned identity categories. This desire finds expression in the increasingly prevalent cultural phenomenon of voluntary enfreakment, in which people voluntarily differentiate, or queer their own experience of self. As Fraser says when he finds out that a company of able-bodied freaks is competing with him for audiences at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, “[t]he irony is, these days, everyone is trying to get in on our act” (Born Freak). In a brave new world where everybody wants to be a freak, activist artists “must be watchful”, Gómez-Peña warns, “for we can easily get lost in the funhouse of virtual mirrors, epistemological inversions, and distorted perceptions” (288). The reclamation of disability as a positive metaphor for a more dispersed set of human differences in the spectacle of daily life (287-98), and in theoretical figurations of feminist philosophy that favour the grotesque, the monstrous and the mechanical (Haraway Simians, Cyborgs and Women; Braidotti Nomadic Subjects), raises questions for Garland-Thomson (“Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory” 9) and Sandahl (581-83). If “disability serves as a master trope for difference,” Sandahl says, then anybody can adopt it “…to serve as a metaphor expressing their own outsider status, alienation and alterity, not necessarily the social, economic and political concerns of actual disabled people” (583). The work of disabled performers can disappear into a wider sphere of self-differentiated identities, which threatens to withdraw ‘disability’ as a politically useful category around which a distinctive group of people can generate an activist politics. To negotiate these risks, disabled performers need to work somewhere between a specific, minoritarian politics and a universal, majoritarian politics, as Sedgwick describes in Epistemology of the Closet (91; cf. Garland-Thompson “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory” 5; cf. Stephens 493). Performers need to make their experience of otherness explicit, so that their corporeal specificity is not abstracted into a symbolic system that serves the dominant cultural logic. Performers need to contextualise this experience in social terms, so that it is not isolated from the sphere of identity politics. But performers cannot always afford to allow the freak persona to become one more manifestation of the myriad idiosyncratic identities that circulate in the postmodern popular imaginary. It is by negotiating these risks that performers encourage spectators to experience—if only fleetingly, and provisionally—a relationship to the other that is characterised not by generalisation, domestication and containment (Levinas “Substitution” 80, 88), but by respect for the other’s radical alterity, by vulnerability, and, in Derrida’s reformation of Levinasian ethics, by a singular, reciprocal and undecidable responsibility towards the other (Derrida 60-70). This is what Levinas would call an ethical relationship, in which the other exists, but as an excess, a class of being that can be recognised but never seized by comprehension (“Is Ontology Fundamental?” 7, “Transcendence and Height” 17), or sublimated as a category of, or complement to, the same (13, “Meaning and Sense” 51). Mat Fraser’s mobilisation of Sealo the Sealboy is one of the most engaging examples of the way disabled performers negotiate the complexities of this terrain. On his website, Fraser says he has always been aware of the power of confrontational presentations of his own body, and has found live forms that blur the boundaries between freakshow, sideshow and conventional theatre the best forums for “the more brutal and confrontational aspect of my investigation into disability’s difficult interface with mainstream cultural concerns” (MatFraser.co.uk). Fraser’s appropriation of Sealo was born of a fascination with the historical figure of Stanley Berent. “Stanley Berent was an American freakshow entertainer from the 1940s who looked like me,” Fraser says. “He had phocomelia. That’s the medical term for my condition. It literally means seal-like limbs. Berent’s stage name was Sealo the Sealboy” (Born Freak). Fraser first restaged Sealo after a challenge from Dick Zigun, founder of the modern Sideshows by the Seashore. He restaged Berant’s act, focused on Berant’s ability to do basic things like shaving and sawing wood with his deformed hands, for the sideshow’s audiences. While Fraser had fun playing the character on stage, he says he felt a particular discomfort playing the character on the bally platform used to pull punters into the sideshow from the street outside. “There is no powerful dynamic there,” Fraser laments. “It’s just ‘come look at the freak’” (Born Freak). Accordingly, after a season at Sideshows by the Seashore, Fraser readapted the experience as a stage play, Sealboy: Freak, in which Sealo is counterposed with the character Tam, “a modern disabled actor struggling to be seen as more than a freak” (Born Freak). This shift in the theatrical mechanisms by which he stages the freak gives Fraser the power to draw contemporary, politically correct spectators at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival into the position of sideshow gawkers, confronting them with their own fascination with his body. A potent example is a post-audition scene, in which Tam says I read this book once that said that the mainstream will only see a disabled performer in the same way they view a performing seal. Very clever, but just mimicry. No. No it can’t be like that anymore. We’ve all moved on. People are no longer more fascinated by how I do things, rather than what I say. I am an actor, not a fucking freak. (Born Freak) But, as Tam says this, he rolls a joint, and spectators are indeed wrapped up in how he does it, hardly attending to what he says. What is interesting about Fraser’s engagement with Sealo in Sealboy: Freak is the way he works with a complicated—even contradictory—range of presentational strategies. Fraser’s performance becomes explicit, expositional and estranging by turns. At times, he collapses his own identity into that of the freak, the figure so stark, so recognisable, so much more harshly drawn than its real-life referent, that it becomes a simulacrum (cf. Baudrillard 253-282), exceeding and escaping the complications of the human corporeality beneath it. Fraser allows spectators to inhabit the horror, and the humour, his disabled identity has historically provoked, reengaging the reactions they hide in everyday life. And, perhaps, if they are an educated audience at the Fringe, applauding themselves for their own ability to comprehend the freak, and the crudity of sideshow display. However, self-congratulatory comprehension of the freak persona is interrupted by the discomforting encounter with Tam, suspending—if only provisionally—spectators’ ability to reconcile this reaction with their credentials as a politically correct audience. What a closer look at mobilisations of the freak in performances such as Fraser’s demonstrates is that manipulating the theatrical mechanisms of the stage, and their potential to rapidly restructure engagement with the extraordinary body, enables performers to negotiate the risk of (mis)recognition embedded in the face-to-face encounter between self and spectator. So configured, the stage can become a site for contesting the cultural logic by which the disabled body has historically been defined. It can challenge spectators to experience—if fleetingly—the uncertainties of the face-to-face encounter with the extraordinary body, acknowledging this body’s specificity, without immediately being able to abstract, domesticate or abdicate responsibility for it—or abdicate responsibility for their own reaction to it. Whilst spectators’ willingness to reflect further on their complicity in the construction of the other remains an open and individual question, these theatrical manipulations can at least increase the chance that the cathartic effect of the encounter with the so-called freak will be disrupted or deferred. References Adams, Rachel. Sideshow USA: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. Chicago, IL: University of Chigaco Press, 2001. Baudrillard, Jean. “The Precision of Simulacra”. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. Boston, MA: David R. Godine, 1984, 253-282. Born Freak. Dir. Paul Sapin. Written Paul Sapin and Mat Fraser. Planet Wild for Channel 4 UK, 2001. Braidotti, Rosi. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Thought. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994. Bogdan, Robert. Freakshow: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Derrida, Jacques. Gift of Death. Trans. David Wills. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Fraser, Mat. “Live Art”. MatFraser.co.uk. n.date. 30 April 2008 ‹http://www.matfraser.co.uk/live_art.php›. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception. Trans. AM Sheridan Smith. London: Routledge, 1976. Garland-Thomson, Rosmarie. “Integrating Disability, Transforming Feminist Theory”. NSWA Journal 14.3 (2002): 1-33. ———. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997. ———. “Introduction: From Wonder to Error—A Genealogy of Freak Discourse”. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. Ed. Rosmarie Garland-Thomspon. New York, NY and London: New York University Press, 1996. Gómez-Peña, Guillermo. “Culture-in-extremis: Performing Against the Cultural Backdrop of the Mainstream Bizarre”. The Performance Studies Reader. Ed. Henry Bial. London and New York: Routledge, 2004, 287-298. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women. New York, NY: Routledge, 1991. Kuppers, Petra. Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge. New York, NY: Routledge, 2004. Levinas, Emmanuel. “Is Ontology Fundamental?”. Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings. Ed. Adriaan Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 1-10. ———. “Transcendence and Height”. Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings. Ed. Adriaan Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 11-31. ———. “Meaning and Sense”. Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings. Ed. Adriaan Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 33-64. ———. “Substitution”. Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings. Ed. Adriaan Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 79-95. Mazer, Sharon. “‘She’s so fat…’ Facing the Fat Lady at Coney Island’s Sideshows by the Seashore”. Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression. Ed. Jana Evens Braziel and Kathryn LeBesco. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001, 257-276. Sandahl, Carrie. “Black Man, Blind Man: Disability Identity Politics and Performance”. Theatre Journal 56 (2004): 597-602. Schneider, Rebecca. The Explicit Body in Performance. New York, NY and London: Routledge, 1997. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990. Snyder, Sharon L. and David T Mitchell. “Re-engaging the Body: Disability Studies and the Resistance to Embodiment”. Public Culture, 13.3 (2001): 367-389. ———. Narrative Prosthesis: Disability and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Stephens, Elizabeth. “Cultural Fixations of the Freak Body: Coney Island and the Postmodern Sideshow”. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20.4 (2006): 485-498. Acknowledgements An earlier version of this paper was presented at “Extreme States: Issues of Scale—Political, Performative, Emotional”, the Australasian Association for Drama Theatre and Performance Studies Annual Conference 2007.

Longing on a large scale is what makes history.Don DeLillo, UnderworldIntroductionWhile the media industries have been rather thoroughly dissected for their capacity to generate enthusiasm through well-honed practices of marketing and patterns of consumerism, any analysis of the shift underway to capture and modulate the ‘enthusiastic’ and affective labour of media industry practitioners themselves may still have much to learn by reaching back to the long tradition in Western philosophy: a tradition, starting with the Greeks that has almost always contrasted enthusiasm with reason (Heyd). To quote Hume: “Hope, pride, presumption, a warm imagination, together with ignorance, are … the true sources of enthusiasm” (73). Hume’s remarks are contextualised in protestant theological debates of the 18th century, where enthusiasm was a term for a religious practice, in which God possesses the believer. Especially English preachers and theologians were putting considerable energy into demonising this far too ecstatic form of belief in god (Heyd). This ambivalent attitude towards enthusiasm time-travels from the Greeks and the Enlightenment period straight into the 20th century. In 1929, William Henry Schoenau, an early author of self-help literature for the white-collar worker, aimed to gain a wider audience with the title: “Charm, Enthusiasm and Originality - their Acquisition and Use”. According to him, enthusiasm is necessary for the success of the salesman, and has to be generated by techniques such as a rigorous special diet and physical exercises of his facial muscles. But it also has to be controlled:Enthusiasm, when controlled by subtle repression, results in either élan, originality, magnetism, charm or “IT”, depending on the manner of its use. Uncontrolled enthusiasm results in blaring jazz, fanaticism and recklessness. A complete lack of enthusiasm produces the obsequious waiter and the uneducated street car conductor. (7)Though William Henry Schoenau got rather lost in his somewhat esoteric take on enthusiasm – for him it was a result of magnetic and electric currents – we argue that Schoenau had a point: Enthusiasm is a necessary affect in many forms of work, and especially so in the creative industries. It has to be generated, it sometimes has to be enacted, and it has also to be controlled. However, we disagree with Schoenau in one important issue: For us, enthusiasm can only be controlled up to a certain degree. Enthusiasm in the Creative IndustriesSchoenau wrote for an audience of salesmen and ambitious managers. This was simultaneous with the rise of Fordism. Most labour in Fordism was routine labour with the assembly line as its iconic representation. In mass-production itself, enthusiasm was not needed, often not even wanted. Henry Ford himself noted dryly: “Why do I get a human being when all I want is a pair of hands” (Kane 128). It was reserved for few occupational groups situated around the core of the mass-produced economy, such as salesmen, inventors, and leaders like him. “Henry Ford had a burning enthusiasm for the motor car” (Pearle 196).In industrial capitalism enthusiasm on a larger scale was not for the masses. It could be found in political movements, but hardly in the realm of work. This was different in the first socialist state. In the 1920s and 1930s Soviet Union the leaders turned their experience in stimulating a revolutionary mindset into a formula for industrial development – famously documented in Dziga Vertov’s “Enthusiasm. Symphony of the Donbass”.In capitalist countries things changed with the crisis of Fordism. The end of mass production and its transformation to flexible specialisation (Piore/Sabel) prepared the ground for a revival of enthusiasm on a large scale. Post-industrial economies rely on permanent innovation. Now discourses in media, management, and academia emphasise the relevance of buzzwords such as flexibility, adaptability, change, youth, speed, fun, and creativity. In social science debates around topics such as the cultural economy (Ray/Sayers, Cook et al., du Gay/Pryke, Amin/Thrift), affective labour (Lazzarato, Hardt/Negri, Virno) and creative industries (Florida, Hartley) gained in momentum (for an interesting take on enthusiasm see Bröckling). Enthusiasm has become an imperative for most professions. Those who are not on fire are in danger of getting fired. Producing and Consuming EnthusiasmOur interest in enthusiasm as affective labour emerged in an ethnographic and experimental project that we conducted in 2003-2007 in London’s creative industries. The project brought together three industrial and one academic partner to produce a reality TV show tailor-made for IPTV (internet-protocol-based television). During this project we encountered enthusiasm in many forms. Initially, we were faced with the need to be enthusiastic, while we established the project coalition. To be convincing, we had to pitch the commercial potential of such a project enthusiastically to our potential partners, and often we had to cope with rejections and start the search and pitch again (Caldwell). When the project coalition was set up, we as academic partners managed the network. In the following two years we had to cope with our partner’s different directions, different rhythms and different styles of enthusiasm. The TV producer for example had different ways to express excitement than the new media firm. Such differences resulted in conflicts and blockades, and part of our task as project managers was to rebuild an enthusiastic spirit after periods of frustration. At the same time enthusiasm was one of the ingredients of the digital object that we produced: `Real’ emotions form the material of most reality TV shows (Grindstaff). Affects are for reality TV, what steel was for a Fordist factory. We needed an enthusiastic audience as part of the filmed material. There is thus a need to elicit, select, engineer and film such emotions. To this aim we engaged with the participants and the audience in complex ways, sometimes by distancing ourselves, other times by consciously manipulating them, and at even other times by sharing enthusiasm (similar processes in respect to other emotions are ethnographically described in Hesmondhalgh/Baker). Generating and managing enthusiasm is obviously a necessary part of affective labour in the creative industries. However, just as Hesmondhalgh/Baker indicate, this seemingly simple claim is problematic.Affective Labour as Practice‘Affective labour’ is a term that describes labour through its products: ‘A feeling of ease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion’ (Hardt/Negri 292-293). Thus, the term ‘affective labour’ usually describes a sector by the area of human endeavour, which it commodifies. But the concept looses its coherence, if it is used to describe labour by its practice (for an analogue argument see Dowling). The latter is what interests us. Such a usage will have to re-introduce the notion of the working subject. To see affective labour as a practice should enable us to describe in more detail, how enthusiasm shapes the becoming of a cultural object. Who employed affect when and what kinds of affects in which way? Analysing enthusiasm as social practice and affective labour usually brings about one of two contrasting perceptions. On the one hand one can celebrate enthusiasm – like Pekka Himanen – as one of the key characteristics for a new work ethic emerging alongside the Protestant Ethic. On the other hand we find critique of the need to display affects. Barbara Ehrenreich shows how a forced display of enthusiasm becomes a requirement for all office workers to survive in late capitalism. Judging from our experience these two approaches need to be synthesized: Much affective labour consists in the display of affects, in showing off, in pretending. On the other hand, enthusiasm can only realise its potential, if it is ‘real’ (as opposed to enacted).With Ehrenreich, Hochschild and many others we think that an analysis of affective labour as a practice needs to start with a notion of expression. Enthusiasm can be expressed through excited gestures, rapid movements, raised voices, eyes wide open, clapping hands, speech. For us it was often impossible to separate which expression was ‘genuine’ and which was enacted. Judging from introspection, it is probable that many actors had a similar experience to ours: They mixed some genuine enthusiasm with more or less enforced forms of re-enactment. Perhaps re-enactment turned to a ‘real’ feeling: We enacted ourselves into an authentic mood - an effect that is also described as “deep acting” (Grandey). What can happen inside us, can also happen in social situations. German philosopher Max Scheler went to substantial lengths to make a case for the contagiousness of affects, and enthusiasm is one of the most contagious affects. Mutual contagiousness of enthusiasm can lead to collective elation, with or without genuine enthusiasm of all members. The difference of real, authentic affects and enacted affects is thus not only theoretically, but also empirically rather problematic. It is impossible to make convincing claims about the degree of authenticity of an affect. However, it is also impossible to ignore this ambivalence. Both ‘authentic’ and ‘faked’ enthusiasm can be affective labour, but they differ hugely in terms of their productive capacities.Enthusiasm as Productive ForceWhy is enthusiasm so important in the first place? The answer is threefold. Firstly, an enthusiastic worker is more productive. He or she will work more intensively, put in more commitment, is likely to go the so-called extra mile. Enthusiasm can create a surplus of labour and a surplus of value, thus a surplus of productivity. Secondly enthusiasm is part of the creative act. It can unleash energies and overcome self-imposed limitations. Thirdly enthusiasm is future-oriented, a stimulus for investment, always risky. Enthusiasm can be the affective equivalent of venture capital – but it is not reified in capital, but remains incorporated in labour. Thus enthusiasm not only leads to an increase of productivity, it can be productive itself. This is what makes it to one of the most precious commodities in the creative industries. To make this argument in more detail we need to turn to one of the key philosophers of affect.Thinking Enthusiasm with SpinozaFor Spinoza, all affects are derivatives of a first basic drive or appetite. Desire/appetite is the direct equivalent of what Spinoza calls Conatus: Our striving to increase our power. From this starting point, Spinoza derives two basic affects: pleasure/joy and sadness/pain. Pleasure/joy is the result of an increase of our power, and sadness/pain is the result of its decrease. Spinoza explains all other affects through this basic framework. Even though enthusiasm is not one of the affects that Spinoza mentions, we want to suggest that Spinoza’s approach enables us to understand the productivity of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a hybrid between desire (the drive) and joy (the basic affect). Like hope or fear, it is future-oriented. It is a desire (to increase our power) combined with an anticipated outcome. Present and the future are tightly bound. Enthusiasm differs in this respect from its closest relatives: hope and optimism. Both hope and optimism believe in the desired outcome, but only against the odds and with a presumption of doubt. Enthusiasm is a form of ecstatic and hyper-confident hope. It already rewards us with joy in the present.With Spinoza we can understand the magical trick of future-oriented enthusiasm: To be enthusiastic means to anticipate an outcome of an increased power. This anticipation increases our power in the present. The increased power in the present can then be used to achieve the increased power in the future. If successful, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is this future-orientedness, which can make enthusiasm productive. Actions and PassionsIn its Greek origin (‘enthousiasmos’) to be enthusiastic meant to be possessed or inspired by a god. An enthusiast was someone with an intense religious fervour and sometimes someone with an exaggerated belief in religious inspiration. Accordingly, enthusiasm is often connected to the devotion to an ideal, cause, study or pursuit. In late capitalism, we get possessed by different gods. We get possessed by the gods of opportunity – in our case the opportunities of a new technology like IPTV. Obsessions cannot easily be switched on and off. This is part of affective labour: The ability to open up and let the gods of future-oriented enthusiasm take hold of us. We believe in something not for the sake of believing, but for the sake of what we believe in. But at the same time we know that we need to believe. The management of this contradiction is a problem of control. As enthusiasm now constitutes a precious commodity, we cannot leave it to mere chance. Spinoza addresses exactly this point. He distinguishes two kinds of affects, actions and passions. Actions are what we control, passions are what controls us. Joy (= the experience of increased power of acting) can also weaken, if someone is not able to control the affection that triggered the joy. In such a case it becomes a passion: An increase of power that weakens in the long run. Enthusiasm is often exactly this. How can enthusiasm as a passion be turned into an action? One possible answer is to control what Spinoza calls the ‘ideas’ of the bodily affections. For Spinoza, affections (affectiones) ‘strike’ the body, but affect (affectus) is formed of both, of the bodily affectiones, but also of our ideas of these affectiones. Can such ideas become convictions, beliefs, persuasions? Our experience suggests that this is indeed possible. The excitement about the creative possibilities of IPTV, for example, was turned into a conviction. We had internalised the affect as part of our beliefs. But we had internalised it for a prize: The more it became an idea the more stable it got, but the less it was a full, bodily affect, something that touched our nervous system. We gained power over it for the price that it became less powerful in its drive.Managing the UnmanageableIn all institutions and organisations enthusiasm needs to be managed on a regular basis. In project networks however the orchestration of affects faces a different set of obstacles than in traditional organizations. Power structures are often shifting and not formally defined. Project partners are likely to have diverging interests, different expectations and different views on how to collaborate. What might be a disappointing result for one partner can be a successful result for another one. Differences of interest can be accompanied by differences of the expression of enthusiasm. This was clearly the case in our project network. The TV company entered a state of hype and frenzy while pitching the project. They were expressing their enthusiasm with talk about prominent TV channels that would buy the product, and celebrities who would take part in the show. The new media company showed its commitment through the development of beautifully designed time plans and prototypes – one of them included the idea to advertise the logo of the project on banners placed on airplanes. This sort of enthusiastic presentation led the TV producer to oppose the vision of the new media’s brand developer: She perceived this as an example of unrealistic pipe dreams. In turn the TV producer’s repeated name-dropping led other partners to mistrust them.Timing was another reason why it seemed to be impossible to integrate the affective cohorts of all partners into one well-oiled machine. Work in TV production requires periods of heightened enthusiasm while shooting the script. Not surprisingly, TV professionals save up their energy for this time. In contrast, new media practitioners create their products on the go: hype and energy are spread over the whole work process. Their labour becomes materialised in detailed plans, concepts, and prototypes. In short, the affective machine of a project network needs orchestration. This is a question of management.As this management failed so often in our project, we could discover another issue in the universe of enthusiasm: Disappointed high spirits can easily turn into bitterness and hostility. High expectations can lead to a lack of motivation and finally to a loss of loyalty towards the product and towards other project partners. Thus managing enthusiasm is not just about timing. It is also about managing disappointment and frustration. These are techniques, which have to be well developed on the level of the self-management as well as group management.Beyond the ProjectWe want to conclude this paper with a scene that happened at the very end of the project. In a final meeting, all partners agreed – much to our surprise – that the product was a big success. At that time we as academic partners found this irritating. There were many reasons why we disagreed: we did not produce a new format, we did not get positive user feedback, and we could not sell the show to further broadcasters (our original aims). However, all of this did not seem to have any impact on this final assessment. At the time of the meeting this looked for us like surreal theatre. Looking back now, this display of enthusiasm was indeed perhaps a ‘rational’ thing to do. Most projects and products in the creative industries are not successful on the market (Frith). 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The habitual passenger cannot grasp the folly of traffic based overwhelmingly on transport. His inherited perceptions of space and time and of personal pace have been industrially deformed. He has lost the power to conceive of himself outside the passenger role (Illich 25).The most basic definition of Stillness refers to a state of being in the absence of both motion and disturbance. Some might say it is anti-American. Stillness denies the democratic freedom of mobility in a social system where, as Ivan Illich writes in Energy and Equity, people “believe that political power grows out of the capacity of a transportation system, and in its absence is the result of access to the television screen” (26). In America, it isn’t too far of a stretch to say that most are quite used to being interpolated as some sort of subject of the screen, be it the windshield or the flat screen. Whether in transport or tele-vision, life is full of traffic and flickering images. In the best of times there is a choice between being citizen-audience member or citizen-passenger. A full day might include both.But during the summer of 2008 things seemed to change. The citizen-passenger was left beached, not in some sandy paradise but in their backyard. In this state of SIMBY (stuck in my backyard), the citizen-passenger experienced the energy crisis first hand. Middle class suburbanites were forced to come to terms with a new disturbance due to rising fuel prices: unattainable motion. Domestic travel had been exchanged for domestication. The citizen-passenger was rendered what Paul Virilio might call, “a voyager without a voyage, this passenger without a passage, the ultimate stranger, and renegade to himself” (Crepuscular 131). The threat to capitalism posed by this unattainable motion was quickly thwarted by America’s 'big box' stores, hotel chains, and news networks. What might have become a culturally transformative politics of attainable stillness was hijacked instead by The Great American Staycation. The Staycation is a neologism that refers to the activity of making a vacation out of staying at home. But the Staycation is more than a passing phrase; it is a complex cultural phenomenon that targeted middle class homes during the summer of 2008. A major constraint to a happy Staycation was the uncomfortable fact that the middle class home was not really a desirable destination as it stood. The family home would have to undergo a series of changes, one being the initiation of a set of time management strategies; and the second, the adoption of new objects for consumption. Good Morning America first featured the Staycation as a helpful parenting strategy for what was expected to be a long and arduous summer. GMA defined the parameters of the Staycation with four golden rules in May of 2008:Schedule start and end dates. Otherwise, it runs the risk of feeling just like another string of nights in front of the tube. Take Staycation photos or videos, just as you would if you went away from home on your vacation. Declare a 'choratorium.' That means no chores! Don't make the bed, vacuum, clean out the closets, pull weeds, or nothing, Pack that time with activities. (Leamy)Not only did GMA continue with the theme throughout the summer but the other networks also weighed in. Expert knowledge was doled out and therapeutic interventions were made to make people feel better about staying at home. Online travel companies such as expedia.com and tripadvisor.com, estimated that 60% of regular vacation takers would be staying home. With the rise and fall of gas prices, came the rise of fall of the Staycation.The emergence of the Staycation occurred precisely at a time when American citizens were confronted with the reality that their mobility and localities, including their relationship to domestic space, were structurally bound to larger geopolitical forces. The Staycation was an invention deployed by various interlocutors most threatened by the political possibilities inherent in stillness. The family home was catapulted into the circuits of production, consumption, and exchange. Big TV and Big Box stores furthered individual’s unease towards having to stay at home by discursively constructing the gas prices as an impediment to a happy domestic life and an affront to the American born right to be mobile. What was reinforced was that Americans ideally should be moving, but could not. Yet, at the same time it was rather un-American not to travel. The Staycation was couched in a powerful rhetoric of one’s moral duty to the nation while playing off of middle class anxieties and senses of privilege regarding the right to be mobile and the freedom to consume. The Staycation satiates all of these tensions by insisting that the home can become a somewhere else. Between spring and autumn of 2008, lifestyle experts, representatives from major retailers, and avid Staycationers filled morning slots on ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS, and CNN with Staycation tips. CNN highlighted the Staycation as a “1st Issue” in their Weekend Report on 12 June 2008 (Alban). This lead story centred on a father in South Windsor, Connecticut “who took the money he would normally spend on vacations and created a permanent Staycation residence.” The palatial home was fitted with a basketball court, swimming pool, hot tub, gardening area, and volleyball court. In the same week (and for those without several acres) CBS’s Early Show featured the editor of behindthebuy.com, a company that specialises in informing the “time starved consumer” about new commodities. The lifestyle consultant previewed the newest and most necessary items “so you could get away without leaving home.” Key essentials included a “family-sized” tent replete with an air conditioning unit, a projector TV screen amenable to the outdoors, a high-end snow-cone maker, a small beer keg, a mini-golf kit, and a fast-setting swimming pool that attaches to any garden hose. The segment also extolled the virtues of the Staycation even when gas prices might not be so high, “you have this stuff forever, if you go on vacation all you have are the pictures.” Here, the value of the consumer products outweighs the value of erstwhile experiences that would have to be left to mere recollection.Throughout the summer ABC News’ homepage included links to specific products and profiled hotels, such as Hiltons and Holiday Inns, where families could at least get a few miles away from home (Leamy). USA Today, in an article about retailers and the Staycation, reported that Wal-Mart would be “rolling back prices on everything from mosquito repellent to portable DVD players to baked beans and barbecue sauce”. Target and Kohl’s were celebrated for offering discounts on patio furniture, grills, scented candles, air fresheners and other products to make middle class homes ‘staycationable’. A Lexis Nexis count revealed over 200 news stories in various North American sources, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Investors Guide, the Christian Science Monitor, and various local Consumer Credit Counselling Guides. Staying home was not necessarily an inexpensive option. USA Today reported brand new grills, grilling meats, patio furniture and other accoutrements were still going to cost six percent more than the previous year (24 May 2008). While it was suggested that the Staycation was a cost-saving option, it is clear Staycations were for the well-enough off and would likely cost more or as much as an actual vacation. To put this in context with US vacation policies and practices, a recent report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research called No-Vacation Nation found that the US is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation (Ray and Schmidt 3). Subsequently, without government standards 25% of Americans have neither paid vacation nor paid holidays. The Staycation was not for the working poor who were having difficulty even getting to work in the first place, nor were they for the unemployed, recently job-less, or the foreclosed. No, the Staycationers were middle class suburbanites who had backyards and enough acreage for swimming pools and tents. These were people who were going to be ‘stuck’ at home for the first time and a new grill could make that palatable. The Staycation would be exciting enough to include in their vacation history repertoire.All of the families profiled on the major networks were white Americans and in most cases nuclear families. For them, unattainable motion is an affront to the privilege of their white middle class mobility which is usually easy and unencumbered, in comparison to raced mobilities. Doreen Massey’s theory of “power geometry” which argues that different people have differential and inequitable relationships to mobility is relevant here. The lack of racial representation in Staycation stories reinforces the reality that has already been well documented in the works of bell hooks in Black Looks: Race and Representation, Lynn Spigel in Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs, and Jeremy Packer in Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars and Citizenship. All of these critical works suggest that taking easily to the great open road is not the experience of all Americans. Freedom of mobility is in fact a great American fiction.The proprietors for the Great American Staycation were finding all sorts of dark corners in the American psyche to extol the virtues of staying at home. The Staycation capitalised on latent xenophobic tendencies of the insular family. Encountering cultural difference along the way could become taxing and an impediment to the fully deserved relaxation that is the stuff of dream vacations. CNN.com ran an article soon after their Weekend Report mentioned above quoting a life coach who argued Staycations were more fitting for many Americans because the “strangeness of different cultures or languages, figuring out foreign currencies or worrying about lost luggage can take a toll” (12 June 2008). The Staycation sustains a culture of insularity, consumption, distraction, and fear, but in doing so serves the national economic interests quite well. Stay at home, shop, grill, watch TV and movies, these were the economic directives programmed by mass media and retail giants. As such it was a cultural phenomenon commensurable to the mundane everyday life of the suburbs.The popular version of the Staycation is a highly managed and purified event that reflects the resort style/compound tourism of ‘Club Meds’ and cruise ships. The Staycation as a new form of domestication bears a significant resemblance to the contemporary spatial formations that Marc Augé refers to as non-places – contemporary forms of homogeneous architecture that are scattered across disparate locales. The nuclear family home becomes another point of transfer in the global circulation of capital, information, and goods. The chain hotels and big box stores that are invested in the Staycation are touted as part of the local economy but instead devalue the local by making it harder for independent restaurants, grocers, farmers’ markets and bed and breakfasts to thrive. In this regard the Staycation excludes the local economy and the community. It includes backyards not balconies, hot-dogs not ‘other’ types of food, and Wal-Mart rather than then a local café or deli. Playing on the American democratic ideals of freedom of mobility and activating one’s identity as a consumer left little room to re-think how life in constant motion (moving capital, moving people, moving information, and moving goods) was partially responsible for the energy crisis in the first place. Instead, staying at home became a way for the American citizen to support the floundering economy while waiting for gas prices to go back down. And, one wouldn’t have to look that much further to see that the Staycation slips discursively into a renewed mission for a just cause – the environment. For example, ABC launched at the end of the summer a ruse of a national holiday, “National Stay at Home Week” with the tag line: “With gas prices so high, the economy taking a nosedive and global warming, it's just better to stay in and enjoy great ABC TV.” It comes as no shock that none of the major networks covered this as an environmental issue or an important moment for transformation. In fact, the air conditioning units in backyard tents attest to quite the opposite. Instead, the overwhelming sense was of a nation waiting at home for it all to be over. Soon real life would resume and everyone could get moving again. The economic slowdown and the energy crisis are examples of the breakdown and failure of capitalism. In a sense, a potential opened up in this breakdown for Stillness to become an alternative to life in constant and unrequited motion. That is, for the practice of non-movement and non-circulation to take on new political and cultural forms especially in the sprawling suburbs where the car moves individuals between the trifecta of home, box store, and work. The economic crisis is also a temporary stoppage of the flows. If the individual couldn’t move, global corporate capital would find a way to set the house in motion, to reinsert it back into the machinery that is now almost fully equated with freedom.The reinvention of the home into a campground or drive-in theatre makes the house a moving entity, an inverted mobile home that is both sedentary and in motion. Paul Virilio’s concept of “polar inertia” is important here. He argues, since the advent of transportation individuals live in a state of “resident polar inertia” wherein “people don’t move, even when they’re in a high speed train. They don’t move when they travel in their jet. They are residents in absolute motion” (Crepuscular 71). Lynn Spigel has written extensively about these dynamics, including the home as mobile home, in Make Room for TV and Welcome to the Dreamhouse. She examines how the introduction of the television into domestic space is worked through the tension between the private space of the home and the public world outside. Spigel refers to the dual emergence of portable television and mobile homes. Her work shows how domestic space is constantly imagined and longed for “as a vehicle of transport through which they (families) could imaginatively travel to an illicit place of passion while remaining in the safe space of the family home” (Welcome 60-61). But similarly to what Virilio has inferred Spigel points out that these mobile homes stayed parked and the portable TVs were often stationary as well. The Staycation exists as an addendum to what Spigel captures about the relationship between domestic space and the television set. It provides another example of advertisers’ attempts to play off the suburban tension between domestic space and the world “out there.” The Staycation exacerbates the role of the domestic space as a site of production, distribution, and consumption. The gendered dynamics of the Staycation include redecorating possibilities targeted at women and the backyard beer and grill culture aimed at men. In fact, ‘Mom’ might suffer the most during a Staycation, but that is another topic. The point is the whole family can get involved in a way that sustains the configurations of power but with an element of novelty.The Staycation is both a cultural phenomenon that feeds off the cultural anxieties of the middle class and an economic directive. It has been constructed to maintain movement at a time when the crisis of capital contains seeds for an alternative, for Stillness to become politically and culturally transformative. But life feels dull when the passenger is stuck and the virtues of Stillness are quite difficult to locate in this cultural context. As Illich argues, “the passenger who agrees to live in a world monopolised by transport becomes a harassed, overburdened consumer of distances whose shape and length he can no longer control” (45). When the passenger is the mode of identification, immobility becomes unbearable. In this context a form of “still mobility” such as the Staycation might be satisfying enough. ConclusionThe still citizen is a threatening figure for capital. In Politics of the Very Worst Virilio argues at the heart of capitalism is a state of permanent mobility, a condition to which polar inertia attests. The Staycation fits completely within this context of this form of mobile immobility. The flow needs to keep flowing. When people are stationary, still, and calm the market suffers. It has often been argued that the advertising industries construct dissatisfaction while also marginally eliminating it through the promises of various products, yet ultimately leaving the individual in a constant state of almost satisfied but never really. The fact that the Staycation is a mode of waiting attests to this complacent dissatisfaction.The subjective and experiential dimensions of living in a capitalist society are experienced through one’s relationship to time and staying on the right path. The economic slowdown and the energy crisis are also crises in pace, energy, and time. The mobility and tempo, the pace and path that capital relies on, has become unhinged and vulnerable to a resistant re-shaping. The Staycation re-sets the tempo of suburbia to meet the new needs of an economic slowdown and financial crisis. Following the directive to staycate is not necessarily a new form of false consciousness, but an intensified technological and economic mode of subjection that depends on already established cultural anxieties. But what makes the Staycation unique and worthy of consideration is that capitalists and other disciplinary institutions of power, in this case big media, construct new and innovative ways to control people’s time and regulate their movement in space. The Staycation is a particular re-territorialisation of the temporal and spatial dimensions of home, work, and leisure. In sum, Staycation and the staging of National Stay at Home Week reveals a systemic mobilising and control of a population’s pace and path. As Bernard Stiegler writes in Technics and Time: “Deceleration remains a figure of speed, just as immobility is a figure of movement” (133). These processes are inexorably tied to one another. Thinking back to the opening quote from Illich, we could ask how we might stop imagining ourselves as passengers – ushered along, falling in line, or complacently floating past. To be still in the flows could be a form of ultimate resistance. In fact, Stillness has the possibility of becoming an autonomous practice of refusal. It is after all this threatening potentiality that created the frenzied invention of the Staycation in the first place. To end where I began, Illich states that “the habitual passenger must adopt a new set of beliefs and expectations if he is to feel secure in the strange world” (25-26). The horizon of political possibility is uniformly limited for the passenger. Whether people actually did follow these directives during the summer of 2008 is hard to determine. The point is that the energy crisis and economic slowdown offered a potential to vacate capital’s premises, both its pace and path. But corporate capital is doing its best to make sure that people wait, staycate, and see it through. The Staycation is not just about staying at home for vacation. It is about staying within reach, being accounted for, at a time when departing global corporate capital seems to be the best option. ReferencesAlban, Debra. “Staycations: Alternative to Pricey, Stressful Travel.” CNN News 12 June 2008. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/worklife/06/12/balance.staycation/index.html›.Augé, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. Verso, London, 1995.hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992.Illich, Ivan. Energy and Equity. New York: Perennial Library, 1974.Leamy, Elisabeth. “Tips for Planning a Great 'Staycation'.” ABC News 23 May 2008. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/story?id=4919211›.Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: Minnesota U P, 1994.Packer, Jeremy. Mobility without Mayhem: Safety, Cars, and Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke U P, 2008.Ray, Rebecca and John Schmitt. No-Vacation Nation. Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research, May 2007.Spigel, Lynn. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: Chicago U P, 1992.———. Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs. Durham, NC: Duke U P, 2001.Stiegler, Bernard. Technics and Time 2: Disorientation. Trans. Stephen Barker. California: Stanford University Press, 2009.USA Today. “Retailers Promote 'Staycation' Sales.” 24 May 2008. 6 Mar. 2009 ‹http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2008-05-24-staycations_N.htm›.Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics. Trans. Mark Polizzotti. New York: Semiotext(e), 1986.———. In James der Derian, ed. The Virilio Reader. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1998.———. Politics of the Very Worst. New York: Semiotext(e), 1999.———. Crepuscular Dawn. New York: Semiotext(e), 2002.

IntroductionAs both a historical and cultural entity, the city of New Orleans has long-maintained a reputation as a centre for hedonistic and carnivaleque pleasures. Historically, images of mardi gras, jazz, and parties on the shores of the Mississippi have pervaded the cultural vision of the city as a “mecca” for “social life” (Marina 2), and successfully fed its tourism narratives. Simultaneously, however, a different kind of narrative also exists in the historical folds of the city’s urban mythology. Many tales of vampire sightings and supernatural accounts surround the area, and have contributed, over the years, to the establishment and mystification of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’. This has produced, in turn, its own brand of vampire tourism (Murphy 2015). Mixed with historical rumours and Gothic folklore, the recent narratives of popular culture lie at the centre of the re-imagination of New Orleans as a vampire hub. Taking this idea as a point of departure, this article provides culturally- and historically-informed critical considerations of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’, especially as portrayed in The Originals (2013-2017), a contemporary television series where vampires are the main protagonists. In the series, the historical narratives of New Orleans become entangled with – and are, at times, almost inseparable from – the fictional chronicles of the vampire in both aesthetic and conceptual terms.The critical connection between urban narratives and vampires representation, as far as New Orleans is concerned, is profoundly entangled with notions of both tourism and fictionalised popular accounts of folklore (Piatti-Farnell 172). In approaching the conceptual relationship between New Orleans as a cultural and historical entity and the vampire — in its folkloristic and imaginative context — the analysis will take a three-pronged approach: firstly, it will consider the historical narrative of tourism for the city of New Orleans; secondly, the city’s connection to vampires and other Gothicised entities will be considered, both historically and narratively; and finally, the analysis will focus on how the connection between New Orleans and Gothic folklore of the vampire is represented in The Originals, with the issue of cultural authenticity being brought into the foreground. A critical footnote must be given to the understanding of the term ‘New Orleans’ in this article as meaning primarily the French Quarter – or, the Vieux Carre – and its various representations. This geographical focus principally owes its existence to the profound cultural significance that the French Quarter has occupied in the history of New Orleans as a city, and, in particular, in its connection to narratives of magic and Gothic folklore, as well as the broader historical and contemporary tourism structures. A History of TourismSocial historian Kevin Fox Gotham agues that New Orleans as a city has been particularly successful in fabricating a sellable image of itself; tourism, Gotham reminds us, is about “the production of local difference, local cultures, and different local histories that appeal to visitors’ tastes for the exotic and the unique” (“Gentrification” 1100). In these terms, both the history and the socio-cultural ‘feel’ of the city cannot be separated from the visual constructs that accompany it. Over the decades, New Orleans has fabricated a distinct network of representational patterns for the Vieux Carre in particular, where the deployment of specific images, themes and motifs – which are, in truth, only peripherally tied to the city’ actual social and political history, and owe their creation and realisation more to the success of fictional narratives from film and literature – is employed to “stimulate tourist demands to buy and consume” (Gotham, “Gentrification” 1102). This image of the city as hedonistic site is well-acknowledged, has to be understood, at least partially, as a conscious construct aimed at the production an identity for itself, which the city can in turn sell to visitors, both domestically and internationally. New Orleans, Gotham suggests, is a ‘complex and constantly mutating city’, in which “meanings of place and community” are “inexorably intertwined with tourism” (Authentic 5). The view of New Orleans as a site of hedonistic pleasure is something that has been heavily capitalised upon by the tourism industry of the city for decades, if not centuries. A keen look at advertising pamphlets for the city, dating form the late Nineteenth century onwards, provides an overview of thematic selling points, that primarily focus on notions of jazz, endless parties and, in particular, nostalgic and distinctly rose-tinted views of the Old South and its glorious plantations (Thomas 7). The decadent view of New Orleans as a centre of carnal pleasures has often been recalled by scholars and lay observers alike; this vision of he city indeed holds deep historical roots, and is entangled with the city’s own economic structures, as well as its acculturated tourism ones. In the late 19th and early 20th century one of the things that New Orleans was very famous for was actually Storyville, the city’s red-light district, sanctioned in 1897 by municipal ordinance. Storyville quickly became a centralized attraction in the heart of New Orleans, so much so that it began being heavily advertised, especially through the publication of the ‘Blue Book’, a resource created for tourists. The Blue Book contained, in alphabetical order, information on all the prostitutes of Storyville. Storyville remained very popular and the most famous attraction in New Orleans until its demolition in 1919 Anthony Stanonis suggests that, in its ability to promote a sellable image for the city, “Storyville meshed with the intersts of business men in the age before mass tourism” (105).Even after the disappearance of Storyville, New Orleans continued to foster its image a site of hedonism, a narrative aided by a favourable administration, especially in the 1930s and 1940s. The French Quarter, in particular, “became a tawdry mélange of brothers and gambling dens operating with impunity under lax law enforcement” (Souther 16). The image of the city as a site for pleasures of worldly nature continued to be deeply rooted, and even survives in the following decades today, as visible in the numerous exotic dance parlours located on the famous Bourbon Street.Vampire TourismSimultaneously, however, a different kind of narrative also exists in the recent historical folds of the city’s urban mythology, where vampires, magic, and voodoo are an unavoidable presence. Many tales of vampire sightings and supernatural accounts surround the area, and have contributed, over the years, to the establishment and mystification of New Orleans as a ‘vampire city’. Kenneth Holditch contends that ‘”New Orleans is a city in love with its myths, mysteries and fantasies” (quoted in McKinney 8). In the contemporary era, these qualities are profoundly reflected in the city’s urban tourism image, where the vampire narrative is pushed into the foreground. When in the city, one might be lucky enough to take one of the many ‘vampire tours’ — often coupled with narratives of haunted locations — or visit the vampire bookshop, or even take part in the annual vampire ball. Indeed, the presence of vampires in New Orleans’s contemporary tourism narrative is so pervasive that one might be tempted to assume that it has always occupied a prominent place in the city’s cultural fabric. Nonetheless, this perception is not accurate: the historical evidence from tourism pamphlets for the city do not make any mentions of vampire tourism before the 1990s, and even then, the focus on the occult side of new Orleans tended to privilege stories of voodoo and hoodoo — a presence that still survives strongly in the cultural narrative city itself (Murphy 91). While the connection between vampires and New Orleans is a undoubtedly recent one, the development and establishment of New Orleans as vampire city cannot be thought of as a straight line. A number of cultural and historical currents appear to converge in the creation of the city’s vampire mystique. The history and geography of the city here could be an important factor, and a useful starting point; as the site of extreme immigration and ethnic and racial mingling New Orleans holds a reputation for mystery. The city was, of course, the regrettable site of a huge marketplace for the slave trade, so discussions of political economy could also be important here, although I’ll leave them for another time. As a city, New Orleans has often been described – by novelists, poets, and historians alike – as being somewhat ‘peculiar’. Simone de Behaviour was known to have remarked that that the city is surrounded by a “pearl grey” and ‘luminous’ air” (McKinney 1). In similar fashion, Oliver Evans claims the city carries “opalescent hints” (quoted in McKinney 1). New Orleans is famous for having a quite thick mist, the result of a high humidity levels in the air. To an observing eye, New Orleans seems immersed in an almost otherworldly ‘glow’, which bestows upon its limits an ethereal and mysterious quality (Piatti-Farnell 173). While this intention here is not to suggest that New Orleans is the only city to have mist – especially in the Southern States – one might venture to say that this physical phenomenon, joined with other occurrences and legends, has certainly contributed to the city’s Gothicised image. The geography of the city also makes it sadly famous for floods and their subsequent devastation, which over centuries have wrecked parts of the city irrevocably. New Orleans sits at a less than desirable geographical position, is no more than 17 feet above sea level, and much of it is at least five feet below (McKinney 5). In spite of its lamentable fame, hurricane Katrina was not the first devastating geo-meteorological phenomenon to hit and destroy most of New Orleans; one can trace similar hurricane occurrences in 1812 and 1915, which at the time significantly damaged parts of the French Quarter. The geographical position of New Orleans also owes to the city’s well-known history of disease such as the plague and tuberculosis – often associated, in previous centuries, with the miasma proper to reclaimed river lands. In similar terms, one must not forget New Orleans’s history of devastating fires – primarily in the years 1788, 1794, 1816, 1866 and 1919 – which slowly destroyed the main historical parts of the city, particularly in the Vieux Carre, and to some extent opened the way for regeneration and later gentrification as well. As a result of its troubled and destructive history, Louise McKinnon claims that the city ‒ perhaps unlike any others in the United States ‒ hinges on perpetual cycles of destruction and regeneration, continuously showing “the wear and tear of human life” (McKinney 6).It is indeed in this extremely important element that New Orleans finds a conceptual source in its connection to notions of the undead, and the vampire in particular. Historically, one can identify the pervasive use of Gothic terminology to describe New Orleans, even if, the descriptions themselves were more attuned to perceptions of the city’s architecture and metrological conditions, rather than the recollection of any folklore-inspired narratives of unread creatures. Because of its mutating, and often ill-maintained historical architecture – especially in the French Quarter - New Orleans has steadily maintained a reputation as a city of “splendid decay” (McKinney, 6). This highly lyrical and metaphorical approach plays an important part in building the city as a site of mystery and enchantment. Its decaying outlook functions as an unavoidable sign of how New Orleans continues to absorb, and simultaneously repel, as McKinney puts it, “the effects of its own history” (6).Nonetheless, the history of New Orleans as a cultural entity, especially in terms of tourism, has not been tied to vampires for centuries, as many imagine, and the city itself insists in its contemporary tourism narratives. Although a lot of folklore has survived around the city in connection to magic and mysticism, for a number of reasons, vampires have not always been in the foreground of its publicised cultural narratives. Mixed with historical rumours and Gothic folklore, the recent narratives of popular culture lie at the centre of the re-imagination of New Orleans as a vampire spot: most scholars claim that it all started with the publication of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976), but actually evidence shows that the vampire narrative for the city of New Orleans did not fully explode until the release of Neil Jordan’s cinematic adaptation of Interview with the Vampire (1994). This film really put New Orleans at the centre of the vampire narrative, indulging in the use of many iconic locations in the city as tied to vampire, and cementing the idea of New Orleans as a vampiric city (Piatti-Farnell 175). The impact of Rice’s work, and its adaptations, has also been picked up by numerous other examples of popular culture, including Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire mystery series, and its well-known television adaptation True Blood. Harris herself states in one of her novels: “New Orleans had been the place to go for vampires and those who wanted to be around them ever since Anne Rice had been proven right about their existence” (2). In spite of the fact that popular culture, rather than actual historical evidence, lies at the heart of the city’s cultural relationship with vampires, this does not detract from the fact that vampires themselves – as fabricated figures lying somewhere between folklore, history, and fiction – represent an influential part of New Orleans’s contemporary tourism narrative, building a bridge between historical storytelling, mythologised identities, and consumerism. The Originals: Vampires in the CityIndeed, the impact of popular culture in establishing and re-establishing the success of the vampire tourism narrative in New Orleans is undeniable. Contemporary examples continue to capitalise on the visual, cultural, and suggestively historical connection between the city’s landmarks and vampire tales, cementing the notion of New Orleans as a solid entity within the Gothic tourism narrative. One such successful example is The Originals. This television show is actually a spin-off of the Vampires Diaries, and begins with three vampires, the Mikaelson siblings (Niklaus, Elijah, and Rebekkah) returning to the city of New Orleans for the first time since 1919, when they were forced to flee by their vengeful father. In their absence, Niklaus's protégé, Marcel, took charge of the city. The storyline of The Originals focuses on battles within the vampire factions to regain control of the city, and eliminate the hold of other mystical creatures such as werewolves and witches (Anyiwo 175). The central narrative here is that the city belongs to the vampire, and there can be no other real Gothic presence in the Quarter. One can only wonder, even at this embryonic level, how this connects functions in a multifaceted way, extending the critique of the vampire’s relationship to New Orleans from the textual dimension of the TV show to the real life cultural narrative of the city itself. A large number of the narrative strands in The Originals are tied to city and its festivals, its celebrations, and its visions of the past, whether historically recorded, or living in the pages of its Gothic folklore. Vampires are actually claimed to have made New Orleans what it is today, and they undoubtedly rule it. As Marcel puts it: “The blood never stops flowing, and the party never ends” (Episode 1, “Always and Forever”). Even the vampiric mantra for New Orleans in The Originals is tied to the city’s existing and long-standing tourism narrative, as “the party never ends” is a reference to one of Bourbon Street’s famous slogans. Indeed, the pictorial influence of the city’s primary landmarks in The Originals is undeniable. In spite of the fact the inside scenes for The Originals were filmed in a studio, the outside shots in the series reveal a strong connections to the city itself, as viewers are left with no doubt as to the show’s setting. New Orleans is continuously mentioned and put on show – and pervasively referred to as “our city”, by the vampires. So much so, that New Orleans becomes the centre of the feud between supernatural forces, as the vampires fight witches and werewolves – among others- to maintain control over the city’s historical heart. The French Quarter, in particular, is given renewed life from the ashes of history into the beating heart of the vampire narrative, so much so that it almost becomes its own character in its own right, instrumental in constructing the vampire mystique. The impact of the vampire on constructing an image for the city of New Orleans is made explicit in The Originals, as the series explicitly shows vampires at the centre of the city’s history. Indeed, the show’s narrative goes as far as justifying the French Quarter’s history and even legends through the vampire metaphor. For instance, the series explains the devastating fire that destroyed the French Opera House in 1919 as the result of a Mikaelson vampire family feud. In similar terms, the vampires of the French Quarter are shown at the heart of the Casquette Girls narrative, a well-known tale from Eighteenth-century colonial New Orleans, where young women were shipped from France to the new Louisiana colony, in order to marry. The young women were said to bring small chests – or casquettes – containing their clothes (Crandle 47). The Originals, however, capitalises on the folkloristic interpretation that perceives the girls’ luggage as coffins potentially containing the undead, a popular version of the tale that can often be heard if taking part in one of the many vampire tours in New Orleans. One can see here how the chronicles of the French Quarter in New Orleans and the presumed narratives of the vampire in the city merge to become one and the same, blurring the lines between history and fiction, and presenting the notion of folklore as a verifiable entity of the everyday (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 25) It is essential to remember, en passant, that, as far as giving the undead their own historical chronicles in connection to New Orleans, The Originals is not alone in doing this. Other TV series like American Horror Story have provided Gothicised histories for the city, although in this case more connected to witchcraft, hoodoo, and voodoo, rather than vampires.What one can see taking place in The Originals is a form of alternate and revisionist history that is reminiscent of several instances of pulp and science fiction from the early 20th century, where the Gothic element lies at the centre of not only the fictional narrative, but also of the re-conceptualisation of historical time and space, as not absolute entities, but as narratives open to interpretation (Singles 103). The re-interpretation here is of course connected to the cultural anxieties that are intrinsic to the Gothic – of changes, shifts, and unwanted returns - and the vampire as a figure of intersections, signalling the shift between stages of existence. If it is true that, to paraphrase Paul Ricoeur’s famous contention, the past returns to “haunt” us (105), then the history of New Orleans in The Originals is both established and haunted by vampires, a pervasive shadow that provides the city itself with an almost tangible Gothic afterlife. This connection, of course, extends beyond the fictional world of the television series, and finds fertile ground in the cultural narratives that the city constructs for itself. The tourism narrative of New Orleans also lies at the heart of the reconstructive historical imagination, which purposefully re-invents the city as a constructed entity that is, in itself, extremely sellable. The Originals mentions on multiple occasions that certain bars — owned, of course, by vampires — host regular ‘vampire themed events’, to “keep the tourists happy”. The importance of maintaining a steady influx of vampire tourism into the Quarter is made very clear throughout, and the vampires are complicit in fostering it for a number of reasons: not only because it provides them and the city with a constant revenue, but also because it brings a continuous source of fresh blood for the vampires to feed on. As Marcel puts it: “Something's gotta draw in the out-of-towners. Otherwise we'd all go hungry” (Episode 1, “Always and Forever”). New Orleans, it is made clear, is not only portrayed as a vampire hub, but also as a hot spot for vampire tourism; as part of the tourism narratives, the vampires themselves — who commonly feign humanity — actually further ‘pretend’ to be vampires for the tourists, who expect to find vampires in the city. It is made clear in The Originals that vampires often put on a show – and bear in mind, these are vampires who pretend to be human, who pretend to be vampires for the tourists. They channel stereotypes that belong in Gothic novels and films, and that are, as far as the ‘real’ vampires of the series, are concerned, mostly fictional. The vampires that are presented to the tourists in The Originals are, inevitably, inauthentic, for the real vampires themselves purposefully portray the vision of vampires put forward by popular culture, together with its own motifs and stereotypes. The vampires happily perform their popular culture role, in order to meet the expectations of the tourist. This interaction — which sociologist Dean MacCannell would refer to, when discussing the dynamics of tourism, as “staged authenticity” (591) — is the basis of the appeal, and what continues to bring tourists back, generating profits for vampires and humans alike. Nina Auerbach has persuasively argued that the vampire is often eroticised through its connections to the “self-obsessed’ glamour of consumerism that ‘subordinates history to seductive object” (57).With the issue of authenticity brought into sharp relief, The Originals also foregrounds questions of authenticity in relation to New Orleans’s own vampire tourism narrative, which ostensibly bases into historical narratives of magic, horror, and folklore, and constructs a fictionalised urban tale, suitable to the tourism trade. The vampires of the French Quarter in The Originals act as the embodiment of the constructed image of New Orleans as the epitome of a vampire tourist destination. ConclusionThere is a clear suggestion in The Originals that vampires have evolved from simple creatures of old folklore, to ‘products’ that can be sold to expectant tourists. This evolution, as far as popular culture is concerned, is also inevitably tied to the conceptualisation of certain locations as ‘vampiric’, a notion that, in the contemporary era, hinges on intersecting narratives of culture, history, and identity. Within this, New Orleans has successfully constructed an image for itself as a vampire city, exploiting, in a number ways, the popular and purposefully historicised connection to the undead. In both tourism narratives and popular culture, of which The Originals is an ideal example, New Orleans’s urban image — often sited in constructions and re-constructions, re-birth and decay — is presented as a result of the vampire’s own existence, and thrives in the Gothicised afterlife of imagery, symbolism, and cultural persuasion. In these terms, the ‘inauthentic’ vampires of The Originals are an ideal allegory that provides a channelling ground for the issues surrounding the ‘inauthentic’ state of New Orleans a sellable tourism entity. As both hinge on images of popular representation and desirable symbols, the historical narratives of New Orleans become entangled with — and are, at times, almost inseparable from — the fictional chronicles of the vampire in both aesthetic and conceptual terms. ReferencesAnyiwo, U. Melissa. “The Female Vampire in Popular Culture.” Gender in the Vampire Narrative. Eds. Amanda Hobson and U. Melissa Anyiwo. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2016. 173-192. Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.Crandle, Marita Woywod. New Orleans Vampires: History and Legend. Stroud: The History Press, 2017.Gotham, Kevin Fox. Authentic New Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy. New York: New York University Press, 2007.———. “Tourism Gentrification: The Case of New Orleans’ Vieux Carre’.” Urban Studies 42.7 (2005): 1099-1121. Harris, Charlaine. All Together Dead. London: Gollancz, 2008.Interview with the Vampire. Dir. Neil Jordan. Geffen Pictures, 1994. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Mistaken Dichotomies.” Public Folklore. Eds. Robert Baron and Nick Spitzer. Oxford: University of Missisippi Press, 2007. 28-48.Marina, Peter J. Down and Out in New Orleans: Trangressive Living in the Informal Economy. New York: Columia University Press, 2017. McKinney, Louise. New Orleans: A Cultural History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.Murphy, Michael. Fear Dat New Orleans: A Guide to the Voodoo, Vampires, Graveyards & Ghosts of the Crescent City. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. The Vampire in Contemporary Popular Literature. London: Routledge, 2014. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Singles, Kathleen. Alternate History: Playing with Contingency and Necessity. Boston: de Gruyter, 2013.Souther, Mark. New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City. Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 2006. Stanonis, Anthony J. Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006.The Originals. Seasons 1-4. CBS/Warner Bros Television. 2013-2017.Thomas, Lynell. Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.

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

If love is a many-splendoured thing, then many of its splendours can be seen on toy shelves occupied by recent playthings such as Luv Buds, Love and Kisses, First Love, My Puppy Loves Me and Love-A-Lot Bear. As the meaning of childhood has changed, particularly over the last 150 years (Postman), toys have become a major means of demonstrating and defining love between generations, between genders and between humans and commodities. The widespread availability of commodities, all increasingly finetuned in their prescribed meanings under a regime of rampant advertising, has been a key factor in this development, which reached an apex in the final quarter of the last century. Major toy companies grew dramatically (Stern and Schoenhaus), details of toy-play became more intricately spelt out for children (Kline), and advertising leapt into bold new fronts, not the least being 30-minute toy advertisements masquerading as children’s television programs (Kunkel). Hand in hand with these developments came more sensual elaboration of characters and themes (Kline and Pentecost), in line with general moves towards “commodity aesthetics” (Haug). Selling not just toys but warm fuzzy feelings, toy companies took up slogans such as those surrounding Cabbage Patch Kids: “A special kind of love” and “Come open your arms to a Cabbage Patch Kid” (Blyskal; Jacob, Rodenhauser and Markert). Care Bears made similar claims, each in the set distinguished by heightened sensuality and segmenting the tasks previously performed by the simpler teddy bear. Thus, while semanticists and sociologists grapple with the meaning of the word “love” and the shifting nature of the concept, modern-day toy manufacturers have utilised a number of pertinent notions to underpin their marketing efforts. Such is the importance of marketing that even the basic design of toys can be a marketer’s initiative, giving rise to toys structured specifically around love themes. This is significant because mass marketed toys act as powerful media, transmitting messages, offering interpretations and interacting with other toys and commodities, particularly in terms of communicating the appeals and joys of consumerism on which their existence so heavily relies. Modern toys are not only surrounded by massive advertising and other related texts which leave little to the child’s imagination but, due to their “collaboration” with other commodities in cross-marketing ventures, are prominently positioned to advertise themselves and each other. Messages promoting mass marketed toys are interwoven into the presentation of each toy, its advertising package and other promotional media, including books, films, mall appearances and miniaturisation in children’s packaged fast-food meals. Such schemes highlight the sensuality and appeals of the toys and their themes. Of course children – and their parents – may create oppositional meanings from those intended. The messages are not closed and not always accepted wholesale or unquestioningly, but toys, like other media, often privilege particular readings favourable to the marketplace, as Ann du Cille has pointed out in relation to race and I have noted in relation to gender. Love fits snugly into the repertoire of appeals and joys, taking several different forms, determined mostly by each toy’s target audience and marketing profile. Four of the main variations on the love theme in toys are: Representational love Substitutional love Obligatory love Romantic love I will focus on closely linked representational and substitutional love. A toy that draws on straightforward representational love for its appeal to a parent or carer is typically marketed to suggest that toys are material proof of love, important links in a chain of bonding. At its most crass, the suggestion is that one can prove one’s love for a child by showering her or him with toys, though usually claims are more sophisticated, implying issues of quality and toy genre. In 1993 toy company Mattel was marketing its Disney toys as coming with the special offer of a book. An advertisement in the Australian women’s magazine New Idea spoke of the “magic” of Disney toys and how they would “enchant your child” but made even grander claims of the accompanying book: “It’s valued at $9.95…but you can’t put a price on the bond between you and your child when you read one of these Disney classic tales together.” The pressures of modern-day life are such that parents sometimes feel guilty that they cannot spend enough time with their children or do not know how to play with them or have little interest in doing so, in which case substitutional love can be a strong marketing claim to parents by toys. Among the major features of modern toys and their part in the relationship between parents and children, Brian Sutton-Smith pinpointed a contradiction (115, 127). Parents give their children toys to bond with them but also to simultaneously facilitate separation: “I give you this toy for you to play with…but now go away and play with it by yourself.” Toys not only serve the contradiction but also may offer reconciliation, pitching at a niche seeking substitutional love. Mattel was explicit about this with its promotion of the Heart Family, a set of dolls that on one hand stressed the importance of the traditional nuclear family while, on the other, offered carers a chance to opt out of the burdens of such rigid family organization (Langer). In a booklet entitled “Dear Mum and Dad, will you give me five minutes of your time?” distributed in Australia, Mattel claimed that major research had found that parents did not spend enough time with children and that children felt sad and angry about this. But there was a solution at hand: the purchase of the Heart Family, which incidentally came with an enormous range of accessories, each capable of chipping away at parental guilt though perhaps never quite assuaging it, for there always seemed to be one more accessory on the way. Most notable of these was the large, elegant, two-storeyed dollhouse, Loving Home. The dolls, their dollhouse, musical nursery, playground and umpteen other accessories were, it was insinuated by the Mattel booklet, a way of purchasing “values we all believe in. Sharing. Caring. Loving. Togetherness”. It seemed that the range of commodities could stand in for parents. More recently, Fisher-Price, now part of the Mattel group, has brought out a similar toy line, Loving Family, which hints even more strongly at links between family security and material possessions. Among Loving Family’s accessories are a multi-room family house with attached stable, a beach house, country home, townhouse, beauty salon and much more. While we cannot be sure that these suggested links and parental guilt in the absence of multiple toy gifts take root, toy companies, market analysts, toy advertising agencies and psychiatrists have noted trends that suggest they generally do. They have noted the impact on toy sales thought to be associated with “the high number of children with guilt-ridden working mothers, or from broken homes where parents are trying to buy their offspring’s affections” (McKee). Sometimes parents are keen to ensure the love and affection of playmates for their children. Toy companies also offer this type of substitutional love. Knickerbocker says of its wares: “Toys that love you back,” while among Galoob’s dolls is Mandi, My Favorite Friend. But what a gloomy picture of human companionship is painted by Phebe Bears’ slogan: “When there’s no one else to trust.” Space permits only the briefest comments on either obligatory love or romantic love; the key factor here is that both are strongly gendered. Boys need not concern themselves with either variety but girls’ toys abound which play a socialising role in respect to each. Toys contributing to a concept of love as obligation train girls for a motherhood role that ensures they will be emotionally as well as physically equipped. Kenner doll Baby Needs Me is only one of many such toys. The box of Baby Chris gift set claims the doll “needs your love and care” while Hush Little Baby “responds to your loving care” and “loves to be fed”. Matchbox’s Chubbles is claimed to “live on love”. If the weight of these obligations seems daunting to a girl, the Barbie doll genre offers her a carrot, suggesting that girls grow into women who are the recipients of love from men. A closer look reveals narcissism is surely the strongest type of love promoted by Barbie, but that is not explicit. Barbies such as Dream Date Barbie, Enchanted Evening Barbie and the numerous Barbie brides – even though Barbie is claimed to have never married – promote a straightforward and romanticised view of heterosexual relationships. In conclusion, each toy makes its own grab for attention, often promising love or one of its components, but usually working within a framework of short-term gratification, infatuation, obsession, the yearn to possess and elicitation of guilt – mostly unhealthy ingredients for relationships. While it may be hard to decide what love is, most would agree that, if it ideally has some sense of community responsibility and reciprocity about it, then the definitions offered by these toys fall short of the mark. Works Cited Blyskal, Jeff and Marie. “Media Doll – Born in a Cabbage Patch and Reared by a PR Man” The Quill, 73, November 1985: 32. du Cille, Ann. “Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandising of Difference” Differences 6(1) Spring 1994: 46-68. Haug, Wolfgang Fritz. Commodity Aesthetics: Ideology and Culture. New York: International General, 1987. Jacob, James E., Paul Rodenhauser and Ronald J. Markert. “The Benign Exploitation of Human Emotions: Adult Women and the Marketing of Cabbage Patch Kids” Journal of American Culture 10, Fall 1987: 61-71. Kline, Stephen, and Debra Pentecost, “The Characterization of Play: Marketing Children’s Toys” Play and Culture, 3(3), 1990: 235-255. Kline, Stephen, Out of the Garden: Toys, TV, and Children’s Culture in the Age of Marketing. London: Verso, 1993. Kunkel, Dale. “From a Raised Eyebrow to a Turned Back: The FCC and Children’s Product-Related Programming” Journal of Communication 38(4) Autumn 1988: 90-108. Langer, Beryl. “Commoditoys: Marketing Childhood” Arena no. 87, 1989: 29-37. McKee, Victoria. “All Stressed Out and Ready to Play” The Times (London), 19 December 1990: 17. Postman, Neil. The Disappearance of Childhood. New York: Dell, 1982. Stern, Sydney Ladensohn and Ted Schoenhaus. Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1990. Sutton-Smith, Brian. Toys As Culture. New York: Garden Press, 1986. Varney, Wendy. “The Briar Around the Strawberry Patch: Toys, Women and Food” Women’s Studies International Forum no. 19, June 1996: 267-276. Varney, Wendy. “Of Men and Machines: Images of Masculinity in the Toybox” Feminist Studies 28(1) Spring 2002: 153-174. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Varney, Wendy. "Love in Toytown" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/loveintotytown.php>. APA Style Varney, W., (2002, Nov 20). Love in Toytown. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/loveintotytown.html

Introduction Presidents “define who Americans are—often by declaring who they aren’t”, and “by their very utterances […] have shaped our sense of who we are as Americans” (Stuckey, front cover). This advocacy of some groups and policies to the exclusion of others has been facilitated in the United States’ political culture by the country music industry. Indeed, President Richard Nixon said of country music that it “radiates a love of this nation—a patriotism,” adding that it “makes America a better country” (Bufwack and Oermann 328). Country music’s ardent support of American military conflict, including Vietnam, has led to its long-term support of Republican candidates. There has been a general lack of scholarly interest, however, in how country music has promoted Republican definitions of what it means to be an American. Accordingly, we have two primary objectives. First, we will demonstrate that Republicans, aided by country music, have used the theme of defence of “country,” especially post-9/11, to attempt to intimidate detractors. Secondly, Republicans have questioned the love of “country,” or “patriotism,” of their electoral opponents just as country musicians have attempted to silence their own critics. This research is timely in that little has been done to merge Presidential advocacy and country music; furthermore, with the election of a new President mere days away, it is important to highlight the tendencies toward intolerance that both conservatism and country music have historically shared. Defence of ‘Country’ After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush addressed the nation before a Joint Session of Congress on 20 September 2001. During this speech, the president threatened the international community and raised the spectre of fear in Americans both while drawing distinctions between the United States and its enemies. This message was reflected and reinforced by several patriotic anthems composed by country artists, thus enhancing its effect. In his remarks before Congress, Bush challenged the international community: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists;” thus “advocating some groups to the exclusion of others” on the international stage (20 September 2001). With these words, the President expanded the definition of the United States’ enemies to include not only those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, but also anyone who refused to support him. Republican Senator John McCain’s hawkishness regarding the attacks mirrored the President’s. “There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” McCain said the next morning on ABC (American Broadcasting Company) News. Within a month he made clear his priority: “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. Later he yelled to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!” (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/17/america/mccain.php). Bush’s address also encouraged Americans at home to “be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat” (20 September 2001). The subtle “us vs. them” tension here is between citizens and those who would threaten them. Bush added that “freedom and fear” had always “been at war” and “God is not neutral between them” (20 September 2001) suggesting a dualism between God and Satan with God clearly supporting the cause of the United States. Craig Allen Smith’s research refers to this as Bush’s “angel/devil jeremiad.” The President’s emphasis on fear, specifically the fear that the American way of life was being assailed, translated into public policy including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. This strategic nomenclature strengthened the power of the federal government and has been used by Republicans to suggest that if a candidate or citizen is not a terrorist then what does he/she have to fear from the government? The impact of Bush’s rhetoric of fear has of late been evaluated by scholars who have termed it “melodrama” in international affairs (Anker; Sampert and Treiberg). To disseminate his message for Americans to support his defence of “country,” Bush needed look no further than country music. David Firestein, a State Department diplomat and published authority on country music, asserted that the Bush team “recognised the power of country music as a political communication device” (86). The administration’s appeal to country music is linked to what Firestein called the “honky-tonk gap” which delineates red states and blue states. In an analysis of census data, Radio-Locator’s comprehensive listing by state of country music radio stations, and the official 2004 election results, he concluded that If you were to overlay a map of the current country music fan base onto the iconic red-and-blue map of the United States, you would find that its contours coincide virtually identically with those of the red state region. (84) And country musicians were indeed powerful in communicating the Republican message after 9/11. Several country musicians tapped into Bush’s defence of country rhetoric with a spate of songs including Alan Jackson’s Where Were You? (When the World Stopped Turning), Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (the Angry American), and Darryl Worley’s Have You Forgotten? to name a few. Note how well the music parallels Bush’s attempt to define Americans. For instance, one of the lines from Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (the Angry American) speaks of those who have given their lives so that other Americans may rest peacefully. This sentiment is reiterated by the theme of Worley’s Have You Forgotten? in which he talks of spending time with soldiers who have no doubts about why they are at war. Both songs implicitly indict the listener for betraying United States soldiers if his/her support for the Iraqi war wanes or, put in Bush terms, the listener would become a supporter of “terrorism.” Country music’s appeal to middle-America’s red state conservatism has made the genre a natural vehicle for supporting the defence of country. Indeed, country songs have been written about every war in United States history; most expressing support for the conflict and the troops as opposed to protesting the United States’ action: “Since the Civil War and Reconstruction, ‘Dixie’ has always been the bellwether of patriotic fervour in time of war and even as the situation in Vietnam reached its lowest point and support for the war began to fade, the South and its distinctive music remained solidly supportive” (Andresen 105). Historically, country music has a long tradition of attempting to “define who Americans were by defining who they weren’t” (Stuckey). As Bufwack and Oermann note within country music “images of a reactionary South were not hard to find.” They add “Dixie fertilized ‘three r’s’ – the right, racism, and religion” (328). Country musicians supported the United States’ failed intervention in Vietnam with such songs as It’s for God and Country and You Mom (That’s Why I’m Fighting In Vietnam), and even justified the American massacre of noncombatants at My Lai in the Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley (328). Thus, a right-wing response to the current military involvement in Iraq was not unexpected from the industry and the honky-tonk state listeners. During the current election, Republican presidential nominee McCain has also received a boost from the country music genre as John Rich, of Big and Rich, wrote Raising McCain, a musical tribute to McCain’s military service used as his campaign theme song. The song, debuted at a campaign rally on 1 August 2008, in Florida, mentions McCain’s ‘Prisoner of War’ status to keep the focus on the war and challenge those who would question it. Scholars have researched the demographics of the country music listener as they have evaluated the massification theory: the notion that the availability of a widespread media culture would break down social and cultural barriers and result in a “homogenised” society as opposed to the results of government-controlled media in non-democratic countries (Peterson and DiMaggio). They have determined that the massification theory has only been partially demonstrated in that regional and class barriers have eroded to some extent but country music listeners are still predominately white and older (Peterson and DiMaggio 504). These individuals do tend to be more conservative within the United States’ political culture, and militarism has a long history within both country music and conservatism. If the bad news of the massification theory is that a mass media market may not perpetuate a homogenous society, there is good news. The more onerous fears that the government will work in tandem with the media to control the people in a democracy seem not to have been borne out over time. Although President Bush’s fear tactics were met with obsequious silence initially, resistance to the unquestioning support of the war has steadily grown. In 2003, a worldwide rally opposed the invasion of Iraq because it was a sovereign state and because the Bush doctrine lacked United Nations’ support. Further opposition in the United States included rallies and concerts as well as the powerful display in major cities across the nation of pairs of combat boots representing fallen soldiers (Olson). Bush’s popularity has dropped precipitously, with his disapproval ratings higher than any President in history at 71% (Steinhauser). While the current economic woes have certainly been a factor, the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain can also be viewed as a referendum on the Bush war. The American resistance to the Bush rhetoric and the Iraq war is all the more significant in light of research indicating that citizens incorrectly believe that the opposition to the Vietnam War was typified by protests against the troops rather than the war itself (Beamish). This false notion has empowered the Republicans and country musicians to challenge the patriotism of anyone who would subsequently oppose the military involvement of the United States, and it is to this topic of patriotism that we now turn. Patriotism Patriotism can be an effective way for presidential candidates to connect with voters (Sullivan et al). It has been a particularly salient issue since the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, George W. Bush, a man whose limited military service had been the subject of debate in 2000, was able to employ the persistent patriotic themes of country music to his electoral advantage. In fact, Firestein argued that country music radio had a greater effect on the 2004 election than any ads run by issue groups because it “inculcated and reinforced conservative values in the red state electorate, helped frame the issues of the day on terms favourable to the conservative position on those issues, and primed red state voters to respond positively to President Bush’s basic campaign message of family, country, and God” (Firestein 83). Bush even employed Only in America, a patriotic anthem performed by Brooks and Dunn, as a campaign theme song, because the war and patriotism played such a prominent role in the election. That the Bush re-election campaign successfully cast doubt on the patriotism of three-time Purple Heart winner, Democratic Senator John Kerry, during the campaign is evidence of Firestein’s assertion. The criticism was based on a book: Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (O’Neill and Corsi). The book was followed by advertisements funded by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth which included unsubstantiated claims that Kerry lied or exaggerated his combat role in Vietnam in order to obtain two of his Purple Hearts and his Bronze Star; the testimony of Kerry’s crewmen and Navy records notwithstanding, these ads were effective in smearing Kerry’s service record and providing the President with an electoral advantage. As far as country music was concerned, the 2004 election played out against the backdrop of the battle between the patriotic Toby Keith and the anti-American Dixie Chicks. The Dixie Chicks were berated after lead singer Natalie Maines’s anti-Bush comments during a concert in London. The trio’s song about an American soldier killed in action, Travelin’ Soldier, quickly fell from the top spot of the country music charts. Moreover, while male singers such as Keith, Darryl Worley, and Alan Jackson received accolades for their post 9/11 artistic efforts, the Dixie Chicks endured a vitriolic reaction from country music fans as their CDs were burned, country radio refused to play their music, their names were added to an internet list of traitors, their concerts were protested by Bush supporters, and their lives were even threatened (http://www.poppolitics.com/archives/2003/04/Bandwagon). Speaking from experience at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Kerry addressed the issue of patriotism stating: This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: you don’t decide who loves this country; you don’t decide who is a patriot; you don’t decide whose service counts and whose doesn’t. […] After all, patriotism is not love of power or some cheap trick to win votes; patriotism is love of country. (http://www.clipsandcomment.com/2008/08/27/full-text-john-kerry-speech-democratic-national-convention/) Kerry broached the issue because of the constant attacks on the patriotism of Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama. At the most basic level, many of the attacks questioned whether Obama was even an American. Internet rumours persisted that Obama was a Muslim who was not even an American citizen. The attacks intensified when the Obamas’ pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, came under fire for comments made during a sermon in which he stated “God damn America.” As a result, Obama was forced to distance himself from his pastor and his church. Obama was also criticised for not wearing a United States flag lapel pin. When Michelle Obama stated for the “first time [she was] proud of her country” for its willingness to embrace change in February of 2008, Cindy McCain responded that she “had always been proud of her country” with the implication being, of course, a lack of patriotism on the part of Michelle Obama. Even the 13 July 2008 cover of the liberal New Yorker portrayed the couple as flag-burning Muslim terrorists. During the 2008 election campaign, McCain has attempted to appeal to patriotism in a number of ways. First, McCain’s POW experience in Vietnam has been front and centre as he touts his experience in foreign policy. Second, the slogan of the campaign is “Country First” implying that the Obama campaign does not put the United States first. Third, McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, insisted in a speech on 4 October 2008, that Barack Obama has been “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Her reference was to Obama’s acquaintance, Bill Ayers, who was involved in a series of Vietnam era bombings; the implication, however, was that Obama has terrorist ties and is unpatriotic. Palin stood behind her comments even though several major news organisations had concluded that the relationship was not significant as Ayers’ terrorist activities occurred when Obama was eight-years-old. This recent example is illustrative of Republican attempts to question the patriotism of Democrats for their electoral advantage. Country music has again sided with the Republicans particularly with Raising McCain. However, the Democrats may have realised the potential of the genre as Obama chose Only in America as the song played after his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. He has also attempted to reach rural voters by starting his post-convention campaign in Bristol, Virginia, a small, conservative town. Conclusion Thus, in the wake of 9/11, Republicans seized the opportunity to control the culture through fear and patriotic fervour. They were facilitated in this endeavor by the country music industry with songs that that would questions the motives, defence of “country,” and patriotism, of anyone who would question the Bush administration. This alliance between country music and the right is an historically strong one, and we recommend more research on this vital topic. While this election may indeed be a referendum on the war, it has been influenced by an economic downturn as well. Ultimately, Democrats will have to convince rural voters that they share their values; they don’t have the same edge as Republicans without the reliance of country music. However, the dynamic of country music has changed to somewhat reflect the war fatigue since the 2004 campaign. The Angry American, Toby Keith, has admitted that he is actually a Democrat, and country music listeners have grown tired of the “barrage of pro-troop sentiment,” especially since the summer of 2005 (Willman 115). As Joe Galante, the chief of the RCA family of labels in Nashville, stated, “It’s the relatability. Kerry never really spent time listening to some of those people” (Willman 201). Bill Clinton, a Southern governor, certainly had relatability, carrying the normally red states and overcoming the honky-tonk gap, and Obama has seen the benefit of country music by playing it as the grand finale of the Democratic Convention. Nevertheless, we recommend more research on the “melodrama” theory of the Presidency as the dynamics of the relationship between the Presidency and the country music genre are currently evolving. References Andreson, Lee. Battle Notes: Music of the Vietnam War. 2nd ed. Superior, WI: Savage Press, 2003. Anker, Elisabeth. “Villains, Victims and Heroes: Melodrama, Media and September 11th.” Journal of Communication. 55.1 (2005): 22-37. Baker, Peter and David Brown. “Bush Tries to Tone Down High-Pitched Debate on Iraq.” Monday, 21November 2005, Page A04. washingtonpost.com Beamish, Thomas D., Harvey Molotch, and Richard Flacks. “Who Supports the Troops? Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Making of Collective Memory.” Social Problems. 42.3 (1995): 344-60. Brooks and Dunn. Only in America. Arista Records, 2003. Bufwack, Mary A. and Robert K. Oermann. Finding Her Voice The Saga of Women in Country Music. New York: Crown Publishers, 1993. Dixie Chicks. “Travelin Soldier.” Home. Columbia. 27 August 2002. Firestein, David J. “The Honky-Tonk Gap.” Vital Speeches of the Day. 72.3 (2006): 83-88. Jackson, Alan. Where Were You? (When the World Stopped Turning) Very Best of Alan Jackson. Nashville: Arista, 2004. Keith, Toby. Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American). Nashville: Dreamworks. November 9, 2004. Olson, Scott. “Chicago remembers war dead with 500 pairs of empty boots.” 22 January 2004. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-01-22-chicago-boots_x.htm O’Neill, John E. and Jerome L. Corsi. “Unfit for Command Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.” Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2004. Peterson, Richard A. and Peter Di Maggio. “From Region to Class, the Changing Locus of Country Music. A Test of the Massification Hypothesis.” Social Forces. 53.3 (1975): 497-506. Rich, John. Raising McCain. Production information unavailable. Sampert, Shannon, and Natasja Treiberg. “The Reification of the ?American Soldier?: Popular Culture, American Foreign Policy, and Country Music.” Paper presented at the International Studies Association 48th Annual Convention, Chicago, Illinois, United States, 28 February 2007. Smith, Craig Allen. “President Bush’s Enthymeme of Evil: The Amalgamation of 9/11, Iraq, and Moral Values.” American Behavioral Scientist. 49 (2005): 32-47. Steinhauser, Paul. “Poll: More disapprove of Bush that any other president.” Politics Cnn.politics.com. 1 May 2008. Stuckey, Mary E. Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2004. Sullivan, John L., Amy Fried, Mary G. Dietz. 1992. “Patriotism, Politics, and the Presidential Election of 1988.” American Journal of Political Science. 36.1 (1992): 200-234. Willman, Chris. Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music. New York: The New Press, 2005. Worley, Darryl. Have You Forgotten? Nashville: Dreamworks, 2003.

We are enslaved by speed and have succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life, which disrupts our habits, pervades the privacy of our homes and forces us to eat Fast Foods. -- Manifesto of the Slow Food movement In Australia, we like our food fast. We spend more than a third of our average weekly household budget eating out or on takeaway food, a figure that may jump to 50% in the next five years (Macken). An ever increasing proportion of the food we do prepare at home has been processed for convenience, so that now we manage to spend just an hour and a half eating and drinking each day, or less time than we spend watching television (ABS, How Australians). If the sharing of food fosters family and social ties, and strong family and social relationships are an integral part of civil society, statistics such as these should give us pause. While it is beyond the scope of this article to give this topic the full attention it deserves, the article will nonetheless briefly examine some of the implications of life on the fast-food track. But first, why have we become so reliant on convenience foods? One reason is that significant numbers of women have entered the workforce during the last few decades and today, more than 60 percent of Australian women who are married work outside the home (ABS, Labour Force). As the value of women's labour in the market increases, their time becomes a more precious commodity and they seek ways to use it more efficiently (Bourdieu). Because women have traditionally been responsible for the preparation of family meals, and continue to shoulder most of the responsibility regardless of their role in the workforce, they naturally look for ways to save time buying and cooking food. However, this is not a trend confined solely to working women with families, but rather one that crosses many demographic and economic lines. We all seem to feel our time is at a premium, even though we are actually working less (ABS, Social Trends). That is because we are increasingly placing a greater value on our leisure time, and although we have more of it because of the shorter hours we work and the multitude of time-saving devices we use, we do not want to spend our free time shopping for food (Cheeseman & Breddin) or cooking it. Instead, our preferred activities are watching television and videos, socialising and talking, listening to the radio and reading (ABS, Social Trends). Interestingly, we have placed socialising and the family meal into completely separate categories. But first, why have we become so reliant on convenience foods? One reason is that significant numbers of women have entered the workforce during the last few decades and today, more than 60 percent of Australian women who are married work outside the home (ABS, Labour Force). As the value of women's labour in the market increases, their time becomes a more precious commodity and they seek ways to use it more efficiently (Bourdieu). Because women have traditionally been responsible for the preparation of family meals, and continue to shoulder most of the responsibility regardless of their role in the workforce, they naturally look for ways to save time buying and cooking food. However, this is not a trend confined solely to working women with families, but rather one that crosses many demographic and economic lines. We all seem to feel our time is at a premium, even though we are actually working less (ABS, Social Trends). That is because we are increasingly placing a greater value on our leisure time, and although we have more of it because of the shorter hours we work and the multitude of time-saving devices we use, we do not want to spend our free time shopping for food (Cheeseman & Breddin) or cooking it. Instead, our preferred activities are watching television and videos, socialising and talking, listening to the radio and reading (ABS, Social Trends). Interestingly, we have placed socialising and the family meal into completely separate categories. While the nutritional benefits derived from 'replaced' meals may be questionable, there are more important considerations at stake. People who have come to feel they do not have time to cook are not likely to feel they can spare much time to eat, either. 'Eating on the run' has now become part of our lexicon. And truthfully, who would want to linger over a meal made from reconstituted foods? But more importantly, what message do meals such as these impart to those who eat them? The social engagement, for example, that occurs over a frozen dinner "is very different to that which occurs over a long meal that has been carefully prepared and is shared with family or friends" (Finkelstein). The message inherent in quickly prepared or purchased foods that are in turn quickly consumed, often at different times by different members of the family or household, is that the family or communal meal is not an occasion worthy of much attention. Nothing can be farther from the truth. According to Claude Lévi-Strauss, food is at the very core of sociality. Humans evolved as food-sharing animals (van den Berghe), and the origin of the family can be traced in large part to the necessity of sharing meals. Today, meal times not only serve to strengthen family and social ties, but also to acculturate children into the norms of 'civilised' behaviour" (Lupton). Yet, they are under attack as family members are increasingly left to forage for food on their own. We need to consider what social and emotional skills our children are developing as they nibble on leftover pizza by the kitchen sink or unwrap their microwaved meal in front of the television. In an interview with Psychology Today, Ruth Reichl, renowned food writer and current editor of Gourmet magazine, said that the trend for family members to eat five-minute meals on their own will have a profound psychological impact on future generations of children, who will have missed out on a vital part of the socialisation process (Toufexis). Perhaps the Slow Food movement, then, has hit upon something. Its manifesto states, "a firm defense of quiet material pleasure is the only way to oppose the universal folly of Fast Life... . Our defense should begin at the table with Slow Food. Let us rediscover the flavors and savors of regional cooking and banish the degrading effects of Fast Food" (Slow Food). The movement was founded in Italy in 1986 by Carlos Petrini as a reaction to the establishment of a McDonald's near Rome's historic Spanish Steps. While global fast food colonisation is certainly a rallying point, the movement also encourages members to eat seasonal foods, support and protect regional cuisines, reinstate the ritual of family dining and educate children's palates. Mostly, however, Slow Food is about taking the time to enjoy a meal, to value the ingredients that go into it, and to share it with friends and family. It is appropriate, then, that the movement's symbol is a snail, "a talisman against speed" (Slow Food). While speed may be exciting, fast foods are not, and the idea of slowing down to savour meals with family and friends is one that is gaining momentum. The Slow Food movement, which started with a few delegates from 15 countries just over a decade ago, has now grown to 60,000 members in 35 countries, complete with 400 convivia, or local branches. Australia hosts eight of these chapters. Maggie Beer, the well-known Barossa Valley chef, entrepreneur and food writer, is also a Slow Food member. Her solution to the daily dinner dilemma is simple: by planning ahead and keeping a well-stocked pantry, it is possible for time-constrained cooks to have at hand many of the ingredients they need to make simple and nutritious meals in as much time as it takes to go get takeaway food (Beer). Nonetheless, keeping the pantry well-stocked with quality foods instead of dinners-in-a-packet means deciding that meals matter, that they are worthy of consideration and of time spent in preparation and consumption, and that the long-term rewards of Slow Food are worth far more than the short-term benefits of Fast Food. As the training grounds for future generations and important sites of reconnection for current ones, meals should be welcomed as opportunities for interaction rather than chores to be completed as quickly as possible. They should make people want to linger, while enjoying the company, the conversation and the food. As the French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote in the early nineteenth century: One may find round a single table all the modifications which extreme sociability has introduced into our midst: love, friendship, business, speculation, influence, solicitation, patronage, ambition, intrigue; that is why conviviality affects every aspect of human life, and bears fruits of every flavour. (Brillat-Savarin). Reviving the ritual of a family meal does not mean returning to 'traditional' 1950s household dynamics, but rather, adopting a modern view that meals are important, even vital, and that all members of a family should contribute to making them special. The preparation of a meal can become part of the social process; Italo-Australians, for example, have turned the making of tomato sauce into a very communal and social event that draws friends and family closer together. It is a type of meal preparation that can be replicated on a far smaller scale by simply involving family members, housemates and partners in the making of a meal, which can be accomplished in a myriad of ways by people of varying ages and skills. However, it means periodically suspending time, for a good meal that satisfies body and soul cannot be rushed. The evidence suggests, however, that many of us are not yet able to jump off the treadmill, even though the current trend toward faster and faster foods may have a significant impact on the structure of the family and the nature of our relationships with each other. If we continue to eat on the run, if we consistently eat meals that do not make us want to linger, then we may find ourselves in danger of losing that uniquely human ritual of sharing food, which is a cornerstone of our sociality, the bedrock of family life and a building block of our collective spirit. Much does, indeed, depend on dinner. References Australian Bureau of Statistics. How Australians Use Their Time. Canberra: ABS, 1998. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Labour Force Status and Other Characteristics of Families, Australia. Canberra: ABS, 1999. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Social Trends 1999. Canberra: ABS, 1999. Beer, Maggie. "Advance Australia's Fare." The Australian Magazine 1-2 Jan. 2000: 40. Van den Berghe, Pierre. "Ethnic Cuisine: Culture in Nature." Ethnic and Racial Studies 7.3 (1984): 387-97. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984. Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme. The Philosopher in the Kitchen. Trans. Anne Drayton. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1970. Cheeseman, Noel, and Robyn Breddin. Food Retailing in Australia. Brisbane: Queensland Department of Primary Industries, 1995. Finkelstein, Joanne. "Fast Foods: The Dangers of Eating Too Quickly." Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium of Australian Gastronomy: Much Depends on Dinner. Melbourne, 1991. 173-7. Lupton, Deborah. Food, the Body and the Self. London: Sage, 1996. Macken, Deirdre. "The Death of the Kitchen: Will Cooking Survive the 1990s?" Sydney Morning Herald Spectrum 7 Sep. 1996: 10s. Mangosi, Sandro. "Pie-and-Sandwich Corner Shop Threatened by Dynamics of Fast Food Industry." BIS Shrapnel News Release. 18 May 2000. Slattery, Geoff. "Accept No Imitations." The Age Food 11 May 1999. Slow Food. "Manifesto." 2000. 1 June 2000 <http://www.slowfood.com/>. Toufexis, Anastasia. "Dishing with Ruth Reichl." Psychology Today 31.6 (Nov.-Dec. 1998): 48. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Gwendolyn Stansbury. "Arresting Fast Food." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.3 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/food.php>. Chicago style: Gwendolyn Stansbury, "Arresting Fast Food," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 3 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/food.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Gwendolyn Stansbury. (2000) Arresting fast food. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(3). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0006/food.php> ([your date of access]).

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media? How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use? What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation? What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”? Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation? Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators? How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1976. Barlow, Aaron. The Rise of the Blogosphere. Westport, CN: Praeger Publishers, 2007. Block, Peter. Flawless Consulting. 2nd ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2000. Boriss, Steve. “Citizen Journalism Is Dead. Expert Journalism Is the Future.” The Future of News. 28 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://thefutureofnews.com/2007/11/28/citizen-journalism-is-dead- expert-journalism-is-the-future/>. Brooks, Jr., Frederick P. The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Rev. ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1995. Campbell, Vincent. Information Age Journalism: Journalism in an International Context. New York: Arnold, 2004. Carlile, Paul R., and Clayton M. Christensen. “The Cycles of Building Theory in Management Research.” Innosight working paper draft 6. 6 Jan. 2005. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.innosight.com/documents/Theory%20Building.pdf>. Caverly, Doug. “Hyperlocal News Site Takes A Hit.” WebProNews.com 6 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/06/hyperlocal-news- sites-take-a-hit>. Chenoweth, Neil. Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Superhighway. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001. Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Curtis, Adam. The Mayfair Set. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ghoshal, Sumantra. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4.1 (2005): 75-91. Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. London: Viking, 2003. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Cool-Hunt.” The New Yorker Magazine 17 March 1997. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm>. Gross, Daniel. Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. New York: Collins, 2007. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper, 1951. Howe, Jeff. “Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.” Wired News 16 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_ zero_final?currentPage=all>. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. Khurana, Rakesh. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Kolodzy, Janet. Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Koppelman, Charles. Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. Upper Saddle River, NJ: New Rider, 2004. Leadbeater, Charles, and Paul Miller. “The Pro-Am Revolution”. London: Demos, 24 Nov. 2004. 19 Feb. 2008 http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/proameconomy>. Loomis, Carol J. “Bloomberg’s Money Machine.” Fortune 5 April 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/ 8404302/index.htm>. Lynch, Peter, and John Rothchild. Beating the Street. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Maister, David. True Professionalism. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Maister, David, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The Trusted Advisor. New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out>. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine>. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Pesce, Mark D. “Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).” The Human Network 28 Sep. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39>. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2002. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? Princeton NJ: Yale UP, 2001. Shasha, Dennis Elliott. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Copernicus, 1995. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Burns, Alex. "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (Apr. 2008) "Select Issues with New Media Theories of Citizen Journalism," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/10-burns.php>.

“Journalists have to begin a new type of journalism, sometimes being the guide on the side of the civic conversation as well as the filter and gatekeeper.” (Kolodzy 218) “In many respects, citizen journalism is simply public journalism removed from the journalism profession.” (Barlow 181) 1. Citizen Journalism — The Latest Innovation? New Media theorists such as Dan Gillmor, Henry Jenkins, Jay Rosen and Jeff Howe have recently touted Citizen Journalism (CJ) as the latest innovation in 21st century journalism. “Participatory journalism” and “user-driven journalism” are other terms to describe CJ, which its proponents argue is a disruptive innovation (Christensen) to the agenda-setting media institutions, news values and “objective” reportage. In this essay I offer a “contrarian” view, informed by two perspectives: (1) a three-stage model of theory-building (Carlile & Christensen) to evaluate the claims made about CJ; and (2) self-reflexive research insights (Etherington) from editing the US-based news site Disinformation between November 1999 and February 2008. New media theories can potentially create “cognitive dissonance” (Festinger) when their explanations of CJ practices are compared with what actually happens (Feyerabend). First I summarise Carlile & Christensen’s model and the dangers of “bad theory” (Ghoshal). Next I consider several problems in new media theories about CJ: the notion of ‘citizen’, new media populism, parallels in event-driven and civic journalism, and mergers and acquisitions. Two ‘self-reflexive’ issues are considered: ‘pro-ams’ or ‘professional amateurs’ as a challenge to professional journalists, and CJ’s deployment in new media operations and production environments. Finally, some exploratory questions are offered for future researchers. 2. An Evaluative Framework for New Media Theories on Citizen Journalism Paul Carlile and Clayton M. Christensen’s model offers one framework with which to evaluate new media theories on CJ. This framework is used below to highlight select issues and gaps in CJ’s current frameworks and theories. Carlile & Christensen suggest that robust theory-building emerges via three stages: Descriptive, Categorisation and Normative (Carlile & Christensen). There are three sub-stages in Descriptive theory-building; namely, the observation of phenomena, inductive classification into schemas and taxonomies, and correlative relationships to develop models (Carlile & Christensen 2-5). Once causation is established, Normative theory evolves through deductive logic which is subject to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popperian falsifiability (Carlile & Christensen 6). Its proponents situate CJ as a Categorisation or new journalism agenda that poses a Normative challenged and Kuhnian paradigm shift to traditional journalism. Existing CJ theories jump from the Descriptive phase of observations like “smart mobs” in Japanese youth subcultures (Rheingold) to make broad claims for Categorisation such as that IndyMedia, blogs and wiki publishing systems as new media alternatives to traditional media. CJ theories then underpin normative beliefs, values and worldviews. Correlative relationships are also used to differentiate CJ from the demand side of microeconomic analysis, from the top-down editorial models of traditional media outlets, and to adopt a vanguard stance. To support this, CJ proponents cite research on emergent collective behaviour such as the “wisdom of crowds” hypothesis (Surowiecki) or peer-to-peer network “swarms” (Pesce) to provide scientific justification for their Normative theories. However, further evaluative research is needed for three reasons: the emergent collective behaviour hypothesis may not actually inform CJ practices, existing theories may have “correlation not cause” errors, and the link may be due to citation network effects between CJ theorists. Collectively, this research base also frames CJ as an “ought to” Categorisation and then proceeds to Normative theory-building (Carlile & Christensen 7). However, I argue below that this Categorisation may be premature: its observations and correlative relationships might reinforce a ‘weak’ Normative theory with limited generalisation. CJ proponents seem to imply that it can be applied anywhere and under any condition—a “statement of causality” that almost makes it a fad (Carlile & Christensen 8). CJ that relies on Classification and Normative claims will be problematic without a strong grounding in Descriptive observation. To understand what’s potentially at stake for CJ’s future consider the consider the parallel debate about curricula renewal for the Masters of Business Administration in the wake of high-profile corporate collapses such as Enron, Worldcom, HIH and OneTel. The MBA evolved as a sociological and institutional construct to justify management as a profession that is codified, differentiated and has entry barriers (Khurana). This process might partly explain the pushback that some media professionals have to CJ as one alternative. MBA programs faced criticism if they had student cohorts with little business know-how or experiential learning (Mintzberg). Enron’s collapse illustrated the ethical dilemmas and unintended consequences that occurred when “bad theories” were implemented (Ghoshal). Professional journalists are aware of this: MBA-educated managers challenged the “craft” tradition in the early 1980s (Underwood). This meant that journalism’s ‘self-image’ (Morgan; Smith) is intertwined with managerial anxieties about media conglomerates in highly competitive markets. Ironically, as noted below, Citizen Journalists who adopt a vanguard position vis-a-vis media professionals step into a more complex game with other players. However, current theories have a naïve idealism about CJ’s promise of normative social change in the face of Machiavellian agency in business, the media and politics. 3. Citizen Who? Who is the “citizen” in CJ? What is their self-awareness as a political agent? CJ proponents who use the ‘self-image’ of ‘citizen’ draw on observations from the participatory vision of open source software, peer-to-peer networks, and case studies such as Howard Dean’s 2004 bid for the Democrat Party nominee in the US Presidential election campaign (Trippi). Recent theorists note Alexander Hamilton’s tradition of civic activism (Barlow 178) which links contemporary bloggers with the Federalist Papers and early newspaper pamphlets. One unsurfaced assumption in these observations and correlations is that most bloggers will adopt a coherent political philosophy as informed citizens: a variation on Lockean utilitarianism, Rawlsian liberalism or Nader consumer activism. To date there is little discussion about how political philosophy could deepen CJ’s ‘self-image’: how to critically evaluate sources, audit and investigation processes, or strategies to deal with elites, deterrence and power. For example, although bloggers kept Valerie Plame’s ‘outing’ as a covert intelligence operative highly visible in the issues-attention cycle, it was agenda-setting media like The New York Times who the Bush Administration targeted to silence (Pearlstine). To be viable, CJ needs to evolve beyond a new media populism, perhaps into a constructivist model of agency, norms and social change (Finnemore). 4. Citizen Journalism as New Media Populism Several “precursor trends” foreshadowed CJ notably the mid-1990s interest in “cool-hunting” by new media analysts and subculture marketeers (Gibson; Gladwell). Whilst this audience focus waned with the 1995-2000 dotcom bubble it resurfaced in CJ and publisher Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 vision. Thus, CJ might be viewed as new media populism that has flourished with the Web 2.0 boom. Yet if the boom becomes a macroeconomic bubble (Gross; Spar) then CJ could be written off as a “silver bullet” that ultimately failed to deliver on its promises (Brooks, Jr.). The reputations of uncritical proponents who adopted a “true believer” stance would also be damaged (Hoffer). This risk is evident if CJ is compared with a parallel trend that shares its audience focus and populist view: day traders and technical analysts who speculate on financial markets. This parallel trend provides an alternative discipline in which the populism surfaced in an earlier form (Carlile & Christensen 12). Fidelity’s Peter Lynch argues that stock pickers can use their Main Street knowledge to beat Wall Street by exploiting information asymmetries (Lynch & Rothchild). Yet Lynch’s examples came from the mid-1970s to early 1980s when indexed mutual fund strategies worked, before deregulation and macroeconomic volatility. A change in the Web 2.0 boom might similarly trigger a reconsideration of Citizen Journalism. Hedge fund maven Victor Niederhoffer contends that investors who rely on technical analysis are practicing a Comtean religion (Niederhoffer & Kenner 72-74) instead of Efficient Market Hypothesis traders who use statistical arbitrage to deal with ‘random walks’ or Behavioural Finance experts who build on Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky). Niederhoffer’s deeper point is that technical analysts’ belief that the “trend is your friend” is no match for the other schools, despite a mini-publishing industry and computer trading systems. There are also ontological and epistemological differences between the schools. Similarly, CJ proponents who adopt a ‘Professional Amateur’ or ‘Pro-Am’ stance (Leadbeater & Miller) may face a similar gulf when making comparisons with professional journalists and the production environments in media organisations. CJ also thrives as new media populism because of institutional vested interests. When media conglomerates cut back on cadetships and internships CJ might fill the market demand as one alternative. New media programs at New York University and others can use CJ to differentiate themselves from “hyperlocal” competitors (Christensen; Slywotzky; Christensen, Curtis & Horn). This transforms CJ from new media populism to new media institution. 5. Parallels: Event-driven & Civic Journalism For new media programs, CJ builds on two earlier traditions: the Event-driven journalism of crises like the 1991 Gulf War (Wark) and the Civic Journalism school that emerged in the 1960s social upheavals. Civic Journalism’s awareness of minorities and social issues provides the character ethic and political philosophy for many Citizen Journalists. Jay Rosen and others suggest that CJ is the next-generation heir to Civic Journalism, tracing a thread from the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention to IndyMedia’s coverage of the 1999 “Battle in Seattle” (Rosen). Rosen’s observation could yield an interesting historiography or genealogy. Events such as the Southeast Asian tsunami on 26 December 2004 or Al Qaeda’s London bombings on 7 July 2005 are cited as examples of CJ as event-driven journalism and “pro-am collaboration” (Kolodzy 229-230). Having covered these events and Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11th September 2001, I have a slightly different view: this was more a variation on “first responder” status and handicam video footage that journalists have sourced for the past three decades when covering major disasters. This different view means that the “salience of categories” used to justify CJ and “pro-am collaboration” these events does not completely hold. Furthermore, when Citizen Journalism proponents tout Flickr and Wikipedia as models of real-time media they are building on a broader phenomenon that includes CNN’s Gulf War coverage and Bloomberg’s dominance of financial news (Loomis). 6. The Mergers & Acquisitions Scenario CJ proponents often express anxieties about the resilience of their outlets in the face of predatory venture capital firms who initiate Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) activities. Ironically, these venture capital firms have core competencies and expertise in the event-driven infrastructure and real-time media that CJ aspires to. Sequoia Capital and other venture capital firms have evaluative frameworks that likely surpass Carlile & Christensen in sophistication, and they exploit parallels, information asymmetries and market populism. Furthermore, although venture capital firms such as Union Street Ventures have funded Web 2.0 firms, they are absent from the explanations of some theorists, whose examples of Citizen Journalism and Web 2.0 success may be the result of survivorship bias. Thus, the venture capital market remains an untapped data source for researchers who want to evaluate the impact of CJ outlets and institutions. The M&A scenario further problematises CJ in several ways. First, CJ is framed as “oppositional” to traditional media, yet this may be used as a stratagem in a game theory framework with multiple stakeholders. Drexel Burnham Lambert’s financier Michael Milken used market populism to sell ‘high-yield’ or ‘junk’ bonds to investors whilst disrupting the Wall Street establishment in the late 1980s (Curtis) and CJ could fulfil a similar tactical purpose. Second, the M&A goal of some Web 2.0 firms could undermine the participatory goals of a site’s community if post-merger integration fails. Jason Calacanis’s sale of Weblogs, Inc to America Online in 2005 and MSNBC’s acquisition of Newsvine on 5 October 2007 (Newsvine) might be success stories. However, this raises issues of digital “property rights” if you contribute to a community that is then sold in an M&A transaction—an outcome closer to business process outsourcing. Third, media “buzz” can create an unrealistic vision when a CJ site fails to grow beyond its start-up phase. Backfence.com’s demise as a “hyperlocal” initiative (Caverly) is one cautionary event that recalls the 2000 dotcom crash. The M&A scenarios outlined above are market dystopias for CJ purists. The major lesson for CJ proponents is to include other market players in hypotheses about causation and correlation factors. 7. ‘Pro-Ams’ & Professional Journalism’s Crisis CJ emerged during a period when Professional Journalism faced a major crisis of ‘self-image’. The Demos report The Pro-Am Revolution (Leadbeater & Miller) popularised the notion of ‘professional amateurs’ which some CJ theorists adopt to strengthen their categorisation. In turn, this triggers a response from cultural theorists who fear bloggers are new media’s barbarians (Keen). I concede Leadbeater and Miller have identified an important category. However, how some CJ theorists then generalise from ‘Pro-Ams’ illustrates the danger of ‘weak’ theory referred to above. Leadbeater and Miller’s categorisation does not really include a counter-view on the strengths of professionals, as illustrated in humanistic consulting (Block), professional service firms (Maister; Maister, Green & Galford), and software development (McConnell). The signs of professionalism these authors mention include a commitment to learning and communal verification, mastery of a discipline and domain application, awareness of methodology creation, participation in mentoring, and cultivation of ethical awareness. Two key differences are discernment and quality of attention, as illustrated in how the legendary Hollywood film editor Walter Murch used Apple’s Final Cut Pro software to edit the 2003 film Cold Mountain (Koppelman). ‘Pro-Ams’ might not aspire to these criteria but Citizen Journalists shouldn’t throw out these standards, either. Doing so would be making the same mistake of overconfidence that technical analysts make against statistical arbitrageurs. Key processes—fact-checking, sub-editing and editorial decision-making—are invisible to the end-user, even if traceable in a blog or wiki publishing system, because of the judgments involved. One post-mortem insight from Assignment Zero was that these processes were vital to create the climate of authenticity and trust to sustain a Citizen Journalist community (Howe). CJ’s trouble with “objectivity” might also overlook some complexities, including the similarity of many bloggers to “noise traders” in financial markets and to op-ed columnists. Methodologies and reportage practices have evolved to deal with the objections that CJ proponents raise, from New Journalism’s radical subjectivity and creative non-fiction techniques (Wolfe & Johnson) to Precision Journalism that used descriptive statistics (Meyer). Finally, journalism frameworks could be updated with current research on how phenomenological awareness shapes our judgments and perceptions (Thompson). 8. Strategic Execution For me, one of CJ’s major weaknesses as a new media theory is its lack of “rich description” (Geertz) about the strategic execution of projects. As Disinfo.com site editor I encountered situations ranging from ‘denial of service’ attacks and spam to site migration, publishing systems that go offline, and ensuring an editorial consistency. Yet the messiness of these processes is missing from CJ theories and accounts. Theories that included this detail as “second-order interactions” (Carlile & Christensen 13) would offer a richer view of CJ. Many CJ and Web 2.0 projects fall into the categories of mini-projects, demonstration prototypes and start-ups, even when using a programming language such as Ajax or Ruby on Rails. Whilst the “bootstrap” process is a benefit, more longitudinal analysis and testing needs to occur, to ensure these projects are scalable and sustainable. For example, South Korea’s OhmyNews is cited as an exemplar that started with “727 citizen reporters and 4 editors” and now has “38,000 citizen reporters” and “a dozen editors” (Kolodzy 231). How does OhmyNews’s mix of hard and soft news change over time? Or, how does OhmyNews deal with a complex issue that might require major resources, such as security negotiations between North and South Korea? Such examples could do with further research. We need to go beyond “the vision thing” and look at the messiness of execution for deeper observations and counterintuitive correlations, to build new descriptive theories. 9. Future Research This essay argues that CJ needs re-evaluation. Its immediate legacy might be to splinter ‘journalism’ into micro-trends: Washington University’s Steve Boriss proclaims “citizen journalism is dead. Expert journalism is the future.” (Boriss; Mensching). The half-lives of such micro-trends demand new categorisations, which in turn prematurely feeds the theory-building cycle. Instead, future researchers could reinvigorate 21st century journalism if they ask deeper questions and return to the observation stage of building descriptive theories. In closing, below are some possible questions that future researchers might explore: Where are the “rich descriptions” of journalistic experience—“citizen”, “convergent”, “digital”, “Pro-Am” or otherwise in new media?How could practice-based approaches inform this research instead of relying on espoused theories-in-use?What new methodologies could be developed for CJ implementation?What role can the “heroic” individual reporter or editor have in “the swarm”?Do the claims about OhmyNews and other sites stand up to longitudinal observation?Are the theories used to justify Citizen Journalism’s normative stance (Rheingold; Surowiecki; Pesce) truly robust generalisations for strategic execution or do they reflect the biases of their creators?How could developers tap the conceptual dimensions of information technology innovation (Shasha) to create the next Facebook, MySpace or Wikipedia? References Argyris, Chris, and Donald Schon. Theory in Practice. 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Caverly, Doug. “Hyperlocal News Site Takes A Hit.” WebProNews.com 6 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/07/06/hyperlocal-news- sites-take-a-hit >. Chenoweth, Neil. Virtual Murdoch: Reality Wars on the Information Superhighway. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2001. Christensen, Clayton M. The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997. Christensen, Clayton M., Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Curtis, Adam. The Mayfair Set. London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Etherington, Kim. Becoming a Reflexive Researcher: Using Ourselves in Research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2004. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1962. Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. 3rd ed. London: Verso, 1993. Finnemore, Martha. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Ghoshal, Sumantra. “Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices.” Academy of Management Learning & Education 4.1 (2005): 75-91. Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. London: Viking, 2003. Gladwell, Malcolm. “The Cool-Hunt.” The New Yorker Magazine 17 March 1997. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://www.gladwell.com/1997/1997_03_17_a_cool.htm >. Gross, Daniel. Pop! Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy. New York: Collins, 2007. Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer. New York: Harper, 1951. Howe, Jeff. “Did Assignment Zero Fail? A Look Back, and Lessons Learned.” Wired News 16 July 2007. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/assignment_ zero_final?currentPage=all >. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. Choices, Values and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur. New York: Doubleday Currency, 2007. Khurana, Rakesh. From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2007. Kolodzy, Janet. Convergence Journalism: Writing and Reporting across the News Media. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. Koppelman, Charles. Behind the Seen: How Walter Murch Edited Cold Mountain Using Apple’s Final Cut Pro and What This Means for Cinema. Upper Saddle River, NJ: New Rider, 2004. Leadbeater, Charles, and Paul Miller. “The Pro-Am Revolution”. London: Demos, 24 Nov. 2004. 19 Feb. 2008 < http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/proameconomy >. Loomis, Carol J. “Bloomberg’s Money Machine.” Fortune 5 April 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/04/16/ 8404302/index.htm >. Lynch, Peter, and John Rothchild. Beating the Street. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Maister, David. True Professionalism. New York: The Free Press, 1997. Maister, David, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The Trusted Advisor. New York: The Free Press, 2004. Mensching, Leah McBride. “Citizen Journalism on Its Way Out?” SFN Blog, 30 Nov. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://www.sfnblog.com/index.php/2007/11/30/940-citizen-journalism- on-its-way-out >. Meyer, Philip. Precision Journalism. 4th ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. McConnell, Steve. Professional Software Development. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2004. Mintzberg, Henry. Managers Not MBAs. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organisation. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2006. Newsvine. “Msnbc.com Acquires Newsvine.” 7 Oct. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://blog.newsvine.com/_news/2007/10/07/1008889-msnbccom- acquires-newsvine >. Niederhoffer, Victor, and Laurel Kenner. Practical Speculation. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003. Pearlstine, Norman. Off the Record: The Press, the Government, and the War over Anonymous Sources. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007. Pesce, Mark D. “Mob Rules (The Law of Fives).” The Human Network 28 Sep. 2007. 20 Feb. 2008 < http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=39 >. Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge MA: Basic Books, 2002. Rosen, Jay. What Are Journalists For? Princeton NJ: Yale UP, 2001. Shasha, Dennis Elliott. Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists. New York: Copernicus, 1995. Slywotzky, Adrian. Value Migration: How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Smith, Steve. “The Self-Image of a Discipline: The Genealogy of International Relations Theory.” Eds. Steve Smith and Ken Booth. International Relations Theory Today. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. 1-37. Spar, Debora L. Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Discovery, Chaos and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Surowiecki, James. The Wisdom of Crowds. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Thompson, Evan. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. New York: ReganBooks, 2004. Underwood, Doug. When MBA’s Rule the Newsroom. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wolfe, Tom, and E.W. Johnson. The New Journalism. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

“...children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents...” — Stephen Kline, The Making of Children’s Culture We live in a world saturated by design and through design artefacts, one can glean unique insights into a culture's values and norms. In fact, some academics, such as British media and film theorist Ben Highmore, see the two areas so inextricably intertwined as to suggest a wholesale “re-branding of the cultural sciences as design studies” (14). Too often, however, everyday objects are marginalised or overlooked as objects of scholarly attention. The field of material culture studies seeks to change that by focussing on the quotidian object and its ability to reveal much about the time, place, and culture in which it was designed and used. This article takes on one such object, a mid-century children's toy tea set, whose humble journey from 1968 Sears catalogue to 2014 thrift shop—and subsequently this author’s basement—reveals complex rhetorical messages communicated both visually and verbally. As material culture studies theorist Jules Prown notes, the field’s foundation is laid upon the understanding “that objects made ... by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged” (1-2). In this case, the objects’ material and aesthetic characteristics can be shown to reflect some of the pervasive stereotypes and gender roles of the mid-century and trace some of the prevailing tastes of the American middle class of that era, or perhaps more accurately the type of design that came to represent good taste and a modern aesthetic for that audience. A wealth of research exists on the function of toys and play in learning about the world and even the role of toy selection in early sex-typing, socialisation, and personal identity of children (Teglasi). This particular research area isn’t the focus of this article; however, one aspect that is directly relevant and will be addressed is the notion of adult role-playing among children and the role of toys in communicating certain adult practices or values to the child—what sociologist David Oswell calls “the dedifferentiation of childhood and adulthood” (200). Neither is the focus of this article the practice nor indeed the ethicality of marketing to children. Relevant to this particular example I suggest, is as a product utilising messaging aimed not at children but at adults, appealing to certain parents’ interest in nurturing within their child a perceived era and class-appropriate sense of taste. This was fuelled in large part by the curatorial pursuits of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, coupled with an interest and investment in raising their children in a design-forward household and a desire for toys that reflected that priority; in essence, parents wishing to raise modern children. Following Prown’s model of material culture analysis, the tea set is examined in three stages, through description, deduction and speculation with each stage building on the previous one. Figure 1: Porcelain Toy Tea Set. Description The tea set consists of twenty-six pieces that allows service for six. Six cups, saucers, and plates; a tall carafe with spout, handle and lid; a smaller vessel with a spout and handle; a small round bowl with a lid; a larger oval bowl with a lid, and a coordinated oval platter. The cups are just under two inches tall and two inches in diameter. The largest piece, the platter is roughly six inches by four inches. The pieces are made of a ceramic material white in colour and glossy in texture and are very lightweight. The rim or edge of each piece is decorated with a motif of three straight lines in two different shades of blue and in different thicknesses, interspersed with a set of three black wiggly lines. Figure 2: Porcelain Toy Tea Set Box. The set is packaged for retail purposes and the original box appears to be fully intact. The packaging of an object carries artefactual evidence just as important as what it contains that falls into the category of a “‘para-artefact’ … paraphernalia that accompanies the product (labels, packaging, instructions etc.), all of which contribute to a product’s discourse” (Folkmann and Jensen 83). The graphics on the box are colourful, featuring similar shades of teal blue as found on the objects, with the addition of orange and a silver sticker featuring the logo of the American retailer Sears. The cover features an illustration of the objects on an orange tabletop. The most prominent text that confirms that the toy is a “Porcelain Toy Tea Set” is in an organic, almost psychedelic style that mimics both popular graphics of this era—especially album art and concert posters—as well as the organic curves of steam that emanate from the illustrated teapot’s spout. Additional messages appear on the box, in particular “Contemporary DESIGN” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. Along the edges of the box lid, a detail of the decorative motif is reproduced somewhat abstracted from what actually appears on the ceramic objects. Figure 3: Sears’s Christmas Wishbook Catalogue, page 574 (1968). Sears, Roebuck and Co. (Sears) is well-known for its over one-hundred-year history of producing printed merchandise catalogues. The catalogue is another important para-artefact to consider in analysing the objects. The tea set first appeared in the 1968 Sears Christmas Wishbook. There is no date or copyright on the box, so only its inclusion in the catalogue allows the set to be accurately dated. It also allows us to understand how the set was originally marketed. Deduction In the deduction phase, we focus on the sensory aesthetic and functional interactive qualities of the various components of the set. In terms of its function, it is critical that we situate the objects in their original use context, play. The light weight of the objects and thinness of the ceramic material lends the objects a delicate, if not fragile, feeling which indicates that this set is not for rough use. Toy historian Lorraine May Punchard differentiates between toy tea sets “meant to be used by little girls, having parties for their friends and practising the social graces of the times” and smaller sets or doll dishes “made for little girls to have parties with their dolls, or for their dolls to have parties among themselves” (7). Similar sets sold by Sears feature images of girls using the sets with both human playmates and dolls. The quantity allowing service for six invites multiple users to join the party. The packaging makes clear that these toy tea sets were intended for imaginary play only, rendering them non-functional through an all-capitals caution declaiming “IMPORTANT: Do not use near heat”. The walls and handles of the cups are so thin one can imagine that they would quickly become dangerous if filled with a hot liquid. Nevertheless, the lid of the oval bowl has a tan stain or watermark which suggests actual use. The box is broken up by pink cardboard partitions dividing it into segments sized for each item in the set. Interestingly even the small squares of unfinished corrugated cardboard used as cushioning between each stacked plate have survived. The evidence of careful re-packing indicates that great care was taken in keeping the objects safe. It may suggest that even though the set was used, the children or perhaps the parents, considered the set as something to care for and conserve for the future. Flaws in the glaze and applique of the design motif can be found on several pieces in the set and offer some insight as to the technique used in producing these items. Errors such as the design being perfectly evenly spaced but crooked in its alignment to the rim, or pieces of the design becoming detached or accidentally folded over and overlapping itself could only be the result of a print transfer technique popularised with decorative china of the Victorian era, a technique which lends itself to mass production and lower cost when compared to hand decoration. Speculation In the speculation stage, we can consider the external evidence and begin a more rigorous investigation of the messaging, iconography, and possible meanings of the material artefact. Aspects of the set allow a number of useful observations about the role of such an object in its own time and context. Sociologists observe the role of toys as embodiments of particular types of parental messages and values (Cross 292) and note how particularly in the twentieth century “children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents” (Kline 96). Throughout history children’s toys often reflected a miniaturised version of the adult world allowing children to role-play as imagined adult-selves. Kristina Ranalli explored parallels between the practice of drinking tea and the play-acting of the child’s tea party, particularly in the nineteenth century, as a gendered ritual of gentility; a method of socialisation and education, and an opportunity for exploratory and even transgressive play by “spontaneously creating mini-societies with rules of their own” (20). Such toys and objects were available through the Sears mail-order catalogue from the very beginning at the end of the nineteenth century (McGuire). Propelled by the post-war boom of suburban development and homeownership—that generation’s manifestation of the American Dream—concern with home décor and design was elevated among the American mainstream to a degree never before seen. There was a hunger for new, streamlined, efficient, modernist living. In his essay titled “Domesticating Modernity”, historian Jeffrey L. Meikle notes that many early modernist designers found that perhaps the most potent way to “‘domesticate’ modernism and make it more familiar was to miniaturise it; for example, to shrink the skyscraper and put it into the home as furniture or tableware” (143). Dr Timothy Blade, curator of the 1985 exhibition of girls’ toys at the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Gallery—now the Goldstein Museum of Design—described in his introduction “a miniaturised world with little props which duplicate, however rudely, the larger world of adults” (5). Noting the power of such toys to reflect adult values of their time, Blade continues: “the microcosm of the child’s world, remarkably furnished by the miniaturised props of their parents’ world, holds many direct and implied messages about the society which brought it into being” (9). In large part, the mid-century Sears catalogues capture the spirit of an era when, as collector Thomas Holland observes, “little girls were still primarily being offered only the options of glamour, beauty and parenthood as the stuff of their fantasies” (175). Holland notes that “the Wishbooks of the fifties [and, I would add, the sixties] assumed most girls would follow in their mother’s footsteps to become full-time housewives and mommies” (1). Blade grouped toys into three categories: cooking, cleaning, and sewing. A tea set could arguably be considered part of the cooking category, but closer examination of the language used in marketing this object—“little hostesses”, et cetera—suggests an emphasis not on cooking but on serving or entertaining. This particular category was not prevalent in the era examined by Blade, but the cultural shifts of the mid-twentieth century, particularly the rapid popularisation of a suburban lifestyle, may have led to the use of entertaining as an additional distinct category of role play in the process of learning to become a “proper” homemaker. Sears and other retailers offered a wide variety of styles of toy tea sets during this era. Blade and numerous other sources observe that children’s toy furniture and appliances tended to reflect the style and aesthetic qualities of their contemporary parallels in the adult world, the better to associate the child’s objects to its adult equivalent. The toy tea set’s packaging trumpets messages intended to appeal to modernist values and identity including “Contemporary Design” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. The use of this coded marketing language, aimed particularly at parents, can be traced back several decades. In 1928 a group of American industrial and textile designers established the American Designers' Gallery in New York, in part to encourage American designers to innovate and adopt new styles such as those seen in the L’ Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925) in Paris, the exposition that sparked international interest in the Art Deco or Art Moderne aesthetic. One of the gallery founders, Ilonka Karasz, a Hungarian-American industrial and textile designer who had studied in Austria and was influenced by the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna, publicised her new style of nursery furnishings as “designed for the very modern American child” (Brown 80). Sears itself was no stranger to the appeal of such language. The term “contemporary design” was ubiquitous in catalogue copy of the nineteen-fifties and sixties, used to describe everything from draperies (1959) and bedspreads (1961) to spice racks (1964) and the Lady Kenmore portable dishwasher (1961). An emphasis on the role of design in one’s life and surroundings can be traced back to efforts by MoMA. The museum’s interest in modern design hearkens back almost to the institution’s inception, particularly in relation to industrial design and the aestheticisation of everyday objects (Marshall). Through exhibitions and in partnership with mass-market magazines, department stores and manufacturer showrooms, MoMA curators evangelised the importance of “good design” a term that can be found in use as early as 1942. What Is Good Design? followed the pattern of prior exhibitions such as What Is Modern Painting? and situated modern design at the centre of exhibitions that toured the United States in the first half of the nineteen-fifties. To MoMA and its partners, “good design” signified the narrow identification of proper taste in furniture, home decor and accessories; effectively, the establishment of a design canon. The viewpoints enshrined in these exhibitions and partnerships were highly influential on the nation’s perception of taste for decades to come, as the trickle-down effect reached a much broader segment of consumers than those that directly experienced the museum or its exhibitions (Lawrence.) This was evident not only at high-end shops such as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. Even mass-market retailers sought out well-known figures of modernist design to contribute to their offerings. Sears, for example, commissioned noted modernist designer and ceramicist Russel Wright to produce a variety of serving ware and decor items exclusively for the company. Notably for this study, he was also commissioned to create a toy tea set for children. The 1957 Wishbook touts the set as “especially created to delight modern little misses”. Within its Good Design series, MoMA exhibitions celebrated numerous prominent Nordic designers who were exploring simplified forms and new material technologies. In the 1968 Wishbook, the retailer describes the Porcelain Toy Tea Set as “Danish-inspired china for young moderns”. The reference to Danish design is certainly compatible with the modernist appeal; after the explosion in popularity of Danish furniture design, the term “Danish Modern” was commonly used in the nineteen-fifties and sixties as shorthand for pan-Scandinavian or Nordic design, or more broadly for any modern furniture design regardless of origin that exhibited similar characteristics. In subsequent decades the notion of a monolithic Scandinavian-Nordic design aesthetic or movement has been debunked as primarily an economically motivated marketing ploy (Olivarez et al.; Fallan). In the United States, the term “Danish Modern” became so commonly misused that the Danish Society for Arts and Crafts called upon the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to legally restrict the use of the labels “Danish” and “Danish Modern” to companies genuinely originating in Denmark. Coincidentally the FTC ruled on this in 1968, noting “that ‘Danish Modern’ carries certain meanings, and... that consumers might prefer goods that are identified with a foreign culture” (Hansen 451). In the case of the Porcelain Toy Tea Set examined here, Sears was not claiming that the design was “Danish” but rather “Danish-inspired”. One must wonder, was this another coded marketing ploy to communicate a sense of “Good Design” to potential customers? An examination of the formal qualities of the set’s components, particularly the simplified geometric forms and the handle style of the cups, confirms that it is unlike a traditional—say, Victorian-style—tea set. Punchard observes that during this era some American tea sets were actually being modelled on coffee services rather than traditional tea services (148). A visual comparison of other sets sold by Sears in the same year reveals a variety of cup and pot shapes—with some similar to the set in question—while others exhibit more traditional teapot and cup shapes. Coffee culture was historically prominent in Nordic cultures so there is at least a passing reference to that aspect of Nordic—if not specifically Danish—influence in the design. But what of the decorative motif? Simple curved lines were certainly prominent in Danish furniture and architecture of this era, and occasionally found in combination with straight lines, but no connection back to any specific Danish motif could be found even after consultation with experts in the field from the Museum of Danish America and the Vesterheim National Norwegian-American Museum (personal correspondence). However, knowing that the average American consumer of this era—even the design-savvy among them—consumed Scandinavian design without distinguishing between the various nations, a possible explanation could be contained in the promotion of Finnish textiles at the time. In the decade prior to the manufacture of the tea set a major design tendency began to emerge in the United States, triggered by the geometric design motifs of the Finnish textile and apparel company Marimekko. Marimekko products were introduced to the American market in 1959 via the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based retailer Design Research (DR) and quickly exploded in popularity particularly after would-be First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy appeared in national media wearing Marimekko dresses during the 1960 presidential campaign and on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. (Thompson and Lange). The company’s styling soon came to epitomise a new youth aesthetic of the early nineteen sixties in the United States, a softer and more casual predecessor to the London “mod” influence. During this time multiple patterns were released that brought a sense of whimsy and a more human touch to classic mechanical patterns and stripes. The patterns Piccolo (1953), Helmipitsi (1959), and Varvunraita (1959), all designed by Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi offered varying motifs of parallel straight lines. Maija Isola's Silkkikuikka (1961) pattern—said to be inspired by the plumage of the Great Crested Grebe—combined parallel serpentine lines with straight and angled lines, available in a variety of colours. These and other geometrically inspired patterns quickly inundated apparel and decor markets. DR built a vastly expanded Cambridge flagship store and opened new locations in New York in 1961 and 1964, and in San Francisco in 1965 fuelled in no small part by the fact that they remained the exclusive outlet for Marimekko in the United States. It is clear that Marimekko’s approach to pattern influenced designers and manufacturers across industries. Design historian Lesley Jackson demonstrates that Marimekko designs influenced or were emulated by numerous other companies across Scandinavia and beyond (72-78). The company’s influence grew to such an extent that some described it as a “conquest of the international market” (Hedqvist and Tarschys 150). Subsequent design-forward retailers such as IKEA and Crate and Barrel continue to look to Marimekko even today for modern design inspiration. In 2016 the mass-market retailer Target formed a design partnership with Marimekko to offer an expansive limited-edition line in their stores, numbering over two hundred items. So, despite the “Danish” misnomer, it is quite conceivable that designers working for or commissioned by Sears in 1968 may have taken their aesthetic cues from Marimekko’s booming work, demonstrating a clear understanding of the contemporary high design aesthetic of the time and coding the marketing rhetoric accordingly even if incorrectly. Conclusion The Sears catalogue plays a unique role in capturing cross-sections of American culture not only as a sales tool but also in Holland’s words as “a beautifully illustrated diary of America, it’s [sic] people and the way we thought about things” (1). Applying a rhetorical and material culture analysis to the catalogue and the objects within it provides a unique glimpse into the roles these objects played in mediating relationships, transmitting values and embodying social practices, tastes and beliefs of mid-century American consumers. Adult consumers familiar with the characteristics of the culture of “Good Design” potentially could have made a connection between the simplified geometric forms of the components of the toy tea set and say the work of modernist tableware designers such as Kaj Franck, or between the set’s graphic pattern and the modernist motifs of Marimekko and its imitators. But for a much broader segment of the population with a less direct understanding of modernist aesthetics, those connections may not have been immediately apparent. The rhetorical messaging behind the objects’ packaging and marketing used class and taste signifiers such as modern, contemporary and “Danish” to reinforce this connection to effect an emotional and aspirational appeal. These messages were coded to position the set as an effective transmitter of modernist values and to target parents with the ambition to create “appropriately modern” environments for their children. 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Jackson, Lesley. “Textile Patterns in an International Context: Precursors, Contemporaries, and Successors.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 44–83. Kline, Stephen. “The Making of Children’s Culture.” The Children’s Culture Reader. Ed. Henry Jenkins. New York: NYU P, 1998. 95–109. Lawrence, Sidney. “Declaration of Function: Documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s Design Crusade, 1933-1950.” Design Issues 2.1 (1985): 65–77. Marshall, Jennifer Jane. Machine Art 1934. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. McGuire, Sheila. “Playing House: Sex-Roles and the Child’s World.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances : June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Meikel, Jeffrey L. “Domesticating Modernity: Ambivalence and Appropriation, 1920–1940.” Designing Modernity; the Arts of Reform and Persuasion. Ed. Wendy Kaplan. Thames & Hudson, 1995. 143–68. O’Brien, Marion, and Aletha C. 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Teglasi, Hedwig. “Children’s Choices of and Value Judgments about Sex-Typed Toys and Occupations.” Journal of Vocational Behavior 18.2 (1981): 184–95. Thompson, Jane, and Alexandra Lange. Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes. Chronicle, 2010.

The concept of the “other” is starting to get a little worn out, as it has been used extensively. Despite this it still is a clarifying term to be used when we talk of things that we tend to marginalize. The concept is largely built on fear, for it is that which we find distant, different and threatening that we name the “other”. We construct others because of fear and then fear them because of their otherness. (Cohen 1996). One forgotten group of “others” are animals. Of course, we don’t always see the animals as others, and maybe are heading more into the direction of seeing similarities instead of differences between them and ourselves. Still, the animals are often seen as our opposites. It is through the animal that anthropocentric cultures have defined “humanity”: we are what animals are not (see Clarke & Linzey 1990). One differentiating thing is their “wildness”, and it is often the cause of fear. Unlike us supposedly “cultural” creatures, we like to see (biased as ever) the animals as irrational and instinctual beings that threaten our control. Together with wildness also the “unknown” nature of animals makes us fearful, for the silent animals (especially when lurking in the waters or forests) remain beyond our reach. This fear has given birth to animal monsters that have been meddling with our imagination for centuries: the folklores tell about wear wolves, hell hounds and dragons that brave nights have to kill so that human cultures can flourish, the Bible suggests that the fallen angle is a dragon and the anti-christ a “beast”. Especially in the Middle Ages animals were often seen as demonic beings not to be messed with. (Salisbury 1997; Serpell 1986, 46). It does not seem like a big leap to claim that sometimes we see the animal as the silent, immoral, instinctual, material and even evil enemy that needs to be destroyed so that human rationality, morality and spirituality can prevail. The animal monster has not gone anywhere. They still live in the media, in the horror films and in the urban stories. Natural nasties The animal monsters became increasingly popular in the 70’s horror film. Andrew Tudor has called the genre “eco-doom” and refers to the animal monsters as “natural nasties” (Tudor 1989, 48-62). In his opinion the increased number of animal monsters can be tied to the fear of ecological catastrophe. I’d like to add the growing attention to animal rights issues and animal welfare. All of a sudden the superior status of humans was being critically examined, and animal monsters were one way to deal with the fear of loosing the old safe position. Tudor points out that at the same time also paranoia and helplessness were being emphasised: it was in the presumably safe environment that monsters all of a sudden emerged from, and the heroes were no longer quite as strong in protecting the society against them. This could be linked to the awareness of environmental and animal welfare issues: it was the supposedly controlled area that was attacking humanity. The most famous example of “zoohorror” (perhaps a better term for specifically animal monster horror) is of course Jaws (Spielberg, USA 1975). In the film an idyllic small town with happy holiday enjoyers is attacked by a seemingly psychopathic shark. Through out the film the difference and otherness of the shark are emphasised, and it is described as an instinctual “eating machine”. The humans trying to fight it are morally upright people who care for the community, the shark on the other hand is an aggressive killer who’s only motive seems to be to eat as many people as possible. The otherness is underlined with the way the shark is constructed. He remains out of sight for the majority of the film, neither the swimmers or the viewers get to see it. When it is seen for brief few seconds it is shown as a bodily spectacle of a fin, grey glittering body and – of course – huge jaws. Tudor calls these kinds of monsters “alien”, but I think a better term in this case would be “physical”. The monster lacks all personality and its motives are nonexistent. It becomes known only through its body and aggressive actions: it is constructed as an acting body. Otherwise it remains hidden, causing fear with its invisibility and absence. This goes well together with the idea that the animal is the opposite of humans – where as the humans in the films are intentional, rational and moral heroes the animal remains an instinctually acting violent body that is unseen, unknown – and frightning. Pets gone bad As said, it is the wildness and uncontrollability of animals that often causes us to view them as “others” and make us fear them. This is most evident with wild animals, but also present when it comes to domesticated animals. Domestication has often been understood as a process of improvement, of bringing animals from the natural state into culture that is supposed to be somehow “higher” (Thomas 1980; Harris 1996). Domestication also makes it possible to take control over animals (Passariello 1999). The threatening wildness disappears, and animals are made tame creatures that follow our control (of course, this is not always the motive behind domestication). Still, the wildness never completely disappears. As Steve Baker (1993) has claimed, it seems that there always is a fear of our control breaking and the animal going back to its natural stage. A nice little puppy can turn into a hellhound over night and kill the mailman. These stories make the headlines regularly causing even hysteria. The feared others can be domesticated and tamed, but they can still any time break free. The most famous example of an animal monster that causes fear because of “dedomestication” is Cujo (Teague, USA 1983). In the film a friendly family dog turns into a killer after being bit by a bat, and goes after the local villagers with amazing determination to kill everyone in sight. Another example is Man’s Best Friend (Lafia, USA 1993), where a genetically engineered Rottweiler kills all the people he considers rivals in respect to the owner. These (and many more) films construct animal monsters on the basis of our fear that something might go wrong with the domestication. The differences to the “natural nasties” are interesting. Where as wild animals are often physical monsters, domesticated animals are closer to the “anthropomorphic” (the term from Tudor 1989, 115) or “individual” monsters, for unlike wild animals, we are familiar with them. They are not hidden away like the wild animals, but remain in the viewers’ sight. They are also not as instinctual, and we can even understand their motives. Still, they are monsters that cause fear, for they have fought our cultural control and gone back into being “wild”. Psychopathic primates Where as wild animals are far away and domesticated animals close to us, primates are understood to be like us. Their cognitive skills and DNA’s have made it difficult to categorise them, and we feel a little embarrassed of how much they are like us. Still, and perhaps even because of this, they also cause fear. Planet of the Apes (Schaffner USA 1968) plays with the idea of roles being turned upside down, Link (Franklin 1985) and Congo (Marshall 1995) on the other hand show us primates as monsters. In these films the main motive seems to be to find a difference between humans and primates. Eventually it is claimed to be (when all else fails) morality. In Link a domesticated chimpanzee, who can use language, dresses in clothes and even works as a butler for a scientist, turns into a psychopathic killer when he discovers he might be replaced. In the film the scientist keeps saying humans should never forget that they are “the dominant species” and that primates “lack morality”. In Congo there is both a well behaving domesticated gorilla, and a pack of wild gorillas. The scientist, who owns the domesticated one decides to bring her back to the jungle (where she supposedly “belongs”) and has to fight back a group of monstrous wild gorillas. In the course of the film he becomes to understand that not all primates are as nice as the one he’s had, and that some are “killer apes”. The lesson seems to be quite clear: primates can resemble us, but because they lack morality they can ultimately become viscious monsters. Where as wild animals are physical and domesticated animals somewhat closer to individual monsters, primates are completely individuated – after all, they are “closest” to us. In the films the primate monsters are portrayed much like traditional human villains: we understand their motives and they remain visible to us most of the time. Monstrosity is built on individuality that lacks a crucial feature. Conclusion The existence of animal monsters depends on our understanding of what animals are. When we want to emphasise their difference, we create dualisms and classify animals under the one headline “animal”. Through this “generic animal” we can distance ourselves from animality and nature: we are individuals, they are all part of the class of “animals”, who are determined by animality and attributes that go with it (Birke & Parisi 1999). Cultural studies generally ignore the animal others. Nature and animals are mentioned as the opposites to culture and human beings (Haraway 1991), but they usually remain just that – a mention. Certain understandings of their meaning still make us tend to believe that the analyses of animals is somehow disinteresting (Baker 1993; Steeves 1999; Simons 1997). Paradoxically animals are made the opposite of human beings, and then marginalized even in cultural studies as the disinteresting “other”. Analysing what we understand “animality” to be and why we make it our opposition is crucial in seeking to find new ways to relate to animals. Maybe if this was done, the next time the wolf from the national park or the dog that bit the mailman would not cause fear, panic, and hatred. References Baker, Steve. Picturing the beast. Animals, identity and representation. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Birke, Lynda and Parisi, Luciana. “Animals, Becoming.” Animal Others: On Ethics, Ontology and Animal Life. Ed. Peter Steeves. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 55-75. Clarke, Paul & Linzey, Andrew. Political Theory and Animals Rights. London: Pluto Press, 1990. Cohen, Jeffrey. ”Monster Culture: Seven Theses.” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Cohen. Minneapolis: UMP, 1996. Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Harris, David. “Domesticatory Relationships of People, Plants and Animals.” Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication. Eds. Roy Ellen, Katruyoshi Fukui. Berg: Oxford International Publishers, 1996. Passariello, Phylis. “Me and my totem: cross-cultural attitudes toward animals.” Attitudes to Animals: View to Animal Welfare. Ed. Francine Dolins. Cambridge: CUP, 1999. 12-26. Salisbury, Joyce. “Human Beasts and Bestial Humans in the Middle Ages.” Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History. Eds. Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior. London: Routledge, 1997. 9-23. Serpell, James. In the Company of Animals. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Simons, John. “The Longest Revolution: Cultural Studies after Speciesism.” Environmental Values vol. 6, no 4 (1997): 483-497. Steeves, Peter. Introduction. Animal Others: on Ethics, Ontology and Animal Life. Ed. Peter Steeves. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. 1-14. Thomas, Keith. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800. London: Penguing Books, 1983. Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Aaltola, Elisa. "Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php>. Chicago Style Aaltola, Elisa, "Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Aaltola, Elisa. (2002) Animal Monsters and the Fear of the Wild. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/animals.php> ([your date of access]).

Cultural sociologists (Bourdieu; DiMaggio, “Cultural Capital”, “Classification”; Gans; Lamont & Foumier; Halle; Erickson) wrote about high culture and popular culture in an attempt to explain the growing social and economic inequalities, to find consensus on culture hierarchies, and to analyze cultural complexities. Halle states that this categorisation of culture into “high culture” and “popular culture” underlined most of the debate on culture in the last fifty years. Gans contends that both high culture and popular culture are stereotypes, public forms of culture or taste cultures, each sharing “common aesthetic values and standards of tastes” (8). However, this article is not concerned with these categorisations, or macro analysis. Rather, it is a reflection piece that inquires if opera, which is usually considered high culture, has become more equal to popular culture, and why some directors change the time and place of opera plots, whereas others will stay true to the original setting of the story. I do not consider these productions “adaptations,” but “post-modern morphologies,” and I will refer to this later in the paper. In other words, the paper is seeking to explain a social phenomenon and explore the underlying motives by quoting interviews with directors. The word ‘opera’ is defined in Elson’s Music Dictionary as: “a form of musical composition evolved shortly before 1600, by some enthusiastic Florentine amateurs who sought to bring back the Greek plays to the modern stage” (189). Hence, it was an experimentation to revive Greek music and drama believed to be the ideal way to express emotions (Grout 186). It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when stage directors started changing the time and place of the original settings of operas. The practice became more common after World War II, and Peter Brook’s Covent Garden productions of Boris Godunov (1948) and Salome (1949) are considered the prototypes of this practice (Sutcliffe 19-20). Richard Wagner’s grandsons, the brothers Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner are cited in the music literature as using technology and modern innovations in staging and design beginning in the early 1950s. Brief Background into the History of Opera Grout contends that opera began as an attempt to heighten the dramatic expression of language by intensifying the natural accents of speech through melody supported by simple harmony. In the late 1590s, the Italian composer Jacopo Peri wrote what is considered to be the first opera, but most of it has been lost. The first surviving complete opera is Euridice, a version of the Orpheus myth that Peri and Giulio Caccini jointly set to music in 1600. The first composer to understand the possibilities inherent in this new musical form was Claudio Monteverdi, who in 1607 wrote Orfeo. Although it was based on the same story as Euridice, it was expanded to a full five acts. Early opera was meant for small, private audiences, usually at court; hence it began as an elitist genre. After thirty years of being private, in 1637, opera went public with the opening of the first public opera house, Teatro di San Cassiano, in Venice, and the genre quickly became popular. Indeed, Monteverdi wrote his last two operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea for the Venetian public, thereby leading the transition from the Italian courts to the ‘public’. Both operas are still performed today. Poppea was the first opera to be based on a historical rather than a mythological or allegorical subject. Sutcliffe argues that opera became popular because it was a new mixture of means: new words, new music, new methods of performance. He states, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (65). By the end of the 17th century, Venice alone had ten opera houses that had produced more than 350 operas. Wealthy families purchased season boxes, but inexpensive tickets made the genre available to persons of lesser means. The genre spread quickly, and various styles of opera developed. In Naples, for example, music rather than the libretto dominated opera. The genre spread to Germany and France, each developing the genre to suit the demands of its audiences. For example, ballet became an essential component of French opera. Eventually, “opera became the profligate art as large casts and lavish settings made it the most expensive public entertainment. It was the only art that without embarrassment called itself ‘grand’” (Boorstin 467). Contemporary Opera Productions Opera continues to be popular. According to a 2002 report released by the National Endowment for the Arts, 6.6 million adults attended at least one live opera performance in 2002, and 37.6 million experienced opera on television, video, radio, audio recording or via the Internet. Some think that it is a dying art form, while others think to the contrary, that it is a living art form because of its complexity and “ability to probe deeper into the human experience than any other art form” (Berger 3). Some directors change the setting of operas with perhaps the most famous contemporary proponent of this approach being Peter Sellars, who made drastic changes to three of Mozart’s most famous operas. Le Nozze di Figaro, originally set in 18th-century Seville, was set by Sellars in a luxury apartment in the Trump Tower in New York City; Sellars set Don Giovanni in contemporary Spanish Harlem rather than 17th century Seville; and for Cosi Fan Tutte, Sellars chose a diner on Cape Cod rather than 18th century Naples. As one of the more than six million Americans who attend live opera each year, I have experienced several updated productions, which made me reflect on the convergence or cross-over between high culture and popular culture. In 2000, I attended a production of Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre in Prague, the very theatre where Mozart conducted the world premiere in 1787. In this production, Don Giovanni was a fashion designer known as “Don G” and drove a BMW. During the 1999-2000 season, Los Angeles Opera engaged film director Bruce Beresford to direct Verdi’s Rigoletto. Beresford updated the original setting of 16th century Mantua to 20th century Hollywood. The lead tenor, rather than being the Duke of Mantua, was a Hollywood agent known as “Duke Mantua.” In the first act, just before Marullo announces to the Duke’s guests that the jester Rigoletto has taken a mistress, he gets the news via his cell phone. Director Ian Judge set the 2004 production of Le Nozze di Figaro in the 1950s. In one of the opening productions of the 2006-07 LA opera season, Vincent Patterson also chose the 1950s for Massenet’s Manon rather than France in the 1720s. This allowed the title character to appear in the fourth act dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Excerpts from the dress rehearsal can be seen on YouTube. Most recently, I attended a production of Ariane et Barbe-Bleu at the Paris Opera. The original setting of the Maeterlinck play is in Duke Bluebeard’s castle, but the time period is unclear. However, it is doubtful that the 1907 opera based on an 1899 play was meant to be set in what appeared to be a mental institution equipped with surveillance cameras whose screens were visible to the audience. The critical and audience consensus seemed to be that the opera was a musical success but a failure as a production. James Shore summed up the audience reaction: “the production team was vociferously booed and jeered by much of the house, and the enthusiastic applause that had greeted the singers and conductor, immediately went nearly silent when they came on stage”. It seems to me that a new class-related taste has emerged; the opera genre has shot out a subdivision which I shall call “post-modern morphologies,” that may appeal to a larger pool of people. Hence, class, age, gender, and race are becoming more important factors in conceptualising opera productions today than in the past. I do not consider these productions as new adaptations because the libretto and the music are originals. What changes is the fact that both text and sound are taken to a higher dimension by adding iconographic images that stimulate people’s brains. When asked in an interview why he often changes the setting of an opera, Ian Judge commented, “I try to find the best world for the story and characters to operate in, and I think you have to find a balance between the period the author set it in, the period he conceived it in and the nature of theatre and audiences at that time, and the world we live in.” Hence, the world today is complex, interconnected, borderless and timeless because of advanced technologies, and updated opera productions play with symbols that offer multiple meanings that reflect the world we live in. It may be that television and film have influenced opera production. Character tenor Graham Clark recently observed in an interview, “Now the situation has changed enormously. Television and film have made a lot of things totally accessible which they were not before and in an entirely different perception.” Director Ian Judge believes that television and film have affected audience expectations in opera. “I think audiences who are brought up on television, which is bad acting, and movies, which is not that good acting, perhaps require more of opera than stand and deliver, and I have never really been happy with someone who just stands and sings.” Sociologist Wendy Griswold states that culture reflects social reality and the meaning of a particular cultural object (such as opera), originates “in the social structures and social patterns it reflects” (22). Screens of various technologies are embedded in our lives and normalised as extensions of our bodies. In those opera productions in which directors change the time and place of opera plots, use technology, and are less concerned with what the composer or librettist intended (which we can only guess), the iconographic images create multi valances, textuality similar to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of multiplicity of voices. Hence, a plurality of meanings. Plàcido Domingo, the Eli and Edyth Broad General Director of Los Angeles Opera, seeks to take advantage of the company’s proximity to the film industry. This is evidenced by his having engaged Bruce Beresford to direct Rigoletto and William Friedkin to direct Ariadne auf Naxos, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Gianni Schicchi. Perhaps the most daring example of Domingo’s approach was convincing Garry Marshall, creator of the television sitcom Happy Days and who directed the films Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries, to direct Jacques Offenbach’s The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein to open the company’s 20th anniversary season. When asked how Domingo convinced him to direct an opera for the first time, Marshall responded, “he was insistent that one, people think that opera is pretty elitist, and he knew without insulting me that I was not one of the elitists; two, he said that you gotta make a funny opera; we need more comedy in the operetta and opera world.” Marshall rewrote most of the dialogue and performed it in English, but left the “songs” untouched and in the original French. He also developed numerous sight gags and added characters including a dog named Morrie and the composer Jacques Offenbach himself. Did it work? Christie Grimstad wrote, “if you want an evening filled with witty music, kaleidoscopic colors and hilariously good singing, seek out The Grand Duchess. You will not be disappointed.” The FanFaire Website commented on Domingo’s approach of using television and film directors to direct opera: You’ve got to hand it to Plàcido Domingo for having the vision to draw on Hollywood’s vast pool of directorial talent. Certainly something can be gained from the cross-fertilization that could ensue from this sort of interaction between opera and the movies, two forms of entertainment (elitist and perennially struggling for funds vs. popular and, it seems, eternally rich) that in Los Angeles have traditionally lived separate lives on opposite sides of the tracks. A wider audience, for example, never a problem for the movies, can only mean good news for the future of opera. So, did the Marshall Plan work? Purists of course will always want their operas and operettas ‘pure and unadulterated’. But with an audience that seemed to have as much fun as the stellar cast on stage, it sure did. Critic Alan Rich disagrees, calling Marshall “a representative from an alien industry taking on an artistic product, not to create something innovative and interesting, but merely to insult.” Nevertheless, the combination of Hollywood and opera seems to work. The Los Angeles Opera reported that the 2005-2006 season was its best ever: “ticket revenues from the season, which ended in June, exceeded projected figures by nearly US$900,000. Seasonal attendance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stood at more than 86% of the house’s capacity, the largest percentage in the opera’s history.” Domingo continues with the Hollywood connection in the upcoming 2008-2009 season. He has reengaged William Friedkin to direct two of Puccini’s three operas titled collectively as Il Trittico. Friedkin will direct the two tragedies, Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. Although Friedkin has already directed a production of the third opera in Il Trittico for Los Angeles, the comedy Gianni Schicchi, Domingo convinced Woody Allen to make his operatic directorial debut with this work. This can be viewed as another example of the desire to make opera and popular culture more equal. However, some, like Alan Rich, may see this attempt as merely insulting rather than interesting and innovative. With a top ticket price in Los Angeles of US$238 per seat, opera seems to continue to be elitist. Berger (2005) concurs with this idea and gives his rationale for elitism: there are rich people who support and attend the opera; it is an imported art from Europe that causes some marginalisation; opera is not associated with something being ‘moral,’ a concept engrained in American culture; it is expensive to produce and usually funded by kings, corporations, rich people; and the opera singers are rare –usually one in a million who will have the vocal quality to sing opera arias. Furthermore, Nicholas Kenyon commented in the early 1990s: “there is suspicion that audiences are now paying more and more money for their seats to see more and more money spent on stage” (Kenyon 3). Still, Garry Marshall commented that the budget for The Grand Duchess was US$2 million, while his budget for Runaway Bride was US$72 million. Kenyon warns, “Such popularity for opera may be illusory. The enjoyment of one striking aria does not guarantee the survival of an art form long regarded as over-elitist, over-recondite, and over-priced” (Kenyon 3). A recent development is the Metropolitan Opera’s decision to simulcast live opera performances from the Met stage to various cinemas around the world. These HD transmissions began with the 2006-2007 season when six performances were broadcast. In the 2007-2008 season, the schedule has expanded to eight live Saturday matinee broadcasts plus eight recorded encores broadcast the following day. According to The Los Angeles Times, “the Met’s experiment of merging film with live performance has created a new art form” (Aslup). Whether or not this is a “new art form,” it certainly makes world-class live opera available to countless persons who cannot travel to New York and pay the price for tickets, when they are available. In the US alone, more than 350 cinemas screen these live HD broadcasts from the Met. Top ticket price for these performances at the Met is US$375, while the lowest price is US$27 for seats with only a partial view. Top price for the HD transmissions in participating cinemas is US$22. This experiment with live simulcasts makes opera more affordable and may increase its popularity; combined with updated stagings, opera can engage a much larger audience and hope for even a mass consumption. Is opera moving closer and closer to popular culture? There still seems to be an aura of elitism and snobbery about opera. However, Plàcido Domingo’s attempt to join opera with Hollywood is meant to break the barriers between high and popular culture. The practice of updating opera settings is not confined to Los Angeles. As mentioned earlier, the idea can be traced to post World War II England, and is quite common in Europe. Examples include Erich Wonder’s approach to Wagner’s Ring, making Valhalla, the mythological home of the gods and typically a mountaintop, into the spaceship Valhalla, as well as my own experience with Don Giovanni in Prague and Ariane et Barbe-Bleu in Paris. Indeed, Sutcliffe maintains, “Great classics in all branches of the arts are repeatedly being repackaged for a consumerist world that is increasingly and neurotically self-obsessed” (61). Although new operas are being written and performed, most contemporary performances are of operas by Verdi, Mozart, and Puccini (www.operabase.com). This means that audiences see the same works repeated many times, but in different interpretations. Perhaps this is why Sutcliffe contends, “since the 1970s it is the actual productions that have had the novelty value grabbed by the headlines. Singing no longer predominates” (Sutcliffe 57). If then, as Sutcliffe argues, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (Sutcliffe 65), then the contemporary practice of changing the original settings is simply the latest “new formula” that is replacing the old ones. If there are no new words or new music, then what remains are new methods of performance, hence the practice of changing time and place. Opera is a complex art form that has evolved over the past 400 years and continues to evolve, but will it survive? The underlining motives for directors changing the time and place of opera performances are at least three: for aesthetic/artistic purposes, financial purposes, and to reach an audience from many cultures, who speak different languages, and who have varied tastes. These three reasons are interrelated. In 1996, Sutcliffe wrote that there has been one constant in all the arguments about opera productions during the preceding two decades: “the producer’s wish to relate the works being staged to contemporary circumstances and passions.” Although that sounds like a purely aesthetic reason, making opera relevant to new, multicultural audiences and thereby increasing the bottom line seems very much a part of that aesthetic. It is as true today as it was when Sutcliffe made the observation twelve years ago (60-61). My own speculation is that opera needs to attract various audiences, and it can only do so by appealing to popular culture and engaging new forms of media and technology. Erickson concludes that the number of upper status people who are exclusively faithful to fine arts is declining; high status people consume a variety of culture while the lower status people are limited to what they like. Research in North America, Europe, and Australia, states Erickson, attest to these trends. My answer to the question can stage directors make opera and popular culture “equal” is yes, and they can do it successfully. Perhaps Stanley Sharpless summed it up best: After his Eden triumph, When the Devil played his ace, He wondered what he could do next To irk the human race, So he invented Opera, With many a fiendish grin, To mystify the lowbrows, And take the highbrows in. References The Grand Duchess. 2005. 3 Feb. 2008 < http://www.ffaire.com/Duchess/index.htm >.Aslup, Glenn. “Puccini’s La Boheme: A Live HD Broadcast from the Met.” Central City Blog Opera 7 Apr. 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.centralcityopera.org/blog/2008/04/07/puccini%E2%80%99s- la-boheme-a-live-hd-broadcast-from-the-met/ >.Berger, William. Puccini without Excuses. New York: Vintage, 2005.Boorstin, Daniel. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination. New York: Random House, 1992.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Clark, Graham. “Interview with Graham Clark.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 11 Aug. 2006.DiMaggio, Paul. “Cultural Capital and School Success.” American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 189-201.DiMaggio, Paul. “Classification in Art.”_ American Sociological Review_ 52 (1987): 440-55.Elson, C. Louis. “Opera.” Elson’s Music Dictionary. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1905.Erickson, H. Bonnie. “The Crisis in Culture and Inequality.” In W. Ivey and S. J. Tepper, eds. Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life. New York: Routledge, 2007.Fanfaire.com. “At Its 20th Anniversary Celebration, the Los Angeles Opera Had a Ball with The Grand Duchess.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.fanfaire.com/Duchess/index.htm >.Gans, J. Herbert. Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books, 1977.Grimstad, Christie. Concerto Net.com. 2005. 12 Jan. 2008 < http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=3091 >.Grisworld, Wendy. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1994.Grout, D. Jay. A History of Western Music. Shorter ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1964.Halle, David. “High and Low Culture.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. London: Blackwell, 2006.Judge, Ian. “Interview with Ian Judge.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 22 Mar. 2006.Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. 19 Nov. 2006 < http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=opera&searchmode=none >.Kenyon, Nicholas. “Introduction.” In A. Holden, N. Kenyon and S. Walsh, eds. The Viking Opera Guide. New York: Penguin, 1993.Lamont, Michele, and Marcel Fournier. Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Lord, M.G. “Shlemiel! Shlemozzle! And Cue the Soprano.” The New York Times 4 Sep. 2005.Los Angeles Opera. “LA Opera General Director Placido Domingo Announces Results of Record-Breaking 20th Anniversary Season.” News release. 2006.Marshall, Garry. “Interview with Garry Marshall.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 31 Aug. 2005.National Endowment for the Arts. 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Research Division Report #45. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.nea.gov/pub/NEASurvey2004.pdf >.NCM Fanthom. “The Metropolitan Opera HD Live.” 2 Feb. 2008 < http://fathomevents.com/details.aspx?seriesid=622&gclid= CLa59NGuspECFQU6awodjiOafA >.Opera Today. James Sobre: Ariane et Barbe-Bleue and Capriccio in Paris – Name This Stage Piece If You Can. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Rich, Alan. “High Notes, and Low.” LA Weekly 15 Sep. 2005. 6 May 2008 < http://www.laweekly.com/stage/a-lot-of-night-music/high-notes-and-low/8160/ >.Sharpless, Stanley. “A Song against Opera.” In E. O. Parrott, ed. How to Be Tremendously Tuned in to Opera. New York: Penguin, 1990.Shore, James. Opera Today. 2007. 4 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Sutcliffe, Tom. Believing in Opera. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1996.YouTube. “Manon Sex and the Opera.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiBQhr2Sy0k >.

I was at Harry’s last night, ostensibly for a quick glass of wine. Instead it turned into a few over many hours and a rare experience of the “regular” identity. It was relatively quiet when I arrived and none of the owners were there. David [a regular] was DJing; we only vaguely acknowledged each other. He was playing great music though, and I was enjoying being there by myself for the first time in a while—looking about at other customers and trying to categorise them, and occasionally chatting to the girl next to me. My friend Angie came to join me about an hour later, and then Paul, a regular, arrived. He sat on my other side and alternated between talking to me, David [they are close friends], the staff, and other customers he knew who passed by. As the evening progressed a few more regulars arrived; the most “unconnected” regulars I can recall seeing at one time. We were sitting along the bar, making jokes about whether the manager for the evening would let us have a lock in. None of us thought so, however the joking seemed to engender a shared identity—that we were a collective of regulars, with specialised knowledge and expectations of privileges. Perhaps it only arose because we were faced with the possibility of having those privileges refused. Or because just for once there were more than one or two of us present. Evenings like that put the effort and pain of the work I put into gaining that identity into context. (Research note, 18 June 2011) Being a Harry’s Regular Harry’s is my favourite bar in my neighbourhood. It is a small wine bar, owned by three men in their late thirties and targeted at people like them; my gentrifying inner city neighbourhood’s 20 to 40 something urban middle class. Harry’s has seats along the bar, booths inside, and a courtyard out the back. The seating arrangements mean that larger groups tend to gather outside, groups of two to four spread around the location, and people by themselves, or in groups of two, tend to sit at the bar. I usually sit at the bar. Over the three or so years I’ve been patronising Harry’s I’ve developed quite an attachment to the place. It is somewhere I feel comfortable and secure, where I have met and continue to run into other neighbourhood residents, and that I approach with an openness as to how the evening may play out. The development of this attachment and sense of ease has been a cumulative process. The combination of a slow growing familiarity punctuated by particularly memorable evenings, such as the one described above, where heightened emotions coalesce into a reflexive recognition of identification and belonging. As a result I would describe myself as an irregular regular (Katovich and Reese 317). This is because whilst my patronage is sporadic, I have a regular’s expectation of recognition, as well as an awareness of the privileges and responsibilities that this identification brings. Similar processes of identification and attachment have been described in earlier ethnographic work on regulars within bars and cafes. These have described the ways that group identifications and broader cultural roles are continually renegotiated and reinforced through social interaction, and how physical and symbolic tools, such as business layout and décor, acquired knowledge, as well as non-regulars, are utilised in this process (Anderson 33–38; Katovich and Reese 324, 328, 330; Spradley and Mann 67, 69, 84). However the continuing shifts in the manner in which consumption practices shape our experiences of the urban environment (see for example Lloyd; Zukin), and of collective identification (see for example Cova, Kozinets and Shankar), suggest that ongoing investigation in this area would be fruitful. Accordingly, this paper extends this earlier work to consider the ways this kind of regular collective identification may manifest within consumption spaces in the contemporary Western inner city. In particular this research is interested in the implications for regular identification of the urban middle class’s use of consumption spaces for socialising, and the ways this can construct social realms. These realms are not fixed within physical pieces of space, and are instead dependent on the density and proportions of the relationship types that are present (Lofland 11). Whilst recognising, as per Ash Amin (“Collective Culture and Urban Public Space” 8), that physical and symbolic elements also shape our experiences of collective identification in public spaces, this paper focuses specifically on these social elements. This is not only because it is social recognition that is at the heart of regular identification, but more significantly, because the layers of meaning that social realms produce are continually shifting with the ebb and flow of people within these spaces, potentially complicating the identification process. Understanding how these shifting social realms are experienced, and may aid or undermine identification, is thus an important aspect of understanding how regular collective identification may be experienced in the contemporary city, and the key aim of this paper. To do so, this paper draws on autoethnographic research of my consumption experiences within an Australian inner city neighbourhood, conducted from September 2009 to September 2010. Through this autoethnography I sought to explore the ways consumption spaces can support experiences of place-based community, with a particular interest in the emotional and imaginative aspects of this process. The research data drawn on here comes from detailed research memos that recorded my interactions, identifications and emotional responses within these spaces. For this paper I focus specifically on my experiences of becoming a regular at Harry’s as a means of exploring regular identification in the contemporary inner city. The Shapes of Third Places in Contemporary Inner City Harry’s could be described as my third place. This term has been used to describe public locations outside of home and work that are host to regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals (Oldenburg 16). These regular’s bars and locals cafés have been celebrated in research and popular culture for their perceived ability to facilitate “that easier version of friendship and congeniality that results from casual and informal affiliation” (Oldenburg 65). They are said to achieve this by offering accessible, neutral spaces, where worries and inequalities are left at the door, and spirited, playful conversation is the focus of activity (Oldenburg 25, 29, 32). This is the idealised place “where everybody knows your name.” Despite the undeniable appeal of the third place concept, these types of social and inclusive consumption spaces are more likely to be seen on television, or in property development marketing, than on the shopping streets of our neighbourhoods. Instead many consumption spaces are purely that; spaces in which individual’s consume goods and services in ways that can encourage individualism, segregation, and stifle interaction. This has been attributed to a range of factors, including planning systems that encourage single use zoning, a reliance on cars limiting our use of public places, and the proliferation of shopping centres that focus on individualised consumption and manufactured experiences (Lofland 145, 205, 218; Oldenburg 61). In addition, the fundamentals of running a successful business can also work against a consumption space’s accessibility and neutrality. This is because location, décor, product offering, pricing, competition, and advertising practices all physically and symbolically communicate a desired target audience and expected behaviour patterns that can implicitly shape customer interactions, and the meanings we attach to them (Bitner 61; Sherry 4). More subtlety, the changing lifestyle preferences of residents of gentrifying neighbourhoods such as mine, may also work as a barrier to the development of third places. Research tells us that the urban middle class is a demographic which engages in a broad range of lifestyle-based consumption activities for socialising purposes and as part of their identity construction (Lloyd 122; Zukin 7). However this is also a demographic that is said to be increasingly mobile, and thus less restricted by geographic boundaries, such as of the neighbourhood they live in (Amin, “Re-Thinking the Urban Social” 107). As I noted above, it was not often that I experienced a critical mass of regulars at Harry’s, indeed I rarely expected to. This is because whilst Harry’s target demographic would seem likely candidates for becoming regular café or bar customers, they are also likely to be socialising in a number of different cafés, bars, and restaurants across a number of different neighbourhoods in my city, thus reducing the frequency of their presence within any one particular location. Finally, even those consumption spaces that do support social interaction may still not be operating as third places. This is because this sociality can alter a space’s level of openness, through the realms that it constructs (Lofland 11). Lofland (14) describes three types of social realms: public, parochial, and private. Private realms are dominated by intimate relations, parochial realms by communal relations, and the public realm by relations with people who are only categorically known. According to this classification, the regular’s café or bar is primarily operating as a parochial realm, identifiable by the shared sense of commonality that defines the regular collective. However naming the regular identification of the third place as the product of a social realm also highlights its fragility, and suggests that instead of being reliable and able to be anticipated, that the collective identification such spaces offers is uncertain, and easily disrupted by the shifts in patronage and patterns of interaction that consumption based socialising can bring. This is fluidity is articulated in the work of Veronique Aubert-Gamet and Bernard Cova, who describe two ways consumption spaces can support public collective identification; as anchoring and exposure sites. Anchoring sites are those within which an established collective gathers to interact and reinforce their shared identity (Aubert-Gamet and Cova 40). These are parochial realms in their more closed form, and are perhaps most likely to offer the certainty of the happily anticipated gathering that Ray Oldenburg describes. However because of this they are also more likely to be exclusionary. This is because anchoring can limit collective identification to those who are recognised as community members, thus undermining the potential for openness. This openness is instead found within exposure sites, in which individuals are able to observe and engage with the identification practices of others at limited risk (Aubert-Gamet and Cova 41). This is not quite the anomie of the public street, but neither is it the security of anchoring or the third place. This is because exposure realms can offer both familiarity, such as through the stability of physical setting, and strangeness, through the transience of customers and relationships. Furthermore, by hovering at the ever shifting boundary of parochial and public realms, these moments of exposure may offer the potential for the type of spontaneous conviviality that has been proposed as the basis for fleeting collective identifications (Amin, “Collective Culture and Urban Public Space” 10; Maffesoli). That is, it may be that when a potential third place is dominated by an exposure realm, it is experienced as open and accessible, whereas when an anchoring realm dominates, the security of collective identification takes precedence. It is the potential of social interaction at the boundaries of these realms and the ways it shapes regular identification that is of interest to this paper. This is because it is in this shifting space that identifications themselves are most fluid, unpredictable, and thus open to opportunistic breaches in the patterns of interaction. This unpredictability, and the interaction strategies we adopt to negotiate it, may also suggest ways in which a certain kind of third place experience can be developed and maintained in the contemporary inner city, where consumption based socialising is high, but where people are also mobile and less tied into fixed patterns of patronage. The remainder of the paper draws on my experiences of regular identification in Harry’s to consider how this might work. Becoming a Harry’s Regular: Anchoring and the Regular Collective The Harry’s regular collective is formed from a loose social network of neighbourhood residents, variably connected through long established friendships and more recently established consumption space based acquaintances. Evenings such as the one described above work to reinforce that shared identity and the specialised knowledge that underpins it; of the quirks of the owners and staff, of our privileges and responsibilities as regulars, and of the shared cultural identity that reflects a specific aspect of the gentrifying neighbourhood in which we live. However, achieving this level of identification and belonging has not been not easy. Whilst Oldenburg suggests that to establish third place membership one mainly just turns up regularly and tries not to be obnoxious (35), my experience instead suggests it’s a slightly more complicated, and emotional process, that is not always positive. My research notes indicate that discontent, worry, and shame, were as much a feature of my interactions in Harry’s, as were moments of joy, excitement, or an optimistic feeling of connection. This paper suggests that these negative experiences often stemmed from the confusion created by the shifting realms of interaction that occurred within the bar. This is because whilst Harry’s appeared to be a regular’s bar, it more often operated as an anchoring realm for a social network linked to the owners. Many of Harry’s regulars were established friends of the owners, and their shared identity definition appeared to be based on those primary ties. Whilst over time I became acquainted with some of this social network through my patronage, their dominance of the regular group had important implications for the collective identification I was trying to achieve. It created a realm that appeared to be parochial, but often became private, through simple acts such as the arrival of additional social network members, or a staff member shifting their orientation to another, from regular customer to friend. One consequence of these shifting realms was that my perceived inability to penetrate this anchored social network led me to doubt the value and presence of a broader consumption space based regular collective. The boundaries between private, parochial, and public appeared rigid, with no potential for cumulative impacts from fleeting connections in the public realm. It also made me question my motives regarding this desire to identify as suggested here: Thinking about tonight and Kevin [an owner] and Lucas [staff member] and introductions and realising I feel a bit let down/disappointed about the lack of something from them. But I realise also that is because I am wanting something more from them than the superficial I keep on going on about. I want recognition, as a person worth knowing. And that is perhaps where the thing of doing it by yourself falls down. I have an emotional investment in it. … Linking back to my previous thoughts about being able to be placed within a social network—having that emotional certainty of being able to be identified as part of a specific social network would reinforce to ME, who I am within this place. That I had some kind of identifiable position—which is not about superficial connections at all—it’s about recognisable strong ties. (Research note, 2 February 2009) As this excerpt suggests, I struggled to appreciate the identification within my interactions in Harry’s, because I had difficulty separating my emotional need for recognition from the implication that a lack of acknowledgement beyond the superficial I theoretically expected was a social rejection. That is, I had difficulty negotiating the boundary between the parochial realm of the regular collective, and its manifestation as a more closed private realm for the anchored social network. I expected regular, voluntary, informal and happily anticipated gatherings (Oldenburg 16), instead what I got was the brief hellos and limited yet enjoyable conversations that mark the sociality of public collective identifications. It could be suggested that what I also failed to grasp here is the difference between regularity as collective and as an individual identification. It is the collective identity that is reinforced in the parochial realm, as is evident in the description that opened this paper, and yet what I hoped for was recognition as an individual, “a person worth knowing.” However as the following section will suggest, the regular identity can also be experienced, and actively embraced, as an individual identity within realms of exposure. And it is through this version of the regular identity, that this paper suggests that some kind of personal recognition is able to be achieved. Becoming a Harry’s Regular: Exposing the Regular as Individual Given the level of comfort and connection expressed within the research excerpt that opened this paper, it is clear that I overcame the uncertainty described in the previous section, and was able to establish myself within the Harry’s regular collective. This is despite, as noted above, that both the presence and openness of Harry’s regular collective was unpredictable. However, this uncertainty also created a tension that could be said to positively increase the openness of the space. This is because it challenged the predictability that can be associated with anchored regularity, and instead forced me to look outside that identity for those reliable moments of easy friendship and congeniality within realms of exposure. That is, because of the uncertainty regarding both the presence and openness of established regulars, I often turned to fleeting interactions with non-regulars to generate that sense of identification. The influence of non-regulars can be downplayed in ethnographies of cafes and bars, perhaps because they tend to be excluded from the primary group’s identifications that are being investigated. Michael Katovich and William Reese provide the most detailed description of their relevance to the regular identity when they describe how the non-regulars in the Big Derby Lounge were used as tools against which established regulars compared their position and standing, as well as being a potential pool of recruits (336). This paper argues that non-regulars are also significant because their presence alters the realms operating within the space, thus creating opportunities for interactions at those boundaries that can be identity defining. My interactions with non-regulars in Harry’s generally offered the opportunity for spirited, playful and at times quite involved conversations, in which acquired knowledge, familiarity with staff or products, or simple statements of attachment were sufficient markers to establish an experience of regular identification in the eyes of the other. Whilst at times the density of these strangers altered Harry’s realms to the extent I did not feel at home at all, they nonetheless provided an avenue through which to remedy the uncertainties created by my interactions with the anchored social network. These non-regular interactions were able to do this because they operated at the low emotional involvement but high emotional gain boundary between fleeting public realm relations, and more meaningful experiences of exposure, where shared values and identities are on display. That is, I was confirming my regular identity not through an experience of the regular collective, but through an experience of being an individual and a regular. And in each successful encounter there was also the affirmation I had unsuccessfully sought through the regular collective, the emotional certainty that I had some kind of identifiable position within that place. Conclusion: Anchoring and Exposing in the Third Place This paper has drawn from my experiences in Harry’s to explore the process of regular identification as it operates at the boundaries of social realms. This focus provides a means to explore the ways that regular collective identification may develop in the contemporary inner city, where regularity can be sporadic and consumption based socialising is common. Drawing on autoethnographic work, this paper suggests that regularity is experienced both as an individual and a collective identity, according to the nature of the realms operating within the space. Collective identification occurs in anchoring realms, and supports the established regular group, whereas individual regular identification occurs within exposure realms, and relies on recognition from willing non-regulars. Furthermore, this paper suggests it is the latter of these identifications that is the more easily achieved, because it can be experienced at the exposure boundaries of the parochial realm, a less risky and more accessible place to identify when patronage is infrequent and social realms so fluid. It is this use of non-regular relations to balance the emotional work involved in the development of anchored relationships that I believe points to the true potential of third places in the contemporary inner city. Establishing a place where everybody knows your name is improbable in this context. However encouraging consumption spaces in which an individual’s regular patronage can form the basis of an identification, from which one can both anchor and expose, may ultimately work to support a kind of contemporary inner city version of the easier friendship and congeniality that the third place is hoped to offer. References Amin, Ash. “Collective Culture and Urban Public Space.” City 12.1 (2008): 5–24. ———. “Re-Thinking the Urban Social.” City 11.1 (2007): 100–14. Anderson, Elijah. A Place on the Corner. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978. Aubert-Gamet, Veronique, and Bernard Cova. “Servicescapes: From Modern Non-Places to Postmodern Common Places.” Journal of Business Research 44 (1999): 37–45. Bitner, Mary Jo. “Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees.” Journal of Marketing 56 (Apr. 1992): 57–71. Cova, Bernard, Robert V. Kozinets, and Avi Shankar. Eds. Consumer Tribes, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007. Katovich, Michael A., and William A. Reese II. “The Regular: Full-Time Identities and Memberships in an Urban Bar.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 16.3 (1987): 308–43. Lloyd, Richard. Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Post-Industrial City. New York: Routledge, 2006. Lofland, Lyn H. The Public Realm: Exploring the City's Quintessential Social Territory. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1998. Maffesoli, Michel. The Times of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. Trans. Don Smith. London: Sage, 1996. Oldenburg, Ray. The Great Good Place: Cafes. Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. New York: Marlowe and Company, 1999. Sherry, John F., Jr. “Understanding Markets as Places: An Introduction to Servicescapes.” Servicescapes: The Concept of Place in Contemporary Markets. Ed. John F. Sherry, Jr. Chicago: NTC Business Books, 1998. 1–24. Spradley, James P., and Barbara J. Mann. The Cocktail Waitress: Woman’s Work in a Man’s World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Zukin, Sharon. Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places. New York: Oxford UP, 2010.

At one point in Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the archdeacon, Claude Frollo, looked up from a book on his table to the edifice of the gothic cathedral, visible from his canon’s cell in the cloister of Notre Dame: “Alas!” he said, “this will kill that” (146). Frollo’s lament, that the book would destroy the edifice, captures the medieval cleric’s anxiety about the way in which Gutenberg’s print technology would become the new universal means for recording and communicating humanity’s ideas and artistic expression, replacing the grand monuments of architecture, human engineering, and craftsmanship. For Hugo, architecture was “the great handwriting of humankind” (149). The cathedral as the material outcome of human technology was being replaced by the first great machine—the printing press. At this point in the third millennium, some people undoubtedly have similar anxieties to Frollo: is it now the book’s turn to be destroyed by yet another great machine? The inclusion of “post print” in our title is not intended to sound the death knell of the book. Rather, we contend that despite the enduring value of print, digital publishing is “present and active” and is changing the way in which research, particularly in the humanities, is being undertaken. Our approach has three related parts. First, we consider how digital technologies are changing the way in which content is constructed, customised, modified, disseminated, and accessed within a global, distributed network. This section argues that the transition from print to electronic or digital publishing means both losses and gains, particularly with respect to shifts in our approaches to textuality, information, and innovative publishing. Second, we discuss the Children’s Literature Digital Resources (CLDR) project, with which we are involved. This case study of a digitising initiative opens out the transformative possibilities and challenges of digital publishing and e-scholarship for research communities. Third, we reflect on technology’s capacity to bring about major changes in the light of the theoretical and practical issues that have arisen from our discussion. I. Digitising in a “post-print age” We are living in an era that is commonly referred to as “the late age of print” (see Kho) or the “post-print age” (see Gunkel). According to Aarseth, we have reached a point whereby nearly all of our public and personal media have become more or less digital (37). As Kho notes, web newspapers are not only becoming increasingly more popular, but they are also making rather than losing money, and paper-based newspapers are finding it difficult to recruit new readers from the younger generations (37). Not only can such online-only publications update format, content, and structure more economically than print-based publications, but their wide distribution network, speed, and flexibility attract advertising revenue. Hype and hyperbole aside, publishers are not so much discarding their legacy of print, but recognising the folly of not embracing innovative technologies that can add value by presenting information in ways that satisfy users’ needs for content to-go or for edutainment. As Kho notes: “no longer able to satisfy customer demand by producing print-only products, or even by enabling online access to semi-static content, established publishers are embracing new models for publishing, web-style” (42). Advocates of online publishing contend that the major benefits of online publishing over print technology are that it is faster, more economical, and more interactive. However, as Hovav and Gray caution, “e-publishing also involves risks, hidden costs, and trade-offs” (79). The specific focus for these authors is e-journal publishing and they contend that while cost reduction is in editing, production and distribution, if the journal is not open access, then costs relating to storage and bandwith will be transferred to the user. If we put economics aside for the moment, the transition from print to electronic text (e-text), especially with electronic literary works, brings additional considerations, particularly in their ability to make available different reading strategies to print, such as “animation, rollovers, screen design, navigation strategies, and so on” (Hayles 38). Transition from print to e-text In his book, Writing Space, David Bolter follows Victor Hugo’s lead, but does not ask if print technology will be destroyed. Rather, he argues that “the idea and ideal of the book will change: print will no longer define the organization and presentation of knowledge, as it has for the past five centuries” (2). As Hayles noted above, one significant indicator of this change, which is a consequence of the shift from analogue to digital, is the addition of graphical, audio, visual, sonic, and kinetic elements to the written word. A significant consequence of this transition is the reinvention of the book in a networked environment. Unlike the printed book, the networked book is not bound by space and time. Rather, it is an evolving entity within an ecology of readers, authors, and texts. The Web 2.0 platform has enabled more experimentation with blending of digital technology and traditional writing, particularly in the use of blogs, which have spawned blogwriting and the wikinovel. Siva Vaidhyanathan’s The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community … and Why We Should Worry is a wikinovel or blog book that was produced over a series of weeks with contributions from other bloggers (see: http://www.sivacracy.net/). Penguin Books, in collaboration with a media company, “Six Stories to Start,” have developed six stories—“We Tell Stories,” which involve different forms of interactivity from users through blog entries, Twitter text messages, an interactive google map, and other features. For example, the story titled “Fairy Tales” allows users to customise the story using their own choice of names for characters and descriptions of character traits. Each story is loosely based on a classic story and links take users to synopses of these original stories and their authors and to online purchase of the texts through the Penguin Books sales website. These examples of digital stories are a small part of the digital environment, which exploits computer and online technologies’ capacity to be interactive and immersive. As Janet Murray notes, the interactive qualities of digital environments are characterised by their procedural and participatory abilities, while their immersive qualities are characterised by their spatial and encyclopedic dimensions (71–89). These immersive and interactive qualities highlight different ways of reading texts, which entail different embodied and cognitive functions from those that reading print texts requires. As Hayles argues: the advent of electronic textuality presents us with an unparalleled opportunity to reformulate fundamental ideas about texts and, in the process, to see print as well as electronic texts with fresh eyes (89–90). The transition to e-text also highlights how digitality is changing all aspects of everyday life both inside and outside the academy. Online teaching and e-research Another aspect of the commercial arm of publishing that is impacting on academe and other organisations is the digitising and indexing of print content for niche distribution. Kho offers the example of the Mark Logic Corporation, which uses its XML content platform to repurpose content, create new content, and distribute this content through multiple portals. As the promotional website video for Mark Logic explains, academics can use this service to customise their own textbooks for students by including only articles and book chapters that are relevant to their subject. These are then organised, bound, and distributed by Mark Logic for sale to students at a cost that is generally cheaper than most textbooks. A further example of how print and digital materials can form an integrated, customised source for teachers and students is eFictions (Trimmer, Jennings, & Patterson). eFictions was one of the first print and online short story anthologies that teachers of literature could customise to their own needs. Produced as both a print text collection and a website, eFictions offers popular short stories in English by well-known traditional and contemporary writers from the US, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and Europe, with summaries, notes on literary features, author biographies, and, in one instance, a YouTube movie of the story. In using the eFictions website, teachers can build a customised anthology of traditional and innovative stories to suit their teaching preferences. These examples provide useful indicators of how content is constructed, customised, modified, disseminated, and accessed within a distributed network. However, the question remains as to how to measure their impact and outcomes within teaching and learning communities. As Harley suggests in her study on the use and users of digital resources in the humanities and social sciences, several factors warrant attention, such as personal teaching style, philosophy, and specific disciplinary requirements. However, in terms of understanding the benefits of digital resources for teaching and learning, Harley notes that few providers in her sample had developed any plans to evaluate use and users in a systematic way. In addition to the problems raised in Harley’s study, another relates to how researchers can be supported to take full advantage of digital technologies for e-research. The transformation brought about by information and communication technologies extends and broadens the impact of research, by making its outputs more discoverable and usable by other researchers, and its benefits more available to industry, governments, and the wider community. Traditional repositories of knowledge and information, such as libraries, are juggling the space demands of books and computer hardware alongside increasing reader demand for anywhere, anytime, anyplace access to information. Researchers’ expectations about online access to journals, eprints, bibliographic data, and the views of others through wikis, blogs, and associated social and information networking sites such as YouTube compete with the traditional expectations of the institutions that fund libraries for paper-based archives and book repositories. While university libraries are finding it increasingly difficult to purchase all hardcover books relevant to numerous and varied disciplines, a significant proportion of their budgets goes towards digital repositories (e.g., STORS), indexes, and other resources, such as full-text electronic specialised and multidisciplinary journal databases (e.g., Project Muse and Proquest); electronic serials; e-books; and specialised information sources through fast (online) document delivery services. An area that is becoming increasingly significant for those working in the humanities is the digitising of historical and cultural texts. II. Bringing back the dead: The CLDR project The CLDR project is led by researchers and librarians at the Queensland University of Technology, in collaboration with Deakin University, University of Sydney, and members of the AustLit team at The University of Queensland. The CLDR project is a “Research Community” of the electronic bibliographic database AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, which is working towards the goal of providing a complete bibliographic record of the nation’s literature. AustLit offers users with a single entry point to enhanced scholarly resources on Australian writers, their works, and other aspects of Australian literary culture and activities. AustLit and its Research Communities are supported by grants from the Australian Research Council and financial and in-kind contributions from a consortium of Australian universities, and by other external funding sources such as the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. Like other more extensive digitisation projects, such as Project Gutenberg and the Rosetta Project, the CLDR project aims to provide a centralised access point for digital surrogates of early published works of Australian children’s literature, with access pathways to existing resources. The first stage of the CLDR project is to provide access to digitised, full-text, out-of-copyright Australian children’s literature from European settlement to 1945, with selected digitised critical works relevant to the field. Texts comprise a range of genres, including poetry, drama, and narrative for young readers and picture books, songs, and rhymes for infants. Currently, a selection of 75 e-texts and digital scans of original texts from Project Gutenberg and Internet Archive have been linked to the Children’s Literature Research Community. By the end of 2009, the CLDR will have digitised approximately 1000 literary texts and a significant number of critical works. Stage II and subsequent development will involve digitisation of selected texts from 1945 onwards. A precursor to the CLDR project has been undertaken by Deakin University in collaboration with the State Library of Victoria, whereby a digital bibliographic index comprising Victorian School Readers has been completed with plans for full-text digital surrogates of a selection of these texts. These texts provide valuable insights into citizenship, identity, and values formation from the 1930s onwards. At the time of writing, the CLDR is at an early stage of development. An extensive survey of out-of-copyright texts has been completed and the digitisation of these resources is about to commence. The project plans to make rich content searchable, allowing scholars from children’s literature studies and education to benefit from the many advantages of online scholarship. What digital publishing and associated digital archives, electronic texts, hypermedia, and so forth foreground is the fact that writers, readers, publishers, programmers, designers, critics, booksellers, teachers, and copyright laws operate within a context that is highly mediated by technology. In his article on large-scale digitisation projects carried out by Cornell and University of Michigan with the Making of America collection of 19th-century American serials and monographs, Hirtle notes that when special collections’ materials are available via the Web, with appropriate metadata and software, then they can “increase use of the material, contribute to new forms of research, and attract new users to the material” (44). Furthermore, Hirtle contends that despite the poor ergonomics associated with most electronic displays and e-book readers, “people will, when given the opportunity, consult an electronic text over the print original” (46). If this preference is universally accurate, especially for researchers and students, then it follows that not only will the preference for electronic surrogates of original material increase, but preference for other kinds of electronic texts will also increase. It is with this preference for electronic resources in mind that we approached the field of children’s literature in Australia and asked questions about how future generations of researchers would prefer to work. If electronic texts become the reference of choice for primary as well as secondary sources, then it seems sensible to assume that researchers would prefer to sit at the end of the keyboard than to travel considerable distances at considerable cost to access paper-based print texts in distant libraries and archives. We considered the best means for providing access to digitised primary and secondary, full text material, and digital pathways to existing online resources, particularly an extensive indexing and bibliographic database. Prior to the commencement of the CLDR project, AustLit had already indexed an extensive number of children’s literature. Challenges and dilemmas The CLDR project, even in its early stages of development, has encountered a number of challenges and dilemmas that centre on access, copyright, economic capital, and practical aspects of digitisation, and sustainability. These issues have relevance for digital publishing and e-research. A decision is yet to be made as to whether the digital texts in CLDR will be available on open or closed/tolled access. The preference is for open access. As Hayles argues, copyright is more than a legal basis for intellectual property, as it also entails ideas about authorship, creativity, and the work as an “immaterial mental construct” that goes “beyond the paper, binding, or ink” (144). Seeking copyright permission is therefore only part of the issue. Determining how the item will be accessed is a further matter, particularly as future technologies may impact upon how a digital item is used. In the case of e-journals, the issue of copyright payment structures are evolving towards a collective licensing system, pay-per-view, and other combinations of print and electronic subscription (see Hovav and Gray). For research purposes, digitisation of items for CLDR is not simply a scan and deliver process. Rather it is one that needs to ensure that the best quality is provided and that the item is both accessible and usable by researchers, and sustainable for future researchers. Sustainability is an important consideration and provides a challenge for institutions that host projects such as CLDR. Therefore, items need to be scanned to a high quality and this requires an expensive scanner and personnel costs. Files need to be in a variety of formats for preservation purposes and so that they may be manipulated to be useable in different technologies (for example, Archival Tiff, Tiff, Jpeg, PDF, HTML). Hovav and Gray warn that when technology becomes obsolete, then content becomes unreadable unless backward integration is maintained. The CLDR items will be annotatable given AustLit’s NeAt funded project: Aus-e-Lit. The Aus-e-Lit project will extend and enhance the existing AustLit web portal with data integration and search services, empirical reporting services, collaborative annotation services, and compound object authoring, editing, and publishing services. For users to be able to get the most out of a digital item, it needs to be searchable, either through double keying or OCR (optimal character recognition). The value of CLDR’s contribution The value of the CLDR project lies in its goal to provide a comprehensive, searchable body of texts (fictional and critical) to researchers across the humanities and social sciences. Other projects seem to be intent on putting up as many items as possible to be considered as a first resort for online texts. CLDR is more specific and is not interested in simply generating a presence on the Web. Rather, it is research driven both in its design and implementation, and in its focussed outcomes of assisting academics and students primarily in their e-research endeavours. To this end, we have concentrated on the following: an extensive survey of appropriate texts; best models for file location, distribution, and use; and high standards of digitising protocols. These issues that relate to data storage, digitisation, collections, management, and end-users of data are aligned with the “Development of an Australian Research Data Strategy” outlined in An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework (2006). CLDR is not designed to simply replicate resources, as it has a distinct focus, audience, and research potential. In addition, it looks at resources that may be forgotten or are no longer available in reproduction by current publishing companies. Thus, the aim of CLDR is to preserve both the time and a period of Australian history and literary culture. It will also provide users with an accessible repository of rare and early texts written for children. III. Future directions It is now commonplace to recognize that the Web’s role as information provider has changed over the past decade. New forms of “collective intelligence” or “distributed cognition” (Oblinger and Lombardi) are emerging within and outside formal research communities. Technology’s capacity to initiate major cultural, social, educational, economic, political and commercial shifts has conditioned us to expect the “next big thing.” We have learnt to adapt swiftly to the many challenges that online technologies have presented, and we have reaped the benefits. As the examples in this discussion have highlighted, the changes in online publishing and digitisation have provided many material, network, pedagogical, and research possibilities: we teach online units providing students with access to e-journals, e-books, and customized archives of digitised materials; we communicate via various online technologies; we attend virtual conferences; and we participate in e-research through a global, digital network. In other words, technology is deeply engrained in our everyday lives. In returning to Frollo’s concern that the book would destroy architecture, Umberto Eco offers a placatory note: “in the history of culture it has never happened that something has simply killed something else. Something has profoundly changed something else” (n. pag.). Eco’s point has relevance to our discussion of digital publishing. The transition from print to digital necessitates a profound change that impacts on the ways we read, write, and research. As we have illustrated with our case study of the CLDR project, the move to creating digitised texts of print literature needs to be considered within a dynamic network of multiple causalities, emergent technological processes, and complex negotiations through which digital texts are created, stored, disseminated, and used. Technological changes in just the past five years have, in many ways, created an expectation in the minds of people that the future is no longer some distant time from the present. Rather, as our title suggests, the future is both present and active. References Aarseth, Espen. “How we became Postdigital: From Cyberstudies to Game Studies.” Critical Cyber-culture Studies. Ed. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari. New York: New York UP, 2006. 37–46. An Australian e-Research Strategy and Implementation Framework: Final Report of the e-Research Coordinating Committee. Commonwealth of Australia, 2006. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1991. Eco, Umberto. “The Future of the Book.” 1994. 3 June 2008 ‹http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_future_of_book.html>. Gunkel, David. J. “What's the Matter with Books?” Configurations 11.3 (2003): 277–303. Harley, Diane. “Use and Users of Digital Resources: A Focus on Undergraduate Education in the Humanities and Social Sciences.” Research and Occasional Papers Series. Berkeley: University of California. Centre for Studies in Higher Education. 12 June 2008 ‹http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_future_of_book.html>. Hayles, N. Katherine. My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005. Hirtle, Peter B. “The Impact of Digitization on Special Collections in Libraries.” Libraries & Culture 37.1 (2002): 42–52. Hovav, Anat and Paul Gray. “Managing Academic E-journals.” Communications of the ACM 47.4 (2004): 79–82. Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre-Dame de Paris). Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth editions, 1993. Kho, Nancy D. “The Medium Gets the Message: Post-Print Publishing Models.” EContent 30.6 (2007): 42–48. Oblinger, Diana and Marilyn Lombardi. “Common Knowledge: Openness in Higher Education.” Opening up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education Through Open Technology, Open Content and Open Knowledge. Ed. Toru Liyoshi and M. S. Vijay Kumar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. 389–400. Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Trimmer, Joseph F., Wade Jennings, and Annette Patterson. eFictions. New York: Harcourt, 2001.

“As the old technologies become automatic and invisible, we find ourselves more concerned with fighting or embracing what’s new”—Dennis Baron, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stage of Literacy Technologies Popular music is firmly rooted within realist practice, or what has been called the "culture of authenticity" associated with modernism. As Lawrence Grossberg notes, the accelleration of the rate of change in modern life caused, in post-war youth culture, an identity crisis or "lived contradiction" that gave rock (particularly) and popular music (generally) a peculiar position in regard to notions of authenticity. Grossberg places rock's authenticity within the "difference" it maintains from other cultural forms, and notes that its difference "can be justified aesthetically or ideologically, or in terms of the social position of the audiences, or by the economics of its production, or through the measure of its popularity or the statement of its politics" (205-6). Popular music scholars have not adequately addressed issues of authenticity and individuality. Two of the most important questions to be asked are: How is authenticity communicated in popular music? What is the site of the interpretation of authenticity? It is important to ask about sound, technology, about the attempt to understand the ideal and the image, the natural and artificial. It is these that make clear the strongest connections between popular music and contemporary culture. Popular music is a particularly appropriate site for the study of authenticity as a cultural category, for several reasons. For one thing, other media do not follow us, as aural media do, into malls, elevators, cars, planes. Nor do they wait for us, as a tape player paused and ready to play. What is important is not that music is "everywhere" but, to borrow from Vivian Sobchack, that it creates a "here" that can be transported anywhere. In fact, we are able to walk around enveloped by a personal aural environment, thanks to a Sony Walkman.1 Also, it is more difficult to shut out the aural than the visual. Closing one's ears does not entirely shut out sound. There is, additionally, the sense that sound and music are interpreted from within, that is, that they resonate through and within the body, and as such engage with one's self in a fashion that coincides with Charles Taylor's claim that the "ideal of authenticity" is an inner-directed one. It must be noted that authenticity is not, however, communicated only via music, but via text and image. Grossberg noted the "primacy of sound" in rock music, and the important link between music, visual image, and authenticity: Visual style as conceived in rock culture is usually the stage for an outrageous and self-conscious inauthenticity... . It was here -- in its visual presentation -- that rock often most explicitly manifested both an ironic resistance to the dominant culture and its sympathies with the business of entertainment ... . The demand for live performance has always expressed the desire for the visual mark (and proof) of authenticity. (208) But that relationship can also be reversed: Music and sound serve in some instances to provide the aural mark and proof of authenticity. Consider, for instance, the "tear" in the voice that Jensen identifies in Hank Williams's singing, and in that of Patsy Cline. For the latter, voicing, in this sense, was particularly important, as it meant more than a singing style, it also involved matters of self-identity, as Jensen appropriately associates with the move of country music from "hometown" to "uptown" (101). Cline's move toward a more "uptown" style involved her visual image, too. At a significant turning point in her career, Faron Young noted, Cline "left that country girl look in those western outfits behind and opted for a slicker appearance in dresses and high fashion gowns" (Jensen 101). Popular music has forged a link with visual media, and in some sense music itself has become more visual (though not necessarily less aural) the more it has engaged with industrial processes in the entertainment industry. For example, engagement with music videos and film soundtracks has made music a part of the larger convergence of mass media forms. Alongside that convergence, the use of music in visual media has come to serve as adjunct to visual symbolisation. One only need observe the increasingly commercial uses to which music is put (as in advertising, film soundtracks and music videos) to note ways in which music serves image. In the literature from a variety of disciplines, including communication, art and music, it has been argued that music videos are the visualisation of music. But in many respects the opposite is true. Music videos are the auralisation of the visual. Music serves many of the same purposes as sound does generally in visual media. One can find a strong argument for the use of sound as supplement to visual media in Silverman's and Altman's work. For Silverman, sound in cinema has largely been overlooked (pun intended) in favor of the visual image, but sound is a more effective (and perhaps necessary) element for willful suspension of disbelief. One may see this as well in the development of Dolby Surround Sound, and in increased emphasis on sound engineering among video and computer game makers, as well as the development of sub-woofers and high-fidelity speakers as computer peripherals. Another way that sound has become more closely associated with the visual is through the ongoing evolution of marketing demands within the popular music industry that increasingly rely on visual media and force image to the front. Internet technologies, particularly the WorldWideWeb (WWW), are also evidence of a merging of the visual and aural (see Hayward). The development of low-cost desktop video equipment and WWW publishing, CD-i, CD-ROM, DVD, and other technologies, has meant that visual images continue to form part of the industrial routine of the music business. The decrease in cost of many of these technologies has also led to the adoption of such routines among individual musicians, small/independent labels, and producers seeking to mimic the resources of major labels (a practice that has become considerably easier via the Internet, as it is difficult to determine capital resources solely from a WWW site). Yet there is another facet to the evolution of the link between the aural and visual. Sound has become more visual by way of its representation during its production (a representation, and process, that has largely been ignored in popular music studies). That representation has to do with the digitisation of sound, and the subsequent transformation sound and music can undergo after being digitised and portrayed on a computer screen. Once digitised, sound can be made visual in any number of ways, through traditional methods like music notation, through representation as audio waveform, by way of MIDI notation, bit streams, or through representation as shapes and colors (as in recent software applications particularly for children, like Making Music by Morton Subotnick). The impetus for these representations comes from the desire for increased control over sound (see Jones, Rock Formation) and such control seems most easily accomplished by way of computers and their concomitant visual technologies (monitors, printers). To make computers useful tools for sound recording it is necessary to employ some form of visual representation for the aural, and the flexibility of modern computers allows for new modes of predominately visual representation. Each of these connections between the aural and visual is in turn related to technology, for as audio technology develops within the entertainment industry it makes sense for synergistic development to occur with visual media technologies. Yet popular music scholars routinely analyse aural and visual media in isolation from one another. The challenge for popular music studies and music philosophy posed by visual media technologies, that they must attend to spatiality and context (both visual and aural), has not been taken up. Until such time as it is, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to engage issues of authenticity, because they will remain rootless instead of situated within the experience of music as fully sensual (in some cases even synaesthetic). Most of the traditional judgments of authenticity among music critics and many popular music scholars involve space and time, the former in terms of the movement of music across cultures and the latter in terms of history. None rely on notions of the "situatedness" of the listener or musicmaker in a particular aural, visual and historical space. Part of the reason for the lack of such an understanding arises from the very means by which popular music is created. We have become accustomed to understanding music as manipulation of sound, and so far as most modern music production is concerned such manipulation occurs as much visually as aurally, by cutting, pasting and otherwise altering audio waveforms on a computer screen. Musicians no more record music than they record fingering; they engage in sound recording. And recording engineers and producers rely less and less on sound and more on sight to determine whether a recording conforms to the demands of digital reproduction.2 Sound, particularly when joined with the visual, becomes a means to build and manipulate the environment, virtual and non-virtual (see Jones, "Sound"). Sound & Music As we construct space through sound, both in terms of audio production (e.g., the use of reverberation devices in recording studios) and in terms of everyday life (e.g., perception of aural stimuli, whether by ear or vibration in the body, from points surrounding us), we centre it within experience. Sound combines the psychological and physiological. Audio engineer George Massenburg noted that in film theaters: You couldn't utilise the full 360-degree sound space for music because there was an "exit sign" phenomena [sic]. If you had a lot of audio going on in the back, people would have a natural inclination to turn around and stare at the back of the room. (Massenburg 79-80) However, he went on to say, beyond observations of such reactions to multichannel sound technology, "we don't know very much". Research in psychoacoustics being used to develop virtual audio systems relies on such reactions and on a notion of human hardwiring for stimulus response (see Jones, "Sense"). But a major stumbling block toward the development of those systems is that none are able to account for individual listeners' perceptions. It is therefore important to consider the individual along with the social dimension in discussions of sound and music. For instance, the term "sound" is deployed in popular music to signify several things, all of which have to do with music or musical performance, but none of which is music. So, for instance, musical groups or performers can have a "sound", but it is distinguishable from what notes they play. Entire music scenes can have "sounds", but the music within such scenes is clearly distinct and differentiated. For the study of popular music this is a significant but often overlooked dimension. As Grossberg argues, "the authenticity of rock was measured by its sound" (207). Visually, he says, popular music is suspect and often inauthentic (sometimes purposefully so), and it is grounded in the aural. Similarly in country music Jensen notes that the "Nashville Sound" continually evoked conflicting definitions among fans and musicians, but that: The music itself was the arena in and through which claims about the Nashville Sound's authenticity were played out. A certain sound (steel guitar, with fiddle) was deemed "hard" or "pure" country, in spite of its own commercial history. (84) One should, therefore, attend to the interpretive acts associated with sound and its meaning. But why has not popular music studies engaged in systematic analysis of sound at the level of the individual as well as the social? As John Shepherd put it, "little cultural theoretical work in music is concerned with music's sounds" ("Value" 174). Why should this be a cause for concern? First, because Shepherd claims that sound is not "meaningful" in the traditional sense. Second, because it leads us to re-examine the question long set to the side in popular music studies: What is music? The structural homology, the connection between meaning and social formation, is a foundation upon which the concept of authenticity in popular music stands. Yet the ability to label a particular piece of music "good" shifts from moment to moment, and place to place. Frith understates the problem when he writes that "it is difficult ... to say how musical texts mean or represent something, and it is difficult to isolate structures of musical creation or control" (56). Shepherd attempts to overcome this difficulty by emphasising that: Music is a social medium in sound. What [this] means ... is that the sounds of music provide constantly moving and complex matrices of sounds in which individuals may invest their own meanings ... [however] while the matrices of sounds which seemingly constitute an individual "piece" of music can accommodate a range of meanings, and thereby allow for negotiability of meaning, they cannot accommodate all possible meanings. (Shepherd, "Art") It must be acknowledged that authenticity is constructed, and that in itself is an argument against the most common way to think of authenticity. If authenticity implies something about the "pure" state of an object or symbol then surely such a state is connected to some "objective" rendering, one not possible according to Shepherd's claims. In some sense, then, authenticity is autonomous, its materialisation springs not from any necessary connection to sound, image, text, but from individual acts of interpretation, typically within what in literary criticism has come to be known as "interpretive communities". It is not hard to illustrate the point by generalising and observing that rock's notion of authenticity is captured in terms of songwriting, but that songwriters are typically identified with places (e.g. Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Liverpool, etc.). In this way there is an obvious connection between authenticity and authorship (see Jones, "Popular Music Studies") and geography (as well in terms of musical "scenes", e.g. the "Philly Sound", the "Sun Sound", etc.). The important thing to note is the resultant connection between the symbolic and the physical worlds rooted (pun intended) in geography. As Redhead & Street put it: The idea of "roots" refers to a number of aspects of the musical process. There is the audience in which the musician's career is rooted ... . Another notion of roots refers to music. Here the idea is that the sounds and the style of the music should continue to resemble the source from which it sprang ... . The issue ... can be detected in the argument of those who raise doubts about the use of musical high-technology by African artists. A final version of roots applies to the artist's sociological origins. (180) It is important, consequently, to note that new technologies, particularly ones associated with the distribution of music, are of increasing importance in regulating the tension between alienation and progress mentioned earlier, as they are technologies not simply of musical production and consumption, but of geography. That the tension they mediate is most readily apparent in legal skirmishes during an unsettled era for copyright law (see Brown) should not distract scholars from understanding their cultural significance. These technologies are, on the one hand, "liberating" (see Hayward, Young, and Marsh) insofar as they permit greater geographical "reach" and thus greater marketing opportunities (see Fromartz), but on the other hand they permit less commercial control, insofar as they permit digitised music to freely circulate without restriction or compensation, to the chagrin of copyright enthusiasts. They also create opportunities for musical collaboration (see Hayward) between performers in different zones of time and space, on a scale unmatched since the development of multitracking enabled the layering of sound. Most importantly, these technologies open spaces for the construction of authenticity that have hitherto been unavailable, particularly across distances that have largely separated cultures and fan communities (see Paul). The technologies of Internetworking provide yet another way to make connections between authenticity, music and sound. Community and locality (as Redhead & Street, as well as others like Sara Cohen and Ruth Finnegan, note) are the elements used by audience and artist alike to understand the authenticity of a performer or performance. The lived experience of an artist, in a particular nexus of time and space, is to be somehow communicated via music and interpreted "properly" by an audience. But technologies of Internetworking permit the construction of alternative spaces, times and identities. In no small way that has also been the situation with the mediation of music via most recordings. They are constructed with a sense of space, consumed within particular spaces, at particular times, in individual, most often private, settings. What the network technologies have wrought is a networked audience for music that is linked globally but rooted in the local. To put it another way, the range of possibilities when it comes to interpretive communities has widened, but the experience of music has not significantly shifted, that is, the listener experiences music individually, and locally. Musical activity, whether it is defined as cultural or commercial practice, is neither flat nor autonomous. It is marked by ever-changing tastes (hence not flat) but within an interpretive structure (via "interpretive communities"). Musical activity must be understood within the nexus of the complex relations between technical, commercial and cultural processes. As Jensen put it in her analysis of Patsy Cline's career: Those who write about culture production can treat it as a mechanical process, a strategic construction of material within technical or institutional systems, logical, rational, and calculated. But Patsy Cline's recording career shows, among other things, how this commodity production view must be linked to an understanding of culture as meaning something -- as defining, connecting, expressing, mattering to those who participate with it. (101) To achieve that type of understanding will require that popular music scholars understand authenticity and music in a symbolic realm. Rather than conceiving of authenticity as a limited resource (that is, there is only so much that is "pure" that can go around), it is important to foreground its symbolic and ever-changing character. Put another way, authenticity is not used by musician or audience simply to label something as such, but rather to mean something about music that matters at that moment. Authenticity therefore does not somehow "slip away", nor does a "pure" authentic exist. Authenticity in this regard is, as Baudrillard explains concerning mechanical reproduction, "conceived according to (its) very reproducibility ... there are models from which all forms proceed according to modulated differences" (56). Popular music scholars must carefully assess the affective dimensions of fans, musicians, and also record company executives, recording producers, and so on, to be sensitive to the deeply rooted construction of authenticity and authentic experience throughout musical processes. Only then will there emerge an understanding of the structures of feeling that are central to the experience of music. Footnotes For analyses of the Walkman's role in social settings and popular music consumption see du Gay; Hosokawa; and Chen. It has been thus since the advent of disc recording, when engineers would watch a record's grooves through a microscope lens as it was being cut to ensure grooves would not cross over one into another. References Altman, Rick. "Television/Sound." Studies in Entertainment. Ed. Tania Modleski. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 39-54. Baudrillard, Jean. Symbolic Death and Exchange. London: Sage, 1993. Brown, Ronald. Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1995. Chen, Shing-Ling. "Electronic Narcissism: College Students' Experiences of Walkman Listening." Annual meeting of the International Communication Association. Washington, D.C. 1993. Du Gay, Paul, et al. Doing Cultural Studies. London: Sage, 1997. Frith, Simon. Sound Effects. New York: Pantheon, 1981. Fromartz, Steven. "Starts-ups Sell Garage Bands, Bowie on Web." Reuters newswire, 4 Dec. 1996. Grossberg, Lawrence. We Gotta Get Out of This Place. London: Routledge, 1992. Hayward, Philip. "Enterprise on the New Frontier." Convergence 1.2 (Winter 1995): 29-44. Hosokawa, Shuhei. "The Walkman Effect." Popular Music 4 (1984). Jensen, Joli. The Nashville Sound: Authenticity, Commercialisation and Country Music. Nashville, Vanderbilt UP, 1998. Jones, Steve. Rock Formation: Music, Technology and Mass Communication. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992. ---. "Popular Music Studies and Critical Legal Studies" Stanford Humanities Review 3.2 (Fall 1993): 77-90. ---. "A Sense of Space: Virtual Reality, Authenticity and the Aural." Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10.3 (Sep. 1993), 238-52. ---. "Sound, Space & Digitisation." Media Information Australia 67 (Feb. 1993): 83-91. Marrsh, Brian. "Musicians Adopt Technology to Market Their Skills." Wall Street Journal 14 Oct. 1994: C2. Massenburg, George. "Recording the Future." EQ (Apr. 1997): 79-80. Paul, Frank. "R&B: Soul Music Fans Make Cyberspace Their Meeting Place." Reuters newswire, 11 July 1996. Redhead, Steve, and John Street. "Have I the Right? Legitimacy, Authenticity and Community in Folk's Politics." Popular Music 8.2 (1989). Shepherd, John. "Art, Culture and Interdisciplinarity." Davidson Dunston Research Lecture. Carleton University, Canada. 3 May 1992. ---. "Value and Power in Music." The Sound of Music: Meaning and Power in Culture. Eds. John Shepherd and Peter Wicke. Cambridge: Polity, 1993. Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988. Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space. New York: Ungar, 1982. Young, Charles. "Aussie Artists Use Internet and Bootleg CDs to Protect Rights." Pro Sound News July 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Steve Jones. "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php>. Chicago style: Steve Jones, "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Steve Jones. (1999) Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: "Remixing" Authenticity in Popular Music Studies. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/remix.php> ([your date of access]).

As I round the corner from Church Street onto Vesey, I am abruptly met with the façade of St. Paul’s Chapel and by the sudden memory of two things, both of which have not yet happened. I think about how, in a couple of decades, the area surrounding me will be burnt to the ground. I also recall how, just after the turn of the twenty-first century, the area will again crumble onto itself. It is 1759, and I—via my avatar—am wandering through downtown New York City in the videogame space of Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (AC:R). These spatial and temporal memories stem from the fact that I have previously (that is, earlier in my life) played an AC game set in New York City during the War for Independence (later in history), wherein the city’s lower west side burns at the hands of the British. Years before that (in my biographical timeline, though much later in history) I watched from twenty-something blocks north of here as flames erupted from the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Complicating the situation further, Michel de Certeau strolls with me in spirit, pondering observations he will make from almost this exact location (though roughly 1,100 feet higher up) 220 years from now, around the time I am being born. Perhaps the oddest aspect of this convoluted and temporally layered experience is the fact that I am not actually at the corner of Church and Vesey in 1759 at all, but rather on a couch, in Virginia, now. This particular type of sudden arrival at a space is only possible when it is not planned. Prior to the moment described above, I had finished a “mission” in the game that involved my coming to the city, so I decided I would just walk around a bit in the newly discovered digital New York of 1759. I wanted to take it in. I wanted to wander. Truly Being-in-a-place means attending to the interconnected Being-ness and Being-with-ness of all of the things that make up that place (Heidegger; Haraway). Conversely, to travel to or through a place entails a type of focused directionality toward a place that you are not currently Being in. Wandering, however, demands eschewing both, neither driven by an incessant goal, nor stuck in place by introspective ruminations. Instead, wandering is perhaps best described as a sort of mobile openness. A wanderer is not quite Benjamin’s flâneur, characterised by an “idle yet assertive negotiation of the street” (Coates 28), but also, I would argue, not quite de Certeau’s “Wandersmünner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban ‘text’ they write without being able to read it” (de Certeau 93). Wandering requires a concerted effort at non-intentionality. That description may seem to fold in on itself, to be sure, but as the spaces around us are increasingly “canalized” (Rabinow and Foucault) and designed with specific trajectories and narratives in mind, inaction leads to the unconscious enacting of an externally derived intention; whereas any attempt to subvert that design is itself a wholly intentional act. This is why wandering is so difficult. It requires shedding layers. It takes practice, like meditation.In what follows, I will explore the possibility of revelatory moments enabled by the shedding of these layers of intention through my own experience in digital space (maybe the most designed and canalized spaces we inhabit). I come to recognise, as I disavow the designed narrative of game space, that it takes on other meanings, becomes another space. I find myself Being-there in a way that transcends the digital as we understand it, experiencing space that reaches into the past and future, into memory and fiction. Indeed, wandering is liminal, betwixt fixed points, spaces, and times, and the text you are reading will wander in this fashion—between the digital and the physical, between memory and experience, and among multiple pasts and the present—to arrive at a multilayered subjective sense of space, a palimpsest of placemaking.Before charging fully into digital time travel, however, we must attend to the business of context. In this case, this means addressing why I am talking about videogame space in Certaudian terms. Beginning as early as 1995, videogame theorists have employed de Certeau’s notion of “spatial stories” in their assertions that games allow players to construct the game’s narrative by travelling through and “colonizing” the space (Fuller and Jenkins). Most of the scholarship involving de Certeau and videogames, however, has been relegated to the concepts of “map/tour” in looking at digital embodiment within game space as experiential representatives of the place/space binary. Maps verbalise spatial experience in place terms, such as “it’s at the corner of this and that street”, whereas tours express the same in terms of movement through space, as in “turn right at the red house”. Videogames complicate this because “mapping is combined with touring when moving through the game-space” (Lammes).In Games as Inhabited Spaces, Bernadette Flynn moves beyond the map/tour dichotomy to argue that spatial theories can approach videogaming in a way no other viewpoint can, because neither narrative nor mechanics of play can speak to the “space” of a game. Thus, Flynn’s work is “focused on completely reconceiving gameplay as fundamentally configured with spatial practice” (59) through de Certeau’s concepts of “strategic” and “tactical” spatial use. Flynn explains:The ability to forge personal directions from a closed simulation links to de Certeau’s notion of tactics, where users can create their own trajectories from the formal organizations of space. For de Certeau, tactics are related to how people individualise trajectories of movement to create meaning and transformations of space. Strategies on the other hand, are more akin to the game designer’s particular matrix of formal structures, arrangements of time and space which operate to control and constrain gameplay. (59)Flynn takes much of her reading of de Certeau from Lev Manovich, who argues that a game designer “uses strategies to impose a particular matrix of space, time, experience, and meaning on his viewers; they, in turn, use ‘tactics’ to create their own trajectories […] within this matrix” (267). Manovich believes de Certeau’s theories offer a salient model for thinking about “the ways in which computer users navigate through computer spaces they did not design” (267). In Flynn’s and Manovich’s estimation, simply moving through digital space is a tactic, a subversion of its strategic and linear design.The views of game space as tactical have historically (and paradoxically) treated the subject of videogames from a strategic perspective, as a configurable space to be “navigated through”, as a way of attaining a certain goal. Dan Golding takes up this problem, distancing our engagement from the design and calling for a de Certeaudian treatment of videogame space “from below”, where “the spatial diegesis of the videogame is affordance based and constituted by the skills of the player”, including those accrued outside the game space (Golding 118). Similarly, Darshana Jayemanne adds a temporal element with the idea that these spatial constructions are happening alongside a “complexity” and “proliferation of temporal schemes” (Jayemanne 1, 4; see also Nikolchina). Building from Golding and Jayemanne, I illustrate here a space wherein the player, not the game, is at the fulcrum of both spatial and temporal complexity, by adding the notion that—along with skill and experience—players bring space and time with them into the game.Viewed with the above understanding of strategies, tactics, skill, and temporality, the act of wandering in a videogame seems inherently subversive: on one hand, by undergoing a destination-less exploration of game space, I am rejecting the game’s spatial narrative trajectory; on the other, I am eschewing both skill accrual and temporal insistence to attempt a sense of pure Being-in-the-game. Such rebellious freedom, however, is part of the design of this particular game space. AC:R is a “sand box” game, which means it involves a large environment that can be traversed in a non-linear fashion, allowing, supposedly, for more freedom and exploration. Indeed, much of the gameplay involves slowly making more space available for investigation in an outward—rather than unidirectional—course. A player opens up these new spaces by “synchronising a viewpoint”, which can only be done by climbing to the top of specific landmarks. One of the fundamental elements of the AC franchise is an acrobatic, free-running, parkour style of engagement with a player’s surroundings, “where practitioners weave through urban environments, hopping over barricades, debris, and other obstacles” (Laviolette 242), climbing walls and traversing rooftops in a way unthinkable (and probably illegal) in our everyday lives. People scaling buildings in major metropolitan areas outside of videogame space tend to get arrested, if they survive the climb. Possibly, these renegade climbers are seeking what de Certeau describes as the “voluptuous pleasure […] of ‘seeing the whole,’ of looking down on, totalizing the most immoderate of human texts” (92)—what he experienced, looking down from the top of the World Trade Center in the late 1970s.***On digital ground level, back in 1759, I look up to the top of St. Paul’s bell tower and crave that pleasure, so I climb. As I make my way up, Non-Player Characters (NPCs)—the townspeople and trader avatars who make up the interactive human scenery of the game—shout things such as “You’ll hurt yourself” and “I say! What on earth is he doing?” This is the game’s way of convincing me that I am enacting agency and writing my own spatial story. I seem to be deploying “tricky and stubborn procedures that elude discipline without being outside the field in which it is exercised” (de Certeau 96), when I am actually following the program the way I am supposed to. If I were not meant to climb the tower, I simply would not be able to. The fact that game developers go to the extent of recording dialogue to shout at me when I do this proves that they expect my transgression. This is part of the game’s “semi-social system”: a collection of in-game social norms that—to an extent—reflect the cultural understandings of outside non-digital society (Atkinson and Willis). These norms are enforced through social pressures and expectations in the game such that “these relative imperatives and influences, appearing to present players with ‘unlimited’ choices, [frame] them within the parameters of synthetic worlds whose social structure and assumptions are distinctly skewed in particular ways” (408). By using these semi-social systems, games communicate to players that performing a particular act is seen as wrong or scandalous by the in-game society (and therefore subversive), even when the action is necessary for the continuation of the spatial story.When I reach the top of the bell tower, I am able to “synchronise the viewpoint”—that is, unlock the map of this area of the city. Previously, I did not have access to an overhead view of the area, but now that I have indulged in de Certeau’s pleasure of “seeing the whole”, I can see not only the tactical view from the street, but also the strategic bird’s-eye view from above. From the top, looking out over the city—now The City, a conceivable whole rather than a collection of streets—it is difficult to picture the neighbourhood engulfed in flames. The stair-step Dutch-inspired rooflines still recall the very recent change from New Amsterdam to New York, but in thirty years’ time, they will all be torched and rebuilt, replaced with colonial Tudor boxes. I imagine myself as an eighteenth-century de Certeau, surveying pre-ruination New York City. I wonder how his thoughts would have changed if his viewpoint were coloured with knowledge of the future. Standing atop the very symbol of global power and wealth—a duo-lith that would exist for less than three decades—would his pleasure have been less “voluptuous”? While de Certeau considers the viewer from above like Icarus, whose “elevation transfigures him into a voyeur” (92), I identify more with Daedalus, preoccupied with impending disaster. I swan-dive from the tower into a hay cart, returning to the bustle of the street below.As I wander amongst the people of digital 1759 New York, the game continuously makes phatic advances at me. I bump into others on the street and they drop boxes they are carrying, or stumble to the side. Partial overheard conversations going on between townspeople—“… what with all these new taxes …”, “… but we’ve got a fine regiment here …”—both underscore the historical context of the game and imply that this is a world that exists even when I am not there. These characters and their conversations are as much a part of the strategic makeup of the city as the buildings are. They are the text, not the writers nor the readers. I am the only writer of this text, but I am merely transcribing a pre-programmed narrative. So, I am not an author, but rather a stenographer. For this short moment, though, I am allowed by the game to believe that I am making the choice not to transcribe; there are missions to complete, and I am ignoring them. I am taking in the city, forgetting—just as the design intends—that I am the only one here, the only person in the entire world, indeed, the person for whom this world exists.While wandering, I also experience conflicts and mergers between what Maurice Halbwachs has called historical, autobiographical, and collective memory types: respectively, these are memories created according to historical record, through one’s own life experience, and by the way a society tends to culturally frame and recall “important” events. De Certeau describes a memorable place as a “palimpsest, [where] subjectivity is already linked to the absence that structures it as existence” (109). Wandering through AC:R’s virtual representation of 1759 downtown New York, I am experiencing this palimpsest in multiple layers, activating my Halbwachsian memories and influencing one another in the creation of my subjectivity. This is the “absence” de Certeau speaks of. My visions of Revolutionary New York ablaze tug at me from beneath a veneer of peaceful Dutch architecture: two warring historical memory constructs. Simultaneously, this old world is painted on top of my autobiographical memories as a New Yorker for thirteen years, loudly ordering corned beef with Russian dressing at the deli that will be on this corner. Somewhere sandwiched between these layers hides a portrait of September 11th, 2001, painted either by collective memory or autobiographical memory, or, more likely, a collage of both. A plane entering a building. Fire. Seen by my eyes, and then re-seen countless times through the same televised imagery that the rest of the world outside our small downtown village saw it. Which images are from media, and which from memory?Above, as if presiding over the scene, Michel de Certeau hangs in the air at the collision site, suspended a 1000 feet above the North Pool of the 9/11 Memorial, rapt in “voluptuous pleasure”. And below, amid the colonists in their tricorns and waistcoats, people in grey ash-covered suits—ambulatory statues; golems—slowly and silently march ever uptown-wards. Dutch and Tudor town homes stretch skyward and transform into art-deco and glass monoliths. These multiform strata, like so many superimposed transparent maps, ground me in the idea of New York, creating the “fragmentary and inward-turning histories” (de Certeau 108) that give place to my subjectivity, allowing me to Be-there—even though, technically, I am not.My conscious decision to ignore the game’s narrative and wander has made this moment possible. While I understand that this is entirely part of the intended gameplay, I also know that the design cannot possibly account for the particular way in which I experience the space. And this is the fundamental point I am asserting here: that—along with the strategies and temporal complexities of the design and the tactics and skills of those on the ground—we bring into digital space our own temporal and experiential constructions that allow us to Be-in-the-game in ways not anticipated by its strategic design. Non-digital virtuality—in the tangled forms of autobiographical, historic, and collective memory—reaches into digital space, transforming the experience. Further, this changed game-experience becomes a part of my autobiographical “prosthetic memory” that I carry with me (Landsberg). When I visit New York in the future, and I inevitably find myself abruptly met with the façade of St Paul’s Chapel as I round the corner of Church Street and Vesey, I will be brought back to this moment. Will I continue to wander, or will I—if just for a second—entertain the urge to climb?***After the recent near destruction by fire of Notre-Dame, a different game in the AC franchise was offered as a free download, because it is set in revolutionary Paris and includes a very detailed and interactive version of the cathedral. Perhaps right now, on sundry couches in various geographical locations, people are wandering there: strolling along the Siene, re-experiencing time they once spent there; overhearing tense conversations about regime change along the Champs-Élysées that sound disturbingly familiar; or scaling the bell tower of the Notre-Dame Cathedral itself—site of revolution, desecration, destruction, and future rebuilding—to reach the pleasure of seeing the strategic whole at the top. And maybe, while they are up there, they will glance south-southwest to the 15th arrondissement, where de Certeau lies, enjoying some voluptuous Icarian viewpoint as-yet unimagined.ReferencesAtkinson, Rowland, and Paul Willis. “Transparent Cities: Re‐Shaping the Urban Experience through Interactive Video Game Simulation.” City 13.4 (2009): 403–417. DOI: 10.1080/13604810903298458.Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Ed. Rolf Tiedmann. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2002. Coates, Jamie. “Key Figure of Mobility: The Flâneur.” Social Anthropology 25.1 (2017): 28–41. DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12381.De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.Flynn, Bernadette. “Games as Inhabited Spaces.” Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture and Policy 110 (2004): 52–61. DOI: 10.1177/1329878X0411000108.Fuller, Mary, and Henry Jenkins. “‘Nintendo and New World Travel Writing: A Dialogue’ [in] CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community.” CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. Steve Jones. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994. 57–72. <https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=7dc700b8-cb87-e611-80c6-005056af4099>.Golding, Daniel. “Putting the Player Back in Their Place: Spatial Analysis from Below.” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 5.2 (2013): 117–30. DOI: 10.1386/jgvw.5.2.117_1.Halbwachs, Maurice. The Collective Memory. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2016.Heidegger, Martin. Existence and Being. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1949.Jayemanne, Darshana. “Chronotypology: A Comparative Method for Analyzing Game Time.” Games and Culture (2019): 1–16. DOI: 10.1177/1555412019845593.Lammes, Sybille. “Playing the World: Computer Games, Cartography and Spatial Stories.” Aether: The Journal of Media Geography 3 (2008): 84–96. DOI: 10.1080/10402659908426297.Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Laviolette, Patrick. “The Neo-Flâneur amongst Irresistible Decay.” Playgrounds and Battlefields: Critical Perspectives of Social Engagement. Eds. Martínez Jüristo and Klemen Slabina. Tallinn: Tallinn University Press, 2014. 243–71.Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002.Nikolchina, Miglena. “Time in Video Games: Repetitions of the New.” Differences 28.3 (2017): 19–43. DOI: 10.1215/10407391-4260519.Rabinow, Paul, and Michel Foucault. “Interview with Michel Foucault on Space, Knowledge and Power.” Skyline (March 1982): 17–20.

Introduction Films with deaf characters often do not focus on the condition of deafness at all. Rather, the characters seem to satisfy a role in the story that either furthers the plot or the audience’s understanding of other hearing characters. The deaf characters can be symbolic, for example as a metaphor for isolation representative of ‘those without a voice’ in a society. The deaf characters’ misunderstanding of auditory cues can lead to comic circumstances, and their knowledge can save them in the case of perilous ones. Sign language, because of its unique linguistic properties and its lack of comprehension by hearing people, can save the day in a story line. Deaf characters are shown in different eras and in different countries, providing a fictional window into their possible experiences. Films shape and reflect cultural attitudes and can serve as a potent force in influencing the attitudes and assumptions of those members of the hearing world who have had few, if any, encounters with deaf people. This article explores categories of literary function as identified by the author, providing examples and suggestions of other films for readers to explore. Searching for Deaf Characters in Film I am a sign language interpreter. Several years ago, I started noticing how deaf characters are used in films. I made a concerted effort to find as many as I could. I referred to John Shuchman’s exhaustive book about deaf actors and subject matter, Hollywood Speaks; I scouted video rental guides (key words were ‘deaf’ or ‘disabled’); and I also plugged in the key words ‘deaf in film’ on Google’s search engine. I decided to ignore the issue of whether or not the actors were actually deaf—a political hot potato in the Deaf community which has been discussed extensively. Similarly, the linguistic or cultural accuracy of the type of sign language used or super-human lip-reading talent did not concern me. What was I looking for? I noticed that few story lines involving deaf characters provide any discussion or plot information related to that character’s deafness. I was puzzled. Why is there signing in the elevator in Jerry Maguire? Why does the guy in Grand Canyon have a deaf daughter? Why would the psychosomatic response to a trauma—as in Psych Out—be deafness rather than blindness? I concluded that not being able to hear carried some special meaning or fulfilled a particular need intrinsic to the plot of the story. I also observed that the functions of deaf characters seem to fall into several categories. Some deaf characters fit into more than one category, serving two or more symbolic purposes at the same time. By viewing and analysing the representations of deafness and deaf characters in forty-six films, I have come up with the following classifications: Deafness as a plot device Deaf characters as protagonist informants Deaf characters as a parallel to the protagonist Sign language as ‘hero’ Stories about deaf/hearing relationships A-normal-guy-or-gal-who-just-happens-to-be-deaf Deafness as a psychosomatic response to trauma Deafness as metaphor Deafness as a symbolic commentary on society Let your fingers do the ‘talking’ Deafness as Plot Device Every element of a film is a device, but when the plot hinges on one character being deaf, the story succeeds because of that particular character having that particular condition. The limitations or advantages of a deaf person functioning within the hearing world establish the tension, the comedy, or the events which create the story. In Hear No Evil (1993), Jillian learns from her hearing boyfriend which mechanical devices cause ear-splitting noises (he has insomnia and every morning she accidentally wakes him in very loud ways, eg., she burns the toast, thus setting off the smoke detector; she drops a metal spoon down the garbage disposal unit). When she is pursued by a murderer she uses a fire alarm, an alarm/sprinkler system, and a stereo turned on full blast to mask the sounds of her movements as she attempts to hide. Jillian and her boyfriend survive, she learns about sound, her boyfriend learns about deafness, and she teaches him the sign for orgasm. Life is good! The potential comic aspects of deafness may seem in this day and age to be shockingly politically incorrect. While the slapstick aspect is often innocent and means no overt harm or insult to the Deaf as a population, deafness functions as the visual banana peel over which the characters figuratively stumble in the plot. The film, See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989), pairing Gene Wilder with Richard Pryor as deaf and blind respectively, is a constant sight gag of lip-reading miscues and lack-of-sight gags. Wilder can speak, and is able to speech read almost perfectly, almost all of the time (a stereotype often perpetuated in films). It is mind-boggling to imagine the detail of the choreography required for the two actors to convince the audience of their authenticity. Other films in this category include: Suspect It’s a Wonderful Life Murder by Death Huck Finn One Flew over the Cuckoo’s NestThe Shop on Main StreetRead My Lips The Quiet Deaf Characters as Protagonist Informants Often a deaf character’s primary function to the story is to give the audience more information about, or form more of an affinity with, the hearing protagonist. The deaf character may be fascinating in his or her own right, but generally the deafness is a marginal point of interest. Audience attitudes about the hearing characters are affected because of their previous or present involvement with deaf individuals. This representation of deafness seems to provide a window into audience understanding and appreciation of the protagonist. More inferences can be made about the hearing person and provides one possible explanation for what ensues. It is a subtle, almost subliminal trick. There are several effective examples of this approach. In Gas, Food, Lodging (1992), Shade discovers that tough-guy Javier’s mother is deaf. He introduces Shade to his mother by simple signs and finger-spelling. They all proceed to visit and dance together (mom feels the vibrations on the floor). The audience is drawn to feel ‘Wow! Javier is a sensitive kid who has grown up with a beautiful, exotic, deaf mother!’ The 1977 film, Looking for Mr. Goodbar presents film-goers with Theresa, a confused young woman living a double life. By day, she is a teacher of deaf children. Her professor in the Teacher of the Deaf program even likens their vocation to ‘touching God’. But by night she cruises bars and engages in promiscuous sexual activity. The film shows how her fledgling use of signs begins to express her innermost desires, as well as her ability to communicate and reach out to her students. Other films in this category include: Miracle on 34th Street (1994 version)Nashville (1975, dir. Robert Altman)The Family StoneGrand CanyonThere Will Be Blood Deaf Characters as a Parallel to the Protagonist I Don’t Want to Talk about It (1993) from Argentina, uses a deaf character to establish an implied parallel story line to the main hearing character. Charlotte, a dwarf, is friends with Reanalde, who is deaf. The audience sees them in the first moments of the film when they are little girls together. Reanalde’s mother attempts to commiserate with Charlotte’s mother, establishing a simultaneous but unseen story line somewhere else in town over the course of the story. The setting is Argentina during the 1930s, and the viewer can assume that disability awareness is fairly minimal at the time. Without having seen Charlotte’s deaf counterpart, the audience still knows that her story has contained similar struggles for ‘normalcy’ and acceptance. Near the conclusion of the film, there is one more glimpse of Reanalde, when she catches the bridal bouquet at Charlotte’s wedding. While having been privy to Charlotte’s experiences all along, we can only conjecture as to what Reanalde’s life has been. Sign Language as ‘Hero’ The power of language, and one’s calculated use of language as a means of escape from a potentially deadly situation, is shown in The River Wild (1996). The reason that any of the hearing characters knows sign language is that Gail, the protagonist, has a deaf father. Victor appears primarily to allow the audience to see his daughter and grandson sign with him. The mother, father, and son are able to communicate surreptitiously and get themselves out of a dangerous predicament. Signing takes an iconic form when the signs BOAT, LEFT, I-LOVE-YOU are drawn on a log suspended over the river as a message to Gail so that she knows where to steer the boat, and that her husband is still alive. The unique nature of sign language saves the day– silently and subtly produced, right under the bad guys’ noses! Stories about Deaf/Hearing Relationships Because of increased awareness and acceptance of deafness, it may be tempting to assume that growing up deaf or having any kind of relationship with a deaf individual may not pose too much of a challenge. Captioning and subtitling are ubiquitous in the USA now, as is the inclusion of interpreters on stages at public events. Since the inception of USA Public Law 94-142 and section 504 in 1974, more deaf children are ‘mainstreamed’ into public schools than ever before. The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1993, opening the doors in the US for more access, more job opportunities, more inclusion. These are the external manifestations of acceptance that most viewers with no personal exposure to deafness may see in the public domain. The nuts and bolts of growing up deaf, navigating through opposing philosophical theories regarding deaf education, and dealing with parents, siblings, and peers who can’t communicate, all serve to form foundational experiences which an audience rarely witnesses. Children of a Lesser God (1986), uses the character of James Leeds to provide simultaneous voiced translations of the deaf student Sarah’s comments. The audience is ushered into the world of disparate philosophies of deaf education, a controversy of which general audiences may not have been previously unaware. At the core of James and Sarah’s struggle is his inability to accept that she is complete as she is, as a signing not speaking deaf person. Whether a full reconciliation is possible remains to be seen. The esteemed teacher of the deaf must allow himself to be taught by the deaf. Other films in this category include: Johnny Belinda (1949, 1982)Mr. Holland’s OpusBeyond SilenceThe Good ShepherdCompensation A Normal Guy-or-Gal-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Deaf The greatest measure of equality is to be accepted on one's own merits, with no special attention to differences or deviations from whatever is deemed ‘the norm.’ In this category, the audience sees the seemingly incidental inclusion of a deaf or hearing-impaired person in the casting. A sleeper movie titled Crazy Moon (1986) is an effective example. Brooks is a shy, eccentric young hearing man who needs who needs to change his life. Vanessa is deaf and works as a clerk in a shop while takes speech lessons. She possesses a joie de vivre that Brooks admires and wishes to emulate. When comparing the way they interact with the world, it is apparent that Brooks is the one who is handicapped. Other films in this category include: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (South Korea, 1992)Liar, LiarRequiem for a DreamKung Fu HustleBangkok DangerousThe Family StoneDeafness as a Psychosomatic Response to Trauma Literature about psychosomatic illnesses enumerates many disconcerting and disruptive physiological responses. However, rarely is there a PTSD response as profound as complete blockage of one of the five senses, ie; becoming deaf as a result of a traumatic incident. But it makes great copy, and provides a convenient explanation as to why an actor needn't learn sign language! The rock group The Who recorded Tommy in 1968, inaugurating an exciting and groundbreaking new musical genre – the rock opera. The film adaptation, directed by Ken Russell, was released in 1975. In an ironic twist for a rock extravaganza, the hero of the story is a ‘deaf, dumb, and blind kid.’ Tommy Johnson becomes deaf when he witnesses the murder of his father at the hands of his step-father and complicit mother. From that moment on, he is deaf and blind. When he grows up, he establishes a cult religion of inner vision and self-discovery. Another film in this category is Psych Out. Deafness as a Metaphor Hearing loss does not necessarily mean complete deafness and/or lack of vocalization. Yet, the general public tends to assume that there is utter silence, complete muteness, and the inability to verbalize anything at all. These assumptions provide a rich breeding ground for a deaf character to personify isolation, disenfranchisement, and/or avoidance of the harsher side of life. The deafness of a character can also serve as a hearing character’s nemesis. Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) chronicles much of the adult life of a beleaguered man named Glenn Holland whose fondest dream is to compose a grand piece of orchestral music. To make ends meet he must teach band and orchestra to apparently disinterested and often untalented students in a public school. His golden son (named Cole, in honor of the jazz great John Coltrane) is discovered to be deaf. Glenn’s music can’t be born, and now his son is born without music. He will never be able to share his passion with his child. He learns just a little bit of sign, is dismissive of the boy’s dreams, and drifts further away from his family to settle into a puddle of bitterness, regrets, and unfulfilled desires. John Lennon’s death provides the catalyst for Cole’s confrontation with Glenn, forcing the father to understand that the gulf between them is an artificial one, perpetuated by the unwillingness to try. Any other disability could not have had the same effect in this story. Other films in this category include: Ramblin’ RoseBabelThe Heart Is a Lonely HunterA Code Unkown Deafness as a Symbolic Commentary on Society Sometimes films show deafness in a different country, during another era, and audiences receive a fictionalized representation of what life might have been like before these more enlightened times. The inability to hear and/or speak can also represent the more generalized powerlessness that a culture or a society’s disenfranchised experience. The Chinese masterpiece To Live (1994) provides historical and political reasons for Fenxi’s deafness—her father was a political prisoner whose prolonged absence brought hardship and untended illness. Later, the chaotic political situation which resulted in a lack of qualified doctors led to her death. In between these scenes the audience sees how her parents arrange a marriage with another ‘handicapped’ comrade of the town. Those citizens deemed to be crippled or outcast have different overt rights and treatment. The 1996 film Illtown presents the character of a very young teenage boy to represent the powerlessness of youth in America. David has absolutely no say in where he can live, with whom he can live, and the decisions made all around him. When he is apprehended after a stolen car chase, his frustration at his and all of his generation’s predicament in the face of a crumbling world is pounded out on the steering wheel as the police cars circle him. He is caged, and without the ability to communicate. Were he to have a voice, the overall sense of the film and his situation is that he would be misunderstood anyway. Other films in this category include: Stille Liebe (Germany)RidiculeIn the Company of Men Let Your Fingers Do the ‘Talking’ I use this heading to describe films where sign language is used by a deaf character to express something that a main hearing character can’t (or won’t) self-generate. It is a clever device which employs a silent language to create a communication symbiosis: Someone asks a hearing person who knows sign what that deaf person just said, and the hearing person must voice what he or she truly feels, and yet is unable to express voluntarily. The deaf person is capable of expressing the feeling, but must rely upon the hearing person to disseminate the message. And so, the words do emanate from the mouth of the person who means them, albeit self-consciously, unwillingly. Jerry Maguire (1996) provides a signed foreshadowing of character metamorphosis and development, which is then voiced for the hearing audience. Jerry and Dorothy have just met, resigned from their jobs in solidarity and rebellion, and then step into an elevator to begin a new phase of their lives. Their body language identifies them as separate, disconnected, and heavily emotionally fortified. An amorous deaf couple enters the elevator and Dorothy translates the deaf man’s signs as, ‘You complete me.’ The sentiment is strong and a glaring contrast to Jerry and Dorothy’s present dynamic. In the end, Jerry repeats this exact phrase to her, and means it with all his heart. We are all made aware of just how far they have traveled emotionally. They have become the couple in the elevator. Other films in this category include: Four Weddings and a FuneralKnowing Conclusion This has been a cursory glance at examining the narrative raison d’etre for the presence of a deaf character in story lines where no discussion of deafness is articulated. A film’s plot may necessitate hearing-impairment or deafness to successfully execute certain gimmickry, provide a sense of danger, or relational tension. The underlying themes and motifs may revolve around loneliness, alienation, or outwardly imposed solitude. The character may have a subconscious desire to literally shut out the world of sound. The properties of sign language itself can be exploited for subtle, undetectable conversations to assure the safety of hearing characters. Deaf people have lived during all times, in all places, and historical films can portray a slice of what their lives may have been like. I hope readers will become more aware of deaf characters on the screen, and formulate more theories as to where they fit in the literary/narrative schema. ReferencesMaltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin’s 2009 Movie Guide. Penguin Group, 2008.Shuchman, John S. Hollywood Speaks. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. Filmography Babel. Dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. Central Films, 2006. DVD. Bangkok Dangerous. Dir. Pang Brothers. Film Bangkok, 1999. VHS. Beyond Silence. Dir. Caroline Link. Miramax Films, 1998. DVD. Children of a Lesser God. Dir. Randa Haines. Paramount Pictures, 1985. DVD. A Code Unknown. Dir. Michael Heneke. MK2 Editions, 2000. DVD. Compensation. Dir. Zeinabu Irene Davis. Wimmin with a Mission Productions, 1999. VHS. Crazy Moon. Dir. Allan Eastman. Allegro Films, 1987. VHS. The Family Stone. Dir. Mike Bezucha. 20th Century Fox, 2005. DVD. Four Weddings and a Funeral. Dir. Mike Newell. Polygram Film Entertainment, 1994. DVD. Gas, Food, Lodging. Dir. Allison Anders. IRS Media, 1992. DVD. The Good Shepherd. Dir. Robert De Niro. Morgan Creek, TriBeCa Productions, American Zoetrope, 2006. DVD. Grand Canyon. Dir. Lawrence Kasdan, Meg Kasdan. 20th Century Fox, 1991. DVD. Hear No Evil. Dir. Robert Greenwald. 20th Century Fox, 1993. DVD. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Dir. Robert Ellis Miller. Warner Brothers, 1968. DVD. Huck Finn. Stephen Sommers. Walt Disney Pictures, 1993. VHS. I Don’t Want to Talk about It. Dir. Maria Luisa Bemberg. Mojame Productions, 1994. DVD. Knowing. Dir. Alex Proyas. Escape Artists, 2009. DVD. Illtown. Dir. Nick Gomez. 1998. VHS. In the Company of Men. Dir. Neil LaBute. Alliance Atlantis Communications,1997. DVD. It’s a Wonderful Life. Dir. Frank Capra. RKO Pictures, 1947. DVD. Jerry Maguire. Dir. Cameron Crowe. TriSTar Pictures, 1996. DVD. Johnny Belinda. Dir. Jean Nagalesco. Warner Brothers Pictures, 1948. DVD. Kung Fu Hustle. Dir. Stephen Chow. Film Production Asia, 2004. DVD. Liar, Liar. Dir. Tom Shadyac. Universal Pictures, 1997. DVD. Looking for Mr. Goodbar. Dir. Richard Brooks. Paramount Miracle on 34th Street. Dir. Les Mayfield. 20th Century Fox, 1994. DVD. Mr. Holland’s Opus. Dir. Stephen Hereck. Hollywood Pictures, 1996. DVD Murder by Death. Dir. Robert Moore. Columbia Pictures, 1976. VHS. Nashville. Dir. Robert Altman. Paramount Pictures, 1975. DVD. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Dir. Milos Forman. United Artists, 1975. DVD. The Perfect Circle. Dir. Ademir Kenovic. 1997. DVD. Psych Out. Dir. Richard Rush. American International Pictures, 1968. DVD. The Quiet. Dir. Jamie Babbit. Sony Pictures Classics, 2005. DVD. Ramblin’ Rose. Dir. Martha Coolidge. Carolco Pictures, 1991. DVD. Read My Lips. Dir. Jacques Audiard. Panthe Films, 2001. DVD. Requiem for a Dream. Dir. Darren Aronofsky. Artisan Entertainment, 2000. DVD. Ridicule. Dir. Patrice Laconte. Miramax Films, 1996. DVD. The River Wild. Dir. Curtis Hanson. Universal Pictures, 1995. DVD. See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Dir. Arthur Hiller. TriSTar Pictures,1989. DVD. The Shop on Main Street. Dir. Jan Kadar, Elmar Klos. Barrandov Film Studio, 1965. VHS. Stille Liebe. Dir. Christoph Schaub. T and C Film AG, 2001. DVD. Suspect. Dir. Peter Yates. Tri-Star Pictures, 1987. DVD. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Dir. Park Chan-wook. CJ Entertainments, Tartan Films, 2002. DVD. There Will Be Blood. Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Paramount Vantage, Miramax Films, 2007. DVD. To Live. Dir. Zhang Yimou. Shanghai Film Studio and ERA International, 1994. DVD. What the Bleep Do We Know?. Dir. Willam Arntz, Betsy Chasse, Mark Vicente. Roadside Attractions, 2004. DVD.

Since the late 1990s, W. G. Sebald’s innovative contribution to the genre of prose fiction has been the source of much academic scrutiny. His books Vertigo, The Rings of Saturn, The Emigrants and Austerlitz have provoked interest from diverse fields of inquiry: visual communication (Kilbourn; Patt; Zadokerski), trauma studies (Denham and McCulloh; Schmitz), and travel writing (Blackler; Zisselsberger). His work is also claimed to be a bastion for both modernist and postmodernist approaches to literature and history writing (Bere; Fuchs and Long; Long). This is in addition to numerous “guide to” type books, such as Mark McCulloh’s Understanding Sebald, Long and Whitehead’s W. G. Sebald—A Critical Companion, and the comprehensive Saturn’s Moons: A W. G. Sebald Handbook. Here I have only mentioned works available in English. I should point out that Sebald wrote in German, the country of his birth, and as one would expect much scholarship dealing with his work is confined to this language. In this article I focus on what is perhaps Sebald’s prototypical work, The Rings of Saturn. Of all Sebald’s prose fictional works The Rings of Saturn seems the example that best exhibits his innovative literary forms, including the use of lists. This book is the work of an author who is purposefully and imaginatively concerned with the nature of his vocation: what is it to be a writer? Crucially, he addresses this question not only from the perspective of a subject facing an existential crisis, but from the perspective of the documents created by writers. His works demonstrate a concern with the enabling role documents play in the thinking and writing process; how, for example, pen and paper are looped in with our capacity to reason in certain ways. Despite taking the form of fictional narratives, his books are as much motivated by a historical interest in how ideas and forms of organisation are transmitted, and how they evolve as part of an ecology; how humans become articulate within their surrounds, according to the contingencies of specific epochs and places. The Sebald critic J. J. Long accounts for this in some part in his description “archival consciousness,” which recommends that conscious experience is not simply located in the mind of a knowing, human subject, but is rather distributed between the subject and different technologies (among which writing and archives are exemplary).The most notable peculiarity of Sebald’s books lies in their abundant use of “non-syntactical” kinds of writing or inscription. My use of the term “non-syntactical” has its origins in the anthropological work of Jack Goody, who emphasises the importance of list making and tabulation in pre-literate or barely literate cultures. In Sebald’s texts, kinds of non-syntactical writing include lists, photographic images, tables, signatures, diagrams, maps, stamps, dockets and sketches. As I stress throughout this article, Sebald’s shifts between syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing allows him to build up highly complex schemes of internal reference. Massimo Leone identifies something similar, when he notes that Sebald “orchestrates a multiplicity of voices and text-types in order to produce his own coherent discourse” (91). The play between multiplicity and coherence is at once a thematic and poetic concern for Sebald. This is to say, his texts are formal experiments with these contrasting tendencies, in addition to discussing specific historical situations in which they feature. The list is perhaps Sebald’s most widely used and variable form of non-syntactical writing, a key part of his formal and stylistic peculiarity. His lengthy sentences frequently spill over into catalogues and inventories, and the entire structure of his narratives is list-like. Discrete episodes accumulate alongside each other, rather than following a narrative arc where episodes of suspenseful gravity overshadow the significance of minor events. The Rings of Saturn details the travels of Sebald’s trademark, nameless, first person narrator, who recounts his trek along the Suffolk coastline, from Lowestoft to Ditchingham, about two years after the event. From the beginning, the narrative is framed as an effort to organise a period of time that lacks a coherent and durable form, a period of time that is in pieces, fading from the narrator’s memory. However, the movement from the chaos of forgetting to the comparatively distinct and stable details of the remembered present does not follow a continuum. Rather, the past and present are both constituted by the force of memory, which is continually crystallising and dissolving. Each event operates according to its own specific arrangement of emphasis and forgetting. Our experience of memory in the present, or recollective memory, is only one kind of memory. Sebald is concerned with a more pervasive kind of remembering, which includes the vectorial existence of non-conscious, non-human perceptual events; memory as expressed by crystals, tree roots, glaciers, and the nested relationship of fuel, fire, smoke, and ash. The Rings of Saturn is composed of ten chapters, each of which is outlined in table form at the book’s beginning. The first chapter appears as: “In hospital—Obituary—Odyssey of Thomas Browne’s skull—Anatomy lecture—Levitation—Quincunx—Fabled creatures—Urn burial.” The Rings of Saturn is of course hardly exceptional in its use of this device. Rather, it is exemplary concerning the repeated emphasis on the tension between syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing, among which this chapter breakdown is included. Sebald continually uses the conventions of bookmaking in subtle though innovative ways. Each of these horizontally linked and divided indices might put the reader in mind of Thomas Browne’s urns, time capsules from the past, the unearthing of which is discussed in the book’s first chapter (25). The chapter outlines (and the urns) are containers that preserve a fragmentary and suggestive history. Each is a perspective on the narrator’s travels that abstracts, arranges, and uniquely refers to the narrative elaborations to come.As I have already stressed, Sebald is a writer concerned with forms of organisation. His works account for a diverse range of organisational forms, some of which instance an overt, chronological, geometric, or metrical manipulation of space and time, such as grids, star shapes, and Greenwich Mean Time. This contrasts with comparatively suggestive, insubstantial, mutable forms, including various meteorological phenomena such as cloudbanks and fog, dust and sand, and as exemplified in narrative form by the haphazard, distracted assemblage of events featured in dreams or dream logic. The relationship between these supposedly opposing tendencies is, however, more complex and paradoxical than might at first glance appear. As Sebald warily reminds us in his essay “A Little Excursion to Ajaccio,” despite our wishes to inhabit periods of complete freedom, where we follow our distractions to the fullest possible extent, we nonetheless “must all have some more or less significant design in view” (Sebald, Campo 4). It is not so much that we must choose, absolutely, between form and formlessness. Rather, the point is to understand that some seemingly inevitable forms are in fact subject to contingencies, which certain uses deliberately or ignorantly mask, and that simplicity and intricacy are often co-dependent. Richard T. Gray is a Sebald critic who has picked up on the element in Sebald’s work that suggests a tension between different forms of organisation. In his article “Writing at the Roche Limit,” Gray notes that Sebald’s tendency to emphasise the decadent aspects of human and natural history “is continually counterbalanced by an insistence on order and by often extremely subtle forms of organization” (40). Rather than advancing the thesis that Sebald is exclusively against the idea of systematisation or order, Gray argues that The Rings of Saturn models in its own textual make-up an alternative approach to the cognitive order(ing) of things, one that seeks to counter the natural tendency toward entropic decline and a fall into chaos by introducing constructive forces that inject a modicum of balance and equilibrium into the system as a whole. (Gray 41)Sebald’s concern with the contrasting energies exemplified by different forms extends to his play with syntactical and non-syntactical forms of writing. He uses lists to add contrast to his flowing, syntactically intricate sentences. The achievement of his work is not the exclusive privileging of either the list form or the well-composed sentence, but in providing contexts whereby the reader can appreciate subtle modulations between the two, thus experiencing a more dynamic and complex kind of narrative time. His works exhibit an astute awareness of the fact that different textual devices command different experiences of temporality, and our experience of temporality in good part determines our metaphysics. Here I consider two lists featured in The Rings of Saturn, one from the first chapter, and one from the last. Each shows contrasting tendencies concerning systems of organisation. Both are attributable to the work of Thomas Browne, “who practiced as a doctor in Norwich in the seventeenth century and had left a number of writings that defy all comparison” (Sebald, Rings 9). The Rings of Saturn is in part a dialogue across epochs with the sentiments expressed in Browne’s works, which, according to Bianca Theisen, preserve a kind of reasoning that is lost in “the rationalist and scientific embrace of a devalued world of facts” (Theisen 563).The first list names the varied “animate and inanimate matter” in which Browne identifies the quincuncial structure, a lattice like arrangement of five points and intersecting lines. The following phenomena are enumerated in the text:certain crystalline forms, in starfish and sea urchins, in the vertebrae of mammals and the backbones of birds and fish, in the skins of various species of snake, in the crosswise prints left by quadrupeds, in the physical shapes of caterpillars, butterflies, silkworms and moths, in the root of the water fern, in the seed husks of the sunflower and the Caledonian pine, within young oak shoots or the stem of the horse tail; and in the creations of mankind, in the pyramids of Egypt and the mausoleum of Augustus as in the garden of King Solomon, which was planted with mathematical precision with pomegranate trees and white lilies. (Sebald, Rings 20-21)Ostensibly quoting from Browne, Sebald begins the next sentence, “Examples might be multiplied without end” (21). The compulsion to list, or the compulsiveness expressed by listing, is expressed here in a relationship of dual utility with another, dominant or overt, kind of organisational form: the quincunx. It is not the utility or expressiveness of the list itself that is at issue—at least in the version of Browne’s work preserved here by Sebald. In W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity, Long notes the historical correspondences and divergences between Sebald and Michel Foucault (2007). Long interprets Browne’s quincunx as exemplifying a “hermeneutics of resemblance,” whereby similarities among diverse phenomena are seen as providing proof of “the universal oneness of all things” (33). This contrasts with the idea of a “pathological nature, autonomous from God,” which, according to Long, informs Sebald’s transformation of Browne into “an avatar of distinctly modern epistemology” (38). Long follows Foucault in noting the distinction between Renaissance and modern epistemology, a distinction in good part due to the experimental, inductive method, the availability of statistical data, and probabilistic reasoning championed in the latter epoch (Whitehead; Hacking). In the book’s final chapter, Sebald includes a list from Browne’s imaginary library, the “Musæum Clausium.” In contrast to the above list, here Sebald seems to deliberately problematise any efforts to suggest an abstract uniting principle. There is no evident reason for the togetherness of the discrete things, beyond the mere fact that they happen to be gathered, hypothetically, in the text (Sebald, Rings 271-273). Among the library’s supposed contents are:an account by the ancient traveller Pytheas of Marseilles, referred to in Strabo, according to which all the air beyond thule is thick, condensed and gellied, looking just like sea lungs […] a dream image showing a prairie or sea meadow at the bottom of the Mediterranean, off the coat of Provence […] and a glass of spirits made of æthereal salt, hermetically sealed up, of so volatile a nature that it will not endure by daylight, and therefore shown only in winter or by the light of a carbuncle or Bononian stone. (Sebald, Rings 272-73)Unlike the previous example attributed to Browne, here the list coheres according to the tensions of its own coincidences. Sebald uses the list to create spontaneous organisations in which history is exhibited as a complex mix of fact and fantasy. More important than the distinction between the imaginary and the real is the effort to account for the way things uniquely incorporate aspects of the world in order to be what they are. Human knowledge is a perspective that is implicated in, rather than excluded from, this process.Lists move us to puzzle over the criteria that their togetherness implies. They might be used inthe service of a specific paradigm, or they might suggest an imaginable but as yet unknown kind of systematisation; a specific kind of relationship, or simply the possibility of a relationship. Take, for example, the list-like accumulation of architectural details in the following description of the decadent Sommerleyton Hall, featured in chapter II: There were drawing rooms and winter gardens, spacious halls and verandas. A corridor might end in a ferny grotto where fountains ceaselessly plashed, and bowered passages criss-crossed beneath the dome of a fantastic mosque. Windows could be lowered to open the interior onto the outside, and inside the landscape was replicated on the mirror walls. Palm houses and orangeries, the lawn like green velvet, the baize on the billiard tables, the bouquets of flowers in the morning and retiring rooms and in the majolica vases on the terrace, the birds of paradise and the golden peasants on the silken tapestries, the goldfinches in the aviaries and the nightingales in the garden, the arabesques in the carpets and the box-edged flower beds—all of it interacted in such a way that one had the illusion of complete harmony between the natural and the manufactured. (Sebald, Rings 33-34)This list shifts emphasis away from preconceived distinctions between the natural and the manufactured through the creation of its own unlikely harmony. It tells us something important about the way perception and knowledge is ordered in Sebald’s prose. Each encounter, or historically specific situation, is considered as though it were its own microworld, its own discrete, synecdochic realisation of history. Rather than starting from the universal or the meta-level and scaling down to the local, Sebald arranges historically peculiar examples that suggest a variable, contrasting and dynamic metaphysics, a motley arrangement of ordering systems that each aspire to but do not command universal applicability. In a comparable sense, Browne’s sepulchral urns of his 1658 work Urn Burial, which feature in chapter I, are time capsules that seem to create their own internally specific kind of organisation:The cremated remains in the urns are examined closely: the ash, the loose teeth, some long roots of quitch, or dog’s grass wreathed about the bones, and the coin intended for the Elysian ferryman. Browne records other objects known to have been placed with the dead, whether as ornament or utensil. His catalogue includes a variety of curiosities: the circumcision knives of Joshua, the ring which belonged to the mistress of Propertius, an ape of agate, a grasshopper, three-hundred golden bees, a blue opal, silver belt buckles and clasps, combs, iron pins, brass plates and brazen nippers to pull away hair, and a brass Jews harp that last sounded on the crossing over black water. (Sebald, Rings 25-26)Regardless of our beliefs concerning the afterlife, these items, preserved across epochs, solicit a sense of wonder as we consider what we might choose for company on our “last journey” (25). In death, the human body is reduced to a condition of an object or thing, while the objects that accompany the corpse seem to acquire a degree of potency as remnants that transcend living time. Life is no longer the paradigm through which to understand purpose. In their very difference from living things these objects command our fascination. Eric Santner coins the term “undeadness” to name the significance of this non-living agency in Sebald’s prose (Santner xx). Santner’s study places Sebald in a linage of German-Jewish writers, including Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka, and Paul Celan, whose understanding of “the human” depends crucially on the concept of “the creature” or “creatureliness” (Santner 38-41). Like the list of items contained within Sommerleyton Hall, the above list accounts for a context in which ornament and utensil, nature and culture, are read according to their differentiated togetherness, rather than opposition. Death, it seems, is a universal leveller, or at least a different dimension in which symbol and function appear to coincide. Perhaps it is the unassuming and convenient nature of lists that make them enduring objects of historical interest. Lists are a form of writing to which we appeal for immediate mnemonic assistance. They lack the artifice of a sentence. While perhaps not as interesting in the present that is contemporary with their usefulness (a trip to the supermarket), with time lists acquire credibility due to the intimacy they share with mundane, diurnal concerns—due to the fact that they were, once upon a time, so useful. The significance of lists arrives anachronistically, when we look back and wonder what people were really up to, or what our own concerns were, relatively free from fanciful, stylistic adornment. Sebald’s democratic approach to different forms of writing means that lists sit alongside the esteemed poetic and literary efforts of Joseph Conrad, Algernon Swinburne, Edward Fitzgerald, and François René de Chateaubriand, all of whom feature in The Rings of Saturn. His books make the exclusive differences between literary and non-literary kinds of writing less important than the sense of dynamism that is elicited through a play of contrasting kinds of syntactical and non-syntactical writing. The book’s closing chapter includes a revealing example that expresses these sentiments. After tracing over a natural history of silk, with a particular focus on human greed and naivety, the narrative arrives at a “pattern book” that features strips of colourful silk kept in “the small museum of Strangers Hall” (Sebald, Rings 283). The narrator notes that the silks arranged in this book “were of a truly fabulous variety, and of an iridescent, quite indescribable beauty as if they had been produced by Nature itself, like the plumage of birds” (283). This effervescent declamation continues after a double page photograph of the pattern book, which is described as a “catalogue of samples” and “leaves from the only true book which none of our textual and pictorial works can even begin to rival” (286). Here we witness Sebald’s inclusive and variable understanding as to the kinds of thing a book, and writing, can be. The fraying strips of silk featured in the photograph are arranged one below the other, in the form of a list. They are surrounded by ornate handwriting that, like the strips of silk, seems to fray at the edges, suggesting the specific gestural event that occasioned the moment of their inscription—something which tends to be excluded in printed prose. Sebald’s remarks here are not without a characteristic irony (“the only true book”). However, in the greatercontext of the narrative, this comment suggests an important inclination. Namely, that there is much scope yet for innovative literary forms that capture the nuances and complexity of collective and individual histories. And that writing always includes, though to varying degrees obscures, contrasting tensions shared among syntactical and non-syntactical elements, including material and gestural contingencies. Sebald’s works remind us of what potentials might lay ahead for books if the question of what writing can be is asked continually as part of a writer’s enterprise.ReferencesBere, Carol. “The Book of Memory: W. G. Sebald’s The Emigrants and Austerlitz.” Literary Review, 46.1 (2002): 184-92.Blackler, Deane. Reading W. G. Sebald: Adventure and Disobedience. Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2007. Catling Jo, and Richard Hibbitt, eds. Saturn’s Moons: A W. G. Sebald Handbook. Oxford: Legenda, 2011.Denham, Scott and Mark McCulloh, eds. W. G. Sebald: History, Memory, Trauma. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Fuchs, Anne and J. J. Long, eds. W. G. Sebald and the Writing of History. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007. Goody, Jack. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986. Gray, Richard T. “Writing at the Roche Limit: Order and Entropy in W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn.” The German Quarterly 83.1 (2010): 38-57. Hacking, Ian. The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. London: Cambridge UP, 1977.Kilbourn, Russell J. A. “Architecture and Cinema: The Representation of Memory in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.” W. G. Sebald—A Critical Companion. Ed. J. J. Long and Anne Whitehead. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2004.Leone, Massimo. “Textual Wanderings: A Vertiginous Reading of W. G. Sebald.” W. G. Sebald—A Critical Companion. Ed. J. J. Long and A. Whitehead. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2004.Long, J. J. W. G. Sebald: Image, Archive, Modernity. New York: Columbia UP, 2007.Long, J. J., and Anne Whitehead, eds. W. G. Sebald—A Critical Companion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh U P, 2004. McCulloh, Mark. Understanding W. G. Sebald. Columbia, S. C.: U of South Carolina P, 2003.Patt, Lise, ed. Searching for Sebald: Photography After W. G. Sebald. Los Angeles: The Institute of Critical Inquiry and ICI Press, 2007. Sadokierski, Zoe. “Visual Writing: A Critique of Graphic Devices in Hybrid Novels from a Visual Communication Design Perspective.” Diss. University of Technology Sydney, 2010. Santner, Eric. On Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. Schmitz, Helmut. “Catastrophic History, Trauma and Mourning in W. G. Sebald and Jörg Friedrich.” The German Monitor 72 (2010): 27-50.Sebald, W. G. The Rings of Saturn. Trans. Michael Hulse. London: Harvill Press, 1998.---. Vertigo. Trans. Michael Hulse. London: Harvill Press, 1999.---. Campo Santo. Trans. Anthea Bell. London: Penguin Books, 2005. Print. Theisen, Bianca. “A Natural History of Destruction: W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn.” MLN, 121. The John Hopkins U P (2006): 563-81.Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and The Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1932.Zisselsberger, Markus. The Undiscover’d Country: W. G. Sebald and the Poetics of Travel. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010.

IllegitimacyBack in 1987, Gregory Bateson argued that:Kurt Vonnegut gives us wary advice – that we should be careful what we pretend because we become what we pretend. And something like that, some sort of self-fulfilment, occurs in all organisations and human cultures. What people presume to be ‘human’ is what they will build in as premises of their social arrangements, and what they build in is sure to be learned, is sure to become a part of the character of those who participate. (178)The human capacity to marginalise and discriminate against others on the basis of innate and constructed characteristics is evident from the long history of discrimination against people whose existence is ‘illegitimate’, defined as being outside the law. What is inside or outside the law depends upon the context under consideration. For example, in societies such as ancient Greece and the antebellum United States, where slavery was legal, people who were constructed as ‘slaves’ could legitimately be treated very differently from ‘citizens’: free people who benefit from a range of human rights (Northup). The discernment of what is legitimate from that which is illegitimate is thus implicated within the law but extends into the wider experience of community life and is evident within the civil structures through which society is organised and regulated.The division between the legitimate and illegitimate is an arbitrary one, susceptible to changing circumstances. Within recent memory a romantic/sexual relationship between two people of the same sex was constructed as illegitimate and actively persecuted. This was particularly the case for same-sex attracted men, since the societies regulating these relationships generally permitted women a wider repertoire of emotional response than men were allowed. Even when lesbian and gay relationships were legalised, they were constructed as less legitimate in the sense that they often had different rules around the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual couples. In Australia, the refusal to allow same sex couples to marry perpetuates ways in which these relationships are constructed as illegitimate – beyond the remit of the legislation concerning marriage.The archetypal incidence of illegitimacy has historically referred to people born out of wedlock. The circumstances of birth, for example whether a person was born as a result of a legally-sanctioned marital relationship or not, could have ramifications throughout an individual’s life. Stories abound (for example, Cookson) of the implications of being illegitimate. In some social stings, such as Catherine Cookson’s north-eastern England at the turn of the twentieth century, illegitimate children were often shunned. Parents frequently refused permission for their (legitimate) children to play with illegitimate classmates, as if these children born out of wedlock embodied a contaminating variety of evil. Illegitimate children were treated differently in the law in matters of inheritance, for example, and may still be. They frequently lived in fear of needing to show a birth certificate to gain a passport, for example, or to marry. Sometimes, it was at this point in adult life, that a person first discovered their illegitimacy, changing their entire understanding of their family and their place in the world. It might be possible to argue that the emphasis upon the legitimacy of a birth has lessened in proportion to an acceptance of genetic markers as an indicator of biological paternity, but that is not the endeavour here.Given the arbitrariness and mutability of the division between legitimacy and illegitimacy as a constructed boundary, it is policed by social and legal sanctions. Boundaries, such as the differentiation between the raw and the cooked (Lévi-Strauss), or S/Z (Barthes), or purity and danger (Douglas), serve important cultural functions and also convey critical information about the societies that enforce them. Categories of person, place or thing which are closest to boundaries between the legitimate and the illegitimate can prompt existential anxiety since the capacity to discern between these categories is most challenged at the margins. The legal shenanigans which can result speak volumes for which aspects of life have the potential to unsettle a culture. One example of this which is writ large in the recent history of Australia is our treatment of refugees and asylum seekers and the impact of this upon Australia’s multicultural project.Foreshadowing the sexual connotations of the illegitimate, one of us has written elsewhere (Green, ‘Bordering on the Inconceivable’) about the inconceivability of the Howard administration’s ‘Pacific solution’. This used legal devices to rewrite Australia’s borders to limit access to the rights accruing to refugees upon landing in a safe haven entitling them to seek asylum. Internationally condemned as an illegitimate construction of an artificial ‘migration zone’, this policy has been revisited and made more brutal under the Abbot regime with at least two people – Reza Barati and Hamid Khazaei – dying in the past year in what is supposed to be a place of safety provided by Australian authorities under their legal obligations to those fleeing from persecution. Crock points out, echoing the discourse of illegitimacy, that it is and always has been inappropriate to label “undocumented asylum seekers” as “‘illegal’” because: “until such people cross the border onto Australian territory, the language of illegality is nonsense. People who have no visas to enter Australia can hardly be ‘illegals’ until they enter Australia” (77). For Australians who identify in some ways – religion, culture, fellow feeling – with the detainees incarcerated on Nauru and Manus Island, it is hard to ignore the disparity between the government’s treatment of visa overstayers and “illegals” who arrive by boat (Wilson). It is a comparatively short step to construct this disparity as reflecting upon the legitimacy within Australia of communities who share salient characteristics with detained asylum seekers: “The overwhelmingly negative discourse which links asylum seekers, Islam and terrorism” (McKay, Thomas & Kneebone, 129). Some communities feel themselves constructed in the public and political spheres as less legitimately Australian than others. This is particularly true of communities where members can be identified via markers of visible difference, including indicators of ethnic, cultural and religious identities: “a group who [some 585 respondent Australians …] perceived would maintain their own languages, customs and traditions […] this cultural diversity posed an extreme threat to Australian national identity” (McKay, Thomas & Kneebone, 129). Where a community shares salient characteristics such as ethnicity or religion with many detained asylum seekers they can become fearful of the discourses around keeping borders strong and protecting Australia from illegitimate entrants. MethodologyThe qualitative fieldwork upon which this paper is based took place some 6-8 years ago (2006-2008), but the project remains one of the most recent and extensive studies of its kind. There are no grounds for believing that any of the findings are less valid than previously. On the contrary, if political actions are constructed as a proxy for mainstream public consent, opinions have become more polarised and have hardened. Ten focus groups were held involving 86 participants with a variety of backgrounds including differences in age, gender, religious observance, religious identification and ethnicity. Four focus groups involved solely Muslim participants; six drew from the wider Australian community. The aim was to examine the response of different communities to mainstream Australian media representations of Islam, Muslims, and terrorism. Research questions included: “Are there differences in the ways in which Australian Muslims respond to messages about ‘fear’ and ‘terror’ compared with broader community Australians’ responses to the same messages?” and “How do Australian Muslims construct the perceptions and attitudes of the broader Australian community based on the messages that circulate in the media?” Recent examples of kinds of messages investigated include media coverage of Islamic State’s (ISIS’s) activities (Karam & Salama), and the fear-provoking coverage around the possible recruitment of Australians to join the fighting in Syria and Iraq (Cox). The ten focus groups were augmented by 60 interviews, 30 with respondents who identified as Muslim (15 males, 15 female) and 30 respondents from the broader community (same gender divisions). Finally, a market research company was commissioned to conduct a ‘fear survey’, based on an established ‘fear of rape’ inventory (Aly and Balnaves), delivered by telephone to a random sample of 750 over-18 y.o. Australians in which Muslims formed a deliberative sub-group, to ensure they were over-sampled and constituted at least 150 respondents. The face-to-face surveys and focus groups were conducted by co-author, Dr Anne Aly. General FindingsMuslim respondents indicate a heightened intensity of reaction to media messages around fear and terror. In addition to a generalised fear of the potential impact of terrorism upon Australian society and culture, Muslim respondents experienced a specific fear that any terrorist-related media coverage might trigger hostility towards Muslim Australian communities and their own family members. According to the ‘fear survey’ scale, Muslim Australians at the time of the research experienced approximately twice the fear level of mainstream Australian respondents. Broader Australian community Australian Muslim communityFear of a terrorist attackFear of a terrorist attack combines with the fear of a community backlashSpecific victims: dead, injured, bereavedCommunity is full of general victims in addition to any specific victimsShort-term; intense impactsProtracted, diffuse impactsSociety-wide sympathy and support for specific victims and all those involved in dealing with the trauma and aftermathSociety-wide suspicion and a marginalisation of those affected by the backlashVictims of a terrorist attack are embraced by broader communityVictims of backlash experience hostility from the broader communityFour main fears were identified by Australian Muslims as a component of the fear of terrorism:Fear of physical harm. In addition to the fear of actual terrorist acts, Australian Muslims fear backlash reprisals such as those experienced after such events as 9/11, the Bali bombings, and attacks upon public transport passengers in Spain and the UK. These and similar events were constructed as precipitating increased aggression against identifiable Australian Muslims, along with shunning of Muslims and avoidance of their company.The construction of politically-motivated fear. Although fear is an understandable response to concerns around terrorism, many respondents perceived fears as being deliberately exacerbated for political motives. Such strategies as “Be alert, not alarmed” (Bassio), labelling asylum seekers as potential terrorists, and talk about home-grown terrorists, are among the kinds of fears which were identified as politically motivated. The political motivation behind such actions might include presenting a particular party as strong, resolute and effective. Some Muslim Australians construct such approaches as indicating that their government is more interested in political advantage than social harmony.Fear of losing civil liberties. As well as sharing the alarm of the broader Australian community at the dozens of legislative changes banning people, organisations and materials, and increasing surveillance and security checks, Muslim Australians fear for the human rights implications across their community, up to and including the lives of their young people. This fear is heightened when community members may look visibly different from the mainstream. Examples of the events fuelling such fears include the London police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian Catholic working as an electrician in the UK and shot in the month following the 7/7 attacks on the London Underground system (Pugliese). In Australia, the case of Mohamed Hannef indicated that innocent people could easily be unjustly accused and wrongly targeted, and even when this was evident the political agenda made it almost impossible for authorities to admit their error (Rix).Feeling insecure. Australian Muslims argue that personal insecurity has become “the new normal” (Massumi), disproportionately affecting Muslim communities in both physical and psychological ways. Physical insecurity is triggered by the routine avoidance, shunning and animosity experienced by many community members in public places. Psychological insecurity includes fear for the safety of younger members of the community compounded by concern that young people may become ‘radicalised’ as a result of the discrimination they experience. Australian Muslims fear the backlash following any possible terrorist attack on Australian soil and describe the possible impact as ‘unimaginable’ (Aly and Green, ‘Moderate Islam’).In addition to this range of fears expressed by Australian Muslims and constructed in response to wider societal reactions to increased concerns over radical Islam and the threat of terrorist activity, an analysis of respondents’ statements indicate that Muslim Australians construct the broader community as exhibiting:Fear of religious conviction (without recognising the role of their own secular/religious convictions underpinning this fear);Fear of extremism (expressed in various extreme ways);Fear of powerlessness (responded to by disempowering others); andFear of political action overseas having political effects at home (without acknowledging that it is the broader community’s response to such overseas events, such as 9/11 [Green ‘Did the world really change?’], which has also had impacts at home).These constructions, extrapolations and understandings by Australian Muslims of the fears of the broader community underpinning the responses to the threat of terror have been addressed elsewhere (Green and Aly). Legitimate Australian MuslimsOne frustration identified by many Muslim respondents centres upon a perceived ‘acceptable’ way to be an Australian Muslim. Arguing that the broader community construct Muslims as a homogenous group defined by their religious affiliation, these interviewees felt that the many differences within and between the twenty-plus national, linguistic, ethnic, cultural and faith-based groupings that constitute WA’s Muslim population were being ignored. Being treated as a homogenised group on a basis of faith appears to have the effect of putting that religious identity under pressure, paradoxically strengthening and reinforcing it (Aly, ‘Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism’). The appeal to Australian Muslims to embrace membership in a secular society and treat religion as a private matter also led some respondents to suggest they were expected to deny their own view of their faith, in which they express their religious identity across their social spheres and in public and private contexts. Such expression is common in observant Judaism, Hinduism and some forms of Christianity, as well as in some expressions of Islam (Aly and Green, ‘Less than equal’). Massumi argues that even the ways in which some Muslims dress, indicating faith-based behaviour, can lead to what he terms as ‘affective modulation’ (Massumi), repeating and amplifying the fear affect as a result of experiencing the wider community’s fear response to such triggers as water bottles (from airport travel) and backpacks, on the basis of perceived physical difference and a supposed identification with Muslim communities, regardless of the situation. Such respondents constructed this (implied) injunction to suppress their religious and cultural affiliation as akin to constructing the expression of their identity as illegitimate and somehow shameful. Parallels can be drawn with previous social responses to a person born out of wedlock, and to people in same-sex relationships: a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of denial.Australian Muslims who see their faith as denied or marginalised may respond by identifying more strongly with other Muslims in their community, since the community-based context is one in which they feel welcomed and understood. The faith-based community also allows and encourages a wider repertoire of acceptable beliefs and actions entailed in the performance of ‘being Muslim’. Hand in hand with a perception of being required to express their religious identity in ways that were acceptable to the majority community, these respondents provided a range of examples of self-protective behaviours to defend themselves and others from the impacts of perceived marginalisation. Such behaviours included: changing their surnames to deflect discrimination based solely on a name (Aly and Green, ‘Fear, Anxiety and the State of Terror’); keeping their opinions private, even when they were in line with those being expressed by the majority community (Aly and Green, ‘Moderate Islam’); the identification of ‘less safe’ and ‘safe’ activities and areas; concerns about visibly different young men in the Muslim community and discussions with them about their public behaviour and demeanour; and women who chose not to leave their homes for fear of being targeted in public places (all discussed in Aly, ‘Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism’). Many of these behaviours, including changing surnames, restricting socialisation to people who know a person well, and the identification of safe and less safe activities in relation to the risk of self-revelation, were common strategies used by people who were stigmatised in previous times as a result of their illegitimacy.ConclusionConstructions of the legitimate and illegitimate provide one means through which we can investigate complex negotiations around Australianness and citizenship, thrown into sharp relief by the Australian government’s treatment of asylum seekers, also deemed “illegals”. Because they arrive in Australia (or, as the government would prefer, on Australia’s doorstep) by illegitimate channels these would-be citizens are treated very differently from people who arrive at an airport and overstay their visa. The impetus to exclude aspects of geographical Australia from the migration zone, and to house asylum seekers offshore, reveals an anxiety about borders which physically reflects the anxiety of western nations in the post-9/11 world. Asylum seekers who arrive by boat have rarely had safe opportunity to secure passports or visas, or to purchase tickets from commercial airlines or shipping companies. They represent those ethnicities and cultures which are currently in turmoil: a turmoil frequently exacerbated by western intervention, variously constructed as an il/legitimate expression of western power and interests.What this paper has demonstrated is that the boundary between Australia and the rest, the legitimate and the illegitimate, is failing in its aim of creating a stronger Australia. The means through which this project is pursued is making visible a range of motivations and concerns which are variously interpreted depending upon the position of the interpreter. The United Nations, for example, has expressed strong concern over Australia’s reneging upon its treaty obligations to refugees (Gordon). Less vocal, and more fearful, are those communities within Australia which identify as community members with the excluded illegals. The Australian government’s treatment of detainees on Manus Island and Nauru, who generally exhibit markers of visible difference as a result of ethnicity or culture, is one aspect of a raft of government policies which serve to make some people feel that their Australianness is somehow less legitimate than that of the broader community. AcknowledgementsThis paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (DP0559707), 2005-7, “Australian responses to the images and discourses of terrorism and the other: establishing a metric of fear”, awarded to Professors Lelia Green and Mark Balnaves. The research involved 10 focus groups and 60 individual in-depth interviews and a telephone ‘fear of terrorism’ survey. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members and wider Australian respondents to the telephone survey. ReferencesAly, Anne. “Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 42.1 (2007): 27-40.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “Fear, Anxiety and the State of Terror.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 33.3 (Feb 2010): 268-81.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “Less than Equal: Secularism, Religious Pluralism and Privilege.” M/C Journal 11.2 (2008). 15 Oct. 2009 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/32›.Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. “‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen”. M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). 13 April 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/08-aly-green.php›.Aly, Anne, and Mark Balnaves. “‘They Want Us to Be Afraid’: Developing a Metric for the Fear of Terrorism. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities & Nations 6.6 (2008): 113-122.Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.Bassio, Diana. “‘Be Alert, Not Alarmed’: Governmental Communication of Risk in an Era of Insecurity.” Annual Conference Australian and New Zealand Communication Association, Christchurch, New Zealand, 2005. ‹http://www.anzca.net/documents/anzca-05-1/refereed-proceedings-9/247-be-alert-not-alarmed-governmental-communication-of-risk-in-an-era-of-insecurity-1/file.html›.Bateson, Gregory, and Mary Catherine Bateson. “Innocence and Experience”. Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred. New York: Hampton Press, 1987. 167-182. 11 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.oikos.org/baten.htm›.Cookson, Catherine. Our Kate. London: Corgi, 1969.Cox, Nicole. “Police Probe ‘Die for Syria’ Car Stickers”. WA Today 11 Sep. 2014. 11 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/police-probe-die-for-syria-car-stickers-20140911-10fmo7.html›.Crock, Mary. “That Sinking Feeling: Correspondence”. Quarterly Essay 54 (June 2014): 75-79.Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1978 [1966].Gordon, Michael. “New UN Human Rights Chief Attacks Australia over Asylum Seeker Rights ‘Violations’.” Sydney Morning Herald 7 Sep. 2014. 11 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/new-un-human-rights-chief-attacks-australia-over-asylum-seeker-rights-violations-20140907-10dlkx.html›.Green, Lelia. “Bordering on the Inconceivable: The Pacific Solution, the Migration Zone and ‘Australia’s 9/11’”. Australian Journal of Communication 31.1 (2004): 19-36.Green, Lelia. “Did the World Really Change on 9/11?” Australian Journal of Communication 29.2 (2002): 1-14.Green, Lelia, and Anne Aly. “How Australian Muslims Construct Western Fear of the Muslim Other”. Negotiating Identities: Constructed Selves and Others. Ed. Helen Vella Bonavita. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. 65-90. Karam, Zeina, and Vivian Salama. “US President Barack Obama Powers Up to Shut Down Islamic State”. The Australian 11 Sep. 2014. 11 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.theaustralian/world/%20us-president-barak-obama-powers-up-to-shut-down-islamic-state-20140911-10f9dh.html›.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked: Mythologiques, Volume 1. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1969.Massumi, Brian. “Fear (the Spectrum Said).” Positions 13.1 (2005): 31-48.McKay, Fiona H., Samantha, L. Thomas, and Susan Kneebone. “‘It Would Be Okay If They Came through the Proper Channels’: Community Perceptions and Attitudes toward Asylum Seekers in Australia”. Journal of Refugee Studies 25.1 (2011): 113-133.Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave. New York: Derby & Miller, 1853.Pugliese, Joseph. “Asymmetries of Terror: Visual Regimes of Racial Profiling and the Shooting of John Charles de Menezes in the Context of the War in Iraq.” Borderlands 5.1 (2006). 11 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol5no1_2006/pugliese.htm›.Rix, M. “With Reckless Abandon: Haneef and Ul-Haque in Australia’s ‘War on Terror’.” In K. Michael and M.G. Micheal (eds.), The Third Workshop on the Social Implications of National Security Australia. Canberra, July 2008. 107-122. 11 Sep. 2014 ‹http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=gsbpapers›.Said, Edward. Orientalism. London: Penguin, 1977.Wilson, Lauren. “More Visa Over-Stayers than Asylum-Seekers”. The Australian 11 Oct. 2012. 11 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/more-visa-over-stayers-than-asylum-seekers/story-fn9hm1gu-1226493178289›.

1. Guy Debord in the Land of the Long WeekendIt’s the weekend – leisure time. It’s the interlude when, Guy Debord contends, the proletarian is briefly free of the “total contempt so clearly built into every aspect of the organization and management of production” in commodity capitalism; when workers are temporarily “treated like grown-ups, with a great show of solicitude and politeness, in their new role as consumers.” But this patronising show turns out to be another form of subjection to the diktats of “political economy”: “the totality of human existence falls under the regime of the ‘perfected denial of man’.” (30). As Debord suggests, even the creation of leisure time and space is predicated upon a form of contempt: the “perfected denial” of who we, as living people, really are in the eyes of those who presume the power to legislate our working practices and private identities.This Saturday The Weekend Australian runs an opinion piece by Christopher Pearson, defending ABC Radio National’s Stephen Crittenden, whose program The Religion Report has been axed. “Some of Crittenden’s finest half-hours have been devoted to Islam in Australia in the wake of September 11,” Pearson writes. “Again and again he’s confronted a left-of-centre audience that expected multi-cultural pieties with disturbing assertions.” Along the way in this admirable Crusade, Pearson notes that Crittenden has exposed “the Left’s recent tendency to ally itself with Islam.” According to Pearson, Crittenden has also thankfully given oxygen to claims by James Cook University’s Mervyn Bendle, the “fairly conservative academic whose work sometimes appears in [these] pages,” that “the discipline of critical terrorism studies has been captured by neo-Marxists of a postmodern bent” (30). Both of these points are well beyond misunderstanding or untested proposition. If Pearson means them sincerely he should be embarrassed and sacked. But of course he does not and will not be. These are deliberate lies, the confabulations of an eminent right-wing culture warrior whose job is to vilify minorities and intellectuals (Bendle escapes censure as an academic because he occasionally scribbles for the Murdoch press). It should be observed, too, how the patent absurdity of Pearson’s remarks reveals the extent to which he holds the intelligence of his readers in contempt. And he is not original in peddling these toxic wares.In their insightful—often hilarious—study of Australian opinion writers, The War on Democracy, Niall Lucy and Steve Mickler identify the left-academic-Islam nexus as the brain-child of former Treasurer-cum-memoirist Peter Costello. The germinal moment was “a speech to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue forum at the Art Gallery of NSW in 2005” concerning anti-Americanism in Australian schools. Lucy and Mickler argue that “it was only a matter of time” before a conservative politician or journalist took the plunge to link the left and terrorism, and Costello plunged brilliantly. He drew a mental map of the Great Chain of Being: left-wing academics taught teacher trainees to be anti-American; teacher trainees became teachers and taught kids to be anti-American; anti-Americanism morphs into anti-Westernism; anti-Westernism veers into terrorism (38). This is contempt for the reasoning capacity of the Australian people and, further still, contempt for any observable reality. Not for nothing was Costello generally perceived by the public as a politician whose very physiognomy radiated smugness and contempt.Recycling Costello, Christopher Pearson’s article subtly interpellates the reader as an ordinary, common-sense individual who instinctively feels what’s right and has no need to think too much—thinking too much is the prerogative of “neo-Marxists” and postmodernists. Ultimately, Pearson’s article is about channelling outrage: directing the down-to-earth passions of the Australian people against stock-in-trade culture-war hate figures. And in Pearson’s paranoid world, words like “neo-Marxist” and “postmodern” are devoid of historical or intellectual meaning. They are, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy repeatedly demonstrate, mere ciphers packed with the baggage of contempt for independent critical thought itself.Contempt is everywhere this weekend. The Weekend Australian’s colour magazine runs a feature story on Malcolm Turnbull: one of those familiar profiles designed to reveal the everyday human touch of the political classes. In this puff-piece, Jennifer Hewett finds Turnbull has “a restless passion for participating in public life” (20); that beneath “the aggressive political rhetoric […] behind the journalist turned lawyer turned banker turned politician turned would-be prime minister is a man who really enjoys that human interaction, however brief, with the many, many ordinary people he encounters” (16). Given all this energetic turning, it’s a wonder that Turnbull has time for human interactions at all. The distinction here of Turnbull and “many, many ordinary people” – the anonymous masses – surely runs counter to Hewett’s brief to personalise and quotidianise him. Likewise, those two key words, “however brief”, have an unfortunate, unintended effect. Presumably meant to conjure a picture of Turnbull’s hectic schedules and serial turnings, the words also convey the image of a patrician who begrudgingly knows one of the costs of a political career is that common flesh must be pressed—but as gingerly as possible.Hewett proceeds to disclose that Turnbull is “no conservative cultural warrior”, “onfounds stereotypes” and “hates labels” (like any baby-boomer rebel) and “has always read widely on political philosophy—his favourite is Edmund Burke”. He sees the “role of the state above all as enabling people to do their best” but knows that “the main game is the economy” and is “content to play mainstream gesture politics” (19). I am genuinely puzzled by this and imagine that my intelligence is being held in contempt once again. That the man of substance is given to populist gesturing is problematic enough; but that the Burke fan believes the state is about personal empowerment is just too much. Maybe Turnbull is a fan of Burke’s complex writings on the sublime and the beautiful—but no, Hewett avers, Turnbull is engaged by Burke’s “political philosophy”. So what is it in Burke that Turnbull finds to favour?Turnbull’s invocation of Edmund Burke is empty, gestural and contradictory. The comfortable notion that the state helps people to realise their potential is contravened by Burke’s view that the state functions so “the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection… by a power out of themselves” (151). Nor does Burke believe that anyone of humble origins could or should rise to the top of the social heap: “The occupation of an hair-dresser, or of a working tallow-chandler, cannot be a matter of honour to any person… the state suffers oppression, if such as they, either individually or collectively, are permitted to rule” (138).If Turnbull’s main game as a would-be statesman is the economy, Burke profoundly disagrees: “the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, callico or tobacco, or some other such low concern… It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection”—a sublime entity, not an economic manager (194). Burke understands, long before Antonio Gramsci or Louis Althusser, that individuals or social fractions must be made admirably “obedient” to the state “by consent or force” (195). Burke has a verdict on mainstream gesture politics too: “When men of rank sacrifice all ideas of dignity to an ambition without a distinct object, and work with low instruments and for low ends, the whole composition [of the state] becomes low and base” (136).Is Malcolm Turnbull so contemptuous of the public that he assumes nobody will notice the gross discrepancies between his own ideals and what Burke stands for? His invocation of Burke is, indeed, “mainstream gesture politics”: on one level, “Burke” signifies nothing more than Turnbull’s performance of himself as a deep thinker. In this process, the real Edmund Burke is historically erased; reduced to the status of stage-prop in the theatrical production of Turnbull’s mass-mediated identity. “Edmund Burke” is re-invented as a term in an aesthetic repertoire.This transmutation of knowledge and history into mere cipher is the staple trick of culture-war discourse. Jennifer Hewett casts Turnbull as “no conservative culture warrior”, but he certainly shows a facility with culture-war rhetoric. And as much as Turnbull “confounds stereotypes” his verbal gesture to Edmund Burke entrenches a stereotype: at another level, the incantation “Edmund Burke” is implicitly meant to connect Turnbull with conservative tradition—in the exact way that John Howard regularly self-nominated as a “Burkean conservative”.This appeal to tradition effectively places “the people” in a power relation. Tradition has a sublimity that is bigger than us; it precedes us and will outlast us. Consequently, for a politician to claim that tradition has fashioned him, that he is welded to it or perhaps even owns it as part of his heritage, is to glibly imply an authority greater than that of “the many, many ordinary people”—Burke’s hair-dressers and tallow-chandlers—whose company he so briefly enjoys.In The Ideology of the Aesthetic, Terry Eagleton assesses one of Burke’s important legacies, placing him beside another eighteenth-century thinker so loved by the right—Adam Smith. Ideology of the Aesthetic is premised on the view that “Aesthetics is born as a discourse of the body”; that the aesthetic gives form to the “primitive materialism” of human passions and organises “the whole of our sensate life together… a society’s somatic, sensational life” (13). Reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Eagleton discerns that society appears as “an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects”, like “any production of human art”. In Smith’s work, the “whole of social life is aestheticized” and people inhabit “a social order so spontaneously cohesive that its members no longer need to think about it.” In Burke, Eagleton discovers that the aesthetics of “manners” can be understood in terms of Gramscian hegemony: “in the aesthetics of social conduct, or ‘culture’ as it would later be called, the law is always with us, as the very unconscious structure of our life”, and as a result conformity to a dominant ideological order is deeply felt as pleasurable and beautiful (37, 42). When this conservative aesthetic enters the realm of politics, Eagleton contends, the “right turn, from Burke” onwards follows a dark trajectory: “forget about theoretical analysis… view society as a self-grounding organism, all of whose parts miraculously interpenetrate without conflict and require no rational justification. Think with the blood and the body. Remember that tradition is always wiser and richer than one’s own poor, pitiable ego. It is this line of descent, in one of its tributaries, which will lead to the Third Reich” (368–9).2. Jean Baudrillard, the Nazis and Public MemoryIn 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Third Reich’s Condor Legion of the Luftwaffe was on loan to Franco’s forces. On 26 April that year, the Condor Legion bombed the market-town of Guernica: the first deliberate attempt to obliterate an entire town from the air and the first experiment in what became known as “terror bombing”—the targeting of civilians. A legacy of this violence was Pablo Picasso’s monumental canvas Guernica – the best-known anti-war painting in art history.When US Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on 5 February 2003 to make the case for war on Iraq, he stopped to face the press in the UN building’s lobby. The doorstop was globally televised, packaged as a moment of incredible significance: history in the making. It was also theatre: a moment in which history was staged as “event” and the real traces of history were carefully erased. Millions of viewers world-wide were undoubtedly unaware that the blue backdrop before which Powell stood was specifically designed to cover the full-scale tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica. This one-act, agitprop drama was a splendid example of politics as aesthetic action: a “performance” of history in the making which required the loss of actual historical memory enshrined in Guernica. Powell’s performance took its cues from the culture wars, which require the ceaseless erasure of history and public memory—on this occasion enacted on a breathtaking global, rather than national, scale.Inside the UN chamber, Powell’s performance was equally staged-crafted. As he brandished vials of ersatz anthrax, the power-point behind him (the theatrical set) showed artists’ impressions of imaginary mobile chemical weapons laboratories. Powell was playing lead role in a kind of populist, hyperreal production. It was Jean Baudrillard’s postmodernism, no less, as the media space in which Powell acted out the drama was not a secondary representation of reality but a reality of its own; the overheads of mobile weapons labs were simulacra, “models of a real without origins or reality”, pictures referring to nothing but themselves (2). In short, Powell’s performance was anchored in a “semiurgic” aesthetic; and it was a dreadful real-life enactment of Walter Benjamin’s maxim that “All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war” (241).For Benjamin, “Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate.” Fascism gave “these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves.” In turn, this required “the introduction of aesthetics into politics”, the objective of which was “the production of ritual values” (241). Under Adolf Hitler’s Reich, people were able to express themselves but only via the rehearsal of officially produced ritual values: by their participation in the disquisition on what Germany meant and what it meant to be German, by the aesthetic regulation of their passions. As Frederic Spotts’ fine study Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics reveals, this passionate disquisition permeated public and private life, through the artfully constructed total field of national narratives, myths, symbols and iconographies. And the ritualistic reiteration of national values in Nazi Germany hinged on two things: contempt and memory loss.By April 1945, as Berlin fell, Hitler’s contempt for the German people was at its apogee. Hitler ordered a scorched earth operation: the destruction of everything from factories to farms to food stores. The Russians would get nothing, the German people would perish. Albert Speer refused to implement the plan and remembered that “Until then… Germany and Hitler had been synonymous in my mind. But now I saw two entities opposed… A passionate love of one’s country… a leader who seemed to hate his people” (Sereny 472). But Hitler’s contempt for the German people was betrayed in the blusterous pages of Mein Kampf years earlier: “The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous” (165). On the back of this belief, Hitler launched what today would be called a culture war, with its Jewish folk devils, loathsome Marxist intellectuals, incitement of popular passions, invented traditions, historical erasures and constant iteration of values.When Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer fled Fascism, landing in the United States, their view of capitalist democracy borrowed from Benjamin and anticipated both Baudrillard and Guy Debord. In their well-know essay on “The Culture Industry”, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, they applied Benjamin’s insight on mass self-expression and the maintenance of property relations and ritual values to American popular culture: “All are free to dance and enjoy themselves”, but the freedom to choose how to do so “proves to be the freedom to choose what is always the same”, manufactured by monopoly capital (161–162). Anticipating Baudrillard, they found a society in which “only the copy appears: in the movie theatre, the photograph; on the radio, the recording” (143). And anticipating Debord’s “perfected denial of man” they found a society where work and leisure were structured by the repetition-compulsion principles of capitalism: where people became consumers who appeared “s statistics on research organization charts” (123). “Culture” came to do people’s thinking for them: “Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown” (144).In this mass-mediated environment, a culture of repetitions, simulacra, billboards and flickering screens, Adorno and Horkheimer concluded that language lost its historical anchorages: “Innumerable people use words and expressions which they have either ceased to understand or employ only because they trigger off conditioned reflexes” in precisely the same way that the illusory “free” expression of passions in Germany operated, where words were “debased by the Fascist pseudo-folk community” (166).I know that the turf of the culture wars, the US and Australia, are not Fascist states; and I know that “the first one to mention the Nazis loses the argument”. I know, too, that there are obvious shortcomings in Adorno and Horkheimer’s reactions to popular culture and these have been widely criticised. However, I would suggest that there is a great deal of value still in Frankfurt School analyses of what we might call the “authoritarian popular” which can be applied to the conservative prosecution of populist culture wars today. Think, for example, how the concept of a “pseudo folk community” might well describe the earthy, common-sense public constructed and interpellated by right-wing culture warriors: America’s Joe Six-Pack, John Howard’s battlers or Kevin Rudd’s working families.In fact, Adorno and Horkheimer’s observations on language go to the heart of a contemporary culture war strategy. Words lose their history, becoming ciphers and “triggers” in a politicised lexicon. Later, Roland Barthes would write that this is a form of myth-making: “myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things.” Barthes reasoned further that “Bourgeois ideology continuously transforms the products of history into essential types”, generating a “cultural logic” and an ideological re-ordering of the world (142). Types such as “neo-Marxist”, “postmodernist” and “Burkean conservative”.Surely, Benjamin’s assessment that Fascism gives “the people” the occasion to express itself, but only through “values”, describes the right’s pernicious incitement of the mythic “dispossessed mainstream” to reclaim its voice: to shout down the noisy minorities—the gays, greenies, blacks, feminists, multiculturalists and neo-Marxist postmodernists—who’ve apparently been running the show. Even more telling, Benjamin’s insight that the incitement to self-expression is connected to the maintenance of property relations, to economic power, is crucial to understanding the contemptuous conduct of culture wars.3. Jesus Dunked in Urine from Kansas to CronullaAmerican commentator Thomas Frank bases his study What’s the Matter with Kansas? on this very point. Subtitled How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, Frank’s book is a striking analysis of the indexation of Chicago School free-market reform and the mobilisation of “explosive social issues—summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art—which it then marries to pro-business policies”; but it is the “economic achievements” of free-market capitalism, “not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars” that are conservatism’s “greatest monuments.” Nevertheless, the culture wars are necessary as Chicago School economic thinking consigns American communities to the rust belt. The promise of “free-market miracles” fails ordinary Americans, Frank reasons, leaving them in “backlash” mode: angry, bewildered and broke. And in this context, culture wars are a convenient form of anger management: “Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire planet must remake itself along the lines preferred” by nationalist, populist moralism and free-market fundamentalism (5).When John Howard received the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award, on 6 March 2008, he gave a speech in Washington titled “Sharing Our Common Values”. The nub of the speech was Howard’s revelation that he understood the index of neo-liberal economics and culture wars precisely as Thomas Frank does. Howard told the AEI audience that under his prime ministership Australia had “pursued reform and further modernisation of our economy” and that this inevitably meant “dislocation for communities”. This “reform-dislocation” package needed the palliative of a culture war, with his government preaching the “consistency and reassurance” of “our nation’s traditional values… pride in her history”; his government “became assertive about the intrinsic worth of our national identity. In the process we ended the seemingly endless seminar about that identity which had been in progress for some years.” Howard’s boast that his government ended the “seminar” on national identity insinuates an important point. “Seminar” is a culture-war cipher for intellection, just as “pride” is code for passion; so Howard’s self-proclaimed achievement, in Terry Eagleton’s terms, was to valorise “the blood and the body” over “theoretical analysis”. This speaks stratospheric contempt: ordinary people have their identity fashioned for them; they need not think about it, only feel it deeply and passionately according to “ritual values”. Undoubtedly this paved the way to Cronulla.The rubric of Howard’s speech—“Sharing Our Common Values”—was both a homage to international neo-conservatism and a reminder that culture wars are a trans-national phenomenon. In his address, Howard said that in all his “years in politics” he had not heard a “more evocative political slogan” than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”—the rhetorical catch-cry for moral re-awakening that launched the culture wars. According to Lawrence Grossberg, America’s culture wars were predicated on the perception that the nation was afflicted by “a crisis of our lack of passion, of not caring enough about the values we hold… a crisis of nihilism which, while not restructuring our ideological beliefs, has undermined our ability to organise effective action on their behalf”; and this “New Right” alarmism “operates in the conjuncture of economics and popular culture” and “a popular struggle by which culture can lead politics” in the passionate pursuit of ritual values (31–2). When popular culture leads politics in this way we are in the zone of the image, myth and Adorno and Horkheimer’s “trigger words” that have lost their history. In this context, McKenzie Wark observes that “radical writers influenced by Marx will see the idea of culture as compensation for a fragmented and alienated life as a con. Guy Debord, perhaps the last of the great revolutionary thinkers of Europe, will call it “the spectacle”’ (20). Adorno and Horkheimer might well have called it “the authoritarian popular”. As Jonathan Charteris-Black’s work capably demonstrates, all politicians have their own idiolect: their personally coded language, preferred narratives and myths; their own vision of who “the people” might or should be that is conjured in their words. But the language of the culture wars is different. It is not a personal idiolect. It is a shared vocabulary, a networked vernacular, a pervasive trans-national aesthetic that pivots on the fact that words like “neo-Marxist”, “postmodern” and “Edmund Burke” have no historical or intellectual context or content: they exist as the ciphers of “values”. And the fact that culture warriors continually mouth them is a supreme act of contempt: it robs the public of its memory. And that’s why, as Lucy and Mickler’s War on Democracy so wittily argues, if there are any postmodernists left they’ll be on the right.Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and, later, Debord and Grossberg understood how the political activation of the popular constitutes a hegemonic project. The result is nothing short of persuading “the people” to collaborate in its own oppression. The activation of the popular is perfectly geared to an age where the main stage of political life is the mainstream media; an age in which, Charteris-Black notes, political classes assume the general antipathy of publics to social change and act on the principle that the most effective political messages are sold to “the people” by an appeal “to familiar experiences”—market populism (10). In her substantial study The Persuaders, Sally Young cites an Australian Labor Party survey, conducted by pollster Rod Cameron in the late 1970s, in which the party’s message machine was finely tuned to this populist position. The survey also dripped with contempt for ordinary people: their “Interest in political philosophy… is very low… They are essentially the products (and supporters) of mass market commercialism”. Young observes that this view of “the people” was the foundation of a new order of political advertising and the conduct of politics on the mass-media stage. Cameron’s profile of “ordinary people” went on to assert that they are fatally attracted to “a moderate leader who is strong… but can understand and represent their value system” (47): a prescription for populist discourse which begs the question of whether the values a politician or party represent via the media are ever really those of “the people”. More likely, people are hegemonised into a value system which they take to be theirs. Writing of the media side of the equation, David Salter raises the point that when media “moguls thunder about ‘the public interest’ what they really mean is ‘what we think the public is interested in”, which is quite another matter… Why this self-serving deception is still so sheepishly accepted by the same public it is so often used to violate remains a mystery” (40).Sally Young’s Persuaders retails a story that she sees as “symbolic” of the new world of mass-mediated political life. The story concerns Mark Latham and his “revolutionary” journeys to regional Australia to meet the people. “When a political leader who holds a public meeting is dubbed a ‘revolutionary’”, Young rightly observes, “something has gone seriously wrong”. She notes how Latham’s “use of old-fashioned ‘meet-and-greet’campaigning methods was seen as a breath of fresh air because it was unlike the type of packaged, stage-managed and media-dependent politics that have become the norm in Australia.” Except that it wasn’t. “A media pack of thirty journalists trailed Latham in a bus”, meaning, that he was not meeting the people at all (6–7). He was traducing the people as participants in a media spectacle, as his “meet and greet” was designed to fill the image-banks of print and electronic media. Even meeting the people becomes a media pseudo-event in which the people impersonate the people for the camera’s benefit; a spectacle as artfully deceitful as Colin Powell’s UN performance on Iraq.If the success of this kind of “self-serving deception” is a mystery to David Salter, it would not be so to the Frankfurt School. For them, an understanding of the processes of mass-mediated politics sits somewhere near the core of their analysis of the culture industries in the “democratic” world. I think the Frankfurt school should be restored to a more important role in the project of cultural studies. Apart from an aversion to jazz and other supposedly “elitist” heresies, thinkers like Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer and their progeny Debord have a functional claim to provide the theory for us to expose the machinations of the politics of contempt and its aesthetic ruses.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Verso, 1979. 120–167.Barthes Roland. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans: Paladin, 1972. 109–58.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zorn. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. 217–251.Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Ed. Conor Cruise O’Brien. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Charteris-Black, Jonathan. Politicians and Rhetoric: The Persuasive Power of Metaphor. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994.Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990.Frank, Thomas. What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.Grossberg, Lawrence. “It’s a Sin: Politics, Post-Modernity and the Popular.” It’s a Sin: Essays on Postmodern Politics & Culture. Eds. Tony Fry, Ann Curthoys and Paul Patton. Sydney: Power Publications, 1988. 6–71.Hewett, Jennifer. “The Opportunist.” The Weekend Australian Magazine. 25–26 October 2008. 16–22.Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. Trans. Ralph Manheim. London: Pimlico, 1993.Howard, John. “Sharing Our Common Values.” Washington: Irving Kristol Lecture, American Enterprise Institute. 5 March 2008. ‹http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,233328945-5014047,00html›.Lucy, Niall and Steve Mickler. The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press. Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006.Pearson, Christopher. “Pray for Sense to Prevail.” The Weekend Australian. 25–26 October 2008. 30.Salter, David. The Media We Deserve: Underachievement in the Fourth Estate. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2007. Sereny, Gitta. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth. London: Picador, 1996.Spotts, Frederic. Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics. London: Pimlico, 2003.Wark, McKenzie. The Virtual Republic: Australia’s Culture Wars of the 1990s. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1997.Young, Sally. The Persuaders: Inside the Hidden Machine of Political Advertising. Melbourne: Pluto Press, 2004.

Cultural Studies has tended to prioritise the domain of leisure and consumption over work as an area for meaning making, in many ways defining everyday life in opposition to work. Greg Noble, a cultural researcher who examined work in the context of the early computerisation of Australian universities made the point that "discussions of everyday life often make the mistake of assuming that everyday life equates with home and family life, or leisure" (87). This article argues for the need within Cultural Studies to focus on work and media as a research area of everyday life. With the growth of flexible and creative labour and the widespread uptake of an array of new media technologies used for work, traditional ways to identify and measure the space and time of work have become increasingly flawed, with implications for how we account for work and negotiate its boundaries. New approaches are needed to address the complex media environments and technological practices that are an increasing part of contemporary working life. Cultural Studies can make a significant impact towards this research agenda by offering new ways to analyse the complex interrelations of space, time and technology in everyday work practice. To further this goal, a new material practices account of work termed Officing is introduced, developed through my doctoral research on professionals' daily use of information and communication technology (ICT). This approach builds on the key cultural concepts of "bricolage" and "appropriation" combined with the idea of "articulation work" proposed by Anselm Strauss, to support the analysis of the office workplace as a contingent and provisional arrangement or process. Officing has a number of benefits as a framework for analysing the nature of work in a highly mediated world. Highlighting the labour that goes into stabilising work platforms makes it possible to assess the claims of productivity and improved work-life balance brought about by new mobile media technologies; to identify previously unidentified sources of time pressure, overwork and intensification and ultimately, to contribute to the design of more sustainable work environments. The Turn Away from Work Work held a central position in social and cultural analysis in the first half of the twentieth century but as Strangleman observed, there was a marked shift away from the study of work from the mid 1970s (3.1). Much of the impulse for this shift came from critiques of the over-emphasis on relations of production and the workplace as the main source of meaning and value (5.1). In line with this position, feminist researchers challenged the traditional division of labour into paid and unpaid work, arguing that this division sustained the false perception of domestic work as non-productive (cf. Delphy; Folbre). Accompanying these critiques were significant changes in work itself, as traditional jobs literally began to disappear with the decline of manufacturing in industrialised countries (6.1). With the turn away from work in academia and the changes in the nature of work, attention shifted to the realm of the market and consumption. One of the important contributions of Cultural Studies has been the focus on the role of the consumer in driving social and technological change and processes of identity formation. Yet, it is a major problem that work is largely marginalised in cultural research of everyday life, especially since, in most industrialised nations, we are working in new ways, in rapidly changing conditions and more than ever before. Research shows that in Australia there has been a steady increase in the average hours of paid work and Australians are working harder (cf. Watson, Buchanan, Campbell and Briggs; Edwards and Wajcman). In the 2008 Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) Skinner and Pocock found around 55 per cent of employees frequently felt rushed or pressed for time and this was associated with long working hours, work overload and an overall poor work–life interaction (8). These trends have coincided with long-term changes in the type and location of work. In Australia, like many other developed countries, information-based occupations have taken over manufacturing jobs and there has been an increase in part-time and casual work (cf. Watson et al.). Many employees now conduct work outside of the traditional workplace, with the ABS reporting that in 2008, 24 per cent of employees worked at least some hours at home. Many social analysts have explained the rise of casual and flexible labour as related to the transition to global capitalism driven by the expansion of networked information processes (cf. Castells; Van Dijk). This shift is not simply that more workers are producing ideas and information but that the previously separated spheres of production and consumption have blurred (cf. Ritzer and Jurgenson). With this, entirely new industries have sprung up, predicated on the often unpaid for creative labour of individuals, including users of media technologies. A growing chorus of writers are now pointing out that a fragmented, polarised and complex picture is emerging of this so-called "new economy", with significant implications for the quality of work (cf. Edwards and Wajcman; Fudge and Owens; Huws). Indeed, some claim that new conditions of insecure and poor quality employment or "precarious work" are fast becoming the norm. Moreover, this longer-term pattern runs parallel to the production of a multitude of new mobile media technologies, first taken up by professionals and then by the mainstream, challenging the notion that activities are bound to any particular place or time. Reinvigorating Work in Social and Cultural Analysis There are moves to reposition social and cultural analysis to respond to these various trends. Work-life balance is an example of a research and policy area that has emerged since the 1990s. The boundary between the household and the outside world has also been subject to scrutiny by cultural researchers, and these critically examine the intersection between work and consumption, gender and care (cf. Nippert-Eng; Sorenson and Lie; Noble and Lupton, "Consuming" and "Mine"; Lally). These responses are examples of a shift away from what Urry has dubbed "structures and stable organisations" to a concern with flows, movements and the blurring of boundaries between life spheres (5). In a similar vein, researchers recently have proposed alternative ways to describe the changing times and places of employment. In their study of UK professionals, Felstead, Jewson and Walters proposed a model of "plural workscapes" to explain a major shift in the spatial organisation of work (23). Mobility theorists Sheller and Urry have called for the need to "develop a more dynamic conceptualisation of the fluidities and mobilities that have increasingly hybridised the public and private" (113). All of this literature has reinforced a growing concern that in the face of new patterns of production and consumption and with the rise of complex media environments, traditional models and measures of space and time are inadequate to account for contemporary work. Analyses that rely on conventional measures of work based on hourly units clearly point to an increase in the volume of work, the speed of work and to the collision (cf. Pocock) of work and life but fall down in accounting for the complex and often contradictory role of technology. Media technologies are "Janus-faced" as Michael Arnold has suggested, referring to the two-faced Roman god to foreground the contradictory effects at the centre of all technologies (232). Wajcman notes this paradox in her research on mobile media and time, pointing out that mobile phones are just as likely to "save" time as to "consume" it (15). It was precisely this problematic of the complex interactions of the space, time and technology of work that was at stake in my research on the daily use of ICT by professional workers. In the context of changes to the location, activity and meaning of work, and with the multiplying array of old and new media technologies used by workers, how can the boundary and scope of work be determined? What are the implications of these shifting grounds for the experience and quality of work? Officing: A Material Practices Account of Office Work In the remaining article I introduce some of the key ideas and principles of a material practices account developed in my PhD, Officing: Professionals' Daily ICT Use and the Changing Space and Time of Work. This research took place between 2006 and 2007 focusing in-depth on the daily technology practices of twenty professional workers in a municipal council in Sydney and a unit of a global telecommunication company taking part in a trial of a new smart phone. Officing builds on efforts to develop a more accurate account of the space and time of work bringing into play the complex and highly mediated environment in which work takes place. It extends more recent practice-based, actor-network and cultural approaches that have, for some time, been moving towards a more co-constitutive and process-oriented approach to media and technology in society. Turning first to "bricolage" from the French bricole meaning something small and handmade, bricolage refers to the ways that individuals and groups borrow from existing cultural forms and meanings to create new uses, meanings and identities. Initially proposed by Levi-Strauss and then taken up by de Certeau, bricolage has been a useful concept within subculture and lifestyle studies to reveal the creative work performed on signs and meaning systems in forming cultural identities (cf. O'Sullivan et al.). Bricolage is also an important concept for understanding how meanings and uses are inscribed into forms in use rather than being read or activated off their design. This is the process of appropriation, through which both the object and the person are mutually shaped and users gain a sense of control and ownership (cf. Noble and Lupton; Lally; Silverstone and Haddon). The concept of bricolage highlights the improvisational qualities of appropriation and its status as work. A bricoleur is thus a person who constructs new meanings and forms by drawing on and assembling a wide range of resources at hand, sourced from multiple spheres of life. One of the problems with how bricolage and appropriation has been applied to date, notwithstanding the priority given to the domestic sphere, is the tendency to grant individuals and collectives too much control to stabilise the meanings and purposes of technologies. This problem is evident in the research drawing on the framework of "domestication" (cf. Silverstone and Haddon). In practice, the sheer volume of technologically-related issues encountered on a daily basis and the accompanying sense of frustration indicates there is no inevitable drift towards stability, nor are problems merely aberrational or trivial. Instead, daily limits to agency and attempts to overcome these are points at which meanings as well as uses are re-articulated and potentially re-invented. This is where "articulation work" comes in. Initially put forward by Anselm Strauss in 1985, articulation work has become an established analytical tool for informing technology design processes in such fields as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Workplace Studies. In these, articulation work is narrowly defined to refer to the real time activities of cooperative work. It includes dealing with contingencies, keeping technologies and systems working and making adjustments to accommodate for problems (Suchman "Supporting", 407). In combination with naturalistic investigations, this concept has facilitated engagement with the increasingly complex technological and media environments of work. It has been a powerful tool for highlighting practices deemed unimportant but which are nevertheless crucial for getting work done. Articulation work, however, has the potential to be applied in a broader sense to explain the significance of the instability of technologies and the efforts to overcome these as transformative in themselves, part of the ongoing process of appropriation that goes well beyond individual tasks or technologies. With clear correspondences to actor-network theory, this expanded definition provides the basis for a new understanding of the office as a temporary and provisional condition of stability achieved through the daily creative and improvisational activities of workers. The office, then, is dependent on and inextricably bound up in its ongoing articulation and crucially, is not bound to a particular place or time. In the context of the large-scale transformations in work already discussed, this expanded definition of articulation work helps to; firstly, address how work is re-organised and re-rationalised through changes to the material conditions of work; secondly, identify the ongoing articulations that this entails and thirdly; understand the role of these articulations in the construction of the space and time of work. This expanded definition is achieved in the newly developed concept of officing. Officing describes a form of labour directed towards the production of a stable office platform. Significantly, one of the main characteristics of this work is that it often goes undetected by organisations as well as by the workers that perform it. As explained later, its "invisibility" is in part a function of its embodiment but also relates to the boundless nature of officing, taking place both inside and outside the workplace, in or out of work time. Officing is made up of a set of interwoven activities of three main types: connecting, synchronising and configuring. Connecting can be understood as aligning technical and social relations for the performance of work at a set time. Synchronising brings together and coordinates different times and temporal demands, for example, the time of "work" with "life" or the time "out in the field" with time "in the workplace". Configuring prepares the space of work, making a single technology or media environment work to some planned action or existing pattern of activity. To give an example of connecting: in the Citizens' Service Centre of the Council, Danielle's morning rituals involved a series of connections even before her work of advising customers begins: My day: get in, sit down, turn on the computer and then slowly open each software program that I will need to use…turn on the phone, key in my password, turn on the headphones and sit there and wait for the calls! (Humphry Officing, 123) These connections not only set up and initiate the performance of work but also mark Danielle's presence in her office. Through these activities, which in practice overlap and blur, the space and time of the office comes to appear as a somewhat separate and mostly invisible structure or infrastructure. The work that goes into making the office stable takes place around the boundary of work with implications for how this boundary is constituted. These efforts do not cluster around boundaries in any simple sense but become part of the process of boundary making, contributing to the construction of categories such as "work" and "life". So, for example, for staff in the smart phone trial, the phone had become their main source of information and communication. Turning their smart phone off, or losing connectivity had ramifications that cascaded throughout their lifeworld. On the one hand, this lead to the breakdown of the distinction between "work" and "life" and a sense of "ever-presence", requiring constant and vigilant "boundary work" (cf. Nippert-Eng). On the other hand, this same state also enabled workers to respond to demands in their own time and across multiple boundaries, giving workers a sense of flexibility, control and of being "in sync". Connecting, configuring and synchronising are activities performed by bodies, producing an embodied transformation. In the tradition of phenomenology, most notably in the works of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and more recently Ihde, embodiment is used to explain the relationship between subjects and objects. This concept has since been developed to be understood as not residing in the body but as spread through social, material and discursive arrangements (cf. Haraway, "Situated" and Simians; Henke; Suchman, "Figuring"). Tracing efforts towards making the office stable is thus a way of uncovering how the body, as a constitutive part of a larger arrangement or network, is formed through embodiment, how it gains its competencies, social meanings and ultimately, how workers gain a sense of what it means to be a professional. So, in the smart phone trial, staff managed their connections by replying immediately to their voice, text and data messages. This immediacy not only acted as proof of their presence in the office. It also signalled their commitment to their office: their active participation and value to the organisation and their readiness to perform when called on. Importantly, this embodied transformation also helps to explain how officing becomes an example of "invisible work" (cf. Star and Strauss). Acts of connecting, synchronising and configuring become constituted and forgotten in and through bodies, spaces and times. Through their repeated performance these acts become habits, a transparent means through which the environment of work is navigated in the form of skills and techniques, configurations and routines. In conclusion, researching work in contemporary societies means confronting its marginalisation within cultural research and developing ways to comprehend and measure the interaction of space, time and the ever-multiplying array of media technologies. Officing provides a way to do this by shifting to an understanding of the workplace as a contingent product of work itself. The strength of this approach is that it highlights the creative and ongoing work of individuals on their media infrastructures. It also helps to identify and describe work activities that are not neatly contained in a workplace, thus adding to their invisibility. The invisibility of these practices can have significant impacts on workers: magnifying feelings of time pressure and a need to work faster, longer and harder even as discrete technologies are utilised to save time. In this way, officing exposes some of the additional contributions to the changing experience and quality of work as well as to the construction of everyday domains. Officing supports an evaluation of claims of productivity and work-life balance in relation to new media technologies. In the smart phone trial, contrary to an assumed increase in productivity, mobility of work was achieved at the expense of productivity. Making the mobile office stable—getting it up and running, keeping it working in changing environments and meeting expectations of speed and connectivity—took up time, resulting in an overall productivity loss and demanding more "boundary work". In spite of their adaptability and flexibility, staff tended to overwork to counteract this loss. This represented a major shift in the burden of effort in the production of office forms away from the organisation and towards the individual. Finally, though not addressed here in any detail, officing could conceivably have practical uses for designing more sustainable office environments that better support the work process and the balance of work and life. Thus, by accounting more accurately for the resource requirements of work, organisations can reduce the daily effort, space and time taken up by employees on their work environments. In any case, what is clear, is the ongoing need to continue a cultural research agenda on work—to address the connections between transformations in work and the myriad material practices that individuals perform in going about their daily work. References Arnold, Michael. "On the Phenomenology of Technology: The 'Janus-Faces' of Mobile Phones." Information and Organization 13.4 (2003): 231–56. Australian Bureau of Statistics. 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"Consuming Work: Computers, Subjectivity and Appropriation in the University Workplace." The Sociological Review 46.4 (1998): 803-27. –––. "Mine/Not Mine: Appropriating Personal Computers in the Academic Workplace." Journal of Sociology 38.1 (2002): 5-23. O'Sullivan, Tim, John Hartley, Danny Saunders, Martin Montgomery, and John Fiske. Key Concepts in Communication and Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1994. Pocock, Barbara. The Work/Life Collision: What Work Is Doing to Australians and What to Do about It. Sydney: The Federation P, 2003. Ritzer, George, and Nathan Jurgenson. "Production, Consumption, Prosumption." Journal of Consumer Culture 10.1 (2010): 13-36. Sheller, Mimi, and John Urry. "Mobile Transformations of 'Public' and 'Private' Life." Theory, Culture & Society 20.3 (2003): 107-25. Silverstone, Roger, and Leslie Haddon. "Design and the Domestication of Information and Communication Technologies: Technical Change and Everyday Life." Communication by Design: The Politics of Information and Communication Technologies. Eds. Roger Silverstone and Robin Mansell. Oxford: U of Oxford P, 1996. 44-74. Skinner, Natalie, and Barbara Pocock. "Work, Life and Workplace Culture: The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) 2008." Adelaide: The Centre for Work and Life, Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia 2008 ‹http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/cwl/default.asp›.Sorenson, Knut H., and Merete Lie. Making Technology Our Own? Domesticating Technologies into Everyday Life. Oslo: Scandinavian UP, 1996.Star, Susan L. "The Sociology of the Invisible: The Primacy of Work in the Writings of Anselm Strauss." Social Organization and Social Process: Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991. 265-83. Star, Susan L., and Anselm Strauss. "Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice: The Ecology of Visible and Invisible Work." Computer Supported Cooperative Work 8 (1999): 9-30. Strangleman, Timothy. 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The British Journal of Sociology 59.1 (2008): 59-77.Watson, Ian, John Buchanan, Iain Campbell, and Chris Briggs. Fragmented Futures: New Challenges in Working Life. Sydney: Federation P, 2003.

The Leichhardt Highway is a six hundred-kilometre stretch of sealed inland road that joins the Australian Queensland border town of Goondiwindi with the Capricorn Highway, just south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Named after the young Prussian naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt, part of this roadway follows the route his party took as they crossed northern Australia from Morton Bay (Brisbane) to Port Essington (near Darwin). Ignoring the usual colonial practice of honouring the powerful and aristocratic, Leichhardt named the noteworthy features along this route after his supporters and fellow expeditioners. Many of these names are still in use and a series of public monuments have also been erected in the intervening century and a half to commemorate this journey. Unlike Leichhardt, who survived his epic trip, some contemporary travellers who navigate the remote roadway named in his honour do not arrive at their final destinations. Memorials to these violently interrupted lives line the highway, many enigmatically located in places where there is no obvious explanation for the lethal violence that occurred there. This examination profiles 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. All humans know that death awaits them (Morell). Yet, despite this, and the unprecedented torrent of images of death and dying saturating news, television, and social media (Duwe; Sumiala; Bisceglio), Gorer’s mid-century ideas about the denial of death and Becker’s 1973 Pulitzer prize-winning description of the purpose of human civilization as a defence against this knowledge remains current in the contemporary trope that individuals (at least in the West) deny their mortality. Contributing to this enigmatic situation is how many deny the realities of aging and bodily decay—the promise of the “life extension” industries (Hall)—and are shielded from death by hospitals, palliative care providers, and the multimillion dollar funeral industry (Kiernan). Drawing on Piatti-Farnell’s concept of popular culture artefacts as “haunted/haunting” texts, the below describes how memorials to the dead can powerfully reconnect those who experience them with death’s reality, by providing an “encrypted passageway through which the dead re-join the living in a responsive cycle of exchange and experience” (Piatti-Farnell). While certainly very different to the “sublime” iconic Gothic structure, the Gothic ruin that Summers argued could be seen as “a sacred relic, a memorial, a symbol of infinite sadness, of tenderest sensibility and regret” (407), these memorials do function in both this way as melancholy/regret-inducing relics as well as in Piatti-Farnell’s sense of bringing the dead into everyday consciousness. Such memorialising activity also evokes one of Spooner’s features of the Gothic, by acknowledging “the legacies of the past and its burdens on the present” (8).Ludwig Leichhardt and His HighwayWhen Leichhardt returned to Sydney in 1846 from his 18-month journey across northern Australia, he was greeted with surprise and then acclaim. Having mounted his expedition without any backing from influential figures in the colony, his party was presumed lost only weeks after its departure. Yet, once Leichhardt and almost all his expedition returned, he was hailed “Prince of Explorers” (Erdos). When awarding him a significant purse raised by public subscription, then Speaker of the Legislative Council voiced what he believed would be the explorer’s lasting memorial —the public memory of his achievement: “the undying glory of having your name enrolled amongst those of the great men whose genius and enterprise have impelled them to seek for fame in the prosecution of geographical science” (ctd. Leichhardt 539). Despite this acclaim, Leichhardt was a controversial figure in his day; his future prestige not enhanced by his Prussian/Germanic background or his disappearance two years later attempting to cross the continent. What troubled the colonial political class, however, was his transgressive act of naming features along his route after commoners rather than the colony’s aristocrats. Today, the Leichhardt Highway closely follows Leichhardt’s 1844-45 route for some 130 kilometres from Miles, north through Wandoan to Taroom. In the first weeks of his journey, Leichhardt named 16 features in this area: 6 of the more major of these after the men in his party—including the Aboriginal man ‘Charley’ and boy John Murphy—4 more after the tradesmen and other non-aristocratic sponsors of his venture, and the remainder either in memory of the journey’s quotidian events or natural features there found. What we now accept as traditional memorialising practice could in this case be termed as Gothic, in that it upset the rational, normal order of its day, and by honouring humble shopkeepers, blacksmiths and Indigenous individuals, revealed the “disturbance and ambivalence” (Botting 4) that underlay colonial class relations (Macintyre). On 1 December 1844, Leichhardt also memorialised his own past, referencing the Gothic in naming a watercourse The Creek of the Ruined Castles due to the “high sandstone rocks, fissured and broken like pillars and walls and the high gates of the ruined castles of Germany” (57). Leichhardt also disturbed and disfigured the nature he so admired, famously carving his initials deep into trees along his route—a number of which still exist, including the so-called Leichhardt Tree, a large coolibah in Taroom’s main street. Leichhardt also wrote his own memorial, keeping detailed records of his experiences—both good and more regretful—in the form of field books, notebooks and letters, with his major volume about this expedition published in London in 1847. Leichhardt’s journey has since been memorialised in various ways along the route. The Leichhardt Tree has been further defaced with numerous plaques nailed into its ancient bark, and the town’s federal government-funded Bicentennial project raised a formal memorial—a large sandstone slab laid with three bronze plaques—in the newly-named Ludwig Leichhardt Park. Leichhardt’s name also adorns many sites both along, and outside, the routes of his expeditions. While these fittingly include natural features such as the Leichhardt River in north-west Queensland (named in 1856 by Augustus Gregory who crossed it by searching for traces of the explorer’s ill-fated 1848 expedition), there are also many businesses across Queensland and the Northern Territory less appropriately carrying his name. More somber monuments to Leichhardt’s legacy also resulted from this journey. The first of these was the white settlement that followed his declaration that the countryside he moved through was well endowed with fertile soils. With squatters and settlers moving in and land taken up before Leichhardt had even arrived back in Sydney, the local Yeeman people were displaced, mistreated and completely eradicated within a decade (Elder). Mid-twentieth century, Patrick White’s literary reincarnation, Voss of the eponymous novel, and paintings by Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker have enshrined in popular memory not only the difficult (and often described as Gothic) nature of the landscape through which Leichhardt travelled (Adams; Mollinson, and Bonham), but also the distinctive and contrary blend of intelligence, spiritual mysticism, recklessness, and stoicism Leichhardt brought to his task. Roadside Memorials Today, the Leichhardt Highway is also lined with a series of roadside shrines to those who have died much more recently. While, like centotaphs, tombstones, and cemeteries, these memorialise the dead, they differ in usually marking the exact location that death occurred. In 43 BC, Cicero articulated the idea of the dead living in memory, “The life of the dead consists in the recollection cherished of them by the living” (93), yet Nelson is one of very few contemporary writers to link roadside memorials to elements of Gothic sensibility. Such constructions can, however, be described as Gothic, in that they make the roadway unfamiliar by inscribing onto it the memory of corporeal trauma and, in the process, re-creating their locations as vivid sites of pain and suffering. These are also enigmatic sites. Traffic levels are generally low along the flat or gently undulating terrain and many of these memorials are located in locations where there is no obvious explanation for the violence that occurred there. They are loci of contradictions, in that they are both more private than other memorials, in being designed, and often made and erected, by family and friends of the deceased, and yet more public, visible to all who pass by (Campbell). Cemeteries are set apart from their surroundings; the roadside memorial is, in contrast, usually in open view along a thoroughfare. In further contrast to cemeteries, which contain many relatively standardised gravesites, individual roadside memorials encapsulate and express not only the vivid grief of family and friends but also—when they include vehicle wreckage or personal artefacts from the fatal incident—provide concrete evidence of the trauma that occurred. While the majority of individuals interned in cemeteries are long dead, roadside memorials mark relatively contemporary deaths, some so recent that there may still be tyre marks, debris and bloodstains marking the scene. In 2008, when I was regularly travelling this roadway, I documented, and researched, the six then extant memorial sites that marked the locations of ten fatalities from 1999 to 2006. (These were all still in place in mid-2014.) The fatal incidents are very diverse. While half involved trucks and/or road trains, at least three were single vehicle incidents, and the deceased ranged from 13 to 84 years of age. Excell argues that scholarship on roadside memorials should focus on “addressing the diversity of the material culture” (‘Contemporary Deathscapes’) and, in these terms, the Leichhardt Highway memorials vary from simple crosses to complex installations. All include crosses (mostly, but not exclusively, white), and almost all are inscribed with the name and birth/death dates of the deceased. Most include flowers or other plants (sometimes fresh but more often plastic), but sometimes also a range of relics from the crash and/or personal artefacts. These are, thus, unsettling sights, not least in the striking contrast they provide with the highway and surrounding road reserve. The specific location is a key component of their ability to re-sensitise viewers to the dangers of the route they are travelling. The first memorial travelling northwards, for instance, is situated at the very point at which the highway begins, some 18 kilometres from Goondiwindi. Two small white crosses decorated with plastic flowers are set poignantly close together. The inscriptions can also function as a means of mobilising connection with these dead strangers—a way of building Secomb’s “haunted community”, whereby community in the post-colonial age can only be built once past “murderous death” (131) is acknowledged. This memorial is inscribed with “Cec Hann 06 / A Good Bloke / A Good hoarseman [sic]” and “Pat Hann / A Good Woman” to tragically commemorate the deaths of an 84-year-old man and his 79-year-old wife from South Australia who died in the early afternoon of 5 June 2006 when their Ford Falcon, towing a caravan, pulled onto the highway and was hit by a prime mover pulling two trailers (Queensland Police, ‘Double Fatality’; Jones, and McColl). Further north along the highway are two memorials marking the most inexplicable of road deaths: the single vehicle fatality (Connolly, Cullen, and McTigue). Darren Ammenhauser, aged 29, is remembered with a single white cross with flowers and plaque attached to a post, inscribed hopefully, “Darren Ammenhauser 1971-2000 At Rest.” Further again, at Billa Billa Creek, a beautifully crafted metal cross attached to a fence is inscribed with the text, “Kenneth J. Forrester / RIP Jack / 21.10.25 – 27.4.05” marking the death of the 79-year-old driver whose vehicle veered off the highway to collide with a culvert on the creek. It was reported that the vehicle rolled over several times before coming to rest on its wheels and that Forrester was dead when the police arrived (Queensland Police, ‘Fatal Traffic Incident’). More complex memorials recollect both single and multiple deaths. One, set on both sides of the road, maps the physical trajectory of the fatal smash. This memorial comprises white crosses on both sides of road, attached to a tree on one side, and a number of ancillary sites including damaged tyres with crosses placed inside them on both sides of the road. Simple inscriptions relay the inability of such words to express real grief: “Gary (Gazza) Stevens / Sadly missed” and “Gary (Gazza) Stevens / Sadly missed / Forever in our hearts.” The oldest and most complex memorial on the route, commemorating the death of four individuals on 18 June 1999, is also situated on both sides of the road, marking the collision of two vehicles travelling in opposite directions. One memorial to a 62-year-old man comprises a cross with flowers, personal and automotive relics, and a plaque set inside a wooden fence and simply inscribed “John Henry Keenan / 23-11-1936–18-06-1999”. The second memorial contains three white crosses set side-by-side, together with flowers and relics, and reveals that members of three generations of the same family died at this location: “Raymond Campbell ‘Butch’ / 26-3-67–18-6-99” (32 years of age), “Lorraine Margaret Campbell ‘Lloydie’ / 29-11-46–18-6-99” (53 years), and “Raymond Jon Campbell RJ / 28-1-86–18-6-99” (13 years). The final memorial on this stretch of highway is dedicated to Jason John Zupp of Toowoomba who died two weeks before Christmas 2005. This consists of a white cross, decorated with flowers and inscribed: “Jason John Zupp / Loved & missed by all”—a phrase echoed in his newspaper obituary. The police media statement noted that, “at 11.24pm a prime mover carrying four empty trailers [stacked two high] has rolled on the Leichhardt Highway 17km north of Taroom” (Queensland Police, ‘Fatal Truck Accident’). The roadside memorial was placed alongside a ditch on a straight stretch of road where the body was found. The coroner’s report adds the following chilling information: “Mr Zupp was thrown out of the cabin and his body was found near the cabin. There is no evidence whatsoever that he had applied the brakes or in any way tried to prevent the crash … Jason was not wearing his seatbelt” (Cornack 5, 6). Cornack also remarked the truck was over length, the brakes had not been properly adjusted, and the trip that Zupp had undertaken could not been lawfully completed according to fatigue management regulations then in place (8). Although poignant and highly visible due to these memorials, these deaths form a small part of Australia’s road toll, and underscore our ambivalent relationship with the automobile, where road death is accepted as a necessary side-effect of the freedom of movement the technology offers (Ladd). These memorials thus animate highways as Gothic landscapes due to the “multifaceted” (Haider 56) nature of the fear, terror and horror their acknowledgement can bring. Since 1981, there have been, for instance, between some 1,600 and 3,300 road deaths each year in Australia and, while there is evidence of a long term downward trend, the number of deaths per annum has not changed markedly since 1991 (DITRDLG 1, 2), and has risen in some years since then. The U.S.A. marked its millionth road death in 1951 (Ladd) along the way to over 3,000,000 during the 20th century (Advocates). These deaths are far reaching, with U.K. research suggesting that each death there leaves an average of 6 people significantly affected, and that there are some 10 to 20 per cent of mourners who experience more complicated grief and longer term negative affects during this difficult time (‘Pathways Through Grief’). As the placing of roadside memorials has become a common occurrence the world over (Klaassens, Groote, and Vanclay; Grider; Cohen), these are now considered, in MacConville’s opinion, not only “an appropriate, but also an expected response to tragedy”. Hockey and Draper have explored the therapeutic value of the maintenance of “‘continuing bonds’ between the living and the dead” (3). This is, however, only one explanation for the reasons that individuals erect roadside memorials with research suggesting roadside memorials perform two main purposes in their linking of the past with the present—as not only sites of grieving and remembrance, but also of warning (Hartig, and Dunn; Everett; Excell, Roadside Memorials; MacConville). Clark adds that by “localis[ing] and personalis[ing] the road dead,” roadside memorials raise the profile of road trauma by connecting the emotionless statistics of road death directly to individual tragedy. They, thus, transform the highway into not only into a site of past horror, but one in which pain and terror could still happen, and happen at any moment. Despite their increasing commonality and their recognition as cultural artefacts, these memorials thus occupy “an uncomfortable place” both in terms of public policy and for some individuals (Lowe). While in some states of the U.S.A. and in Ireland the erection of such memorials is facilitated by local authorities as components of road safety campaigns, in the U.K. there appears to be “a growing official opposition to the erection of memorials” (MacConville). Criticism has focused on the dangers (of distraction and obstruction) these structures pose to passing traffic and pedestrians, while others protest their erection on aesthetic grounds and even claim memorials can lower property values (Everett). While many ascertain a sense of hope and purpose in the physical act of creating such shrines (see, for instance, Grider; Davies), they form an uncanny presence along the highway and can provide dangerous psychological territory for the viewer (Brien). Alongside the townships, tourist sites, motels, and petrol stations vying to attract customers, they stain the roadway with the unmistakable sign that a violent death has happened—bringing death, and the dead, to the fore as a component of these journeys, and destabilising prominent cultural narratives of technological progress and safety (Richter, Barach, Ben-Michael, and Berman).Conclusion This investigation has followed Goddu who proposes that a Gothic text “registers its culture’s contradictions” (3) and, in profiling these memorials as “intimately connected to the culture that produces them” (Goddu 3) has proposed memorials as Gothic artefacts that can both disturb and reveal. Roadside memorials are, indeed, so loaded with emotional content that their close contemplation can be traumatising (Brien), yet they are inescapable while navigating the roadway. Part of their power resides in their ability to re-animate those persons killed in these violent in the minds of those viewing these memorials. In this way, these individuals are reincarnated as ghostly presences along the highway, forming channels via which the traveller can not only make human contact with the dead, but also come to recognise and ponder their own sense of mortality. While roadside memorials are thus like civic war memorials in bringing untimely death to the forefront of public view, roadside memorials provide a much more raw expression of the chaotic, anarchic and traumatic moment that separates the world of the living from that of the dead. While traditional memorials—such as those dedicated by, and to, Leichhardt—moreover, pay homage to the vitality of the lives of those they commemorate, roadside memorials not only acknowledge the alarming circumstances of unexpected death but also stand testament to the power of the paradox of the incontrovertibility of sudden death versus our lack of ability to postpone it. In this way, further research into these and other examples of Gothic memorialising practice has much to offer various areas of cultural study in Australia.ReferencesAdams, Brian. Sidney Nolan: Such Is Life. Hawthorn, Vic.: Hutchinson, 1987. Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. “Motor Vehicle Traffic Fatalities & Fatality Rate: 1899-2003.” 2004. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. Bisceglio, Paul. “How Social Media Is Changing the Way We Approach Death.” The Atlantic 20 Aug. 2013. Botting, Fred. Gothic: The New Critical Idiom. 2nd edition. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014. 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IntroductionThe 2009 American film Trash Humpers, directed by Harmony Korine, was released at a time when the hipster had become a ubiquitous concept, entering into the common vernacular of numerous cultures throughout the world, and gaining significant press, social media and academic attention (see Žižek; Arsel and Thompson; Greif et al.; Stahl; Ouellette; Reeve; Schiermer; Maly and Varis). Trash Humpers emerged soon after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis triggered Occupy movements in numerous cities, aided by social media platforms, reported on by blogs such as Gawker, and stylized by multi-national youth-subculture brands such as Vice, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and a plethora of localised variants.Korine’s film, which is made to resemble found VHS footage of old-aged vandals, epitomises the ironic, retro stylizations and “counterculture-meets-kitsch” aesthetics so familiar to hipster culture. As a creative stereotype from 1940s and ‘50s jazz and beatnik subcultures, the hipster re-emerged in the twenty-first century as a negative embodiment of alternative culture in the age of the Internet. As well as plumbing the recent past for things not yet incorporated into contemporary marketing mechanisms, the hipster also signifies the blurring of irony and authenticity. Such “outsiderness as insiderness” postures can be regarded as a continuation of the marginality-from-the-centre logic of cool capitalism that emerged after World War Two. Particularly between 2007 and 2015, the post-postmodern concept of the hipster was a resonant cultural trope in Western and non-Western cultures alike, coinciding with the normalisation of the new digital terrain and the establishment of mobile social media as an integral aspect of many people’s daily lives. While Korine’s 79-minute feature could be thought of as following in the schlocky footsteps of the likes of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2006), it is decidedly more arthouse, and more attuned to the influence of contemporary alternative media brands and independent film history alike – as if the love child of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) and Vice Video, the latter having been labelled as “devil-may-care hipsterism” (Carr). Upon release, Trash Humpers was described by Gene McHugh as “a mildly hip take on Jackass”; by Mike D’Angelo as “an empty hipster pose”; and by Aaron Hillis as either “the work of an insincere hipster or an eccentric provocateur”. Lacking any semblance of a conventional plot, Trash Humpers essentially revolves around four elderly-looking protagonists – three men and a woman – who document themselves with a low-quality video camera as they go about behaving badly in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, where Korine still lives. They cackle eerily to themselves as they try to stave off boredom, masturbating frantically on rubbish bins, defecating and drinking alcohol in public, fellating foliage, smashing televisions, playing ten-pin bowling, lighting firecrackers and telling gay “hate” jokes to camera with no punchlines. In one purposefully undramatic scene half-way through the film, the humpers are shown in the aftermath of an attack on a man wearing a French maid’s outfit; he lies dead in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor with a hammer at his feet. The humpers are consummate “bad” performers in every sense of the term, and they are joined by a range of other, apparently lower-class, misfits with whom they stage tap dance routines and repetitively sing nursery-rhyme-styled raps such as: “make it, make it, don’t break it; make it, make it, don’t fake it; make it, make it, don’t take it”, which acts as a surrogate theme song for the film. Korine sometimes depicts his main characters on crutches or in a wheelchair, and a baby doll is never too far away from the action, as a silent and Surrealist witness to their weird, sinister and sometimes very funny exploits. The film cuts from scene to scene as if edited on a video recorder, utilising in-house VHS titling sequences, audio glitches and video static to create the sense that one is engaging voyeuristically with a found video document rather than a scripted movie. Mainstream AlternativesAs a viewer of Trash Humpers, one has to try hard to suspend disbelief if one is to see the humpers as genuine geriatric peeping Toms rather than as hipsters in old-man masks trying to be rebellious. However, as Korine’s earlier films such as Gummo (1997) attest, he clearly delights in blurring the line between failure and transcendence, or, in this case, between pretentious art-school bravado and authentic redneck ennui. As noted in a review by Jeannette Catsoulis, writing for the New York Times: “Much of this is just so much juvenile posturing, but every so often the screen freezes into something approximating beauty: a blurry, spaced-out, yellow-green landscape, as alien as an ancient photograph”. Korine has made a career out of generating this wavering uncertainty in his work, polarising audiences with a mix of critical, cinema-verité styles and cynical exploitations. His work has consistently revelled in ethical ambiguities, creating environments where teenagers take Ritalin for kicks, kill cats, wage war with their families and engage in acts of sexual deviancy – all of which are depicted with a photographer’s eye for the uncanny.The elusive and contradictory aspects of Korine’s work – at once ugly and beautiful, abstract and commercial, pessimistic and nostalgic – are evident not just in films such as Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy (1999) and Mister Lonely (2007) but also in his screenplay for Kids (1995), his performance-like appearances on The Tonight Show with David Letterman (1993-2015) and in publications such as A Crackup at the Race Riots (1998) and Pass the Bitch Chicken (2001). As well as these outputs, Korine is also a painter who is represented by Gagosian Gallery – one of the world’s leading art galleries – and he has directed numerous music videos, documentaries and commercials throughout his career. More than just update of the traditional figure of the auteur, Korine, instead, resembles a contemporary media artist whose avant-garde and grotesque treatments of Americana permeate almost everything he does. Korine wrote the screenplay for Kids when he was just 19, and subsequently built his reputation on the paradoxical mainstreaming of alternative culture in the 1990s. This is exemplified by the establishment of music and film genres such “alternative” and “independent”; the popularity of the slacker ethos attributed to Generation X; the increased visibility of alternative press zines; the birth of grunge in fashion and music; and the coining of “cool hunting” – a bottom-up market research phenomenon that aimed to discover new trends in urban subcultures for the purpose of mass marketing. Key to “alternative culture”, and its related categories such as “indie” and “arthouse”, is the idea of evoking artistic authenticity while covertly maintaining a parasitic relationship with the mainstream. As Holly Kruse notes in her account of the indie music scenes of the 1990s, which gained tremendous popularity in the wake of grunge bands such as Nirvana: without dominant, mainstream musics against which to react, independent music cannot be independent. Its existence depends upon dominant music structures and practices against which to define itself. Indie music has therefore been continually engaged in an economic and ideological struggle in which its ‘outsider’ status is re-examined, re-defined, and re-articulated to sets of musical practices. (Kruse 149)Alternative culture follows a similar, highly contentious, logic, appearing as a nebulous, authentic and artistic “other” whose exponents risk being entirely defined by the mainstream markets they profess to oppose. Kids was directed by the artist cum indie-director Larry Clark, who discovered Korine riding his skateboard with a group of friends in New York’s Washington Square in the early 1990s, before commissioning him to write a script. The then subcultural community of skating – which gained prominence in the 1990s amidst the increased visibility of “alternative sports” – provides an important backdrop to the film, which documents a group of disaffected New York teenagers at a time of the Aids crisis in America. Korine has been active in promoting the DIY ethos, creativity and anti-authoritarian branding of skate culture since this time – an industry that, in its attempts to maintain a non-mainstream profile while also being highly branded, has become emblematic of the category of “alternative culture”. Korine has undertaken commercial projects with an array skate-wear brands, but he is particularly associated with Supreme, a so-called “guerrilla fashion” label originating in 1994 that credits Clark and other 1990s indie darlings, and Korine cohorts, Chloë Sevigny and Terry Richardson, as former models and collaborators (Williams). The company is well known for its designer skateboard decks, its collaborations with prominent contemporary visual artists, its hip-hop branding and “inscrutable” web videos. It is also well known for its limited runs of new clothing lines, which help to stoke demand through one-offs – blending street-wear accessibility with the restricted-market and anti-authoritarian sensibility of avant-garde art.Of course, “alternative culture” poses a notorious conundrum for analysis, involving highly subjective demarcations of “mainstream” from “subversive” culture, not to mention “genuine subversion” from mere “corporate alternatives”. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, the roots of alternative culture lie in the Western tradition of the avant-garde and the “aesthetic gaze” that developed in the nineteenth century (Field 36). In analysing the modernist notion of advanced cultural practice – where art is presented as an alternative to bourgeois academic taste and to the common realm of cultural commodities – Bourdieu proposed a distinction between two types of “fields”, or logics of cultural production. Alternative culture follows what Bourdieu called “the field of restricted production”, which adheres to “art for art’s sake” ideals, where audiences are targeted as if like-minded peers (Field 50). In contrast, the “field of large-scale production” reflects the commercial imperatives of mainstream culture, in which goods are produced for the general public at large. The latter field of large-scale production tends to service pre-established markets, operating in response to public demand. Furthermore, whereas success in the field of restricted production is often indirect, and latent – involving artists who create niche markets without making any concessions to those markets – success in the field of large-scale production is typically more immediate and quantifiable (Field 39). Here we can see that central to the branding of “alternative culture” is the perceived refusal to conform to popular taste and the logic of capitalism more generally is. As Supreme founder James Jebbia stated about his brand in a rare interview: “The less known the better” (Williams). On this, Bourdieu states that, in the field of restricted production, the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies are inversed to create a “loser wins” scenario (Field 39). Profit and cultural esteem become detrimental attributes in this context, potentially tainting the integrity and marginalisation on which alternative products depend. As one ironic hipster t-shirt puts it: “Nothing is any good if other people like it” (Diesel Sweeties).Trash HipstersIn abandoning linear narrative for rough assemblages of vignettes – or “moments” – recorded with an unsteady handheld camera, Trash Humpers positions itself in ironic opposition to mainstream filmmaking, refusing the narrative arcs and unwritten rules of Hollywood film, save for its opening and closing credits. Given Korine’s much publicized appreciation of cinema pioneers, we can understand Trash Humpers as paying homage to independent and DIY film history, including Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton (1973), Andy Warhol’s and Paul Morrissey’s Lonesome Cowboys (1967) and Trash (1970), and John Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1972), all of which jubilantly embraced the “bad” aesthetic of home movies. Posed as fantasized substitutions for mainstream movie-making, such works were also underwritten by the legitimacy of camp as a form of counter-culture critique, blurring parody and documentary to give voice to an array of non-mainstream and counter-cultural identities. The employment of camp in postmodern culture became known not merely as an aesthetic subversion of cultural mores but also as “a gesture of self-legitimation” (Derrida 290), its “failed seriousness” regarded as a critical response to the specific historical problem of being a “culturally over-saturated” subject (Sontag 288).The significant difference between Korine’s film and those of his 1970s-era forbears is precisely the attention he pays to the formal aspects of his medium, revelling in analogue editing glitches to the point of fetishism, in some cases lasting as long as the scenes themselves. Consciously working out-of-step with the media of his day, Trash Humpers in imbued with nostalgia from its very beginning. Whereas Smith, Eggleston, Warhol, Morrissey and Waters blurred fantasy and documentary in ways that raised the social and political identities of their subjects, Korine seems much more interested in “trash” as an aesthetic trope. In following this interest, he rightfully pays homage to the tropes of queer cinema, however, he conveniently leaves behind their underlying commentaries about (hetero-) normative culture. A sequence where the trash humpers visit a whorehouse and amuse themselves by smoking cigars and slapping the ample bottoms of prostitutes in G-strings confirms the heterosexual tenor of the film, which is reiterated throughout by numerous deadpan gay jokes and slurs.Trash Humpers can be understood precisely in terms of Korine’s desire to maintain the aesthetic imperatives of alternative culture, where formal experimentation and the subverting of mainstream genres can provide a certain amount of freedom from explicated meaning, and, in particular, from socio-political commentary. Bourdieu rightly points out how the pleasures of the aesthetic gaze often manifest themselves curiously as form of “deferred pleasure” (353) or “pleasure without enjoyment” (495), which corresponds to Immanuel Kant’s notion of the disinterested nature of aesthetic judgement. Aesthetic dispositions posed in the negative – as in the avant-garde artists who mined primitive and ugly cultural stereotypes – typically use as reference points “facile” or “vulgar” (393) working-class tropes that refer negatively to sensuous pleasure as their major criterion of judgment. For Bourdieu, the pleasures provided by the aesthetic gaze in such instances are not sensual pleasures so much as the pleasures of social distinction – signifying the author’s distance from taste as a form of gratification. Here, it is easy to see how the orgiastic central characters in Trash Humpers might be employed by Korine for a similar end-result. As noted by Jeremiah Kipp in a review of the film: “You don't ‘like’ a movie like Trash Humpers, but I’m very happy such films exist”. Propelled by aesthetic, rather than by social, questions of value, those that “get” the obscure works of alternative culture have a tendency to legitimize them on the basis of the high-degree of formal analysis skills they require. For Bourdieu, this obscures the fact that one’s aesthetic “‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by education” – a privileged mode of looking, estranged from those unfamiliar with the internal logic of decoding presupposed by the very notion of “aesthetic enjoyment” (2).The rhetorical priority of alternative culture is, in Bourdieu’s terms, the “autonomous” perfection of the form rather than the “heteronomous” attempt to monopolise on it (Field 40). However, such distinctions are, in actuality, more nuanced than Bourdieu sometimes assumed. This is especially true in the context of global digital culture, which makes explicit how the same cultural signs can have vastly different meanings and motivations across different social contexts. This has arguably resulted in the destabilisation of prescriptive analyses of cultural taste, and has contributed to recent “post-critical” advances, in which academics such as Bruno Latour and Rita Felski advocate for cultural analyses and practices that promote relationality and attachment rather than suspicious (critical) dispositions towards marginal and popular subjects alike. Latour’s call for a move away from the “sledge hammer” of critique applies as much to cultural practice as it does to written analysis. Rather than maintaining hierarchical oppositions between authentic versus inauthentic taste, Latour understands culture – and the material world more generally – as having agency alongside, and with, that of the social world.Hipsters with No AlternativeIf, as Karl Spracklen suggests, alternativism is thought of “as a political project of resistance to capitalism, with communicative oppositionality as its defining feature” (254), it is clear that there has been a progressive waning in relevance of the category of “alternative culture” in the age of the Internet, which coincides with the triumph of so-called “neoliberal individualism” (258). To this end, Korine has lost some of his artistic credibility over the course of the 2000s. If viewed negatively, icons of 1990s alternative culture such as Korine can be seen as merely exploiting Dada-like techniques of mimetic exacerbation and symbolic détournement for the purpose of alternative, “arty” branding rather than pertaining to a counter-hegemonic cultural movement (Foster 31). It is within this context of heightened scepticism surrounding alternative culture that the hipster stereotype emerged in cultures throughout the world, as if a contested symbol of the aesthetic gaze in an era of neoliberal identity politics. Whatever the psychological motivations underpinning one’s use of the term, to call someone a hipster is typically to point out that their distinctive alternative or “arty” status appears overstated; their creative decisions considered as if a type of bathos. For detractors of alternative cultural producers such as Korine, he is trying too hard to be different, using the stylised codes of “alternative” to conceal what is essentially his cultural and political immaturity. The hipster – who is rarely ever self-identified – re-emerged in the 2000s to operate as a scapegoat for inauthentic markers of alternative culture, associated with men and women who appear to embrace Realpolitik, sincerity and authentic expressions of identity while remaining tethered to irony, autonomous aesthetics and self-design. Perhaps the real irony of the hipster is the pervasiveness of irony in contemporary culture. R. J Magill Jnr. has argued that “a certain cultural bitterness legitimated through trenchant disbelief” (xi) has come to define the dominant mode of political engagement in many societies since the early 2000s, in response to mass digital information, twenty-four-hour news cycles, and the climate of suspicion produced by information about terrorism threats. He analyses the prominence of political irony in American TV shows including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Simpsons, South Park, The Chappelle Show and The Colbert Report but he also notes its pervasiveness as a twenty-first-century worldview – a distancing that “paradoxically and secretly preserves the ideals of sincerity, honesty and authenticity by momentarily belying its own appearance” (x). Crucially, then, the utterance “hipster” has come to signify instances when irony and aesthetic distance are perceived to have been taken too far, generating the most disdain from those for whom irony, aesthetic discernment and cultural connoisseurship still provide much-needed moments of disconnection from capitalist cultures drowning in commercial hyperbole and grave news hype. Korine himself has acknowledged that Spring Breakers (2013) – his follow-up feature film to Trash Humpers – was created in response to the notion that “alternative culture”, once a legitimate challenge to mainstream taste, had lost its oppositional power with the decentralization of digital culture. He states that he made Spring Breakers at a moment “when there’s no such thing as high or low, it’s all been exploded. There is no underground or above-ground, there’s nothing that’s alternative. We’re at a point of post-everything, so it’s all about finding the spirit inside, and the logic, and making your own connections” (Hawker). In this context, we can understand Trash Humpers as the last of the Korine films to be branded with the authenticity of alternative culture. In Spring Breakers Korine moved from the gritty low-fi sensibility of his previous films and adopted a more digital, light-filled and pastel-coloured palette. Focussing more conventionally on plot than ever before, Spring Breakers follows four college girls who hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation. Critic Michael Chaiken noted that the film marks a shift in Korine’s career, from the alternative stylings of the pre-Internet generation to “the cultural heirs [of] the doomed protagonists of Kids: nineties babies, who grew up with the Internet, whose sensibilities have been shaped by the sweeping technological changes that have taken place in the interval between the Clinton and Obama eras” (33).By the end of the 2000s, an entire generation came of age having not experienced a time when the obscure films, music or art of the past took more effort to track down. Having been a key participant in the branding of alternative culture, Korine is in a good position to recall a different, pre-YouTube time – when cultural discernment was still caught up in the authenticity of artistic identity, and when one’s cultural tastes could still operate with a certain amount of freedom from sociological scrutiny. Such ideas seem a long way away from today’s cultural environments, which have been shaped not only by digital media’s promotion of cultural interconnection and mass information, but also by social media’s emphasis on mobilization and ethical awareness. ConclusionI should reiterate here that is not Korine’s lack of seriousness, or irony, alone that marks Trash Humpers as a response to the scepticism surrounding alternative culture symbolised by the figure of the hipster. It is, rather, that Korine’s mock-documentary about juvenile geriatrics works too hard to obscure its implicit social commentary, appearing driven to condemn contemporary capitalism’s exploitations of youthfulness only to divert such “uncool” critical commentaries through unsubtle formal distractions, visual poetics and “bad boy” avant-garde signifiers of authenticity. Before being bludgeoned to death, the unnamed man in the French maid’s outfit recites a poem on a bridge amidst a barrage of fire crackers let off by a nearby humper in a wheelchair. Although easily overlooked, it could, in fact, be a pivotal scene in the film. Spoken with mock high-art pretentions, the final lines of the poem are: So what? Why, I ask, why? Why castigate these creatures whose angelic features are bumping and grinding on trash? Are they not spawned by our greed? Are they not our true seed? Are they not what we’ve bought for our cash? We’ve created this lot, of the ooze and the rot, deliberately and unabashed. Whose orgiastic elation and one mission in creation is to savagely fornicate TRASH!Here, the character’s warning of capitalist overabundance is drowned out by the (aesthetic) shocks of the fire crackers, just as the stereotypical hipster’s ethical ideals are drowned out by their aesthetic excess. The scene also functions as a metaphor for the humpers themselves, whose elderly masks – embodiments of nostalgia – temporarily suspend their real socio-political identities for the sake of role-play. It is in this sense that Trash Humpers is too enamoured with its own artifices – including its anonymous “boys club” mentality – to suggest anything other than the aesthetic distance that has come to mark the failings of the “alternative culture” category. In such instances, alternative taste appears as a rhetorical posture, with Korine asking us to gawk knowingly at the hedonistic and destructive pleasures pursued by the humpers while factoring in, and accepting, our likely disapproval.ReferencesArsel, Zeynep, and Craig J. Thompson. “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Marketplace Myths.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.5 (2011): 791-806.Bourdieu, Pierre. 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Introduction The recent AOL/Time-Warner merger invites us to re-think the relationships amongst content producers, distributors, and audiences. Worth an estimated $300 billion (US), the largest Internet transaction of all time, the deal is 45 times larger than the AOL/Netscape merger of November 1998 (Ledbetter). Additionally, the Time Warner/EMI merger, which followed hard on the heels of the AOL/Time-Warner deal and is itself worth $28 billion (US), created the largest content rights organisation in the music industry. The joining of the Internet giant (AOL) with what was already the world's largest media corporation (Time-Warner-EMI) has inspired some exuberant reactions. An Infoworld column proclaimed: The AOL/Time-Warner merger signals the demise of traditional media companies and the ascendancy of 'new economy' media companies that will force any industry hesitant to adopt a complete electronic-commerce strategy to rethink and put itself on Internet time. (Saap & Schwarrtz) This comment identifies the distribution channel as the dominant component of the "new economy" media. But this might not really be much of an innovation. Indeed, the assumption of all industry observers is that Time-Warner will provide broadband distribution (through its extensive cable holdings) as well as proprietary content for AOL. It is also expected that Time-Warner will adopt AOL's strategy of seeking sponsorship for development projects as well as for content. However, both of these phenomena -- merger and sponsorship -- are at least as old as radio. It seems that the Internet is merely repeating an old industrial strategy. Nonetheless, one important difference distinguishes the Internet from earlier media: its characterisation of the audience. Internet companies such as AOL and Microsoft tend towards a simple and simplistic media- centred view of the audience as market. I will show, however, that as the Internet assumes more of the traditional mass media functions, it will be forced to adopt a more sophisticated notion of the mass audience. Indeed, the Internet is currently the site in which audience definitions borrowed from broadcasting are encountering and merging with definitions borrowed from marketing. The Internet apparently lends itself to both models. As a result, definitions of what the Internet does or is, and of how we should understand the audience, are suitably confused and opaque. And the behaviour of big Internet players, such as AOL and MSN, perfectly reflects this confusion as they seem to careen between a view of the Internet as the new television and a contrasting view of the Internet as the new shopping mall. Meanwhile, Internet users move in ways that most observers fail to capture. For example, Baran and Davis characterise mass communication as a process involving (1) an organized sender, (2) engaged in the distribution of messages, (3) directed toward a large audience. They argue that broadcasting fits this model whereas a LISTSERV does not because, even though the LISTSERV may have very many subscribers, its content is filtered through a single person or Webmaster. But why is the Webmaster suddenly more determining than a network programmer or magazine editor? The distinction seems to grow out of the Internet's technological characteristics: it is an interactive pipeline, therefore its use necessarily excludes the possibility of "broadcasting" which in turn causes us to reject "traditional" notions of the audience. However, if a media organisation were to establish an AOL discussion group in order to promote Warner TV shows, for example, would not the resulting communication suddenly fall under the definition as set out by Baran and Davis? It was precisely the confusion around such definitions that caused the CRTC (Canada's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator) to hold hearings in 1999 to determine what kind of medium the Internet is. Unlike traditional broadcasting, Internet communication does indeed include the possibility of interactivity and niche communities. In this sense, it is closer to narrowcasting than to broadcasting even while maintaining the possibility of broadcasting. Hence, the nature of the audience using the Internet quickly becomes muddy. While such muddiness might have led us to sharpen our definitions of the audience, it seems instead to have led many to focus on the medium itself. For example, Morris & Ogan define the Internet as a mass medium because it addresses a mass audience mediated through technology (Morris & Ogan 39). They divide producers and audiences on the Internet into four groups: One-to-one asynchronous communication (e-mail); Many-to-many asynchronous communication (Usenet and News Groups); One-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many synchronous communication (topic groups, construction of an object, role-playing games, IRC chats, chat rooms); Asynchronous communication (searches, many-to-one, one-to-one, one to- many, source-receiver relations (Morris & Ogan 42-3) Thus, some Internet communication qualifies as mass communication while some does not. However, the focus remains firmly anchored on either the sender or the medium because the receiver --the audience -- is apparently too slippery to define. When definitions do address the content distributed over the Net, they make a distinction between passive reception and interactive participation. As the World Wide Web makes pre-packaged content the norm, the Internet increasingly resembles a traditional mass medium. Timothy Roscoe argues that the main focus of the World Wide Web is not the production of content (and, hence, the fulfilment of the Internet's democratic potential) but rather the presentation of already produced material: "the dominant activity in relation to the Web is not producing your own content but surfing for content" (Rosco 680). He concludes that if the emphasis is on viewing material, the Internet will become a medium similar to television. Within media studies, several models of the audience compete for dominance in the "new media" economy. Denis McQuail recalls how historically, the electronic media furthered the view of the audience as a "public". The audience was an aggregate of common interests. With broadcasting, the electronic audience was delocalised and socially decomposed (McQuail, Mass 212). According to McQuail, it was not a great step to move from understanding the audience as a dispersed "public" to thinking about the audience as itself a market, both for products and as a commodity to be sold to advertisers. McQuail defines this conception of the audience as an "aggregate of potential customers with a known social- economic profile at which a medium or message is directed" (McQuail, Mass 221). Oddly though, in light of the emancipatory claims made for the Internet, this is precisely the dominant view of the audience in the "new media economy". Media Audience as Market How does the marketing model characterise the relationship between audience and producer? According to McQuail, the marketing model links sender and receiver in a cash transaction between producer and consumer rather than in a communicative relationship between equal interlocutors. Such a model ignores the relationships amongst consumers. Indeed, neither the effectiveness of the communication nor the quality of the communicative experience matters. This model, explicitly calculating and implicitly manipulative, is characteristically a "view from the media" (McQuail, Audience 9). Some scholars, when discussing new media, no longer even refer to audiences. They speak of users or consumers (Pavick & Dennis). The logic of the marketing model lies in the changing revenue base for media industries. Advertising-supported media revenues have been dropping since the early 1990s while user-supported media such as cable, satellite, online services, and pay-per-view, have been steadily growing (Pavlik & Dennis 19). In the Internet-based media landscape, the audience is a revenue stream and a source of consumer information. As Bill Gates says, it is all about "eyeballs". In keeping with this view, AOL hopes to attract consumers with its "one-stop shopping and billing". And Internet providers such as MSN do not even consider their subscribers as "audiences". Instead, they work from a consumer model derived from the computer software industry: individuals make purchases without the seller providing content or thematising the likely use of the software. The analogy extends well beyond the transactional moment. The common practice of prototyping products and beta-testing software requires the participation of potential customers in the product development cycle not as a potential audience sharing meanings but as recalcitrant individuals able to uncover bugs. Hence, media companies like MTV now use the Internet as a source of sophisticated demographic research. Recently, MTV Asia established a Website as a marketing tool to collect preferences and audience profiles (Slater 50). The MTV audience is now part of the product development cycle. Another method for getting information involves the "cookie" file that automatically provides a Website with information about the user who logs on to a site (Pavick & Dennis). Simultaneously, though, both Microsoft and AOL have consciously shifted from user-subscription revenues to advertising in an effort to make online services more like television (Gomery; Darlin). For example, AOL has long tried to produce content through its own studios to generate sufficiently heavy traffic on its Internet service in order to garner profitable advertising fees (Young). However, AOL and Microsoft have had little success in providing content (Krantz; Manes). In fact, faced with the AOL/Time-Warner merger, Microsoft declared that it was in the software rather than the content business (Trott). In short, they are caught between a broadcasting model and a consumer model and their behaviour is characteristically erratic. Similarly, media companies such as Time-Warner have failed to establish their own portals. Indeed, Time-Warner even abandoned attempts to create large Websites to compete with other Internet services when it shut down its Pathfinder site (Egan). Instead it refocussed its Websites so as to blur the line between pitching products and covering them (Reid; Lyons). Since one strategy for gaining large audiences is the creation of portals - - large Websites that keep surfers within the confines of a single company's site by providing content -- this is the logic behind the AOL/Time-Warner merger though both companies have clearly been unsuccessful at precisely such attempts. AOL seems to hope that Time- Warner will act as its content specialist, providing the type of compelling material that will make users want to use AOL, whereas Time- Warner seems to hope that AOL will become its privileged pipeline to the hearts and minds of untold millions. Neither has a coherent view of the audience, how it behaves, or should behave. Consequently, their efforts have a distinctly "unmanaged" and slighly inexplicable air to them, as though everyone were simultaneously hopeful and clueless. While one might argue that the stage is set to capitalise on the audience as commodity, there are indications that the success of such an approach is far from guaranteed. First, the AOL/Time-Warner/EMI transaction, merely by existing, has sparked conflicts over proprietary rights. For example, the Recording Industry Association of America, representing Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI, recently launched a $6.8 billion lawsuit against MP3.com -- an AOL subsidiary -- for alleged copyright violations. Specifically, MP3.com is being sued for selling digitized music over the Internet without paying royalties to the record companies (Anderson). A similar lawsuit has recently been launched over the issue of re- broadcasting television programs over the Internet. The major US networks have joined together against Canadian Internet company iCravetv for the unlawful distribution of content. Both the iCravetv and the MP3.com cases show how dominant media players can marshal their forces to protect proprietary rights in both content and distribution. Since software and media industries have failed to recreate the Internet in the image of traditional broadcasting, the merger of the dominant players in each industry makes sense. However, their simultaneous failure to secure proprietary rights reflects both the competitive nature of the "new media economy" and the weakness of the marketing view of the audience. Media Audience as Public It is often said that communication produces social cohesion. From such cohesion communities emerge on which political or social orders can be constructed. The power of social cohesion and attachment to group symbols can even create a sense of belonging to a "people" or nation (Deutsch). Sociologist Daniel Bell described how the mass media helped create an American culture simply by addressing a large enough audience. He suggested that on the evening of 7 March 1955, when one out of every two Americans could see Mary Martin as Peter Pan on television, a kind of social revolution occurred and a new American public was born. "It was the first time in history that a single individual was seen and heard at the same time by such a broad public" (Bell, quoted in Mattelart 72). One could easily substitute the 1953 World Series or the birth of little Ricky on I Love Lucy. The desire to document such a process recurs with the Internet. Internet communities are based on the assumption that a common experience "creates" group cohesion (Rheingold; Jones). However, as a mass medium, the Internet has yet to find its originary moment, that event to which all could credibly point as the birth of something genuine and meaningful. A recent contender was the appearance of Paul McCartney at the refurbished Cavern Club in Liverpool. On Tuesday, 14 December 1999, McCartney played to a packed club of 300 fans, while another 150,000 watched on an outdoor screen nearby. MSN arranged to broadcast the concert live over the Internet. It advertised an anticipated global audience of 500 million. Unfortunately, there was such heavy Internet traffic that the system was unable to accommodate more than 3 million people. Servers in the United Kingdom were so congested that many could only watch the choppy video stream via an American link. The concert raises a number of questions about "virtual" events. We can draw several conclusions about measuring Internet audiences. While 3 million is a sizeable audience for a 20 minute transmission, by advertising a potential audience of 500 million, MSN showed remarkably poor judgment of its inherent appeal. The Internet is the first medium that allows access to unprocessed material or information about events to be delivered to an audience with neither the time constraints of broadcast media nor the space limitations of the traditional press. This is often cited as one of the characteristics that sets the Internet apart from other media. This feeds the idea of the Internet audience as a participatory, democratic public. For example, it is often claimed that the Internet can foster democratic participation by providing voters with uninterpreted information about candidates and issues (Selnow). However, as James Curran argues, the very process of distributing uninterrupted, unfiltered information, at least in the case of traditional mass media, represents an abdication of a central democratic function -- that of watchdog to power (Curran). In the end, publics are created and maintained through active and continuous participation on the part of communicators and audiences. The Internet holds together potentially conflicting communicative relationships within the same technological medium (Merrill & Ogan). Viewing the audience as co-participant in a communicative relationship makes more sense than simply focussing on the Internet audience as either an aggregate of consumers or a passively constructed symbolic public. Audience as Relationship Many scholars have shifted attention from the producer to the audience as an active participant in the communication process (Ang; McQuail, Audience). Virginia Nightingale goes further to describe the audience as part of a communicative relationship. Nightingale identifies four factors in the relationship between audiences and producers that emphasize their co-dependency. The audience and producer are engaged in a symbiotic relationship in which consumption and use are necessary but not sufficient explanations of audience relations. The notion of the audience invokes, at least potentially, a greater range of activities than simply use or consumption. Further, the audience actively, if not always consciously, enters relationships with content producers and the institutions that govern the creation, distribution and exhibition of content (Nightingale 149-50). Others have demonstrated how this relationship between audiences and producers is no longer the one-sided affair characterised by the marketing model or the model of the audience as public. A global culture is emerging based on critical viewing skills. Kavoori calls this a reflexive mode born of an increasing familiarity with the narrative conventions of news and an awareness of the institutional imperatives of media industries (Kavoori). Given the sophistication of the emergent global audience, a theory that reduces new media audiences to a set of consumer preferences or behaviours will inevitably prove inadequate, just as it has for understanding audience behavior in old media. Similarly, by ignoring those elements of audience behavior that will be easily transported to the Web, we run the risk of idealising the Internet as a medium that will create an illusory, pre-technological public. Conclusion There is an understandable confusion between the two models of the audience that appear in the examples above. The "new economy" will have to come to terms with sophisticated audiences. Contrary to IBM's claim that they want to "get to know all about you", Internet users do not seem particularly interested in becoming a perpetual source of market information. The fragmented, autonomous audience resists attempts to lock it into proprietary relationships. Internet hypesters talk about creating publics and argue that the Internet recreates the intimacy of community as a corrective to the atomisation and alienation characteristic of mass society. This faith in the power of a medium to create social cohesion recalls the view of the television audience as a public constructed by the common experience of watching an important event. However, MSN's McCartney concert indicates that creating a public from spectacle it is not a simple process. In fact, what the Internet media conglomerates seem to want more than anything is to create consumer bases. Audiences exist for pleasure and by the desire to be entertained. As Internet media institutions are established, the cynical view of the audience as a source of consumer behavior and preferences will inevitably give way, to some extent, to a view of the audience as participant in communication. Audiences will be seen, as they have been by other media, as groups whose attention must be courted and rewarded. Who knows, maybe the AOL/Time-Warner merger might, indeed, signal the new medium's coming of age. References Anderson, Lessley. "To Beam or Not to Beam. MP3.com Is Being Sued by the Major Record Labels. Does the Digital Download Site Stand a Chance?" Industry Standard 31 Jan. 2000. <http://www.thestandard.com>. Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Methuen, 1985. Baran, Stanley, and Dennis Davis. Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future. 2nd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth 2000. Curran, James. "Mass Media and Democracy Revisited." Mass Media and Society. Eds. 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"Desparate.com (Media Companies Losing Millions on the Web Turn to Electronic Commerce)." Forbes 163.6 (22 March 1999): 50-1. Manes, Stephen. "The New MSN as Prehistoric TV." New York Times 4 Feb. 1997: C6. McQuail, Denis. Audience Analysis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997. ---. Mass Communication Theory. 2nd ed. London: Sage, 1987. Mattelart, Armand. Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture. Trans. Susan Emanuel and James A. Cohen. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. Morris, Merrill, and Christine Ogan. "The Internet as Mass Medium." Journal of Communications 46 (Winter 1996): 39-50. Nightingale, Virginia. Studying Audience: The Shock of the Real. London: Routledge, 1996. Pavlik, John V., and Everette E. Dennis. New Media Technology: Cultural and Commercial Perspectives. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. Reid, Calvin. "Time-Warner Seeks Electronic Synergy, Profits on the Web (Pathfinder Site)." Publisher's Weekly 242 (4 Dec. 1995): 12. Rheingold, Howard. Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Harper, 1993. Roscoe, Timothy. "The Construction of the World Wide Web Audience." Media, Culture and Society 21.5 (1999): 673-84. Saap, Geneva, and Ephraim Schwarrtz. "AOL-Time-Warner Deal to Impact Commerce, Content, and Access Markets." Infoworld 11 January 2000. <http://infoworld.com/articles/ic/xml/00/01/11/000111icimpact.xml>. Slater, Joanna. "Cool Customers: Music Channels Hope New Web Sites Tap into Teen Spirit." Far Eastern Economic Review 162.9 (4 March 1999): 50. Trott, Bob. "Microsoft Views AOL-Time-Warner as Confirmation of Its Own Strategy." Infoworld 11 Jan. 2000. <http://infoworld.com/articles/pi/xml/00/01/11/000111pimsaoltw.xml>. Yan, Catherine. "A Major Studio Called AOL?" Business Week 1 Dec. 1997: 1773-4. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel M. Downes. "The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass Audience in the New Media Economy." 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In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, where income has become precarious and Internet use has soared, the influencer industry has to strategise over new ways to sustain viewer attention, maintain income flows, and innovate around formats and messaging, to avoid being excluded from continued commercial possibilities. In this article, we review the press coverage of the influencer markets in Australia, Japan, and Korea, and consider how the industry has been attempting to navigate their way through the pandemic through deviations and detours. We consider the narratives and groups of influencers who have been included and excluded in shaping the discourse about influencer strategies in the time of COVID-19. The distinction between inclusion and exclusion has been a crucial mechanism to maintain the social normativity, constructed with gender, sexuality, wealth, able-ness, education, age, and so on (Stäheli and Stichweh, par. 3; Hall and Du Gay 5; Bourdieu 162). The influencer industry is the epitome of where the inclusion-exclusion binary is noticeable. It has been criticised for serving as a locus where social norms, such as femininity and middle-class identities, are crystallised and endorsed in the form of visibility and attention (Duffy 234; Abidin 122). Many are concerned about the global expansion of the influencer industry, in which young generations are led to clickbait and sensational content and normative ways of living, in order to be “included” by their peer groups and communities and to avoid being “excluded” (Cavanagh). However, COVID-19 has changed our understanding of the “normal”: people staying home, eschewing social communications, and turning more to the online where they can feel “virtually” connected (Lu et al. 15). The influencer industry also has been affected by COVID-19, since the images of normativity cannot be curated and presented as they used to be. In this situation, it is questionable how the influencer industry that pivots on the inclusion-exclusion binary is adjusting to the “new normal” brought by COVID-19, and how the binary is challenged or maintained, especially by exploring the continuities and discontinuities in industry. Methodology This cross-cultural study draws from a corpus of articles from Australia, Japan, and Korea published between January and May 2020, to investigate how local news outlets portrayed the contingencies undergone by the influencer industry, and what narratives or groups of influencers were excluded in the process. An extended discussion of our methodology has been published in an earlier article (Abidin et al. 5-7). Using the top ranked search engine of each country (Google for Australia and Japan, Naver for Korea), we compiled search results of news articles from the first ten pages (ten results per page) of each search, prioritising reputable news sites over infotainment sites, and by using targeted keyword searches: for Australia: ‘influencer’ and ‘Australia’ and ‘COVID-19’, ‘coronavirus’, ‘pandemic’; for Japan: ‘インフルエンサー’ (influensā) and ‘コロナ’ (korona), ‘新型コロ ナ’ (shin-gata korona), ‘コロナ禍’ (korona-ka); for Korea: ‘인플루언서’ (Influencer) and ‘코로나’ (corona) and ‘팬데믹’ (pandemic). 111 articles were collected (42 for Australia, 31 for Japan, 38 for Korea). In this article, we focus on a subset of 60 articles and adopt a grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 5) to manually conduct open, axial, and close coding of their headline and body text. Each headline was translated by the authors and coded for a primary and secondary ‘open code’ across seven categories: Income loss, Backlash, COVID-19 campaign, Misinformation, Influencer strategy, Industry shifts, and Brand leverage. The body text was coded in a similar manner to indicate all the relevant open codes covered in the article. In this article, we focus on the last two open codes that illustrate how brands have been working with influencers to tide through COVID-19, and what the overall industry shifts were on the three Asia-Pacific country markets. Table 1 (see Appendix) indicates a full list of our coding schema. Inclusion of the Normal in Shifting Brand Preferences In this section, we consider two main shifts in brand preferences: an increased demand for influencers, and a reliance on influencers to boost viewer/consumer traffic. We found that by expanding digital marketing through Influencers, companies attempted to secure a so-called “new normal” during the pandemic. However, their marketing strategies tended to reiterate the existing inclusion-exclusion binary and exacerbated the lack of diversity and inequality in the industry. Increased Demand for Influencers Across the three country markets, brokers and clients in the influencer industry increased their demand for influencers’ services and expertise to sustain businesses via advertising in the “aftermath of COVID-19”, as they were deemed to be more cost-efficient “viral marketing on social media” (Yoo). By outsourcing content production to influencers who could still produce content independently from their homes (Cheik-Hussein) and who engage with audiences with their “interactive communication ability” (S. Kim and Cho), many companies attempted to continue their business and maintain their relationships with prospective consumers (Forlani). As the newly enforced social distancing measures have also interrupted face-to-face contact opportunities, the mass pivot towards influencers for digital marketing is perceived to further professionalise the industry via competition and quality control in all three countries (Wilkinson; S. Kim and Cho; Yadorigi). By integrating these online personae of influencers into their marketing, the business side of each country is moving towards the new normal in different manners. In Australia, businesses launched campaigns showcasing athlete influencers engaging in meaningful activities at home (e.g. yoga, cooking), and brands and companies reorganised their marketing strategies to highlight social responsibilities (Moore). On the other hand, for some companies in the Japanese market, the disruption from the pandemic was a rare opportunity to build connections and work with “famous” and “prominent” influencers (Yadorigi), otherwise unavailable and unwilling to work for smaller campaigns during regular periods of an intensely competitive market. In Korea, by emphasising their creative ability, influencers progressed from being “mere PR tools” to becoming “active economic subjects of production” who now can play a key role in product planning for clients, mediating companies and consumers (S. Kim and Cho). The underpinning premise here is that influencers are tech-savvy and therefore competent in creating media content, forging relationships with people, and communicating with them “virtually” through social media. Reliance on Influencers to Boost Viewer/Consumer Traffic Across several industry verticals, brands relied on influencers to boost viewership and consumer traffic on their digital estates and portals, on the premise that influencers work in line with the attention economy (Duffy 234). The fashion industry’s expansion of influencer marketing was noticeable in this manner. For instance, Korean department store chains (e.g. Lotte) invited influencers to “no-audience live fashion shows” to attract viewership and advertise fashion goods through the influencers’ social media (Y. Kim), and Australian swimwear brand Vitamin A partnered with influencers to launch online contests to invite engagement and purchases on their online stores (Moore). Like most industries where aspirational middle-class lifestyles are emphasised, the travel industry also extended partnerships with their current repertoire of influencers or international influencers in order to plan for the post-COVID-19 market recovery and post-border reopening tourism boom (Moore; Yamatogokoro; J. Lee). By extension, brands without any prior relationships with influencers, whcih did not have such histories to draw on, were likely to have struggled to produce new influencer content. Such brands could thus only rely on hiring influencers specifically to leverage their follower base. The increasing demand for influencers in industries like fashion, food, and travel is especially notable. In the attention economy where (media) visibility can be obtained and maintained (Duffy 121), media users practice “visibility labor” to curate their media personas and portray branding themselves as arbiters of good taste (Abidin 122). As such, influencers in genres where personal taste can be visibly presented—e.g. fashion, travel, F&B—seem to have emerged from the economic slump with a head start, especially given their dominance on the highly visual platform of Instagram. Our analysis shows that media coverage during COVID-19 repeated the discursive correlation between influencers and such hyper-visible or visually-oriented industries. However, this dominant discourse about hyper-visible influencers and the gendered genres of their work has ultimately reinforced norms of self-presentation in the industry—e.g. being feminine, young, beautiful, luxurious—while those who deviate from such norms seem to be marginalised and excluded in media coverage and economic opportunities during the pandemic cycle. Including Newness by Shifting Format Preferences We observed the inclusion of newness in the influencer scenes in all three countries. By shifting to new formats, the previously excluded and lesser seen aspects of our lives—such as home-based content—began to be integrated into the “new normal”. There were four main shifts in format preferences, wherein influencers pivoted to home-made content, where livestreaming is the new dominant format of content, and where followers preferred more casual influencer content. Influencers Have Pivoted to Home-Made Content In all three country markets, influencers have pivoted to generating content based on life at home and ideas of domesticity. These public displays of homely life corresponded with the sudden occurrence of being wired to the Internet all day—also known as “LAN cable life” (랜선라이프, lan-seon life) in the Korean media—which influencers were chiefly responsible for pioneering (B. Kim). While some genres like gaming and esports were less impacted upon by the pivot, given that the nature and production of the content has always been confined to a desktop at home (Cheik-Hussein), pivots occurred for the likes of outdoor brands (Moore), the culinary industry (Dean), and fitness and workout brands (Perelli and Whateley). In Korea, new trends such as “home cafes” (B. Kim) and DIY coffees—like the infamous “Dalgona-Coffee” that was first introduced by a Korean YouTuber 뚤기 (ddulgi)—went viral on social media across the globe (Makalintal). In Japan, the spike in influencers showcasing at-home activities (Hayama) also encouraged mainstream TV celebrities to open social media accounts explicitly to do the same (Kamada). In light of these trends, the largest Multi-Channel Network (MCN) in Japan, UUUM, partnered with one of the country’s largest entertainment industries, Yoshimoto Kogyo, to assist the latter’s comedian talents to establish a digital video presence—a trend that was also observed in Korea (Koo), further underscoring the ubiquity of influencer practices in the time of COVID-19. Along with those creators who were already producing content in a domestic environment before COVID-19, it was the influencers with the time and resources to quickly pivot to home-made content who profited the most from the spike in Internet traffic during the pandemic (Noshita). The benefits of this boost in traffic were far from equal. For instance, many others who had to turn to makeshift work for income, and those who did not have conducive living situations to produce content at home, were likely to be disadvantaged. Livestreaming Is the New Dominant Format Amidst the many new content formats to be popularised during COVID-19, livestreaming was unanimously the most prolific. In Korea, influencers were credited for the mainstreaming and demotising (Y. Kim) of livestreaming for “live commerce” through real-time advertorials and online purchases. Livestreaming influencers were solicited specifically to keep international markets continuously interested in Korean products and cultures (Oh), and livestreaming was underscored as a main economic driver for shaping a “post-COVID-19” society (Y. Kim). In Australia, livestreaming was noted among art (Dean) and fitness influencers (Dean), and in Japan it began to be adopted among major fashion brands like Prada and Chloe (Saito). While the Australian coverage included livestreaming on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitch, and Douyin (Cheik-Hussein; Perelli and Whateley; Webb), the Japanese coverage highlighted the potential for Instagram Live to target young audiences, increase feelings of “trustworthiness”, and increase sales via word-of-mouth advertising (Saito). In light of reduced client campaigns, influencers in Australia had also used livestreaming to provide online consulting, teaching, and coaching (Perelli and Whateley), and to partner with brands to provide masterclasses and webinars (Sanders). In this era, influencers in genres and verticals that had already adopted streaming as a normative practice—e.g. gaming and lifestyle performances—were likely to have had an edge over others, while other genres were excluded from this economic silver lining. Followers Prefer More Casual Influencer Content In general, all country markets report followers preferring more casual influencer content. In Japan, this was offered via the potential of livestreaming to deliver more “raw” feelings (Saito), while in Australia this was conveyed through specific content genres like “mental or physical health battles” (Moore); specific aesthetic choices like appearing “messier”, less “curated”, and “more unfiltered” (Wilkinson); and the growing use of specific emergent platforms like TikTok (Dean, Forlani, Perelli, and Whateley). In Korea, influencers in the photography, travel, and book genres were celebrated for their new provision of pseudo-experiences during COVID-19-imposed social distancing (Kang). Influencers on Instagram also spearheaded new social media trends, like the “#wheredoyouwannago_challenge” where Instagram users photoshopped themselves into images of famous tourist spots around the world (Kang). Conclusion In our study of news articles on the impact of COVID-19 on the Australian, Japanese, and Korean influencer industries during the first wave of the pandemic, influencer marketing was primed to be the dominant and default mode of advertising and communication in the post-COVID-19 era (Tate). In general, specific industry verticals that relied more on visual portrayals of lifestyles and consumption—e.g. fashion, F&B, travel—to continue partaking in economic recovery efforts. However, given the gendered genre norms in the industry, this meant that influencers who were predominantly feminine, young, beautiful, and luxurious experienced more opportunity over others. Further, influencers who did not have the resources or skills to pivot to the “new normals” of creating content from home, engaging in livestreaming, and performing their personae more casually were excluded from these new economic opportunities. Across the countries, there were minor differences in the overall perception of influencers. There was an increasingly positive perception of influencers in Japan and Korea, due to new norms and pandemic-related opportunities in the media ecology: in Korea, influencers were considered to be the “vanguard of growing media commerce in the post-pandemonium era” (S. Kim and Cho), and in Japan, influencers were identified as critical vehicles during a more general consumer shift from traditional media to social media, as TV watching time is reduced and home-based e-commerce purchases are increasingly popular (Yadogiri). However, in Australia, in light of the sudden influx of influencer marketing strategies during COVID-19, the market seemed to be saturated more quickly: brands were beginning to question the efficiency of influencers, cautioned that their impact has not been completely proven for all industry verticals (Stephens), and have also begun to reduce commissions for influencer affiliate programmes as a cost-cutting measure (Perelli and Whateley). While news reports on these three markets indicate that there is some level of growth and expansion for various influencers and brands, such opportunities were not experienced equally, with some genres and demographics of influencers and businesses being excluded from pandemic-related pivots and silver linings. Further, in light of the increasing commercial opportunities, pressure for more regulations also emerged; for example, the Korean government announced new investigations into tax avoidance (Han). Not backed up by talent agencies or MCNs, independent influencers are likely to be more exposed to the disciplinary power of shifting regulatory practices, a condition which might have hindered their attempt at diversifying their income streams during the pandemic. Thus, while it is tempting to focus on the privileged and novel influencers who have managed to cling on to some measure of success during the pandemic, scholarly attention should also remember those who are being excluded and left behind, lest generations, cohorts, genres, or subcultures of the once-vibrant influencer industry fade into oblivion. References Abidin, Crystal. “#In$tagLam: Instagram as a repository of taste, a burgeoning marketplace, a war of eyeballs.” Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones. Eds. Marsha Berry and Max Schleser. New York: Palgrave Pivot, 2014. 119-128. <https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137469816_11>. 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Yadorigi, Yuki. “【第7回】コロナ禍のなかで生まれた光明、新たなアプローチによるコミュニケーション [Episode 7: A Light Emerged during the Corona Crisis, a Communication Based on a New Approach].” C-Station 28 Apr. 2020. <https://c.kodansha.net/news/detail/36286/>. Yamatogokoro. “アフターコロナの観光・インバウンドを考えるVol.4世界の観光業の取り組みから学ぶ、自治体・DMOが今まさにすべきこと [After Corona Tourism and Inbound Tourism Vol. 4: What Municipalities and DMOs Should Do Right Now to Learn from Global Tourism Initiatives].” Yamatogokoro 19 May 2020. Yoo, Hwan-In. "코로나 여파, 연예인·인플루언서 마케팅 활발 [COVID-19, Star-Influencer Marketing Becomes Active].” SkyDaily 19 May 2020. <http://www.skyedaily.com/news/news_view.html?ID=104772>. Appendix Open codes Axial codes 1) Brand leverage Targeting investors Targeting influencers Targeting new digital media formats Targeting consumers/customers/viewers Types of brands/clients 2) Industry shifts Brand preferences Content production Content format Follower preferences Type of Influencers Table 1: Full list of codes from our analysis

Introduction With a deluge of mouthwatering pre-publicity, the opening of The Spotted Pig, the USA’s first self-identified British-styled gastropub, in Manhattan in February 2004 was much anticipated. The late Australian chef, food writer and restauranteur Mietta O’Donnell has noted how “taking over a building or business which has a long established reputation can be a mixed blessing” because of the way that memories “can enrich the experience of being in a place or they can just make people nostalgic”. Bistro Le Zoo, the previous eatery on the site, had been very popular when it opened almost a decade earlier, and its closure was mourned by some diners (Young; Kaminsky “Feeding Time”; Steinhauer & McGinty). This regret did not, however, appear to affect The Spotted Pig’s success. As esteemed New York Times reviewer Frank Bruni noted in his 2006 review: “Almost immediately after it opened […] the throngs started to descend, and they have never stopped”. The following year, The Spotted Pig was awarded a Michelin star—the first year that Michelin ranked New York—and has kept this star in the subsequent annual rankings. Writing Restaurant Biography Detailed studies have been published of almost every type of contemporary organisation including public institutions such as schools, hospitals, museums and universities, as well as non-profit organisations such as charities and professional associations. These are often written to mark a major milestone, or some significant change, development or the demise of the organisation under consideration (Brien). Detailed studies have also recently been published of businesses as diverse as general stores (Woody), art galleries (Fossi), fashion labels (Koda et al.), record stores (Southern & Branson), airlines (Byrnes; Jones), confectionary companies (Chinn) and builders (Garden). In terms of attracting mainstream readerships, however, few such studies seem able to capture popular reader interest as those about eating establishments including restaurants and cafés. This form of restaurant life history is, moreover, not restricted to ‘quality’ establishments. Fast food restaurant chains have attracted their share of studies (see, for example Love; Jakle & Sculle), ranging from business-economic analyses (Liu), socio-cultural political analyses (Watson), and memoirs (Kroc & Anderson), to criticism around their conduct and effects (Striffler). Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is the most well-known published critique of the fast food industry and its effects with, famously, the Rolling Stone article on which it was based generating more reader mail than any other piece run in the 1990s. The book itself (researched narrative creative nonfiction), moreover, made a fascinating transition to the screen, transformed into a fictionalised drama (co-written by Schlosser) that narrates the content of the book from the point of view of a series of fictional/composite characters involved in the industry, rather than in a documentary format. Akin to the range of studies of fast food restaurants, there are also a variety of studies of eateries in US motels, caravan parks, diners and service station restaurants (see, for example, Baeder). Although there has been little study of this sub-genre of food and drink publishing, their popularity can be explained, at least in part, because such volumes cater to the significant readership for writing about food related topics of all kinds, with food writing recently identified as mainstream literary fare in the USA and UK (Hughes) and an entire “publishing subculture” in Australia (Dunstan & Chaitman). Although no exact tally exists, an informed estimate by the founder of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and president of the Paris Cookbook Fair, Edouard Cointreau, has more than 26,000 volumes on food and wine related topics currently published around the world annually (ctd. in Andriani “Gourmand Awards”). The readership for publications about restaurants can also perhaps be attributed to the wide range of information that can be included a single study. My study of a selection of these texts from the UK, USA and Australia indicates that this can include narratives of place and architecture dealing with the restaurant’s location, locale and design; narratives of directly food-related subject matter such as menus, recipes and dining trends; and narratives of people, in the stories of its proprietors, staff and patrons. Detailed studies of contemporary individual establishments commonly take the form of authorised narratives either written by the owners, chefs or other staff with the help of a food journalist, historian or other professional writer, or produced largely by that writer with the assistance of the premise’s staff. These studies are often extensively illustrated with photographs and, sometimes, drawings or reproductions of other artworks, and almost always include recipes. Two examples of these from my own collection include a centennial history of a famous New Orleans eatery that survived Hurricane Katrina, Galatoire’s Cookbook. Written by employees—the chief operating officer/general manager (Melvin Rodrigue) and publicist (Jyl Benson)—this incorporates reminiscences from both other staff and patrons. The second is another study of a New Orleans’ restaurant, this one by the late broadcaster and celebrity local historian Mel Leavitt. The Court of Two Sisters Cookbook: With a History of the French Quarter and the Restaurant, compiled with the assistance of the Two Sisters’ proprietor, Joseph Fein Joseph III, was first published in 1992 and has been so enduringly popular that it is in its eighth printing. These texts, in common with many others of this type, trace a triumph-over-adversity company history that incorporates a series of mildly scintillating anecdotes, lists of famous chefs and diners, and signature recipes. Although obviously focused on an external readership, they can also be characterised as an instance of what David M. Boje calls an organisation’s “story performance” (106) as the process of creating these narratives mobilises an organisation’s (in these cases, a commercial enterprise’s) internal information processing and narrative building activities. Studies of contemporary restaurants are much more rarely written without any involvement from the eatery’s personnel. When these are, the results tend to have much in common with more critical studies such as Fast Food Nation, as well as so-called architectural ‘building biographies’ which attempt to narrate the historical and social forces that “explain the shapes and uses” (Ellis, Chao & Parrish 70) of the physical structures we create. Examples of this would include Harding’s study of the importance of the Boeuf sur le Toit in Parisian life in the 1920s and Middlebrook’s social history of London’s Strand Corner House. Such work agrees with Kopytoff’s assertion—following Appadurai’s proposal that objects possess their own ‘biographies’ which need to be researched and expressed—that such inquiry can reveal not only information about the objects under consideration, but also about readers as we examine our “cultural […] aesthetic, historical, and even political” responses to these narratives (67). The life story of a restaurant will necessarily be entangled with those of the figures who have been involved in its establishment and development, as well as the narratives they create around the business. This following brief study of The Spotted Pig, however, written without the assistance of the establishment’s personnel, aims to outline a life story for this eatery in order to reflect upon the pig’s place in contemporary dining practice in New York as raw foodstuff, fashionable comestible, product, brand, symbol and marketing tool, as well as, at times, purely as an animal identity. The Spotted Pig Widely profiled before it even opened, The Spotted Pig is reportedly one of the city’s “most popular” restaurants (Michelin 349). It is profiled in all the city guidebooks I could locate in print and online, featuring in some of these as a key stop on recommended itineraries (see, for instance, Otis 39). A number of these proclaim it to be the USA’s first ‘gastropub’—the term first used in 1991 in the UK to describe a casual hotel/bar with good food and reasonable prices (Farley). The Spotted Pig is thus styled on a shabby-chic version of a traditional British hotel, featuring a cluttered-but-well arranged use of pig-themed objects and illustrations that is described by latest Michelin Green Guide of New York City as “a country-cute décor that still manages to be hip” (Michelin 349). From the three-dimensional carved pig hanging above the entrance in a homage to the shingles of traditional British hotels, to the use of its image on the menu, website and souvenir tee-shirts, the pig as motif proceeds its use as a foodstuff menu item. So much so, that the restaurant is often (affectionately) referred to by patrons and reviewers simply as ‘The Pig’. The restaurant has become so well known in New York in the relatively brief time it has been operating that it has not only featured in a number of novels and memoirs, but, moreover, little or no explanation has been deemed necessary as the signifier of “The Spotted Pig” appears to convey everything that needs to be said about an eatery of quality and fashion. In the thriller Lethal Experiment: A Donovan Creed Novel, when John Locke’s hero has to leave the restaurant and becomes involved in a series of dangerous escapades, he wants nothing more but to get back to his dinner (107, 115). The restaurant is also mentioned a number of times in Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle in relation to a (fictional) new movie of the same name. The joke in the book is that the character doesn’t know of the restaurant (26). In David Goodwillie’s American Subversive, the story of a journalist-turned-blogger and a homegrown terrorist set in New York, the narrator refers to “Scarlett Johansson, for instance, and the hostess at the Spotted Pig” (203-4) as the epitome of attractiveness. The Spotted Pig is also mentioned in Suzanne Guillette’s memoir, Much to Your Chagrin, when the narrator is on a dinner date but fears running into her ex-boyfriend: ‘Jack lives somewhere in this vicinity […] Vaguely, you recall him telling you he was not too far from the Spotted Pig on Greenwich—now, was it Greenwich Avenue or Greenwich Street?’ (361). The author presumes readers know the right answer in order to build tension in this scene. Although this success is usually credited to the joint efforts of backer, music executive turned restaurateur Ken Friedman, his partner, well-known chef, restaurateur, author and television personality Mario Batali, and their UK-born and trained chef, April Bloomfield (see, for instance, Batali), a significant part has been built on Bloomfield’s pork cookery. The very idea of a “spotted pig” itself raises a central tenet of Bloomfield’s pork/food philosophy which is sustainable and organic. That is, not the mass produced, industrially farmed pig which produces a leaner meat, but the fatty, tastier varieties of pig such as the heritage six-spotted Berkshire which is “darker, more heavily marbled with fat, juicier and richer-tasting than most pork” (Fabricant). Bloomfield has, indeed, made pig’s ears—long a Chinese restaurant staple in the city and a key ingredient of Southern US soul food as well as some traditional Japanese and Spanish dishes—fashionable fare in the city, and her current incarnation, a crispy pig’s ear salad with lemon caper dressing (TSP 2010) is much acclaimed by reviewers. This approach to ingredients—using the ‘whole beast’, local whenever possible, and the concentration on pork—has been underlined and enhanced by a continuing relationship with UK chef Fergus Henderson. In his series of London restaurants under the banner of “St. John”, Henderson is famed for the approach to pork cookery outlined in his two books Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking, published in 1999 (re-published both in the UK and the US as The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating), and Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II (coauthored with Justin Piers Gellatly in 2007). Henderson has indeed been identified as starting a trend in dining and food publishing, focusing on sustainably using as food the entirety of any animal killed for this purpose, but which mostly focuses on using all parts of pigs. In publishing, this includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book, Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect, subtitled Encounters with Some Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them, John Barlow’s Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain and Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (2008). In restaurants, it certainly includes The Spotted Pig. So pervasive has embrace of whole beast pork consumption been in New York that, by 2007, Bruni could write that these are: “porky times, fatty times, which is to say very good times indeed. Any new logo for the city could justifiably place the Big Apple in the mouth of a spit-roasted pig” (Bruni). This demand set the stage perfectly for, in October 2007, Henderson to travel to New York to cook pork-rich menus at The Spotted Pig in tandem with Bloomfield (Royer). He followed this again in 2008 and, by 2009, this annual event had become known as “FergusStock” and was covered by local as well as UK media, and a range of US food weblogs. By 2009, it had grown to become a dinner at the Spotted Pig with half the dishes on the menu by Henderson and half by Bloomfield, and a dinner the next night at David Chang’s acclaimed Michelin-starred Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is famed for its Cantonese-style steamed pork belly buns. A third dinner (and then breakfast/brunch) followed at Friedman/Bloomfield’s Breslin Bar and Dining Room (discussed below) (Rose). The Spotted Pig dinners have become famed for Henderson’s pig’s head and pork trotter dishes with the chef himself recognising that although his wasn’t “the most obvious food to cook for America”, it was the case that “at St John, if a couple share a pig’s head, they tend to be American” (qtd. in Rose). In 2009, the pigs’ head were presented in pies which Henderson has described as “puff pastry casing, with layers of chopped, cooked pig’s head and potato, so all the lovely, bubbly pig’s head juices go into the potato” (qtd. in Rose). Bloomfield was aged only 28 when, in 2003, with a recommendation from Jamie Oliver, she interviewed for, and won, the position of executive chef of The Spotted Pig (Fabricant; Q&A). Following this introduction to the US, her reputation as a chef has grown based on the strength of her pork expertise. Among a host of awards, she was named one of US Food & Wine magazine’s ten annual Best New Chefs in 2007. In 2009, she was a featured solo session titled “Pig, Pig, Pig” at the fourth Annual International Chefs Congress, a prestigious New York City based event where “the world’s most influential and innovative chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, and sommeliers present the latest techniques and culinary concepts to their peers” (Starchefs.com). Bloomfield demonstrated breaking down a whole suckling St. Canut milk raised piglet, after which she butterflied, rolled and slow-poached the belly, and fried the ears. As well as such demonstrations of expertise, she is also often called upon to provide expert comment on pork-related news stories, with The Spotted Pig regularly the subject of that food news. For example, when a rare, heritage Hungarian pig was profiled as a “new” New York pork source in 2009, this story arose because Bloomfield had served a Mangalitsa/Berkshire crossbreed pig belly and trotter dish with Agen prunes (Sanders) at The Spotted Pig. Bloomfield was quoted as the authority on the breed’s flavour and heritage authenticity: “it took me back to my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, windows steaming from the roasting pork in the oven […] This pork has that same authentic taste” (qtd. in Sanders). Bloomfield has also used this expert profile to support a series of pork-related causes. These include the Thanksgiving Farm in the Catskill area, which produces free range pork for its resident special needs children and adults, and helps them gain meaningful work-related skills in working with these pigs. Bloomfield not only cooks for the project’s fundraisers, but also purchases any excess pigs for The Spotted Pig (Estrine 103). This strong focus on pork is not, however, exclusive. The Spotted Pig is also one of a number of American restaurants involved in the Meatless Monday campaign, whereby at least one vegetarian option is included on menus in order to draw attention to the benefits of a plant-based diet. When, in 2008, Bloomfield beat the Iron Chef in the sixth season of the US version of the eponymous television program, the central ingredient was nothing to do with pork—it was olives. Diversifying from this focus on ‘pig’ can, however, be dangerous. Friedman and Bloomfield’s next enterprise after The Spotted Pig was The John Dory seafood restaurant at the corner of 10th Avenue and 16th Street. This opened in November 2008 to reviews that its food was “uncomplicated and nearly perfect” (Andrews 22), won Bloomfield Time Out New York’s 2009 “Best New Hand at Seafood” award, but was not a success. The John Dory was a more formal, but smaller, restaurant that was more expensive at a time when the financial crisis was just biting, and was closed the following August. Friedman blamed the layout, size and neighbourhood (Stein) and its reservation system, which limited walk-in diners (ctd. in Vallis), but did not mention its non-pork, seafood orientation. When, almost immediately, another Friedman/Bloomfield project was announced, the Breslin Bar & Dining Room (which opened in October 2009 in the Ace Hotel at 20 West 29th Street and Broadway), the enterprise was closely modeled on the The Spotted Pig. In preparation, its senior management—Bloomfield, Friedman and sous-chefs, Nate Smith and Peter Cho (who was to become the Breslin’s head chef)—undertook a tasting tour of the UK that included Henderson’s St. John Bread & Wine Bar (Leventhal). Following this, the Breslin’s menu highlighted a series of pork dishes such as terrines, sausages, ham and potted styles (Rosenberg & McCarthy), with even Bloomfield’s pork scratchings (crispy pork rinds) bar snacks garnering glowing reviews (see, for example, Severson; Ghorbani). Reviewers, moreover, waxed lyrically about the menu’s pig-based dishes, the New York Times reviewer identifying this focus as catering to New York diners’ “fetish for pork fat” (Sifton). This representative review details not only “an entree of gently smoked pork belly that’s been roasted to tender goo, for instance, over a drift of buttery mashed potatoes, with cabbage and bacon on the side” but also a pig’s foot “in gravy made of reduced braising liquid, thick with pillowy shallots and green flecks of deconstructed brussels sprouts” (Sifton). Sifton concluded with the proclamation that this style of pork was “very good: meat that is fat; fat that is meat”. Concluding remarks Bloomfield has listed Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie as among her favourite food books. Publishers Weekly reviewer called Ruhlman “a food poet, and the pig is his muse” (Q&A). In August 2009, it was reported that Bloomfield had always wanted to write a cookbook (Marx) and, in July 2010, HarperCollins imprint Ecco publisher and foodbook editor Dan Halpern announced that he was planning a book with her, tentatively titled, A Girl and Her Pig (Andriani “Ecco Expands”). 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