Academic literature on the topic 'Salmon P. Chase College of Law'

Pornography is neither a documentary media genre that documents what real sex in everyday life looks like, nor is it a pedagogical or moral media genre aimed at showing what ideal sex (in terms of health or morality) should look like. Instead, pornography is a fictional media genre that depicts sexual fantasies and explicitly presents naked bodies and sexual activities for the purpose of sexual arousal (Williams, 1989; McKee et al., 2020). Regarding media ethics and media effects, pornography has traditionally been viewed as highly problematic. Pornographic material has been accused of portraying sexuality in unhealthy, morally questionable and often sexist ways, thereby harming performers, audiences, and society at large. In the age of the Internet, pornography has become more diverse, accessible, and widespread than ever (Döring, 2009; Miller et al., 2020). Consequently, the depiction of sexuality in pornography is the focus of a growing number of content analyses of both mass media (e.g., erotic and pornographic novels and movies) and social media (e.g., erotic and pornographic stories, photos and videos shared via online platforms). Typically, pornography’s portrayals of sexuality are examined by measuring the prevalence and frequency of sexual practices and related gender roles via quantitative content analysis (for research reviews see Carrotte et al., 2020; Miller & McBain, 2022). It should be noted that the conceptual differentiation between erotica and pornography is complex and that “pornography” remains an ideologically charged, and often negatively connotated, concept. Hence, the research literature sometimes uses the broader and more neutral term “sexually explicit material” (SEM) in place of “pornographic material” (McKee et al., 2020). Furthermore, it must be emphasized that in the context of content analyses of SEM the focus is typically on legal pornography. Legal visual pornography is produced with adults who have given their informed consent for their image to be recorded, and then disseminated and marketed as SEM. Illegal pornography is usually beyond the scope of media content research, as the acquisition and use of illegal material would be unethical and illegal for researchers (e.g., the analysis of so-called “child pornography”, or what might be more accurately labeled “images of child sexual abuse”). Criminological and forensic research projects are exceptions to this rule. Field of application/theoretical foundation: The theories applied in pornographic media content research primarily come from four academic disciplines: communication science, psychology, sex research, and gender studies. These different theories are fairly similar in their core assumption that pornography users’ sexual cognitions and behaviors are molded by the ways in which sexuality is portrayed in pornographic material. Some of the theories also explain the typical content of pornography and point to the fact that audiences might not only be influenced by pornography but can also shape porn production through their preferences. All theories demand content analyses of pornographic material to back up their predictions. General Media Effects Theories Cultivation Theory and Social Cognitive Theory are the most commonly used media effects theories, irrespective of specific media content. They are often applied to pornographic material. Cultivation Theory (CT) was developed by communication researcher George Gerbner in the 1960s (Gerbner, 1998). CT claims that heavy media users’ perceptions of the prevalence of different societal phenomena (e.g., crimes) are shaped by the prevalence with which these phenomena occur in the media they consume (e.g., cop shows on TV). Applied to pornography, CT predicts that heavy users of pornography will severely overestimate the prevalence of sexual practices that are rare in reality, but widespread in pornography. Young people who lack real life sexual experience are regarded as particularly vulnerable for sexual cultivation effects in terms of biased perceptions of the popularity and normalcy of different performances of sexuality (e.g., name calling and slapping during sex). Another classic media effects theory that is widely adopted in pornography research is psychologist Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1971), later re-labeled as Social Cognitive Theory (SCT; Bandura, 2001). SCT claims that people imitate the behaviors of media role models. Applied to pornographic material, SCT predicts that media audiences will develop more favorable attitudes towards, and engage more frequently in, sexual behaviors portrayed positively in sexually explicit material. Such sexual imitation effects may influence not only attitudes toward, and engagement in, sex acts represented in pornography (e.g., anal sex), but also gender role behaviors (e.g., men acting dominantly, women acting submissively during sex), safer sex measures (e.g., lack of condom use), bodily appearance (e.g., breast augmentation), and consent communication (e.g., lack of explicitly asking for, or giving, consent to engage in different sex acts). Sexual Media Effects Theories While CT and SCT are broad media effects theories applicable to pornography as well as many other types of media content, Sexual Script Theory and the 3AM specifically address sexual media and their effects. Sexual Script Theory (SST) was developed by sociologists John Gagnon and William Simon in the 1970s (Gagnon & Simon, 1973; Simon & Gagnon, 2003; Wiederman, 2015). SST argues that human sexuality is not merely a biological instinct, but a highly complex set of cognitions and behaviors shaped by symbolic, social and cultural factors: People develop ideas about how to have sex in terms of organized cognitive schemas or “scripts” that reflect intra-psychic desires (e.g., their sexual fantasies), social norms (e.g., peers’ and partners’ sexual expectations), and cultural influences (e.g., representations of sexuality in the media they consume). SST stresses that the intra-psychic, social, and cultural determinants of individuals’ sexual scripts mutually influence each other and can change over time (Simon & Gagnon, 2003). However, in pornography research, usually only the third element of the theory (cultural influences through media representations of sexuality) is considered. Applied to pornography, SST predicts that sexual scripts presented in pornographic material (e.g., spontaneous anal sex with strangers without condoms or overt consent communication) can shape individuals’ sexual scripts. The Acquisition, Activation, and Application Model of Media Sexual Socialization (3AM) was developed more recently by communication researcher Paul Wright as a specification of SST regarding media influence (Wright, 2011). According to the 3AM, sexually explicit media content shapes cognitive schemas of sexuality in three ways: Pornography can foster the creation of new schemas (schema acquisition), it can prime extant schemas (schema activation), and it can facilitate the utilization of extant schemas to inform attitudes and behaviors (schema application). The 3AM differentiates between specific scripting effects of pornography (e.g., engaging in condom-free casual anal sex without sufficient consent communication after having observed this exact sexual script multiple times in pornography) versus abstract scripting effects (e.g., adopting a more permissive sexual worldview after having observed many people engaging in unrestricted sex in pornography). The aforementioned general and sexuality-specific media effects theories have been used predominantly to predict negative (unwanted, harmful) effects such as dangerously distorted views of sexuality and gender roles as well as engagement in risky or violent sexual behaviors, while potential positive effects have been mostly ignored. Only recently, has serious consideration been given to the beneficial effects of pornography use (e.g., sexual identity validation, sexual empowerment, improved couple communication, sexual skill acquisition, etc.) in the research literature (e.g., Döring, 2021; Döring & Mohseni, 2018; Döring et al., 2021; Kohut & Fisher, 2013; Kohut et al., 2017; Miller et al., 2018; Tillmann & Wells, 2022). Depending on specific negative and/or positive effect assumptions, different aspects of the representation of sexuality will be measured (e.g., expressions of aggression during sex or different types of sexual stimulation techniques). Gender Role, Feminist and Queer Theories Typically, analysis of the ways in which sexuality is represented in pornography involves considerations of gender relations, therefore gender role theories and feminist theories of gender (in-)equality are frequently drawn upon (e.g., Eagly, 1987). There are two main reasons for this additional theoretical focus on gender: 1) Most SEM depicts heterosexual encounters, hence the portrayal of sexuality in pornography implies a portrayal of sexual gender relations (Williams, 1989). 2) Gender relations in the media are often asymmetrical, depicting men and women in superior and subordinate positions, respectively. Such patriarchal gender relations are expected to be reflected, or even exaggerated, in pornographic material. Radical feminist approaches in particular characterize pornography as a portrayal of sexual degradation of women by men, that is so harmful to society that it should be prohibited (e.g., MacKinnon, 1991). Other feminist approaches are also critical of asymmetric gender relations in traditional mainstream pornography and call for more gender equality in SEM, such as in feminist pornography (Williams, 1989). Feminist criticism of gender roles and relations in pornography does not address the demographic variable of sex/gender alone, but also covers other diversity dimensions such as age, race/ethnicity, or disability. According to the analytical framework of intersectionality, the subordination and discrimination of women in society and media representations particularly affect those women who have multiple marginalized demographic characteristics (e.g., the representation of white women in pornography differs from that of black or Asian women; Fritz et al. 2021). Queer theory is also concerned with different racial/ethnic and sexual identities of women and their participation and representation in pornography (Ingraham 2013). Content analyses of pornography need to take into consideration that pornography is becoming increasingly diverse (Miller & McBain, 2022). Hence, content analyses need to differentiate between various pornographic sub-genres such as commercial heterosexual mainstream pornography (traditionally targeting men) versus, for example, women-friendly and couple-oriented pornography, feminist pornography, queer pornography, fetish and kink pornography, or authentic amateur and DIY (do it yourself) pornography in the form of visual or text pornography (Döring, 2021; McKee et al., 2008). Gender role, feminist, and queer theories predict that gender relations in mainstream pornography are more asymmetrical, stereotypical and patriarchal than in women- and couple-friendly, feminist and queer pornography. Sexual Fantasy and Desire Theories The above-mentioned effect theories do not address and explain the main intended effect of pornography, namely immediate sexual arousal, pleasure and satisfaction. The theories focus on linking the fictional pornographic content directly with real life opinions and behaviors, but mostly ignore the links between fictional pornographic content and sexual fantasies. Research shows that many sexual fantasies of people of all genders are unrealistic, extreme, clichéd, violent and norm-violating and that norm-violation is often what makes them arousing (e.g., Bivona et al., 2012; Critelli & Bivona, 2008; Joyal, 2015). The same might be true for pornographic content. Hence, measuring pornography, a fictional media genre, against standards of realism, health and morality might not always be in line with the main entertainment purpose of the genre. Erotizing the forbidden and dangerous (e.g, sex with family members, with mysterious strangers, with authority figures, with non-human creatures) is a common trope of sexual fantasies, hence meaningful variables to measure pornographic portrayals of sexuality could be derived from, and related to, theories of sexual fantasy and desire (e.g., Salmon et al., 2019; Stoller, 1985). Indulging in unrealistic and norm-violating fantasies and fictional media contents is part of media entertainment and may not necessarily lead to norm-violating behaviors. Competent media users should be able to differentiate between fiction and reality. Mold Theories versus Mirror Theories When analyzing and criticizing sexuality portrayals in pornography, it is important to realize that media do not just uni-directionally influence public opinions and behaviors (mold theory). Rather, media also bi-directionally reflect existing sexual relations and fantasies (mirror theory). Recent sex surveys, for example, demonstrate that engagement in consensual BDSM (Bondage/Discipline, Dominance/Submission, Sadism/Masochism) practices and rough sex (e.g., name calling, spanking, hair pulling) is fairly widespread in the general population and enjoyed by all genders (e.g., Burch & Salmon, 2019; Herbenick et al., 2021a, 2021b; Strizzi et al., 2022). Hence, it might not always be the adult industry that influences audiences’ sexualities, but also audiences’ sexual interests that influence porn production. Particularly in the digital pornography market, producers and vendors can easily analyze audience preferences through the analysis of search terms and download statistics and adopt their content accordingly. Furthermore, general beauty trends in society (e.g., regarding shaving of pubic and body hair, growing of beards, or multiple tattoos and other body art) might be mirrored in pornography (through its selection and presentation of performers) rather than of generated by it. References/combination with other methods of data collection: Manual quantitative content analyses of pornographic material can be combined with qualitative (e.g., Keft-Kennedy, 2008) as well as computational (e.g., Seehuus et al., 2019) content analyses. Furthermore, content analyses can be complemented with qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys to investigate perceptions and evaluations of the portrayals of sexuality in pornography among pornography’s creators and performers (e.g., West, 2019) and audiences (e.g., Cowan & Dunn, 1994; Hardy et al., 2022; Paasoonen, 2021; Shor, 2022). Additionally, experimental studies are helpful to measure directly how different dimensions of pornographic portrayals of sexuality are perceived and evaluated by recipients, and if and how these portrayals can affect audiences’ sexuality-related thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (e.g., Kohut & Fisher, 2013; Miller et al., 2019). Example studies for manual quantitative content analyses: Acknowledging the multidimensionality and complexity of portrayals of sexuality in pornography, a recent research review identified eight main dimensions of analysis (Miller & McBain, 2022) that are adopted and extended in this DOCA entry as: 1) violence, 2) degradation, 3) sex acts, 4) performer demographics (sex/gender, age, race/ethnicity), 5) performer bodily appearance, 6) safer sex practices, 7) relational context of sex, and 8) consent communication. Example studies and measures for all eight dimensions of pornographic portrayals of sexuality are presented in separate DOCA entries. Eight Dimension of Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography DOCA entry 1) Violence Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Violence 2) Degradation Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Degradation 3) Sex Acts Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Sex Acts 4) Performer Demographics Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Performer Demographics 5) Performer Bodily Appearance Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Performer Bodily Appearance 6) Safer Sex Practices Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Safer Sex Practices 7) Relational Context of Sex Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Relational Context of Sex 8) Consent Communication Portrayals of Sexuality in Pornography: Consent Communication References Bandura, A. (1971). Social learning theory. General Learning. Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory of mass communication. Media Psychology, 3(3), 265–299. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0303_03 Bivona, J. M., Critelli, J. W., & Clark, M. J. (2012). 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Cyborgs already walk among us. (“Cures to Come” 76) This essay was begun as a reaction to a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie called Sweet Nothing in My Ear (2008), which follows the lives of two parents, Dan, who is hearing (played by Jeff Daniels), and Laura, who is deaf (Marlee Matlin), as they struggle to make a decision about whether or not to give their 11-year-old son, Adam (late-deafened), a cochlear implant. Dan and Laura represent different perspectives, hearing and deaf perspectives. The film dramatizes the parents’ conflict and negotiation, exposing audiences to both sides of the cochlear implant debate, albeit in a fairly simplistic way. Nevertheless, it represents the lives of deaf people and gives voice to debates about cochlear implants with more accuracy and detail than most film and television dramas. One of the central scenes in the film is what I call the “activation scene”, quite common to cochlear implant narratives. In the scene, the protagonists witness a child having his implant activated or turned on. The depiction is reminiscent of the WATER scene in the film about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker, employing a sentimental visual rhetoric. First, the two parents are shown seated near the child, clasping their hands as if in prayer. The audiologist, wielder of technology and therefore clearly the authority figure in the scene, types away furiously on her laptop. At the moment of being “turned on,” the child suddenly “hears” his father calling “David! David!” He gazes angelically toward heaven as piano music plays plaintively in the background. The parents all but fall to their knees and the protagonist of the film, Dan, watching through a window, weeps. It is a scene of cure, of healing, of “miracle,” a hyper-sentimentalised portrait of what is in reality often a rather anti-climactic event. It was certainly anti-climactic in my son, Michael’s case. I was taken aback by how this scene was presented and dismayed overall at some of the inaccuracies, small though they were, in the portrayal of cochlear implants in this film. It was, after all, according to the Nielsen ratings, seen by 8 million people. I began to wonder what kinds of misconceptions my son was going to face when he met people whose only exposure to implants was through media representations. Spurred by this question, I started to research other recent portrayals of people with implants on U.S. television in the past ten years, to see how cochlear implant (hereafter referred to as CI) identity has been portrayed by American media. For most of American history, deaf people have been portrayed in print and visual media as exotic “others,” and have long been the subject of an almost morbid cultural fascination. Christopher Krentz suggests that, particularly in the nineteenth century, scenes pairing sentimentality and deafness repressed an innate, Kristevan “abject” revulsion towards deaf people. Those who are deaf highlight and define, through their ‘lack’, the “unmarked” body. The fact of their deafness, understood as lack, conjures up an ideal that it does not attain, the ideal of the so-called “normal” or “whole” body. In recent years, however, the figure of the “deaf as Other” in the media, has shifted from what might be termed the “traditionally” deaf character, to what Brenda Jo Brueggeman (in her recent book Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places), calls “the new deaf cyborg” or the deaf person with a cochlear implant (4). N. Katharine Hailes states that cyborgs are now “the stage on which are performed contestations about the body boundaries that have often marked class, ethnic, and cultural differences” (85). In this essay, I claim that the character with a CI, as portrayed in the media, is now not only a strange, “marked” “Other,” but is also a screen upon which viewers project anxieties about technology, demonstrating both fascination fear. In her book, Brueggeman issues a call to action, saying that Deaf Studies must now begin to examine what she calls “implanting rhetorics,” or “the rhetorical relationships between our technologies and our identity” and therefore needs to attend to the construction of “the new deaf cyborg” (18). This short study will serve, I hope, as both a response to that injunction and as a jumping-off point for more in-depth studies of the construction of the CI identity and the implications of these constructions. First, we should consider what a cochlear implant is and how it functions. The National Association of the Deaf in the United States defines the cochlear implant as a device used to help the user perceive sound, i.e., the sensation of sound that is transmitted past the damaged cochlea to the brain. In this strictly sensorineural manner, the implant works: the sensation of sound is delivered to the brain. The stated goal of the implant is for it to function as a tool to enable deaf children to develop language based on spoken communication. (“NAD Position”) The external portion of the implant consists of the following parts: a microphone, which picks up sound from the environment, which is contained in the behind-the-ear device that resembles the standard BTE hearing aid; in this “hearing aid” there is also a speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. The processor transmits signals to the transmitter/receiver, which then converts them into electric impulses. Part of the transmitter sits on the skin and attaches to the inner portion of the transmitter by means of a magnet. The inner portion of the receiver/stimulator sends the impulses down into the electrode array that lies inside the cochlea, which in turn stimulates the auditory nerve, giving the brain the impression of sound (“Cochlear Implants”). According to manufacturer’s statistics, there are now approximately 188,000 people worldwide who have obtained cochlear implants, though the number of these that are in use is not known (Nussbaum). That is what a cochlear implant is. Before we can look at how people with implants are portrayed in the media, before we examine constructions of identity, perhaps we should first ask what constitutes a “real” CI identity? This is, of course, laughable; pinning down a homogeneous CI identity is no more likely than finding a blanket definition of “deaf identity.” For example, at this point in time, there isn’t even a word or term in American culture for someone with an implant. I struggle with how to phrase it in this essay - “implantee?” “recipient?” - there are no neat labels. In the USA you can call a person deaf, Deaf (the “D” representing a specific cultural and political identity), hearing impaired, hard of hearing, and each gradation implies, for better or worse, some kind of subject position. There are no such terms for a person who gets an implant. Are people with implants, as suggested above, just deaf? Deaf? Are they hard of hearing? There is even debate in the ASL community as to what sign should be used to indicate “someone who has a cochlear implant.” If a “CI identity” cannot be located, then perhaps the rhetoric that is used to describe it may be. Paddy Ladd, in Understanding Deaf Culture, does a brilliant job of exploring the various discourses that have surrounded deaf culture throughout history. Stuart Blume borrows heavily from Ladd in his “The Rhetoric and Counter-Rhetoric of a 'Bionic' Technology”, where he points out that an “essential and deliberate feature” of the history of the CI from the 60s onward, was that it was constructed in an overwhelmingly positive light by the mass media, using what Ladd calls the “medical” rhetorical model. That is, that the CI is a kind of medical miracle that promised to cure deafness. Within this model one may find also the sentimental, “missionary” rhetoric that Krentz discusses, what Ladd claims is a revival of the evangelism of the nineteenth-century Oralist movement in America. Indeed, newspaper articles in the 1980s and 90s hailed the implant as a “breakthrough”, a “miracle”; even a quick survey of headlines shows evidence of this: “Upton Boy Can Hear at Last!”, “Girl with a New Song in Her Heart”, “Children Head Queue for Bionic Ears” (Lane). As recently as January 2010, an issue of National Geographic featured on its cover the headline Merging Man and Machine: The Bionic Age. Sure enough, the second photograph in the story is of a child’s bilateral cochlear implant, with the caption “within months of the surgery (the child) spoke the words his hearing parents longed for: Mama and Dada.” “You’re looking at a real bionic kid,” says Johns Hopkins University surgeon John Niparko, proudly (37). To counter this medical/corporate rhetoric of cure, Ladd and Blume claim, the deaf community devised a counter-rhetoric, a discourse in which the CI is not cast in the language of miracle and life, but instead in terms of death, mutilation, and cultural oppression. Here, the implant is depicted as the last in a long line of sadistic experiments using the deaf as guinea pigs. Often the CI is framed in the language of Nazism and genocide as seen in the title of an article in the British Deaf News: “Cochlear Implants: Oralism’s Final Solution.” So, which of these two “implanting rhetorics” is most visible in the current construction of the CI in American television? Is the CI identity presented by rendering people with CIs impossibly positive, happy characters? Is it delineated using the metaphors of the sentimental, of cure, of miracle? Or is the CI identity constructed using the counter-rhetorical references to death, oppression and cultural genocide? One might hypothesize that television, like other media, cultivating as it does the values of the hearing hegemony, would err on the side of promulgating the medicalised, positivist rhetoric of the “cure” for deafness. In an effort to find out, I conducted a general survey of American television shows from 2000 to now that featured characters with CIs. I did not include news shows or documentaries in my survey. Interestingly, some of the earliest television portrayals of CIs appeared in that bastion of American sentimentality, the daytime soap opera. In 2006, on the show “The Young and the Restless”, a “troubled college student who contracted meningitis” received an implant, and in 2007 “All My Children” aired a story arc about a “toddler who becomes deaf after a car crash.” It is interesting to note that both characters were portrayed as “late-deafened”, or suddenly inflicted with the loss of a sense they previously possessed, thus avoiding any whiff of controversy about early implantation. But one expects a hyper-sentimentalised portrayal of just about everything in daytime dramas like this. What is interesting is that when people with CIs have appeared on several “reality” programs, which purport to offer “real,” unadulterated glimpses into people’s lives, the rhetoric is no less sentimentalized than the soaps (perhaps because these shows are no less fabricated). A good example of this is the widely watched and, I think, ironically named show “True Life” which appears on MTV. This is a series that claims to tell the “remarkable real-life stories of young people and the unusual subcultures they inhabit.” In episode 42, “ True Life: I’m Deaf”, part of the show follows a young man, Chris, born deaf and proud of it (his words), who decides to get a cochlear implant because he wants to be involved in the hearing world. Through an interpreter Chris explains that he wants an implant so he can communicate with his friends, talk with girls, and ultimately fulfill his dreams of having a job and getting married (one has to ask: are these things he can’t do without an implant?). The show’s promo asks “how do you go from living a life in total silence to fully understanding the spoken language?” This statement alone contains two elements common to the “miracle” rhetoric, first that the “tragic” deaf victim will emerge from a completely lonely, silent place (not true; most deaf people have some residual hearing, and if you watch the show you see Chris signing, “speaking” voluminously) to seamlessly, miraculously, “fully” joining and understanding the hearing world. Chris, it seems, will only come into full being when he is able to join the hearing world. In this case, the CI will cure what ails him. According to “True Life.” Aside from “soap opera” drama and so-called reality programming, by far the largest dissemination of media constructions of the CI in the past ten years occurred on top-slot prime-time television shows, which consist primarily of the immensely popular genre of the medical and police procedural drama. Most of these shows have at one time or another had a “deaf” episode, in which there is a deaf character or characters involved, but between 2005 and 2008, it is interesting to note that most, if not all of the most popular of these have aired episodes devoted to the CI controversy, or have featured deaf characters with CIs. The shows include: CSI (both Miami and New York), Cold Case, Law and Order (both SVU and Criminal Intent), Scrubs, Gideon’s Crossing, and Bones. Below is a snippet of dialogue from Bones: Zach: {Holding a necklace} He was wearing this.Angela: Catholic boy.Brennan: One by two forceps.Angela {as Brennan pulls a small disc out from behind the victim’s ear} What is that?Brennan: Cochlear implant. Looks like the birds were trying to get it.Angela: That would set a boy apart from the others, being deaf.(Bones, “A Boy in the Tree”, 1.3, 2005) In this scene, the forensics experts are able to describe significant points of this victim’s identity using the only two solid artifacts left in the remains, a crucifix and a cochlear implant. I cite this scene because it serves, I believe, as a neat metaphor for how these shows, and indeed television media in general, are, like the investigators, constantly engaged in the business of cobbling together identity: in this particular case, a cochlear implant identity. It also shows how an audience can cultivate or interpret these kinds of identity constructions, here, the implant as an object serves as a tangible sign of deafness, and from this sign, or clue, the “audience” (represented by the spectator, Angela) immediately infers that the victim was lonely and isolated, “set apart from the others.” Such wrongheaded inferences, frivolous as they may seem coming from the realm of popular culture, have, I believe, a profound influence on the perceptions of larger society. The use of the CI in Bones is quite interesting, because although at the beginning of the show the implant is a key piece of evidence, that which marks and identifies the dead/deaf body, the character’s CI identity proves almost completely irrelevant to the unfolding of the murder-mystery. The only times the CI character’s deafness is emphasized are when an effort is made to prove that the he committed suicide (i.e., if you’re deaf you are therefore “isolated,” and therefore you must be miserable enough to kill yourself). Zak, one of the forensics officers says, “I didn’t talk to anyone in high school and I didn’t kill myself” and another officer comments that the boy was “alienated by culture, by language, and by his handicap” (odd statements, since most deaf children with or without implants have remarkably good language ability). Also, in another strange moment, the victim’s ambassador/mother shows a video clip of the child’s CI activation and says “a person who lived through this miracle would never take his own life” (emphasis mine). A girlfriend, implicated in the murder (the boy is killed because he threatened to “talk”, revealing a blackmail scheme), says “people didn’t notice him because of the way he talked but I liked him…” So at least in this show, both types of “implanting rhetoric” are employed; a person with a CI, though the recipient of a “miracle,” is also perceived as “isolated” and “alienated” and unfortunately, ends up dead. This kind of rather negative portrayal of a person with a CI also appears in the CSI: New York episode ”Silent Night” which aired in 2006. One of two plot lines features Marlee Matlin as the mother of a deaf family. At the beginning of the episode, after feeling some strange vibrations, Matlin’s character, Gina, checks on her little granddaughter, Elizabeth, who is crying hysterically in her crib. She finds her daughter, Alison, dead on the floor. In the course of the show, it is found that a former boyfriend, Cole, who may have been the father of the infant, struggled with and shot Alison as he was trying to kidnap the baby. Apparently Cole “got his hearing back” with a cochlear implant, no longer considered himself Deaf, and wanted the child so that she wouldn’t be raised “Deaf.” At the end of the show, Cole tries to abduct both grandmother and baby at gunpoint. As he has lost his external transmitter, he is unable to understand what the police are trying to tell him and threatens to kill his hostages. He is arrested in the end. In this case, the CI recipient is depicted as a violent, out of control figure, calmed (in this case) only by Matlin’s presence and her ability to communicate with him in ASL. The implication is that in getting the CI, Cole is “killing off” his Deaf identity, and as a result, is mentally unstable. Talking to Matlin, whose character is a stand-in for Deaf culture, is the only way to bring him back to his senses. The October 2007 episode of CSI: Miami entitled “Inside-Out” is another example of the counter-rhetoric at work in the form of another implant corpse. A police officer, trying to prevent the escape of a criminal en route to prison, thinks he has accidentally shot an innocent bystander, a deaf woman. An exchange between the coroner and a CSI goes as follows: (Alexx Woods): “This is as innocent as a victim gets.”(Calleigh Duquesne): “How so?”AW: Check this out.”CD: “I don’t understand. Her head is magnetized? Steel plate?”AW: “It’s a cochlear implant. Helps deaf people to receive and process speech and sounds.”(CSI dramatization) AW VO: “It’s surgically implanted into the inner ear. Consists of a receiver that decodes and transmits to an electrode array sending a signal to the brain.”CD: “Wouldn’t there be an external component?”AW: “Oh, she must have lost it before she was shot.”CD: “Well, that explains why she didn’t get out of there. She had no idea what was going on.” (TWIZ) Based on the evidence, the “sign” of the implant, the investigators are able to identify the victim as deaf, and they infer therefore that she is innocent. It is only at the end of the program that we learn that the deaf “innocent” was really the girlfriend of the criminal, and was on the scene aiding in his escape. So she is at first “as innocent” as they come, and then at the end, she is the most insidious of the criminals in the episode. The writers at least provide a nice twist on the more common deaf-innocent stereotype. Cold Case showcased a CI in the 2008 episode “Andy in C Minor,” in which the case of a 17-year-old deaf boy is reopened. The boy, Andy, had disappeared from his high school. In the investigation it is revealed that his hearing girlfriend, Emma, convinced him to get an implant, because it would help him play the piano, which he wanted to do in order to bond with her. His parents, deaf, were against the idea, and had him promise to break up with Emma and never bring up the CI again. His body is found on the campus, with a cochlear device next to his remains. Apparently Emma had convinced him to get the implant and, in the end, Andy’s father had reluctantly consented to the surgery. It is finally revealed that his Deaf best friend, Carlos, killed him with a blow to the back of the head while he was playing the piano, because he was “afraid to be alone.” This show uses the counter-rhetoric of Deaf genocide in an interesting way. In this case it is not just the CI device alone that renders the CI character symbolically “dead” to his Deaf identity, but it leads directly to his being literally executed by, or in a sense, excommunicated from, Deaf Culture, as it is represented by the character of Carlos. The “House Divided” episode of House (2009) provides the most problematic (or I should say absurd) representation of the CI process and of a CI identity. In the show, a fourteen-year-old deaf wrestler comes into the hospital after experiencing terrible head pain and hearing “imaginary explosions.” Doctors Foreman and Thirteen dutifully serve as representatives of both sides of the “implant debate”: when discussing why House hasn’t mocked the patient for not having a CI, Thirteen says “The patient doesn’t have a CI because he’s comfortable with who he is. That’s admirable.” Foreman says, “He’s deaf. It’s not an identity, it’s a disability.” 13: “It’s also a culture.” F: “Anything I can simulate with $3 earplugs isn’t a culture.” Later, House, talking to himself, thinks “he’s going to go through life deaf. He has no idea what he’s missing.” So, as usual, without permission, he orders Chase to implant a CI in the patient while he is under anesthesia for another procedure (a brain biopsy). After the surgery the team asks House why he did it and he responds, “Why would I give someone their hearing? Ask God the same question you’d get the same answer.” The shows writers endow House’s character, as they usually do, with the stereotypical “God complex” of the medical establishment, but in doing also they play beautifully into the Ladd and Blume’s rhetoric of medical miracle and cure. Immediately after the implant (which the hospital just happened to have on hand) the incision has, miraculously, healed overnight. Chase (who just happens to be a skilled CI surgeon and audiologist) activates the external processor (normally a months-long process). The sound is overwhelming, the boy hears everything. The mother is upset. “Once my son is stable,” the mom says, “I want that THING out of his head.” The patient also demands that the “thing” be removed. Right after this scene, House puts a Bluetooth in his ear so he can talk to himself without people thinking he’s crazy (an interesting reference to how we all are becoming cyborgs, more and more “implanted” with technology). Later, mother and son have the usual touching sentimental scene, where she speaks his name, he hears her voice for the first time and says, “Is that my name? S-E-T-H?” Mom cries. Seth’s deaf girlfriend later tells him she wishes she could get a CI, “It’s a great thing. It will open up a whole new world for you,” an idea he rejects. He hears his girlfriend vocalize, and asks Thirteen if he “sounds like that.” This for some reason clinches his decision about not wanting his CI and, rather than simply take off the external magnet, he rips the entire device right out of his head, which sends him into shock and system failure. Ultimately the team solves the mystery of the boy’s initial ailment and diagnoses him with sarcoidosis. In a final scene, the mother tells her son that she is having them replace the implant. She says it’s “my call.” This show, with its confusing use of both the sentimental and the counter-rhetoric, as well as its outrageous inaccuracies, is the most egregious example of how the CI is currently being constructed on television, but it, along with my other examples, clearly shows the Ladd/Blume rhetoric and counter rhetoric at work. The CI character is on one hand portrayed as an innocent, infantilized, tragic, or passive figure that is the recipient of a medical miracle kindly urged upon them (or forced upon them, as in the case of House). On the other hand, the CI character is depicted in the language of the counter-rhetoric: as deeply flawed, crazed, disturbed or damaged somehow by the incursions onto their Deaf identity, or, in the worst case scenario, they are dead, exterminated. Granted, it is the very premise of the forensic/crime drama to have a victim, and a dead victim, and it is the nature of the police drama to have a “bad,” criminal character; there is nothing wrong with having both good and bad CI characters, but my question is, in the end, why is it an either-or proposition? Why is CI identity only being portrayed in essentialist terms on these types of shows? Why are there no realistic portrayals of people with CIs (and for that matter, deaf people) as the richly varied individuals that they are? These questions aside, if these two types of “implanting rhetoric”, the sentimentalised and the terminated, are all we have at the moment, what does it mean? As I mentioned early in this essay, deaf people, along with many “others,” have long helped to highlight and define the hegemonic “norm.” The apparent cultural need for a Foucauldian “marked body” explains not only the popularity of crime dramas, but it also could explain the oddly proliferant use of characters with cochlear implants in these particular shows. A person with an implant on the side of their head is definitely a more “marked” body than the deaf person with no hearing aid. The CI character is more controversial, more shocking; it’s trendier, “sexier”, and this boosts ratings. But CI characters are, unlike their deaf predecessors, now serving an additional cultural function. I believe they are, as I claim in the beginning of this essay, screens upon which our culture is now projecting repressed anxieties about emergent technology. The two essentialist rhetorics of the cochlear implant, the rhetoric of the sentimental, medical model, and the rhetoric of genocide, ultimately represent our technophilia and our technophobia. The CI character embodies what Debra Shaw terms a current, “ontological insecurity that attends the interface between the human body and the datasphere” (85). We are growing more nervous “as new technologies shape our experiences, they blur the lines between the corporeal and incorporeal, between physical space and virtual space” (Selfe). Technology either threatens the integrity of the self, “the coherence of the body” (we are either dead or damaged) or technology allows us to transcend the limitations of the body: we are converted, “transformed”, the recipient of a happy modern miracle. In the end, I found that representations of CI on television (in the United States) are overwhelmingly sentimental and therefore essentialist. It seems that the conflicting nineteenth century tendency of attraction and revulsion toward the deaf is still, in the twenty-first century, evident. We are still mired in the rhetoric of “cure” and “control,” despite an active Deaf counter discourse that employs the language of the holocaust, warning of the extermination of yet another cultural minority. We are also daily becoming daily more “embedded in cybernetic systems,” with our laptops, emails, GPSs, PDAs, cell phones, Bluetooths, and the likes. We are becoming increasingly engaged in a “necessary relationship with machines” (Shaw 91). We are gradually becoming no longer “other” to the machine, and so our culturally constructed perceptions of ourselves are being threatened. In the nineteenth century, divisions and hierarchies between a white male majority and the “other” (women, African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans) began to blur. Now, the divisions between human and machine, as represented by a person with a CI, are starting to blur, creating anxiety. Perhaps this anxiety is why we are trying, at least in the media, symbolically to ‘cure’ the marked body or kill off the cyborg. Future examinations of the discourse should, I believe, use these media constructions as a lens through which to continue to examine and illuminate the complex subject position of the CI identity, and therefore, perhaps, also explore what the subject position of the post/human identity will be. References "A Boy in a Tree." Patrick Norris (dir.), Hart Hanson (by), Emily Deschanel (perf.). Bones, Fox Network, 7 Sep. 2005. “Andy in C Minor.” Jeannete Szwarc (dir.), Gavin Harris (by), Kathryn Morris (perf.). Cold Case, CBS Network, 30 March 2008. Blume, Stuart. “The Rhetoric and Counter Rhetoric of a “Bionic” Technology.” Science, Technology and Human Values 22.1 (1997): 31-56. Brueggemann, Brenda Jo. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. New York: New York UP, 2009. “Cochlear Implant Statistics.” ASL-Cochlear Implant Community. Blog. Citing Laurent Le Clerc National Deaf Education Center. Gallaudet University, 18 Mar. 2008. 29 Apr. 2010 ‹http:/ /aslci.blogspot.com/2008/03/cochlear-implant-statistics.html›. “Cures to Come.” Discover Presents the Brain (Spring 2010): 76. Fischman, Josh. “Bionics.” National Geographic Magazine 217 (2010). “House Divided.” Greg Yaitanes (dir.), Matthew V. Lewis (by), Hugh Laurie (perf.). House, Fox Network, 22 Apr. 2009. “Inside-Out.” Gina Lamar (dir.), Anthony Zuiker (by), David Caruso (perf.). CSI: Miami, CBS Network, 8 Oct. 2007. Krentz, Christopher. Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Chapel Hill: UNC P, 2007. Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Limited, 2002. Lane, Harlan. A Journey Into the Deaf-World. San Diego: DawnSignPress, 1996. “NAD Position Statement on the Cochlear Implant.” National Association of the Deaf. 6 Oct. 2000. 29 April 2010 ‹http://www.nad.org/issues/technology/assistive-listening/cochlear-implants›. Nussbaum, Debra. “Manufacturer Information.” Cochlear Implant Information Center. National Deaf Education Center. Gallaudet University. 29 Apr. 2010 < http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu >. Shaw, Debra. Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg, 2008. “Silent Night.” Rob Bailey (dir.), Anthony Zuiker (by), Gary Sinise (perf.). CSI: New York, CBS Network, 13 Dec. 2006. “Sweet Nothing in My Ear.” Joseph Sargent (dir.), Stephen Sachs (by), Jeff Daniels (perf.). Hallmark Hall of Fame Production, 20 Apr. 2008. TWIZ TV scripts. CSI: Miami, “Inside-Out.” “What Is the Surgery Like?” FAQ, University of Miami Cochlear Implant Center. 29 Apr. 2010 ‹http://cochlearimplants.med.miami.edu/faq/index.asp›.

Abstract Occasionally after an extremely busy workday, Chase would sit back in his law office and let his mind wander over events or incidents long past. One such Saturday evening in January 1849 he did some reminiscing after clients, callers, politicians, partners, and students had left him alone with his thoughts. As his eyes wandered over the shelves of law books, he imagined that learned jurists such as Coke, Littleton, Mansfield, Holt, and Blackstone were “looking down on me, not as full wigged and full robed judiciaries but as quaint elves with solemn faces, peering out from between dusty leaves.”

Abstract If the acceptance of his resignation caught Chase by surprise, it was met with consternation in the Congress and particularly among members of the finance committees. Government accounts were as usual in bad shape. Gold had continued to rise. Business and banking interests blamed speculators for the precipitous decline in the value of the currency. In response Congress had hastened to pass a law giving the secretary wide latitude in selling government gold reserves on the open market, the reason being that this action, it was thought, would curb speculation and increase the monetary value of the paper currency.

Abstract If Chase was responsible for the actions of his agents in the Mississippi Valley and thus vulnerable to political attack, he was also guilty of that cardinal political sin of not looking after his home base. With the exception of his brief barnstorming tour of Ohio and Indiana in October 1863 Chase had counted on his handful of trusted associates-the Cookes, his son-in-law Sprague, a half-dozen or so newspapers, some tottering like the Ohio State Journal (whose management was part of the corrupt army quartermaster ring), and the gifted Whitelaw Reid, nominally Washington correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette-to support his candidacy.

Abstract It had been a year of vexing trials and of limited triumphs for Chase and the administration as a whole. In the ongoing patronage contest, Chase had generally gotten his way, but not before the President had slowly and inexorably reduced his scope for independent choice on important patronage positions. However, in minor posts that could be useful politically, Congress had passed legislation broadening Chase’s power to appoint Treasury agents and increasing their numbers. Jay Cooke, whom Chase had made general agent for marketing the 5-20 bonds, had performed magnificently. Utilizing innovative organizing and sales techniques that tapped the currency reserves of the general public, Cooke had sold more than $320 million of these securities. Over Chase’s objections to certain aspects of the bill, Congress approved and Lincoln signed the Third Legal Tender Act which added another $150 million worth of greenbacks and another $50 million in fractional currency to the circulating medium. Chase was also given authority to borrow $900 million dollars in bonds carrying 6 percent interest. At his discretion, $400 million of this sum could be issued as Treasury notes that bore no more than 6 percent interest payable in “lawful money,” or as legal tender, excluding interest payments. The law recognized that Chase should have the authority to set prices in accordance with fluctuating market values.