Journal articles on the topic 'Rebecca Saunders'

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1

Jones, Gabriel. "Rebecca Saunders - Rebecca Saunders, Solo. Sterev, Wilker, Ahonen, Müller, Schafleitner, Lindenbaum. Kairos, 0015098KAI." Tempo 75, no. 297 (June 28, 2021): 83–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s004029822100005x.

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Neves, Luiz Augusto Salles das, and Raquel Stefanello. "Edith Rebecca Saunders e a hereditariedade no final do século XIX." História da Ciência e Ensino: construindo interfaces 18 (October 5, 2018): 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.23925/2178-2911.2018v18i1p4-11.

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ResumoO presente artigo trata das Mulheres em Ciências e se refere ao trabalho desenvolvido no século XIX, por uma pesquisadora da área da Botânica chamada Edith Rebecca Saunders, da Newham College, Inglaterra que foi convidada pelo Professor Willian Bateson, de Cambridge, para desenvolver trabalhos de hibridação em plantas, com a finalidade de estudar a descontinuidade das espécies. Edith Saunders não só desenvolveu o trabalho como se destacou dos demais membros do grupo pela sua capacidade de condução de experimentos controlados. Mesmo que o trabalho de Mendel não fosse ainda conhecido pelo grupo e por Edith Saunders, essa pesquisadora conduziu seus cruzamentos que levaram a conclusões semelhantes as de Mendel. Quando seu grupo, dirigido por Willian Bateson, tomou ciência dos resultados mendelianos, os trabalhos desenvolvidos por Edith Saunders agregaram respostas mais precisas na pesquisa da hereditariedade. Além disso, descobriu, juntamente com Punnet, outra interação genética que até então não havia sido relatada. Seu reconhecimento como pesquisadora abriu espaço para que outras mulheres, posteriormente, pudessem constituir grupos de pesquisa e trabalhar em ciência.Palavras-chave: Becky Saunders; Bateson; Genética.AbstractThis article deals with Women in Sciences and refers to the work developed in the 19th century by a botanist researcher named Edith Rebecca Saunders, of Newham College, England, who was invited by Professor William Bateson of Cambridge to develop hybridization works in plants to study the species discontinuity. Edith Saunders not only developed the work but also emphasized the other members of the group by their ability to conduct controlled experiments. Even though Mendel's work was not yet known by the group and by Edith Saunders, this researcher conducted her crosses which led to conclusions similar to Mendel's. When his group, led by William Bateson, becomes aware of Mendelian results, the works developed by Edith Saunders add more precise answers in the research of heredity. In addition, he discovers, along with Punnet, another genetic interaction that hitherto had not been reported. Her recognition as a researcher made room for other women to be able to form research groups and work on science.Keywords: Becky Saunders; Bateson; Genetics.
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Adlington, Robert. "The Music of Rebecca Saunders: Into the Sensuous World." Musical Times 140, no. 1868 (1999): 48. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1004495.

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Abram, Omri. "TIMBRE-BASED COMPOSITION, MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES AND AMBIGUITY IN REBECCA SAUNDERS’ COMPOSITIONAL STYLE." Tempo 75, no. 297 (June 28, 2021): 20–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298221000206.

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AbstractThis article takes up Rebecca Saunders’ comments on the significance of timbre in her work to develop a timbre-centred analytical technique for two of her compositions, Ire (2012), for cello and ensemble, and Still (2011), for violin and orchestra. Two overarching principles are identified: the organisation of the pieces’ sounds into clearly differentiated categories, which can also overlap in different ways, and the use of a phrase-based logic in the pieces’ formal construction. Alongside the timbral construction, stable pitches acquire formal significance by virtue of their rarity and conspicuousness. I also elaborate on the ways in which perceptual ambiguity is fruitfully exploited in these works.
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Jones, Stephanie. "Georg Friedrich Haas and Rebecca Saunders premieres, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2016." Tempo 71, no. 280 (March 3, 2017): 88–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298217000158.

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The first weekend of the 2016 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival saw an eclectic and vibrant mix of musical events. Artistic director Graham McKenzie promised a festival that was going to be ‘undoubtedly characterised by the bringing together of often quite disparate forces, to create new sounds, new experiences, and new approaches to music making’, and the opening days also manifested a strong sense of artistic difference and distance as well. The presence of Georg Friedrich Haas, this year's Composer in Residence, and Rebecca Saunders seemed to fire up such underlying dynamic energies. Throughout the weekend both composers took part in public interviews and both had UK and world premieres, yet they only presented in parallel: the programming kept them apart. In turn, the weekend amplified various levels of similarity and divergence between the two composers, exposing some fascinating creative tensions.
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Hunt, Edmund. "Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, CBSO Centre, Birmingham. Causton, Usui, Žuraj, Saunders. 15 December, 2019." Tempo 74, no. 293 (June 10, 2020): 86–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298220000054.

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Located at the end of a quiet side street in the middle of Birmingham, the CBSO centre is the venue for many of BCMG's concerts throughout the year. If the venue seems somewhat hidden away, concealed behind a Victorian red brick façade, the music that takes place inside is certainly not insular. As one of the world's leading contemporary music ensembles, BCMG's longstanding commitment to commissioning new work, and to fostering relationships with composers, has continued since 2016 under the artistic directorship of Stephan Meier. The final UK concert of 2019, Migrating Sounds, provides clear evidence of the ensemble's aims. Of the four works performed, Richard Causton's Transients and Vito Žuraj's Tension for two ensembles were world premieres, Rebecca Saunders’ Scar was a UK premiere, and Shiori Usui's Deep was commissioned by BCMG in 2014. The pieces by Causton and Saunders were also ‘sound investment commissions’, part funded by many individuals who, in return for their support, receive various rewards, including rehearsal and reception invitations. The concert was conducted by Michael Wendeberg.
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7

Conway, Paul. "London, Wigmore Hall and R.A.M.: String Quartets by Hans Abrahamsen, Rebecca Saunders, Colin Matthews, Graham Williams and John Hawkins." Tempo 67, no. 264 (April 2013): 75–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298213000156.

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Due to Hurricane Sandy, the New York-based JACK Quartet were unable to cross the Atlantic to join forces with the Arditti Quartet at London's Wigmore Hall on 31 October 2012 for the British premières, now postponed, of 2012-S for two string quartets by James Clarke and the string octet Kampf zwischen Karneval und Fasten by Mauro Lanza. In lieu, the Ardittis substituted James Clarke's String Quartet No. 1 (2002–03) and Wolfgang Rihm's String Quartet No. 13 (2011), joining the first performances in the UK, as originally advertised, of quartets by Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen and British-born, Berlin-domiciled Rebecca Saunders.
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McMullan-Glossop, Eva. "Hues, Tints, Tones, and Shades: Timbre as Colour in the Music of Rebecca Saunders." Contemporary Music Review 36, no. 6 (November 2, 2017): 488–529. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2017.1452697.

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9

Levay, Matthew, Francesca Bratton, Caroline Krzakowski, Andrew Keese, Sophie Corser, Catriona Livingstone, Mark West, et al. "XIV Modern Literature." Year's Work in English Studies 98, no. 1 (2019): 858–1020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ywes/maz011.

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Abstract This chapter has eight sections 1. General. 2 British Fiction Pre-1945; 3. British Fiction 1945 to the Present; 4. Pre-1950 Drama; 5. Post-1950 Drama; 6. British Poetry 1900–1950; 7. British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Matthew Levay; section 2(a) is by Francesca Bratton; section 2(b) is by Caroline Krzakowski; section 2(c) is by Sophie Corser; section 2(d) is by Andrew Keese; section 2(e) is by Catriona Livingstone; section 3(a) is by Mark West; section 3(b) is by Samuel Cooper; section 4(a) is by Rebecca D’Monte; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Graham Saunders and William Baker; section 6(a) is by Noreen Masud; section 6(b) is by Matthew Creasy; section 7 is by Alex Alonso; section 8 is by Karl O’Hanlon.
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White, Nancy Marie. "Early Pottery: Technology, Function, Style, and Interaction in the Lower Southeast. Rebecca Saunders , Christopher T. Hays." Journal of Anthropological Research 61, no. 2 (July 2005): 270–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/jar.61.2.3630885.

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11

Nonnenmann, Rainer. "Geliehenes Pathos." Die Musikforschung 57, no. 3 (September 22, 2021): 215–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.52412/mf.2004.h3.675.

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Seit Mitte der 1970er Jahre hat sich für die Musik von Manfred Trojahn, Wolfgang Rihm, Reinhard Febel, Hans-Jürgen von Bose, Wolfgang von Schweinitz und Detlev Müller-Siemens die Bezeichnung "Neue Einfachheit" als typologischer und historiographischer Terminus durchgesetzt. Durch die gemeinsamen Lehrer György Ligeti und Klaus Huber entwickelten die untereinander vielfach befreundeten Komponisten eine Art Gegenschule zur Darmstädter Schule. Im engeren Sinne schulbildend wirkten sie jedoch erst seit den 1980er Jahren als Lehrer der heute dreißig- bis vierzigjährigen Komponisten. Anhand der Musik von Matthias Pintscher wird die Frage diskutiert, inwiefern es sich bei der Musik dieser jüngeren Generation um eine Reformulierung von Ansätzen ihrer Lehrer aus den 1970er Jahren handelt. Ihr Verhältnis zur Musik der Tradition, insbesondere zu Gustav Mahler, zu tonalen Formen und musiksprachlichen Gesten, zu Hans Werner Henze und Helmut Lachenmann, sowie ihre Ablehnung der seriellen und postseriellen Avantgarde legt dies nahe. Angesprochen ist auch die Musik von Rebecca Saunders, Jörg Widmann, Johannes Maria Staud und anderen. Die exemplarische Erörterung des Begriffs einer "Zweiten Neuen Einfachheit" anhand von Pintschers "Fünf Orchesterstücken" (1997) versteht sich als ein erstes Diskussionsangebot über und mit dieser jüngeren Komponistengeneration.
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Цареградская, Т. В. "“Late Modernism” in the Music of the Late 20th and Early 21st Century: Some Observations." Научный вестник Московской консерватории, no. 3(38) (September 25, 2019): 8–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.26176/mosconsv.2019.38.3.001.

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Основная задача статьи— анализ различных подходов к периодизации направлений в музыкальном искусстве конца XX— начала XXI века. Эволюция искусства может быть представлена как линейный процесс, зафиксированный в последовательности «модернизм— постмодернизм— метамодернизм», или как параллельный (полифонический) вариант «модернизм— постмодернизм— второй (или поздний) модернизм» (К.-С. Манкопф). Ключевым моментом становится интерпретация того, что происходит «после постмодернизма»: новый этап со своими признаками (Вермюлен, ван дер Аккен) или возвращение к модернизму (Дженкс, Перлофф). Позиции, разработанные в литературоведении и теории архитектуры, применимы к музыкознанию. В статье приводятся аргументы в пользу «позднего модернизма» и рассматриваются свойства произведений авторов рубежа XX‒XXI веков (Ребекка Сондерс, Харрисон Бёртуисл) в свете их связи с идеями модернизма (экспрессионизма). The main issue of the article is the analysis of different attitudes towards the possibility of stylistic periodization of musical art in the 20th and 21st century. While some authors see the development of music as a linear process fixed in such designations as “modernism— postmodernism— metamodernism”, the others offer non-linear interpretation as “modernism— postmodernism— second (or late) modernism” (Mahnkopf). The key point of this polemic becomes the reflection of processes in the art “after postmodernism”. It is argued that many composers of the beginning of the 21st century (Rebecca Saunders, Harrison Birtwistle and others) turn to specific artistic ideas rooted in styles of earlier period of modernism (expressionism).
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Megson, Chris. "Rebecca D'Monté and Graham Saunders, ed. Cool Britannia? British Political Drama in the 1990sBasingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 251 p. £15.99. ISBN: 978-1-4039-8813-3." New Theatre Quarterly 25, no. 1 (February 2009): 103–4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0266464x09000177.

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Zerdy, Joanne. "Cool Britannia? British Political Drama in the 1990s. Edited by Rebecca D'Monté and Graham Saunders. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008; pp. x+251. $75 cloth, $29 paper." Theatre Survey 51, no. 2 (October 18, 2010): 327–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040557410000517.

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15

Spencer, Jenny. "At the Sharp End: Uncovering the Work of Five Leading Dramatists: David Edgar, Tim Etchells, David Greig, Tanika Gupta, Mark Ravenhill. By Peter Billingham. London: Methuen, 2007. Pp. 264. £16.99/$15.95 Pb. - British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics. Edited by Mireia Aragay, Hildegard Klein, Enric Monforte and Pilar Zozaya. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pp. xii + 208. £45 Hb. - Cool Britannia? British Political Drama in the 1990s. Edited by Rebecca D'Monté and Graham Saunders. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Pp. x + 251. £45 Hb." Theatre Research International 34, no. 1 (March 2009): 96–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0307883308004367.

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Kovac, Jeffrey. "And Gladly Teach: A Resource Book for Chemists Considering Academic Careers, Second Edition (A. Truman Schwartz, Ronald D. Archer, Amina K. El-Ashmawy, David K. Lavallee, Saundra McGuire, Geraldine Richmond, and Rebecca Eikey)." Journal of Chemical Education 83, no. 5 (May 2006): 705. http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ed083p705.1.

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17

Lee, Chung Ho. "The Kings Bay and Devils Walking Stick Sites. William Hampton Adams, editor, with contributions by William Hampton Adams, Thomas Desjean, Christopher Espenshade, Rebecca Saunders, and Karen Jo Walker. Aboriginal Subsistence and Settlement Archaeology of the Kings Bay Locality, Vol. 1. University of Florida, Department of Anthropology, Reports of Investigations, No. 1, Gainesville, 1985. xiii + 393 pp., figures, tables, appendices, references cited. - Zooarchaeology. William Hampton Adams, editor, with contributions by Irvy R. Quitmyer, Elizabeth S. Wing, H. Stephen Hale, Douglas S. Jones, and Sylvia Scudder. Aboriginal Subsistence and Settlement Archaeology of the Kings Bay Locality, Vol. 2. University of Florida, Department of Anthropology, Reports of Investigations, No. 2, Gainesville, 1985. vii + 112 pp., figures, tables, appendix, references cited. $14.50, two volume set (paper)." American Antiquity 53, no. 1 (January 1988): 211. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/281185.

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"PROFILE: REBECCA SAUNDERS." Tempo 70, no. 277 (June 10, 2016): 109–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298216000140.

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Ross, Shawna, Francesca Bratton, Caroline Krzakowski, Sophie Corser, Andrew Keese, Joshua Phillips, Mark West, et al. "XIVModern Literature." Year's Work in English Studies, November 16, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ywes/maaa014.

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Abstract This chapter has eight sections 1. General. 2. Fiction Pre-1945; 3. Fiction Post-1945; 4. Drama Pre-1950; 5. Drama Post-1950; 6. British Poetry 1900–1950; 7 British Poetry Post-1950; 8. Modern Irish Poetry. Section 1 is by Shawna Ross; section 2(a) is by Francesca Bratton; section 2(b) is by Caroline Krzakowski; section 2(c) is by Sophie Corser; section 2(d) is by Andrew Keese; section 2(e) is by Joshua Phillips; section 3(a) is by Mark West; section 3(b) is by Samuel Cooper; section 4(a) is by Rebecca D’Monte; section 4(b) is by Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín; section 5 is by Graham Saunders; section 6(a) is by Noreen Masud; section 6(b) is by Matthew Creasy; section 7 is by Alex Alonso; section 8 is by Karl O’Hanlon.
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20

Duinker, Ben. "Interpretive Difficulty and Emergent Structure in Contemporary Music." Journal of Music Theory, September 8, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00222909-9930901.

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Abstract This article explores the notion of interpretive difficulty in contemporary music, treating it as a structural, tangible aspect of analysis. Interpretive difficulty comprises any challenge a performer may encounter—physical, cognitive, emotional, specific to a musical passage, or generalized across a repertoire or performance idiom. Five professional performers who specialize in contemporary music are interviewed about their experiences learning and performing specific works—Crimson (Rebecca Saunders, 2005), Taurangi (Gillian Whitehead, 1999), Mani.Δίκη (Pierluigi Billone, 2012), Sept papillons (Kaija Saariaho, 2000), and La Nativité du Seigneur (Olivier Messiaen, 1935)—focusing on how interpretive difficulty and musical structure intersect in their practice. These interviews illuminate a relationship between interpretive difficulty and musical structure that manifests in several domains: accuracy, interpretive latitude, narrative, and control. While difficulty is uniquely determined by any musician's physical, cognitive, environmental, or cultural context, using these domains as a theoretical framework establishes relationships among works, performers, and idioms that might otherwise appear to have little in common—a particularly appealing prospect for recently composed repertoire. In subscribing to Nicholas Cook's (2013) recharacterization of the score as a “script” that is interpreted, supplemented, and molded in performance, this research encourages the treatment of performers' contributions as a fundamental object of analysis.
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"FIRST PERFORMANCES." Tempo 66, no. 261 (July 2012): 60–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0040298212000277.

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London, Barbican: Alexander Goehr's ‘When Adam Fell’ Paul ConwayLondon, Barbican: Thomas Adès's ‘Polaris’ Robert SteinUniversity of Manchester: Philip Grange's ‘Ghosts of Great Violence’ Paul ConwayManchester University – Psappha 20th anniversary concert Tim MottersheadBirmingham, Symphony Hall: Cecilia McDowall's ‘Seventy Degrees Below Zero’ Paul ConwayLondon, ENO: John Adams's ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ Robert SteinLondon, Barbican: Rebecca Saunders's ‘Still’ Paul ConwayChichester University: ‘New Music Chi’ John WheatleySt Mary's Church, Shrewsbury: John Joubert's Cello Concerto Paul ConwayLondon, St. Giles Cripplegate: Jericho House's ‘The Tempest’ Jill Barlow
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Piper, Melanie. "Blood on Boylston: Digital Memory and the Dramatisation of Recent History in Patriots Day." M/C Journal 20, no. 5 (October 13, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1288.

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IntroductionWhen I saw Patriots Day (Berg 2016) at my local multiplex, a family entered the theatre and sat a few rows in front of me. They had a child with them, a boy who was perhaps nine or ten years old. Upon seeing the kid, I had a physical reaction. Not quite a knee-jerk, but more of an uneasy gut punch. ‘Don't you know what this movie is about?’ I wanted to ask his parents; ‘I’ve seen Jeff Bauman’s bones, and that is not something a child should see.’ I had lived through the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt, and the memories were vivid in my mind as I waited for the movie to start, to re-present the memory on screen. Admittedly, I had lived through it from the other side of the world, watching through the mediated windows of the computer, smartphone, and television screen. Nevertheless, I remembered it in blood-soaked colour detail, brought to me by online photo galleries, social media updates, the failed amateur sleuths of Reddit, and constant cable news updates, breaking news even when the events had temporarily stalled. Alison Landsberg has coined the term “prosthetic memory” to describe how historical events are re-created and imbued with an affective experience through cinema and other sites of mass cultural mediation, allowing those who did not experience the past to form a personal connection to and subjective memory of history (2). For the boy in the cinema, Patriots Day would most likely be his first encounter with and memory of the Boston Marathon bombing. But how does prosthetic memory apply to audience members like me, who had lived through the Boston bombing from a great distance, with personalised memories mediated by the first-person perspective of social media? Does the ease of dissemination of information, particularly eyewitness photographs and videos, create possibilities for a prosthetic experience of the present? Does the online mediation of historical events of the present translate to screen dramatisations? These questions become particularly pertinent when the first-release audience of a film has recent, living memories of the real events depicted on screen.The time between when an event occurs and when it is brought to cinemas in a true-events adaptation is decreasing. Rebecca A. Sheehan argues that the cultural value of instant information has given rise to a trend in the contemporary biopic and historical film that sees our mediated world turned into a temporal "paradox in which the present is figured as both historical and ongoing" (36). Since 2005, Sheehan writes, biographical films that depict the lives of still-living public figures or in other ways comment on the ongoing history of the present have become increasingly frequent. Sheehan cites films such as The Social Network (Fincher 2010), The Queen (Frears 2006), W. (Stone 2008), and Game Change (Roach 2012) as examples of this growing biopic trend (35-36). In addition to the instantaneous remediation of public figures in the contemporary biopic, similarly there is a stable of contemporary historical films based on the true stories of ordinary people involved in extraordinary recent events. Films such as The Impossible (Bayona 2012), World Trade Center (Stone 2006), United 93 (Greengrass 2006), and Deepwater Horizon (Berg 2016) bring the death and destruction of real-world natural disasters or terrorist attacks to a sanitised but experiential cinematic event. The sensitive nature of some of the events in question often see the films labelled “too soon” and exploitative of recent tragedy. Films such as these typically do not have known public figures as their protagonists, but they arise from a similar climate of the demands of televisual and online mediation that Sheehan describes in the “instant biopics” of her study (36). Given this rise of brief temporal space between real events and their dramatisations, in this essay, I examine Patriots Day in light of the role digital experience plays in both its dramatisation and how the film's initial audience may remember the event. As Patriots Day replicates a kind of prosthetic memory of the present, it uses the first-instance digital mediation of the event to form prosthetic memories for future viewers. Through Patriots Day, I seek to gesture toward the possibilities of first-person digital mediation of major news events in shaping dramatisations of the recent past.Digital Memories of the Boston Marathon BombingTo examine the ways the Boston Marathon bombing circulated in online space, I look at the link- and image-based online discussion platform Reddit as an example of engagement with and recirculation of the event, particularly as a form of engagement defined by photographs and videos. Because the Boston Marathon is a televised and widely-reported event, professional videographers and photographers were present at the marathon’s finish line at the time of the first explosion. Thus, the first bomb and its immediate aftermath were captured in news footage and still images. The graphic nature of some of these images depicting the violence of the scene saw traditional print and television outlets cropping or otherwise editing the photographs to make them appropriate for mass broadcast (Hughney). Some online outlets, however, showed these pictures in their unedited form, often accompanied by warnings that required readers to scroll further down the page or click through the warning to see the photographs. These distinctive capabilities of the online environment allowed individuals to choose whether to view the image, while still allowing the uncensored image to circulate and be reposted elsewhere, such as on Reddit. In addition to photos and videos shot by professionals at the finish line, witnesses armed with smart phone cameras and access to social media posted their views of the aftermath to social media like Twitter, enabling the collation of both amateur and professionally shot photographs of the scene by online news aggregators such as Buzzfeed (Broderick). The Reddit community is seen as an essential part of the Boston Bombing story for the way some of its users participated in a form of ‘crowd-sourced’ investigation that resulted in the false identification of suspects (see: Nhan et al.; Tapia et al.; Potts and Harrison). There is another aspect to Reddit’s role in the circulation and mediation of the story, however, as online venues became a go-to source for news on the unfolding event, where information was delivered faster and with greater accuracy than the often-sensationalised television news coverage (Starbird et al. 347). In addition to its role in providing information that is a part of Reddit’s culture that “value[s] evidence of some kind” to support discussion (Potts and Harrison 144), Reddit played a number of roles in the sense-making process that social media can often facilitate during crisis situations (Heverin and Zach). Through its division into “subreddits,” the individual communities and discussion areas that make up the platform, Reddit accommodates an incredibly diverse range of topics and interests. Different areas of Reddit were able to play different roles in the process of sharing information and acting in a community sense-making capacity in the aftermath of the bombing. Among the subreddits involved in attempting to make sense of the event were those that served as appropriate places for posting image galleries of both professional and amateur photographs and videos, drawn from a variety of online sources. Users of subreddits such as /r/WTF and /r/MorbidReality, for example, posted galleries of “NSFL” (Not Safe For Life) images of the bombing and its aftermath (see: touhou_hijack, titan059, f00d4tehg0dz). Additionally, the /r/Boston subreddit issued calls for anyone with photographs or videos related to the attack to upload them to the thread, as well as providing an e-mail address to submit them to the FBI (RichardHerold). The /r/FindBostonBombers subreddit became a hub for analysis of the photographs. The subreddit's investigatory work was picked up by other online and traditional media outlets (including the New York Post cover photo which misidentified two suspects), bringing wider attention to Reddit’s unfolding coverage of the bombing (Potts and Harrison 148). Landsberg’s theory of prosthetic memory, and her application of it, largely relates to mass culture’s role in “the production and dissemination of memories that have no direct connection to a person’s lived past” (20). The possibilities for news events to be recorded and disseminated by smart phones and social media, however, help to create a deeper sense of affective engagement with a distant present, creating prosthetic memories out of the mediated first-hand experiences of others. The graphic nature of the photos and videos of the Boston bombing collected by and shared on sites like Reddit, the ongoing nature of the event (which, from detonation to the capture of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, spanned five days), and the participatory activity of scouring photographs for clues to the identity of the bombers all lend a sense of ongoing, experiential engagement with first-person, audiovisual mediations of the event. These prosthetic memories of the present are, as Landsberg writes of those created from dramatisations or re-creations of the past, transferable, able to belong to those who have no “natural” claim to them (18) with an experiential element that personalises history for those who do not directly experience it (33). If widely disseminated first-person mediations of events like the Boston bombing can be thought of as a prosthetic experience of present history, how will they play a part in the prosthetic memories of the future? How will those who did not live through the Boston bombing, either as a personal experience or a digitally mediated one, incorporate this digital memory into their own experience of its cinematic re-creation? To address this question, I turn to consider Patriots Day. Of particular note is the bombing sequence’s resemblance to digital mediations of the event as a marker of a plausible docudramatic resemblance to reality.The Docudramatic Re-Presentation of Digital MemoryAs a cinematic representation of recent history, Patriots Day sits at a somewhat uncomfortable intersection of fact and fiction, of docudrama and popcorn action movie, more so than an instant history film typically would. Composite characters or entirely invented characters and narratives that play out against the backdrop of real events are nothing out of the ordinary in the historical film. However, Patriots Day's use of real material and that of pure invention coincides, frequently in stark contrast. The film's protagonist, Boston Police Sergeant Tommy Saunders (played by Mark Wahlberg) is a fictional character, the improbable hero of the story who is present at every step of the attack and the manhunt. He is there on Boylston Street when the bombs go off. He is there with the FBI, helping to identify the suspects with knowledge of Boylston Street security cameras that borders on a supernatural power. He is there at the Watertown shootout among exploding cars and one-liner quips. When Dzokhar Tsarnaev is finally located, he is, of course, first on the scene. Tommy Saunders, as embodied by Wahlberg, trades on all the connotations of both the stereotypical Boston Southie and the action hero that are embedded in Wahlberg’s star persona. As a result, Patriots Day often seems to be a depiction of an alternate universe where Mark Wahlberg in a cop uniform almost single-handedly caught a terrorist. The improbability of Saunders as a character in a true-events drama, though, is thoroughly couched in the docudramatic material of historical depiction. Steven N. Lipkin argues that docudrama is a mode of representation that performs a re-creation of memory to persuade us that it is representing the real (1). By conjuring the memory of an event into being in ways that seem plausible and anchored to the evidence of actuality—such as integrating archival footage or an indexical resemblance to the actual event or an actual person—the representational, cinematic, or fictionalised elements of docudrama are imbued with a sense of the reality they claim to represent (Lipkin 3). Patriots Day uses real visual material throughout the film. The integration of evidence is particularly notable in the bombing sequence, which combines archival footage of the 2013 race, surveillance footage of the Tsarnaev brothers approaching the finish line, and a dramatic re-creation that visually resembles the original to such an extent that its integration with archival footage is almost seamless (Landler). The conclusion of the film draws on this evidential connection to the real as well, in the way that docudrama is momentarily suspended to become documentary, as interviews with some of the real people who are depicted as characters in the film close out the story. In addition to its direct use of the actual, Patriots Day's re-creation of the bombing itself bears an indexical resemblance to the event as seen by those who were not there and relies on memories of the bombing's initial mediation to vouch for the dramatisation's accuracy. In the moments before the bombing's re-creation, actual footage of the Tsarnaevs's route down Boylston Street plays, a low ominous tone of the score building over the silent security footage. The fictional Saunders’s fictional wife (Michelle Monaghan) has come to the finish line to bring him a knee brace, and she passes Tamerlan Tsarnaev as she leaves. This shot directly crosses a visual resemblance to the actual (Themo Melikidze playing Tsarnaev, resembling the bomber through physicality and costuming) with the fictional structuring device of the film in the form of Tommy Saunders. Next, in a long shot, we see Tsarnaev bump into a man wearing a grey raglan shirt. The man turns to look at Tsarnaev. From the costuming, it is evident that this man who is not otherwise named is intended to represent Jeff Bauman, the subject of an iconic photograph from the bombing. In the photo, Bauman is shown being taken from the scene in a wheelchair with both legs amputated from below the knee by the blast (another cinematic dramatisation of the Boston bombing, Stronger, based on Bauman’s memoir of the same name, will be released in 2017). In addition to the visual signifier of Bauman from the memorable photograph, reports circulated that Bauman's ability to describe Tsarnaev to the FBI in the immediate aftermath of the bombing was instrumental in identifying the suspects (Hartmann). Here, this digital memory is re-created in a brief but recognisable moment: this is the before picture of Jeff Bauman, this is the moment of identification that was widely circulated and talked about, a memory of that one piece of good news that helped satisfy public curiosity about the status of the iconic Man in the Wheelchair.When the bombs detonate, we are brought into the smoke and ash, closer access than the original mediation afforded by the videographers at the finish line. After the first bomb detonates, the camera follows Saunders as he walks toward the smoke cloud. As the second bomb explodes, we go inside the scene. The sequence cuts from actual security camera footage that captured the blast, to a first-person perspective of the explosion, the resulting fire and smoke, and a shot that resembles the point of view of footage captured on a smart phone. The frame shakes wildly, giving the viewer disorienting flashes of the victims, a sense of the chaos without seeing anything in lasting, specific detail, before the frame tips sideways onto the pavement, stained with blood and littered with debris. Coupled with this is a soundscape that resembles both the subjective experience of a bombing victim and what their smart phone video has captured. There is the rumble of the explosion and muffled sounds of debris hidden under the noise of shockwaves of air hitting a microphone, fading into an electronic whine and tinnitus ring. A later shot shows the frame obscured by smoke, slowly clearing to give us a high angle view of the aftermath, resembling photographs taken from a window overlooking the scene on Boylston Street (see: touhou_hijack). Archival footage of first responders and points of view resembling a running cell phone camera that captures flashes of blood and open wounds combine with shots of the actors playing characters (both fictional and based on real people) that were established at the beginning of the film. There is once again a merging of the re-created and the actual, bound together by a sense of memory that encourages the viewer to take the former as plausible, based on its resemblance to the latter.When Saunders runs for the second bombing site further down the street, he looks down at two bodies on the ground. Framed in close-up, the bloodless, empty expression and bright blue shirt of Krystle Campbell are recognisable. We can ignore the inaccuracies of this element of the digital memory amidst the chaos of the sequence. Campbell died in the first bombing, not the second. The body of a woman in a black shirt is between the camera's position on the re-created Boylston Street and the actor standing in for Campbell, the opposite of how Campbell and her friend Karen Rand lay beside each other in photographs of the bombing aftermath. The police officer who takes Krystle's pulse on film and shakes her head at Wahlberg's character is a brunette, not the blonde in the widely-circulated picture of a first responder at the actual bombing. The most visceral portion of the image is there, though, re-created almost exactly as it appeared at its first point of mediation: the lifeless eyes and gaping mouth, the bright blue t-shirt. The memory of the event is conjured into being, and the cinematic image resembles the most salient elements of the memory enough for the cinematic image to be a plausible re-creation. The cinematic frame is positioned at a lower level to the original still, as though we are on the ground beside her, bringing the viewer even closer to the event, even as the frame crops out her injuries as scene photographs did not, granting a semblance of respectful distance from the real death. This re-creation of Krystle Campbell’s death is a brief flash in the sequence, but a powerful moment of recognition for those who remember its original mediation. The result is a sequence that shows the graphic violence of the actuality it represents in a series of images that invite its viewer to expand the sequence with their memory of the event the way most of them experienced it: on other screens, at the site of its first instance of digital mediation.ConclusionThrough its use of cinematography that resembles actual photographic evidence of the Boston Marathon bombing or imbues the re-creation with a sense of a first-person, digitally mediated account of the event, Patriots Day draws on its audience's digital memory of recent history to claim accuracy in its fictionalisation. Not everyone who sees Patriots Day may be as familiar with the wealth of eyewitness photographs and images of the Boston Marathon bombing as those who may have experienced and followed the events in online venues such as Reddit. Nonetheless, the fact of this material's existence shapes the event's dramatisation as the filmmakers attempt to imbue the dramatisation with a sense of accuracy and fidelity to the event. The influence of digital memory on the film’s representation of the event gestures toward the possibilities for how online engagement with major news events may play a role in their dramatisation moving forward. Events that have had eyewitness visual accounts distributed online, such as the 2015 Bataclan massacre, the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing and Westminster Bridge attack, or the 2016 police shooting of Philando Castile that was streamed on Facebook live, may become the subject of future dramatisations of recent history. The dramatic renderings of contemporary history films will undoubtedly be shaped by the recent memory of their online mediations to appeal to a sense of accuracy in the viewer's memory. As recent history films continue, digital memories of the present will help make the prosthetic memories of the future. ReferencesBroderick, Ryan. “Photos from the Scene of the Boston Marathon Explosion (Extremely Graphic).” Buzzfeed News, 16 Apr. 2013. 2 Aug. 2017 <https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/first-photos-from-the-scene-of-the-boston-marathon-explosion?utm_term=.fw38Byjq1#.peNXWPe8G>.f00d4tehg0dz. “Collection of Photos from the Boston Marathon Bombing (NSFW) (NSFL-Gore).” Reddit, 16 Apr. 2013. 8 Aug. 2017 <https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1cfhg4/collection_of_photos_from_the_boston_marathon/>.Hartmann, Margaret. “Bombing Victim in Iconic Photo Was Key to Identifying Boston Suspects.” New York Magazine, 18 Apr. 2013. 8 Aug. 2017 <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/04/bombing-victim-identified-suspects.html>.Heverin, Thomas, and Lisl Zach. “Use of Microblogging for Collective Sense-Making during Violent Crises: A Study of Three Campus Shootings.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 63.1 (2012): 34-47. Hughney, Christine. “News Media Weigh Use of Photos of Carnage.” New York Times, 17 Apr. 2013. 2 Aug. 2017 <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/18/business/media/news-media-weigh-use-of-photos-of-carnage.html>.Landler, Edward. “Recreating the Boston Marathon Bombing in Patriots Day.” Cinemontage, 21 Dec. 2016. 8 Aug. 2017 <http://cinemontage.org/2016/12/recreating-boston-marathon-bombing-patriots-day/>.Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia U P, 2004. Lipkin, Steven N. Docudrama Performs the Past: Arenas of Argument in Films Based on True Stories. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011. Nhan, Johnny, Laura Huey, and Ryan Broll. “Digilantism: An Analysis of Crowdsourcing and the Boston Marathon Bombing.” British Journal of Criminology 57 (2017): 341-361. Patriots Day. Dir. Peter Berg. CBS Films, 2016.Potts, Liza, and Angela Harrison. “Interfaces as Rhetorical Constructions. Reddit and 4chan during the Boston Marathon Bombings.” Proceedings of the 31st ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. Greenville, North Carolina, September-October 2013. 143-150. RichardHerold. “2013 Boston Marathon Attacks: Please Upload Any Photos in Relation to the Attacks That You Have.” Reddit, 15 Apr. 2013. 8 Aug. 2017 <https://www.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1cf5wp/2013_boston_marathon_attacks_please_upload_any/>.Sheehan, Rebecca A. “Facebooking the Present: The Biopic and Cultural Instantaneity.” The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture. Eds. Tom Brown and Bélen Vidal. New York: Routledge, 2014. 35-51. Starbird, Kate, Jim Maddock, Mania Orand, Peg Achterman, and Robert M. Mason. “Rumors, False Flags, and Digital Vigilantes: Misinformation on Twitter after the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing.” iConference 2014 Proceedings. Berlin, March 2014. 654-662. Tapia, Andrea H., Nicolas LaLone, and Hyun-Woo Kim. “Run Amok: Group Crowd Participation in Identifying the Bomb and Bomber from the Boston Marathon Bombing.” Proceedings of the 11th International ISCRAM Conference. Eds. S.R. Hiltz, M.S. Pfaff, L. Plotnick, and P.C. Shih. University Park, Pennsylvania, May 2014. 265-274. titan059. “Pics from Boston Bombing NSFL.” Reddit, 15 Apr. 2013. 8 Aug. 2017 <https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1cf0po/pics_from_boston_bombing_nsfl/>.touhou_hijack. “Krystle Campbell Died Screaming. This Sequence of Photos Shows Her Final Moments.” Reddit, 18 Apr. 2013. 8 Aug. 2017 <https://www.reddit.com/r/MorbidReality/comments/1cktrx/krystle_campbell_died_screaming_this_sequence_of/>.
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23

Almila, Anna-Mari. "Fabricating Effervescence." M/C Journal 24, no. 1 (March 15, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2741.

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Abstract:
Introduction In November 2020, upon learning that the company’s Covid-19 vaccine trial had been successful, the head of Pfizer’s Vaccine Research and Development, Kathrin Jansen, celebrated with champagne – “some really good stuff” (Cohen). Bubbles seem to go naturally with celebration, and champagne is fundamentally associated with bubbles. Yet, until the late-seventeenth century, champagne was a still wine, and it only reached the familiar levels of bubbliness in the late-nineteenth century (Harding). During this period and on into the early twentieth century, “champagne” was in many ways created, defined, and defended. A “champagne bubble” was created, within which the “nature” of champagne was contested and constructed. Champagne today is the result of hundreds of years of labour by many sorts of bubble-makers: those who make the bubbly drink, and those who construct, maintain, and defend the champagne bubble. In this article, I explore some elements of the champagne bubble, in order to understand both its fragility and rigidity over the years and today. Creating the Champagne Bubble – the Labour of Centuries It is difficult to separate the physical from the mythical as regards champagne. Therefore the categorisations below are always overlapping, and embedded in legal, political, economic, and socio-cultural factors. Just as assemblage – the mixing of wine from different grapes – is an essential element of champagne wine, the champagne bubble may be called heterogeneous assemblage. Indeed, the champagne bubble, as we will see below, is a myriad of different sorts of bubbles, such as terroir, appellation, myth and brand. And just as any assemblage, its heterogeneous elements exist and operate in relation to each other. Therefore the “champagne bubble” discussed here is both one and many, all of its elements fundamentally interconnected, constituting that “one” known as “champagne”. It is not my intention to be comprehensive of all the elements, historical and contemporary. Indeed, that would not be possible within such a short article. Instead, I seek to demonstrate some of the complexity of the champagne bubble, noting the elaborate labour that has gone into its creation. The Physical Champagne and Champagne – from Soil to Bubbles Champagne means both a legally protected geographical area (Champagne), and the wine (here: champagne) produced in this area from grapes defined as acceptable: most importantly pinot noir, pinot meunier (“black” grapes), and chardonnay (“white” grape). The method of production, too, is regulated and legally protected: méthode champenoise. Although the same method is used in numerous locations, these must be called something different: metodo classico (Italy), método tradicional (Spain), Methode Cap Classique (South Africa). The geographical area of Champagne was first legally defined in 1908, when it only included the areas of Marne and Aisne, leaving out, most importantly, the area of Aube. This decision led to severe unrest and riots, as the Aube vignerons revolted in 1911, forcing the inclusion of “zone 2”: Aube, Haute-Marne, and Seine-et-Marne (Guy). Behind these regulations was a surge in fraudulent production in the early twentieth century, as well as falling wine prices resulting from increasing supply of cheap wines (Colman 18). These first appellations d’origine had many consequences – they proved financially beneficial for the “zone 1”, but less so for the “zone 2”. When both these areas were brought under the same appellation in 1927, the financial benefits were more limited – but this may have been due to the Great Depression triggered in 1929 (Haeck et al.). It is a long-standing belief that the soil and climate of Champagne are key contributors to the quality of champagne wines, said to be due to “conditions … most suitable for making this type of wine” (Simon 11). Already in the end of the nineteenth century, the editor of Vigneron champenois attributed champagne’s quality to “a fortunate combination of … chalky soil … [and] unrivalled exposure [to the sun]” (Guy 119) among other things. Factors such as soil and climate, commonly included in and expressed through the idea of terroir, undoubtedly influence grapes and wines made thereof, but the extent remains unproven. Indeed, terroir itself is a very contested concept (Teil; Inglis and Almila). It is also the case that climate change has had, and will continue to have, devastating effects on wine production in many areas, while benefiting others. The highly successful English sparkling wine production, drawing upon know-how from the Champagne area, has been enabled by the warming climate (Inglis), while Champagne itself is at risk of becoming too hot (Robinson). Champagne is made through a process more complicated than most wines. I present here the bare bones of it, to illustrate the many challenges that had to be overcome to enable its production in the scale we see today. Freshly picked grapes are first pressed and the juice is fermented. Grape juice contains natural yeasts and therefore will ferment spontaneously, but fermentation can also be started with artificial yeasts. In fermentation, alcohol and carbon dioxide (CO2) are formed, but the latter usually escapes the liquid. The secret of champagne is its second fermentation, which happens in bottles, after wines from different grapes and/or vineyards have been blended for desired characteristics (assemblage). For the second fermentation, yeast and sugar are added. As the fermentation happens inside a bottle, the CO2 that is created does not escape, but dissolves into the wine. The average pressure inside a champagne bottle in serving temperature is around 5 bar – 5 times the pressure outside the bottle (Liger-Belair et al.). The obvious challenge this method poses has to do with managing the pressure. Exploding bottles used to be a common problem, and the manner of sealing bottles was not very developed, either. Seventeenth-century developments in bottle-making, and using corks to seal bottles, enabled sparkling wines to be produced in the first place (Leszczyńska; Phillips 137). Still today, champagne comes in heavy-bottomed bottles, sealed with characteristically shaped cork, which is secured with a wire cage known as muselet. Scientific innovations, such as calculating the ideal amount of sugar for the second fermentation in 1836, also helped to control the amount of gas formed during the second fermentation, thus making the behaviour of the wine more predictable (Leszczyńska 265). Champagne is characteristically a “manufactured” wine, as it involves several steps of interference, from assemblage to dosage – sugar added for flavour to most champagnes after the second fermentation (although there are also zero dosage champagnes). This lends champagne particularly suitable for branding, as it is possible to make the wine taste the same year after year, harvest after harvest, and thus create a distinctive and recognisable house style. It is also possible to make champagnes for different tastes. During the nineteenth century, champagnes of different dosage were made for different markets – the driest for the British, the sweetest for the Russians (Harding). Bubbles are probably the most striking characteristic of champagne, and they are enabled by the complicated factors described above. But they are also formed when the champagne is poured in a glass. Natural impurities on the surface of the glass provide channels through which the gas pockets trapped in the wine can release themselves, forming strains of rising bubbles (Liger-Belair et al.). Champagne glasses have for centuries differed from other wine glasses, often for aesthetic reasons (Harding). The bubbles seem to do more than give people aesthetic pleasure and sensory experiences. It is often claimed that champagne makes you drunk faster than other drinks would, and there is, indeed, some (limited) research showing that this may well be the case (Roberts and Robinson; Ridout et al.). The Mythical Champagne – from Dom Pérignon to Modern Wonders Just as the bubbles in a champagne glass are influenced by numerous forces, so the metaphorical champagne bubble is subject to complex influences. Myth-creation is one of the most significant of these. The origin of champagne as sparkling wine is embedded in the myth of Dom Pérignon of Hautvillers monastery (1638–1715), who according to the legend would have accidentally developed the bubbles, and then enthusiastically exclaimed “I am drinking the stars!” (Phillips 138). In reality, bubbles are a natural phenomenon provoked by winter temperatures deactivating the fermenting yeasts, and spring again reactivating them. The myth of Dom Pérignon was first established in the nineteenth century and quickly embraced by the champagne industry. In 1937, Moët et Chandon launched a premium champagne called Dom Pérignon, which enjoys high reputation until this day (Phillips). The champagne industry has been active in managing associations connected with champagne since the nineteenth century. Sparkling champagnes had already enjoyed fashionability in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century, both in the French Court, and amongst the British higher classes. In the second half of the nineteenth century, champagne found ever increasing markets abroad, and the clientele was not aristocratic anymore. Before the 1860s, champagne’s association was with high status celebration, as well as sexual activity and seduction (Harding; Rokka). As the century went on, and champagne sales radically increased, associations with “modernity” were added: “hot-air balloons, towering steamships, transcontinental trains, cars, sports, and other ‘modern’ wonders were often featured in quickly proliferating champagne advertising” (Rokka 280). During this time, champagne grew both drier and more sparkling, following consumer tastes (Harding). Champagne’s most important markets in later nineteenth century included the UK, where the growing middle classes consumed champagne for both celebration and hospitality (Harding), the US, where (upper) middle-class women were served champagne in new kinds of consumer environments (Smith; Remus), and Russia, where the upper classes enjoyed sweeter champagne – until the Revolution (Phillips 296). The champagne industry quickly embraced the new middle classes in possession of increasing wealth, as well as new methods of advertising and marketing. What is remarkable is that they managed to integrate enormously varied cultural thematics and still retain associations with aristocracy and luxury, while producing and selling wine in industrial scale (Harding; Rokka). This is still true today: champagne retains a reputation of prestige, despite large-scale branding, production, and marketing. Maintaining and Defending the Bubble: Formulas, Rappers, and the Absolutely Fabulous Tipplers The falling wine prices and increasing counterfeit wines coincided with Europe’s phylloxera crisis – the pest accidentally brought over from North America that almost wiped out all Europe’s vineyards. The pest moved through Champagne in the 1890s, killing vines and devastating vignerons (Campbell). The Syndicat du Commerce des vins de Champagne had already been formed in 1882 (Rokka 280). Now unions were formed to fight phylloxera, such as the Association Viticole Champenoise in 1898. The 1904 Fédération Syndicale des Vignerons was formed to lobby the government to protect the name of Champagne (Leszczyńska 266) – successfully, as we have seen above. The financial benefits from appellations were certainly welcome, but short-lived. World War I treated Champagne harshly, with battle lines stuck through the area for years (Guy 187). The battle went on also in the lobbying front. In 1935, a new appellation regime was brought into law, which came to be the basis for all European systems, and the Comité National des appellations d'origine (CNAO) was founded (Colman 1922). Champagne’s protection became increasingly international, and continues to be so today under EU law and trade deals (European Commission). The post-war recovery of champagne relied on strategies used already in the “golden years” – marketing and lobbying. Advertising continued to embrace “luxury, celebration, transport (extending from air travel to the increasingly popular automobile), modernity, sports” (Guy 188). Such advertisement must have responded accurately to the mood of post-war, pre-depression Europe. Even in the prohibition US it was known that the “frivolous” French women might go as far as bathe in champagne, like the popular actress Mistinguett (Young 63). Curiously, in the 1930s Soviet Russia, “champagne” (not produced in Champagne) was declared a sign of good living, symbolising the standard of living that any Soviet worker had access to (at least in theory) (Gronow). Today, the reputation of champagne is fiercely defended in legal terms. This is not only in terms of protection against other sparkling wine making areas, but also in terms of exploitation of champagne’s reputation by actors in other commercial fields, and even against mass market products containing genuine champagne (Mahy and d’Ath; Schneider and Nam). At the same time, champagne has been widely “democratised” by mass production, enabled partly by increasing mechanisation and scientification of champagne production from the 1950s onwards (Leszczyńska 266). Yet champagne retains its association with prestige, luxury, and even royalty. This has required some serious adaptation and flexibility. In what follows, I look into three cultural phenomena that illuminate processes of such adaptation: Formula One (F1) champagne spraying, the 1990s sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the Cristal racism scandal in 2006. The first champagne bottle is said to have been presented to F1 grand prix winner in Champagne in 1950 (Wheels24). Such a gesture would have been fully in line with champagne’s association with cars, sport, and modernity. But what about the spraying? Surely that is not in line with the prestige of the wine? The first spraying is attributed to Jo Siffert in 1966 and Dan Gurney in 1967, the former described as accidental, the latter as a spontaneous gesture of celebration (Wheels24; Dobie). Moët had become the official supplier of F1 champagnes in 1966, and there are no signs that the new custom would have been problematic for them, as their sponsorship continued until 1999, after which Mumm sponsored the sport for 15 years. Today, the champagne to be popped and sprayed is Chanson, in special bottles “coated in the same carbon fibre that F1 cars are made of” (Wheels24). Such an iconic status has the spraying gained that it features in practically all TV broadcasts concerning F1, although non-alcoholic substitute is used in countries where sale of alcohol is banned (Barker et al., “Quantifying”; Barker et al., “Alcohol”). As disturbing as the champagne spraying might look for a wine snob, it is perfectly in line with champagne’s marketing history and entrepreneurial spirit shown since the nineteenth century. Nor is it unheard of to let champagne spray. The “art” of sabrage, opening champagne bottle with a sable, associated with glamour, spectacle, and myth – its origin is attributed to Napoleon and his officers – is perfectly acceptable even for the snob. Sparkling champagne was always bound up with joy and celebration, not a solemn drink, and the champagne bubble was able to accommodate middle classes as well as aristocrats. This brings us to our second example, the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. The show, first released in 1992, featured two women, “Eddy” (Jennifer Saunders) and “Patsy” (Joanna Lumley), who spent their time happily smoking, taking drugs, and drinking large quantities of “Bolly” (among other things). Bollinger champagne may have initially experienced “a bit of a shock” for being thus addressed, but soon came to see the benefits of fame (French). In 2005, they hired PR support to make better use of the brand’s “Ab Fab” recognisability, and to improve its prestige reputation in order to justify their higher price range (Cann). Saunders and Lumley were warmly welcomed by the Bollinger house when filming for their champagne tour Absolutely Champers (2017). It is befitting indeed that such controversial fame came from the UK, the first country to discover sparkling champagne outside France (Simon 48), and where the aspirational middle classes were keen to consume it already in the nineteenth century (Harding). More controversial still is the case of Cristal (made by Louis Roederer) and the US rap world. Enthusiastically embraced by the “bling-bling” world of (black) rappers, champagne seems to fit their ethos well. Cristal was long favoured as both a drink and a word in rap lyrics. But in 2006, the newly appointed managing director at the family owned Roederer, Frédéric Rouzaud, made comments considered racist by many (Woodland). Rouzard told in an interview with The Economist that the house observed the Cristal-rap association “with curiosity and serenity”. He reportedly continued: “but what can we do? We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Pérignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business”. It was indeed those two brands that the rapper Jay-Z replaced Cristal with, when calling for a boycott on Cristal. It would be easy to dismiss Rouzard’s comments as snobbery, or indeed as racism, but they merit some more reflection. Cristal is the premium wine of a house that otherwise does not enjoy high recognisability. While champagne’s history involves embracing new sorts of clientele, and marketing flexibly to as many consumer groups as possible (Rokka), this was the first spectacular crossing of racial boundaries. It was always the case that different houses and their different champagnes were targeted at different clienteles, and it is apparent that Cristal was not targeted at black rap artists. Whereas Bollinger was able to turn into a victory the questionable fame brought by the white middle-class association of Absolutely Fabulous, the more prestigious Cristal considered the attention of the black rapper world more threatening and acted accordingly. They sought to defend their own brand bubble, not the larger champagne bubble. Cristal’s reputation seems to have suffered little – its 2008 vintage, launched in 2018, was the most traded wine of that year (Schultz). Jay-Z’s purchase of his own champagne brand (Armand de Brignac, nicknamed Ace of Spades) has been less successful reputation-wise (Greenburg). It is difficult to break the champagne bubble, and it may be equally difficult to break into it. Conclusion In this article, I have looked into the various dilemmas the “bubble-makers” of Champagne encountered when fabricating what is today known as “champagne”. There have been moments of threat to the bubble they formed, such as in the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and eras of incomparable success, such as from the 1860s to 1880s. The discussion has demonstrated the remarkable flexibility with which the makers and defenders of champagne have responded to challenges, and dealt with material, socio-cultural, economic, and other problems. It feels appropriate to end with a note on the current challenge the champagne industry faces: Covid-19. The pandemic hit champagne sales exceptionally hard, leaving around 100 million bottles unsold (Micallef). This was not very surprising, given the closure of champagne-selling venues, banning of public and private celebrations, and a general mood not particularly prone to (or even likely to frown upon) such light-hearted matters as glamour and champagne. Champagne has survived many dramatic drops in sales during the twentieth century, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the post-financial crisis collapse in 2009. Yet they seem to be able to make astonishing recoveries. Already, there are indicators that many people consumed more champagne during the festive end-of-year season than in previous years (Smithers). For the moment, it looks like the champagne bubble, despite its seeming fragility, is practically indestructible, no matter how much its elements may suffer under various pressures and challenges. References Barker, Alexander, Magdalena Opazo-Breton, Emily Thomson, John Britton, Bruce Granti-Braham, and Rachael L. Murray. “Quantifying Alcohol Audio-Visual Content in UK Broadcasts of the 2018 Formula 1 Championship: A Content Analysis and Population Exposure.” BMJ Open 10 (2020): e037035. <https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/10/8/e037035>. Barker, Alexander B., John Britton, Bruce Grant-Braham, and Rachael L. Murray. “Alcohol Audio-Visual Content in Formula 1 Television Broadcasting.” BMC Public Health 18 (2018): 1155. <https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-018-6068-3>. Campbell, Christy. 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