Journal articles on the topic 'Wild Caught Tuna'

Capture-based tuna aquaculture rates as one of the most important aquaculture activities in Cro-atia, where juvenile tuna are reared in cages for over a year long period in order to increase substan-tially their weight. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of length and intensity of feeding on biochemical composition (total fat, moisture, dry matter, carbohydrates and protein content) of tuna (Thunnus thynnus) white muscle tissues in newly caught tuna prior to feeding (NCTPF) versus far-med tuna kept in rearing circular cages in the Vela Grska Bay, Adriatic Sea (LAT 43°17’40,6984”N, LONG 016°28’58,4315”E (WGS84)) between 2001 and 2004. Farmed tunas from all cages were fed with the feed consisting of domestic small pelagic fish, or with mixtures containing North Sea herring (Clupea harengus) and Sardina pilchardus, for five months (cage 3), eight months (cage 4) or 21 months (cages 1 and 2). A low content of moisture and high content of dry matter including fat was observed in farmed tuna muscles compared to wild-caught tuna. In farmed tuna muscles, measured moisture was 55.26% in cage 1, 39.95% in cage 2, 54.64% in cage 3 and 49.70% in cage 4. These results are significantly lower than moisture measured in NCTPF (80.36%). Content of dry matter found in farmed tuna muscles also differed greatly between wild tuna (19.64%) and far-med tuna, but also between the cages (44.74% in cage 1, 60.05% in cage 2, 45.36% in cage 3 and 50.30% in cage 4). In NCTPF, muscle tissues total fat encompassed less than 1% of the total body weight, while it reached over 20% of total body mass in farmed fed tuna (20.62% in cage 1, 42.50% in cage 2, 20.97% in cage 3 and 20.57% in cage 4). These results demonstrate that high fat content can be achieved already after five months of intensive feeding. Higher content of proteins was also found in aquacultured tuna (18.60% in cage 1, 16.00% in cage 2, 15.09% in cage 3 and 20.58% in cage 4) compared to wild-caught tuna (13.77%). There were no differences in carbohydrates con-tent between tuna farmed in different cages and NCTPF tuna, indicating glycogen as a less optimal indicator of muscle tissue quality in farmed tuna of the present study.

Tuna is the mainstay of fisheries export commodities in Indonesia with a total export amounted to 201.159 tons and export value of 750 million dollars in 2012. The high demand tuna improve the practice of tuna captured in the sea, causing a decline in tuna stocks both in the number and size of tuna caught. This condition triggers the experts to culture tuna in laboratory scale to reduce the impact of overexploitation (overfishing). However, the tuna sea farming is under the spotlight because in practice, some countries do tuna farming without hatching of the parent tuna but merely enlarge a baby tuna are caught from the wild to market size. This gives rise to a difference of opinion of many experts on tuna farming practices. Therefore, this article highlights the pros and cons of experts on tuna farming from environmental, economic and technical, to determine whether Indonesia needs to develop tuna farming to cope with overfishing. The method used in this research is the study of literature writings on tuna farming and analyzed descriptively. Results of the analysis showed that despite the many negative opinions about the tuna sea farming, the Indonesian government should support the of tuna sea farming with tuna breeding research, as has been done by the Research Institute for Marine Fisheries Gondol. If the tuna breeding is successful, will have a great impact on the problems of the world tuna demand which increasing every year.

The present study analysis size and weight-frequency composition of Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus thynnus) fattened in Tunisian farms for the period 2005-2010 and compare these morphometric parameters with those from wild bluefin tuna landed on 2001 at Sfax port (Tunisia). A total of 6,757 wild and fattened bluefin tuna were measured as straight-line fork length and 49,962 were weighted. Average value of K for wild BFT was 1.59 and respectively 2.43, 2.32, 2.15, 1.61, 1.79 and 1.90 for Fattened BFT after 5-6 months from 2005 to 2010. Length frequency of fattened bluefin showed clearly a substantial increase in juvenile rate. The percentage which was 21.4% in 2005 reached 31.3% in 2009. For weight distribution, 73.3% of the fish caught in 2001 are below the annual mean (75.7 kg), while means 71 to 72% of fattened fish were under annual mean weight. Year 2009 is exceptional because only 57% of fattened fish were under the mean weight. This demonstrates that the fish caught are becoming increasingly small. Mean weight for fattening period (77 to 124 kg) are obviously higher than those of the wild fish (75,7kg).This study showed an increment in the amount of specimen under first sexual maturity which will not have the chance to spawn.

Mercury (Hg) is a well-known toxic element, diffused in the environment, especially in the Mediterranean Sea which is rich in cinnabar deposits. Mercury bioaccumulation in fish is of great concern, especially for top-level aquatic predators (e.g., shark, tuna, swordfish) and above all for species of large human consumption and high nutritional value. This work aimed to determine Hg concentrations in farmed and wild Atlantic Bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) caught in the Mediterranean area in order to evaluate the level of Hg bioaccumulation. selenium (Se) content was also determined, since this element is an antagonist of mercury toxicity. Mercury and Se were analysed by atomic absorption spectrometry after microwave digestion of the samples. Hg content in farmed tuna was below the legal limit (1 mg/kg, wet weight, w.w.) for all specimens (0.6 ± 0.2 mg/kg), whereas the wild ones had a content over the limit (1.7 ± 0.6 mg/kg); Se concentration was higher in farmed specimens (1.1 ± 0.9 mg/kg) compared to wild ones (0.6 ± 0.3 mg/kg). A safe seafood could show a Se/Hg ratio >1 and a health benefit value (HBVSe) > 0: farmed tuna had higher values than the wild specimens (Se/Hg 5.48 vs. 1.32; HBVSe 11.16 vs. 0.29). These results demonstrate that for Hg, there is a better risk/benefit ratio in farmed T. thynnus. making it safer than wild tuna.

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to provide an overview of bluefin tuna, with special regard to its farming challenges. Tuna is one of the most prominent species in fisheries worldwide. The high market value of tuna stocks has led to intensified fishing pressure that resulted in drastic population reductions in every ocean where these fish are found. It is very difficult to obtain the necessary data for the appropriate stock assessment analysis, and there is a very high degree of uncertainty in the models used to evaluate Atlantic bluefin tuna stocks. Tuna-farming could help reduce pressure on the tuna population, but the problem is that the majority of cage-farmed fish is caught in its natural environment (wild population), and thus is fattened or farmed to a certain size. Additionally, the challenges in tuna farming are numerous. Tuna is a fast swimmer, a large energy and oxygen consumer, therefore consuming a large portion of available food to maintain its metabolism. However, due to its delicious taste, high market price and a large demand for this species, pressure will probably continue to grow in the future. Therefore intensive farming, which implies the full breeding cycle in captivity, remains one of the possible solutions that could help reduce the pressure on the tuna population.

Tag shedding rates are estimated for southern bluefin tuna (SBT, Thunnus maccoyii) from double-tagging data arising from two tagging studies run in the 1990s and 2000s. Since the early 1990s, a high proportion of SBT tag recoveries has been sourced from juveniles captured by purse seine vessels in the Great Australian Bight and transferred to tuna farms off Port Lincoln in the state of South Australia. When tags have been shed by wild-caught SBT fattened in tuna farms, it is generally not known if the tags were shed in the open ocean before purse seine capture or after purse seine capture while the fish were on farm. Using a Bayesian approach, we fit separate tag retention curves for time in the ocean and time on farms as Weibull distribution reliability functions. The study suggests SBT shed tags at a much higher rate in on-farm enclosures than in the open ocean. Biofouling on tags in tuna farms may contribute to higher tag shedding rates.

The value of production of aquaculture in Australia is around $990 million1 and consists of cultivation of over 40 species, most for food, but others such as pearl oysters and crocodiles are cultured for products for the fashion industry. A number of finfish are grown for food including salmon, barramundi, and silver perch, and other species include prawns, marron, abalone, oysters and mussels, whereas southern bluefin tuna are caught from the wild and farmed until they reach market size. A number of species are being investigated for aquaculture and these include octopus and sea cucumber.

A new species of coelozoic myxozoan, Ceratomyxa thunni, was isolated from gall bladders of young wild Atlantic northern bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus Linnaeus, 1758), caught in the Adriatic Sea, Island of Jabuka (type locality). The prevalence was 23.3 % with low intensity (1–5 spores per microscope field at magnification of 400 x), inducing no pathological changes in the gall bladder epithelium. Light and TEM microscopy of spores revealed that this new species differs from other marine Ceratomyxa in morphology and size; the length of spores is 3.4–4.3 mm, thickness 11.6–15.3 mm and polar capsules 1.3 x 1.6 mm. A distinctive characteristic is densely self-coiled polar filaments. Spores are small, slightly semilunar or elongated with arcuate edges. Early forms are shorter, clubber, thicker, paniform, with slightly convex or blunt edges. Mature spores are slimmer, elongated, concave at the posterior margin, with edges finishing slightly sharper, semilunar in appearance. Bluefin tuna is a new host for this genus.

Abstract The Neolithisation process altered human dependence on wild food sources, and dominant models of the Neolithic transition in Scandinavia still focus on cultural divisions. This study emphasises the evidence of creolization processes, in particular the exploitation of Atlantic Bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) among Neolithic fisher-farmers north and east of the Skagerrak Sea in Scandinavia (4000–2350 cal BCE). The site Jortveit in Southern Norway, where Bluefin tuna was caught with toggling harpoons, is used as a point of departure. In order to understand this phenomenon, the first empirical review of prehistoric toggling harpoons in Central and Eastern Europe is presented. Toggling harpoons first appeared in the late Vinĉa Culture, then in the Gumelniţa, Cucuteni-Trypillia, and Sredny Stog cultural complexes further east, and finally in Central Europe and Scandinavia during the time of the Funnel Beaker Culture. Considering the accumulated evidence of long distance contact from Eastern to Central Europe and Scandinavia in the early fourth millennium BCE, it is argued that toggling harpoon technology was distributed through trade networks. Its appearance around the Skagerrak Sea in the Neolithic reflects fisher-farmers using a creolized fishing technology, inspired by Eneolithic societies.

Contaminants in Fish: Risk-Benefit ConsiderationsFish provide a healthful source of dietary protein and are high in nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids. There is evidence of beneficial effects of fish consumption in coronary heart disease, stroke, age-related macular degeneration, and growth and development. Yet, benefits may be offset by the presence of contaminants, such as methylmercury (MeHg), dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and several other halogenated persistent organic pollutants. MeHg is a known developmental neurotoxicant, as evidenced by several animal studies and episodes of human intoxication in Japan and Iraq. Fish represent the main source of exposure to MeHg for the general population, and large predatory fish (swordfish, tuna) have the highest levels of MeHg contamination. Provisional tolerable weekly intakes of 0.7 μg kg-1 to 1.6 μg kg-1 have been set by regulatory agencies. Concern for contamination of fish with dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs stems from their reported carcinogenicity, immunotoxicity, and reproductive and developmental toxicities. Farmed and wild-caught fish appear to have similar levels of contaminants. Advisories are in place that recommend limited consumption of certain fish in children, pregnant women and women of childbearing age. Careful risk-benefit considerations should foster fish consumption while minimizing exposure to toxic contaminants.

The shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus), porbeagle (Lamna nasus), and blue shark (Prionace glauca) are three frequently caught shark species in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. Satellite tagging studies show that all three species range widely across many national boundaries but spend up to 92% of their time on the high seas, where they are largely unregulated and unmonitored. All are caught in large numbers by swordfish and tuna fishing fleets from a large number of nations, usually unintentionally, and all are unproductive by fish standards, which makes them particularly sensitive to fishing pressure. Landing statistics that grossly underrepresent actual catches, unreported discards that often exceed landings, and high discard mortality rates are threats to the populations and roadblocks to useful population monitoring. The influence of these threats is greatly magnified by inattention and ineffective management from the responsible management agency, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), whose prime focus is the more valuable swordfish and tuna stocks. Although practical management options are available, none will be possible if organizations like ICCAT continue to treat sharks like pests.

Northern and southern bluefin tunas are morphologically similar and can be misidentified, posing problems for fishery management and marketing. Allozyme variation and restriction-site variation in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) were used to distinguish between the two species. A survey of 36 allozyme loci active in white muscle and liver tissue showed that the genetic identity between the species was high (Nei's I = 0.907). One diagnostic locus (sAH*) and two nearly diagnostic loci (ADA* and GDA*) were found, and four loci showed highly significant allele frequency differences (FH*, GPI-A*, PGDH* and sSOD*). A survey of the mtDNA genome, using 15 restriction enzymes and southern blotting, revealed five restriction enzymes that gave species-diagnostic restriction digest profiles (Ban I, Bcl I, Dra I, Pvu II, Xba I) and a further three enzymes (Pst I, Barn HI and Nco I) with large haplotype frequency differences. Mitochondrial DNA analysis provided more reliable discrimination of specimens than did allozyme analysis, although the more rapid allozyme identification will be accurate for most specimens. The two biochemical genetic methods were then used to identify Australian-caught fish of uncertain identity. Six of 12 tuna originally considered to be northern bluefin tuna were confirmed as northern bluefin and six were identified as southern bluefin. The presence of northern bluefin tuna as far south as south-western Tasmania was confirmed.

The Kutaraja Ocean Fisheries Port (PPS) located in Banda Aceh City is central to the fisheries sector in Aceh Province. Various types of fish have been landed at Kutaraja PPS, one of which is tuna/madidihang (yellowfin tuna). Tuna is not only in demand by the local market, but also international markets, especially Japan and America. This study aims to estimate the amount of tuna/madidihang (yellowfin tuna) production landed at Kutaraja PPS in 2018 and 2019. These estimates can help the Aceh Government in controlling the ordering of tuna/madidihang (yellowfin tuna) from within and outside the country, so that the number of tuna/madidihang (yellowfin tuna) caught and ordered can be balanced so that stock control can run well. The forecasting method used in this study is the Triple Exponential Smoothing method by using monthly data on the amount of tuna/madidihang (yellowfin tuna) production landed at Kutaraja PPS from January 2010 to December 2017. Based on the results of forecasting with the best models, the amount of tuna/madidihang (yellowfin tuna) production will landed in the Kutaraja PPS in 2018 and 2019 are predicted to be 2,395,615.8 Kg and 2,451,207.5 Kg respectively.

<p>Penggunaan rumpon laut-dalam telah mengubah taktik dan strategi perikanan pukat cincin pelagis kecil yang beroperasi di perairan dangkal untuk bergeser pada perikanan tuna neritik tropis. Rumponisasi perikanan pukat cincin yang dirancang untuk meningkatkan produktivitas telah menjadi masalah serius pada perikanan neritik tuna. Hal ini terjadi karena tertangkapnya ikan berukuran kecil dalam jumlah yang dominan sehingga dalam jangka panjang akan berpotensi konflik dengan perikanan lainnya. Para ilmuwan yang tergabung dalam pengelolaan perikanan regional merekomendasikan bahwa pengembangan terkendali terhadap penggunaan rumpon di daerah asuhan juvenile tuna tropis. Pengendalian dalam jangka panjang dapat meminimalkan ancaman bagi kelangsungan hidup kelompok jenis tuna. Hal ini terkait dengan pentingnya memperbesar peluang masuknya sediaan kelompok jenis ini pada tingkat yang layak untuk dimanfaatkan. Di Indonesia, pilihan kebijakan perikanan tangkap baik melalui peralihan sasaran kelompok spesies maupun diversifikasi usaha penangkapan akan selalu bertumpu pada pertimbangan sosial. Bagaimanapun juga, proses mengubah pemahaman nelayan nelalui pengendalian jumlah dan teknologi kapal penangkap ikan serta penutupan sementara daerah penangkapan yang akan melalui proses panjang harus tetap dijalankan untuk mencegah runtuhnya perikanan yang saat ini sedang berjalan.</p><p>The use of Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) has radically changing the tactic and strategy shallow waters small pelagic purse seiner into high seas tropical neritics tuna fisheries. Applying FADs on purse seine fishery which initiated to increase its productivity became a serious problem to neritics<br />tuna fishery. This indicated by the negative impact on neritics and tropical tuna populations due to large number of small size of tunas being caught and uncertain of number and of FADS position in the high seas. In the long run it will generate a potential conflict to other existing fisheries. The member scientists of regional fisheries management organization (RFMO) recommends that the development of the use of FADs, especially in the area which dominated of juvenile of tropical tuna, should be strongly regulated. FADs management through control system should be applied to minimize impact on recruitment process that associated with the importance of long term availability of its fisheries. Management option through shifting target species and diversification of the fishing activities in<br />Indonesia would always be rely on social dimension. Nevertheles, reorientation on fishers understanding on controllable number of fishing vessels and its technological creeps should strongly be implemented to avoid collapse their existing fisheries.</p>

Abstract The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of the Presidential Regulation (Perpres) Number 44 of 2016 on sustainable fisheries. Presidential Decree No. 44 of 2016 concerning business fields closed to foreign investment in Indonesia. In the results of the analysis using the models: linear trend, quadratic and exponential. Result analyzed indicated that the most suitable model is the quadratic model. The quadratic model is related to the nature of fish resources. The Gordon-Schaefer model states that fisheries with an open access management regime will lead to economic inefficiency. To prevent this economic inefficiency, several economic instruments must be applied, such as limiting efforts and quotas. One of the instruments for limiting fishing efforts is through Presidential Regulation no. 44 of 2016. Limiting efforts is positive impact for local fisherman. For example, since the foreign vessels banned from operating, small bitung fishermen, they could catch 3-6 tunas per day in 2019. In 2014, they had only been caught 1-3 tuna per day. Investment waste in a sector will eliminate the potential economic rents of fish resources. Investment waste in capture fisheries should be used for fish processing activities and aquaculture activities that will provide added value.

Yellowfin tuna Thunnus albacares (Bonnaterre, 1788) is a very important species for the world fisheries. Biological information including length-frequency distribution, total length (TL)-head circle length (HCL) relationship, and total length-body weight (BW) relationship were examined for 115 female and 84 male yellowfin tuna, caught in Molluca Sea. Significantly different mean total length was found for female and male yellowfin tuna; the male (mean length 110.66 cm) is bigger than the female (mean length 103.36 cm). The total length-head circle length relationship for female yellowfin tuna can be described as HCL= 0.7455TL0.9565 and HCL= 0.7821TL0.9456 for male yellowfin tuna. In the HCL-TL relationships, the allometric coefficient (b) values obtained for both female and male yellowfin tuna did not differ significantly from 1 or isometry, which indicates direct proportionality between HCL and TL. The estimated total length-body weight relationship for yellowfin tuna was BW = 0.0172TL2.9826 for female and BW = 0.0223TL2.9281 for male. In the BW-TL relationships, the allometric coefficient (b) values obtained for both female and male yellowfin tuna did not differ significantly from 3 or isometry, which indicates direct proportionality between BW and TL. This biological information will be useful for the fisheries management of the species studied. Ikan madidihang Thunnus albacares (Bonnaterre, 1788) merupakan spesies yang sangat penting untuk perikanan dunia. Informasi biologi yang meliputi sebaran frekuensi panjang, hubungan panjang total (PT)-panjang lingkar kepala (PLK), dan hubungan panjang total-berat tubuh (BT) telah diteliti untuk 115 individu ikan madidihang betina dan 84 individu ikan madidihang jantan yang tertangkap di Laut Maluku. Rata-rata panjang total ikan madidihang betina berbeda nyata dengan rata-rata panjang total ikan madidihang jantan; ikan madidihang jantan (110,66 cm) berukuran lebih besar dibanding ikan madidihang betina (103,36 cm). Hubungan panjang total-panjang lingkar kepala untuk ikan madidihang betina adalah PLK = 0,7455PT0,9565 dan untuk ikan madidihang jantan adalah PLK = 0,7821PT0,9456. Dalam hubungan PLK-PT, nilai-nilai koefisien allometri (b) untuk ikan madidihang betina dan jantan tidak berbeda nyata dengan 1 atau isometri, yang mengindikasikan pertumbuhan yang proporsional antara PLK dan PT baik untuk ikan betina maupun untuk ikan jantan. Hubungan panjang total-berat tubuh dugaan adalah BT = 0,0172PT2,9826 untuk ikan madidihang betina dan BT = 0,0223PT2,9281 untuk ikan madidihang jantan. Dalam hubungan BT-PT, nilai-nilai koefisien allometri (b) untuk ikan madidihang betina dan jantan tidak berbeda nyata dengan 3 atau isometri, yang mengindikasikan pertumbuhan yang proporsional antara BT dan PT baik untuk ikan betina maupun untuk ikan jantan. Informasi biologi ini akan berguna untuk pengelolaan perikanan dari spesies yang dipelajari.

Pada perikanan tuna, tuna neritik merupakan kelompok ikan yang dominan tertangkap pada perikanan pantai, termasuk perikanan skala kecil dan bersifat artisanal. Penangkapan ikan tuna neritik di perairan Palabuhanratu yang semakin intensif setiap tahunnya tanpa didasari pengelolaan yang tepat, diduga akan mengakibatkan terjadinya penurunan stok sumberdaya ikan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisa keberlanjutan spesies neritik tuna menggunakan analisis produktivitas dan suseptibilitas / Productivity and Susceptibility Analysis (PSA). Penelitian ini dilaksanakan dari Februari hingga Mei 2016 di perairan Palabuhanratu. Hasil penelitian menunjukan nilai kerentanan tuna neritik berturut-turut untuk ikan tenggiri 1.25, tongkol krai 1.37, tongkol abu-abu 0.91, tongkol komo 1.49, dan tongkol lisong 1.41. Hal ini menunjukan bahwa tingkat kerentanan ikan tuna neritik terhadap overfishing saat ini masih rendah karena nilainya masih dibawah 1,8, sehingga aktivitas penangkapan masih dapat ditingkatkan terutama untuk ikan tenggiri dan tongkol abu-abu yang memiliki kerentanan terendah.Neritic tuna are mainly caught by coastal fisheries, including small scale fisheries and artisanal fisheries. The continuous absence of proper management for neritic tuna, will result in a decline in the stock of fish. This study aims to analyze the sustainability of neritic tuna species by analyzing the productivity and susceptibility (PSA). The research was conducted from February to May 2016 in Palabuhanratu waters. Vulnerability indexs for narrow-barred Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus commerson) 1.25, frigate tuna (Auxis thazard) 1.37, longtail tuna (Thunnus tonggol) 0.91, kawakawa (Euthynnus affinis) 1.49, and bullet tuna (Auxis rochei) 1.41. These vulnerability indexs shows that level of vulnerability for overfishing for neritic tuna is low because the vulnerability index still below the maximum limit vulnerability index (1.8), fishing activities can still be increased, particularly for narrowbarred Spanish mackerel and longtail tuna that has the lowest vurnerability.

The refrigeration system in use aboard today's modern tuna seiners was developed in the late 1930's for use aboard bait boats. Since that time, fishing methods have changed, vessel carrying capacities have increased tenfold, catch rates have increased fivefold, and individual fishwell sizes have increased fourfold. As a result, although catch rates have 9one up, the refrigeration effect per ton of tuna per well has actually gone down. Despite these trends, the current refrigeration system works remarkably well. This is due partly to its inherent flexibility and partly to the durability of the tuna with respect to its intended canned market. Nevertheless, because of the increase in well sizes and catch rates, a small percentage of fish is currently being lost due to inadequate refrigeration. This results in an economic loss to the fishing fleet. These losses seem to occur when many fish are caught at a time and loaded into large fishwells. While part of the solution is operational changes, some of which have been recommended elsewhere [1], 3 it has been suggested that increasing the refrigeration effect per well will also help overcome problems observed in the present system. Of the many alternatives which could increase the refrigeration effect per well, this paper discusses the addition of an external heat exchanger, called a chiller, to augment the refrigeration effect per well provided by the existing coil evaporators lining the fishwell bulkheads. Available data on refrigeration effectiveness of modern tuna seiners are analyzed and a computer simulation of the system is presented. Other computer results deal with augmentation of the present system by the addition of additional refrigeration capacity through an external chiller. In addition, a new model for the heat transfer involved in freezing fish such as tuna is presented.

Abstract Eastern little tuna production still depends on stocks from nature, so it is feared that if production continues to increase it will threaten the sustainability of tuna resources, therefore for the sake of sustainable management information is needed on population parameters so that research is carried out from January to April 2021 with the aim of assessing the dynamics of the population of these resources. The data collection procedure was carried out by measuring the total length of the fish caught per fishing trip for 4 months using a meter with a unit (centimeter) cm and an accuracy of 1 mm. The results of the research showed that tuna in the southern waters of Ternate Island had stable growth parameters including maximum length (L∞) 68.25 cm with a growth coefficient (K) of 0.25 per month, t0 -0.20, with total mortality, natural and fishing values respectively. respectively are 0.64, 0.43, 0.21 and the level of exploitation is 0.33 where this value indicates that the rate of exploitation is smaller so it is necessary to increase fishing effort until the optimum value reaches 0.38.

The study of zoonotic parasites is of extreme importance, because they can cause diseases in humans and can negatively impact the marketability of fisheries products. The present study aims to determine the infection patterns of helminth parasites infecting mackerel tuna in Banten waters, as well as to clarify possible negative impacts to its fish host. Mackerel tunas were caught from March to July 2020 in Banten Bay and Sunda Strait and obtained from Karangantu fishing port and Muara Angke fishing port. For parasite identification, different staining methods were used (KOH, Semichon’s acetocarmine). Helminth parasites that has been found in this study belonged to the taxa of Monogenea (1), Digenea (1), Nematoda (2) and Acanthocephala (2). The helminth parasite species with the highest prevalence was Hexostoma euthynni (P: 16.7%) from Banten Bay and Neorhadinorhynchus sp. (P: 53.3%) from Sunda Strait followed by a possible zoonotic parasite Anisakis sp. with 46.7% prevalence. In this study four new locality records were established. Pathogenic impacts from the isolated parasites to the examined fish could be expected, especially for the revealed H. euthynni, which may decrease the fish’s ability to perform proper respiration, cause irritation to gills, and anemia. Preventive actions on anthropogenic activities will be required in order to keep the natural conditions in the areas of Banten Bay and Sunda Strait. Regular fish parasite monitorings will lead to the sustainable use of fisheries resources, assess possible fish health impacts, and zoogeographical distributions of zoonotic and pathogenic parasites.

This paper examines histamine production in albacore, bigeye and yellowfin tuna caught by longliners operating in Fijian waters. The research was undertaken in collaboration with the Fijian Fisheries Division and the tuna industry. A comparison of histamine production between species, sampling location and temperatures was undertaken. The results reveal that histamine levels do increase with temperature but that there is no difference in histamine build-up between species at each temperature tested. There was no significant difference between the two sampling locations tested, one of which was taken from a low-value head region, and will potentially make a significant saving for operators. Histamine levels are well below the recommended maximum value when samples are stored at 6oC, which validates the recommended USFDA guidelines. A new ELISA test for determining histamine concentration (Veratox) and the AOAC fluorometric method were used. The Veratox ELISA kit was found to be inadequate for food safety monitoring as it tends to underestimate histamine levels.

A total of 756 yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) caught by a Chinese drifting longliner in the tropical western and central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) from May 2018 to March 2019 were investigated to describe the reproductive biology of the species. Generalized linear model and polytomous logistic regression for the ordinal response model were employed to assess the effects of biometric and spatiotemporal factors (such as individual fork length (FL), fishing depth, dissolved oxygen, and month) on the reproductive traits of yellowfin tuna. The results showed that FLs ranged from 87 to 163 cm, averaging 115.8 cm (SD = ±14.2) for females and 121.8 cm (SD = ±16.8) for males. The proportion of males in the sampled fish was 0.61 (SD = ±0.29), and larger males (>130 cm) were proportionally predominant. Analyses based on the monthly variation of the gonadosomatic index and monthly proportion of sexual maturity stages of the gonads showed that the main spawning period of yellowfin tuna lasts from September to December. In addition, the 50% first maturity FLs of males and females were 111.96 cm (SD = ±1.04) and 119.64 cm (SD = ±1.30), respectively. This study provides new information on the reproductive development of T. albacares in the tropical WCPO region. These reproductive parameters reduce uncertainty in current stock assessment models, which will ultimately assist the fishery in becoming sustainable for future generations.

In the present study, we analysed the stomach contents of 585 bigeye tuna (BET; Thunnus obesus) caught in the Kuroshio–Oyashio transition zone, a high-productivity region in the western North Pacific Ocean, to describe feeding habits and prey size. We identified 46 prey species belonging to 40 genera. Fish otoliths and squid beaks found in stomachs were used to calculate prey body length and weight from allometric relationships. The percentage index of relative importance (%IRI) was calculated from the mean percentage of occurrence, number and weight of each prey species. Squid and fish were the main prey of BET in the sampling area and the highest %IRI prey species during the survey was Eucleoteuthis luminosa (luminous flying squid; 7.6%), followed by Gonatopsis makko (mako armhook squid; 4.8%) and Magnisudis atlantica (duckbill barracudina; 2.3%). The %IRI of E. luminosa decreased and that of M. atlantica increased with increasing BET body length. The size of prey fish increased with increasing BET size, whereas the size of prey squid was similar across BET size. The results indicate ontogenetic shifts in the feeding habits of BET in the study area. These data provide fundamental information that will improve our understanding of oceanic food webs in the Kuroshio–Oyashio transition zone, an important foraging area for many pelagic species.

Small-scale artisanal fisheries can have a significant negative impact in cetacean populations. Cetacean bycatch has been documented in the pole-and-line tuna fishery in the Azores with common dolphins being the species more frequently taken. Based on data collected by observers on ∼50% of vessels operating from 1998 to 2012, we investigate the influence of various environmental and fisheries-related factors in common dolphin bycatch and calculate fleet-wide estimates of total bycatch using design-based and model-based methods. Over the 15-year study dolphin bycatch occurred in less than 0.4% of the observed fishing events. Generalized additive modelling results suggest a significant relationship between common dolphin bycatch and duration of fishing events, sea surface temperature and location. Total bycatch calculated from the traditional stratified ratio estimation approach was 196 (95% CI: 186–205), while the negative binomial GAM estimated 262 (95% CI: 249–274) dolphins. Bycatch estimates of common dolphin were similar using statistical approaches suggesting that either of these methods may be used in future bycatch assessments for this fishery. Our work shows that rates of common dolphin bycatch in the pole-and-line tuna fishery in the Azores are low, despite considerable variations between years. Dolphins caught were released alive although the fate of these individuals is unknown. Continued monitoring will provide a better understanding of dolphin bycatch and more accurate estimates essential in the development of potential mitigation measures.

The mineral component of fish otoliths (ear bones), which is aragonitic calcium carbonate (CaCO3), makes this structure the preferred sample choice for measuring biological carbon and oxygen-stable isotopes in order to address fundamental questions in fish ecology and fisheries science. The main drawback is that the removal of otoliths requires sacrificing the specimen, which is particularly impractical for endangered and commercially valuable species such as Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) (ABFT). This study explores the suitability of using the first dorsal fin spine bone of ABFT as a non-lethal alternative to otolith analysis or as a complementary hard structure. The fin spines of freshly caught ABFT were collected to identify carbonate ions within the mineral matrix (i.e., hydroxyapatite) and to determine the nature of the carbonate substitution within the crystal lattice, knowledge which is crucial for correct measurement and ecological interpretation of oxygen and carbon stable isotopes of carbonates. Fin spine sections were analyzed via X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Raman Spectroscopy, and Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR). The XPS survey analysis showed signals of Ca, O, and P (three compositional elements that comprise hydroxyapatite). The Raman and FTIR techniques showed evidence of carbonate ions within the hydroxyapatite matrix, with the IR spectra being the most powerful for identifying the type B carbonate substitution as shown by the carbonate band in the v2 CO32− domain at ∼872 cm−1. The results of this study confirmed the presence of carbonate ions within the mineral matrix of the fin spine bone of ABFT, showing the feasibility of using this calcified structure for analysis of stable isotopes. Overall, our findings will facilitate new approaches to safeguarding commercially valuable and endangered/protected fish species and will open new research avenues to improve fisheries management and species conservation strategies.

Orthohantaviruses are zoonotic pathogens that play a significant role in public health. These viruses can cause haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in Eurasia. In the Republic of Kazakhstan, the first human cases were registered in the year 2000 in the West Kazakhstan region. Small mammals can be reservoirs of orthohantaviruses. Previous studies showed orthohantavirus antigens in wild-living small mammals in four districts of West Kazakhstan. Clinical studies suggested that there might be further regions with human orthohantavirus infections in Kazakhstan, but genetic data of orthohantaviruses in natural foci are limited. The aim of this study was to investigate small mammals for the presence of orthohantaviruses by molecular biological methods and to provide a phylogenetic characterization of the circulating strains in Kazakhstan. Small mammals were trapped at 19 sites in West Kazakhstan, four in Almaty region and at seven sites around Almaty city during all seasons of 2018 and 2019. Lung tissues of small mammals were homogenized and RNA was extracted. Orthohantavirus RT-PCR assays were applied for detection of partial S and L segment sequences. Results were compared to published fragments. In total, 621 small mammals from 11 species were analysed. Among the collected small mammals, 2.4% tested positive for orthohantavirus RNA, one sample from West Kazakhstan and 14 samples from Almaty region. None of the rodents caught in Almaty city were infected. Sequencing parts of the small (S) and large (L) segments specified Tula virus (TULV) in these two regions. Our data show that geographical distribution of TULV is more extended as previously thought. The detected sequences were found to be split in two distinct genetic clusters of TULV in West Kazakhstan and Almaty region. TULV was detected in the common vole (Microtus arvalis) and for the first time in two individuals of the forest dormouse (Dryomys nitedula), interpreted as a spill-over infection in Kazakhstan.

Keberhasilan operasi penangkapan ikan dengan huhate sangat tergantung pada beberapa faktor, dua diantaranya adalah ukuran mata pancing dan warna umpan tiruan. Hasil tangkapan huhate berupa cakalang, juvenile tuna, madidihang dan tongkol dapat menjadi optimal bila paduan antara ukuran mata pancing dan warna umpan tiruannya tepat. Oleh karenanya, paduan antara ukuran mata pancing dan warna umpan perlu diujicoba secara bersamaan dalam satu kapal. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mendapatkan kombinasi ukuran mata pancing dan warna umpan tiruan huhate sehingga menghasilkan jumlah tangkapan terbanyak. Ukuran mata pancing yang digunakan adalah nomor 2 dan 3. Adapun warna umpan tiruannya merah, biru dan putih. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian adalah melalui uji coba penangkapan dengan cara menguji mata pancing yang terdiri atas berbagai kombinasi ukuran dan warna umpan tiruan secara langsung di laut. Kapal huhate yang digunakan untuk operasi penangkapan berukuran 57 GT dengan jumlah pemancing 20 – 30 orang. Hasil uji statistik RALF dan BNT terhadap hasil tangkapan menunjukan bahwaFhit bernilai 5,214 atau lebih besar daripada Ftab (3,027), atau jumlah hasil tangkapan keenam kombinasi perlakuan berbeda nyata. Kombinasi ukuran mata pancing nomor 3 dan umpan berwarna merah mendapatkan hasil tangkapan sebanyak 2.596 ekor, kemudian diikuti berturut-turut oleh ukuran No.3 dan warna biru sebanyak 2.400 ekor, No. 3 dan warna putih sebanyak 2.109 ekor , No.2 dan warna merah sebanyak 2.106 ekor, No.2 dan warna biru sebanyak 1.333 ekor dan No.2 dan warna putih sebanyak 1.250 ekor.The success of huhate fishing operations is highly dependent on several factors, two of which are the size of hook and the color of the artificial bait. Catch of pole and line consisted of skipjack, juvenile tuna, yellowfin tuna and little tuna will be optimal when the alloy between the hook size and the color of the imitation bait is prorely. Therefore, the combination between the hook size and the color of the bait needs to be tested simultaneously in same fishing vessel. The goal to be achieved in the research is to get a combination of the hook size and artificial bait color are used for catching the largest number of catches. Two type of hook size are used that number 2 and will be combined with three color of artificial bait i.e., red, blue and white. The method used in this research is experimental fishing by using pole and liner sized of 57 GT ship operated by 20 – 30 fisherman. The results of RALF and BNT statistical tests on the catch data show that F-hit is 5.214 or greater than F-tab (3,027), that means the number of catches from the six treatment combinations is significantly different. The combination of the hook size number 3 and the red bait color caught 2,596 fishes. The following sequence are 2,400 fishes (No. 3 and blue), 2,109 fishes (No.3 and white), 2,106 fishes (No.2 and red), 1,333 fishes (No.2 and blue) and 1,250 fishes (No.2 and white).

Investigation into the role of methylation of the adenosine base (m6A) of RNA has only recently begun, but it quickly became apparent that m6A is able to control and fine-tune many aspects of mRNA, from splicing to translation. The ability of m6A to regulate translation distally, away from traditional sites near the nucleus, quickly caught the eye of neuroscientists because of implications for selective protein translation at synapses. Work in the brain has demonstrated how m6A is functionally required for many neuronal functions, but two in particular are covered at length here: The role of m6A in 1) neuron development; and 2) memory formation. The purpose of this review is not to cover all data about m6A in the brain. Instead, this review will focus on connecting mechanisms of m6A function in neuron development, with m6A’s known function in memory formation. We will introduce the concept of “translational priming” and discuss how current data fit into this model, then speculate how m6A-mediated translational priming during memory consolidation can regulate learning and memory locally at the synapse.

If you want to be a philosopher-shut up! Otherwise everyone will know that you are talking nonsense’. In the eleventh passus of Piers Plowman Imagination tells Will (the Dreamer) that he has been deserted by the learning of the clerks and bereft of the reason of his own mind because he could not stop himself from interfering and, puffed up with pride and presumption, had acted in matters where it was not appropriate for him to be the judge. ‘Philosophus esses si tacuisses’, as both the Bible and Boethius teach us: you might be a philosopher if only you could hold your tongue. Adam had had all Paradise to enjoy so long as he kept quiet. But when he ‘mamelede about mete’, when he began to talk nonsense, babbling about forbidden fruit when he should have kept mum—when he forgot that he was a man and began to pry into the mind and wisdom of God himself, to meddle with divine things-he was turned out of the garden. It is a passage which might have been taken straight from John of Salisbury, and indeed John was not a prophet without honour in the England of the fourteenth century. In many ways it is the theme tune of the Metalogicon and the Policraticus; and an ability to keep quiet was an understandably valuable attribute for a political agent of archbishop Theobald to possess as much as anybody else caught up in the ecclesiastical politics of the 1150s. But John of Salisbury would have us believe that the virtues of silence and non-interference had been one of the main lessons that he had learnt in the Parisian schools, which were cursed with the plague of words, and where he had been subjected to the relentless outpourings of those who talked too much and thereby created nonsensical things in profusion.

This nonlinear, mixed-genre essay shows that we can learn much about education by looking at the nonrational aspects of classrooms. Following discursive traditions associated with the social sciences, it presents two interaction patterns found in seminar-style classes at the undergraduate and masters level whose ritual aspects work to “magically” resolve a dilemma contained in the American commitment to individualism. It also suggests a connection to the apparent lack of intellectual vitality claimed to exist on many American campuses. At the same time, drawing on discursive traditions associated with the arts, this essay also complicates the processes of education showing just how complex and contradictory a seminar can be. Damian sits slouched in his chair, hands folded in his lap, Timberlands thrust under the table, his body forming a slightly sagging diagonal line. On his head sits his more-than-dirty white hat, brim turned backwards, plastic strap pressed across his forehead. John Dewey's “The Child and the Curriculum” lies dutifully open on the table in front of him taking its place in the circle of texts that trace the perimeter of the table. Damian's face lacks emotion. In fact, it signals no information whatsoever. It is blank. Is his mind blank as well? I can assure you that it is not. His mind is actively presenting multiple words and images for his own contemplation. A film-loop projection of last night's argument with Sheila dominates the images. Endlessly he watches her rage-contorted face and hears her high shrill voice—though he has forgotten what her words were. Screw it) There's no pleasing some girls) But his argument with Sheila is not the only thing entertaining his mind. For example, he can't stop humming that Goo Goo Doll's tune that he heard on MTV this morning. Nor can he put out of his mind John Rzeznik's tattoos. Damian has been contemplating getting a tattoo for several weeks now and he isn't sure if watching the Goo Goo Doll's increases his enthusiasm or his distaste with the idea. And there isn't just contorted faces, guitar licks, and tattoos to occupy his mind. There is Tina. As always, Damian is sitting next to Tina. Tina was the very first person that Damian noticed when he had entered the classroom on the first day. Noticing Tina did not make Damian unique. Everyone noticed Tina. Tina is the kind of young woman who puts a lie to the idea that men today are obsessed with Kate Moss look-alikes. Tina's body overflows with sensuality. Damian enjoys telling his friends that Tina has a “generous” body and that she could have had a role in the movie Dirty Dancing. But it is her bleached, waterfall hair splashing out all over in irregular tempo that distracted anyone nearby. It is not just the guys who notice Tina; the women do too and not with approval. So the fact that Damian immediately noticed Tina upon entering the room on that first day does not separate him from his peers. What distinguishes him is that Damian did not hesitate to walk over and take the seat next to her. And since students nearly always return to the same seat every subsequent class, Damian sits next to Tina and her delicious distractions every class. So that besides high pitched screams, repetitive drumbeats, and tattooed arms, Damian's mind contemplates strategies for the seduction of Tina. But you might wonder whether Damian is paying any attention to his class or if he is only thinking of irrelevancies. If so, you may be surprised to know that despite all the attention to women and song, Damian is also tracking the class action. Damian is a pretty good student. Well, OK, he is only an “A–B” student. But what is wrong with that? After all, he has known plenty of smart people who have been total losers as teachers. Like Mr. Compton his high school English teacher who never caught on to the ways in which the class would ask him questions about everything under the sun and avoid the topic of the day. But while you don't have to be a rocket scientist to get through ed school classes, Damian is determined to graduate in four years. His parents have made it clear that they are only paying for four years of college. He will have to pay for every additional semester himself and he already has twelve thousand dollars in student loans to pay back. For this reason, that part of Damian's mind not occupied with other more intriguing things has been following the class conversation. Class participation is calculated into the final grade and though he doesn't know exactly how it will be counted, Damian makes sure that he contributes at least one comment in every class. At this particular moment there is a pause in the conversation. Damian decides now would be the time to “contribute.” “Professor Ulrich,” he asks, “What does Dewey mean when he talks about the progressives?”

The capture-based aquaculture of the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) starts with the catch of wild individuals, a slow-operating transport to the rearing facilities, introduction to rearing cages, and adaptation to the captive environment; all bearing significant risks for the onset of stressful conditions that consequently can result in unexpected mortalities.In order to explore whether the survival success through the farming cycle might be monitored at the genetic level and linked to several immunity and stress response associated genes, we have developed a new set of 13 EST-SSRs for T. thynnus and subsequently analysed 334 samples of juvenile wild-caught tuna and captive-reared adults during two consecutive farming cycles in the Adriatic Sea.The results evidenced a low FST value (0.005) with similar allele frequencies and no major allele loss between investigated groups. Two tested approaches for the identification of loci under selection did not indicate departure from neutrality for any of the 13 EST-SSRs, suggesting that the latter could not be considered adaptive in the studied context.Our results are in agreement with other studies that attempted to detect adaptive signals in T. thynnus, stressing the problem associated with the sampling design of a species with complex migratory behavior, reproduction and particular zootechnical practices employed at the farms. Nonetheless, characteristics of 13 new polymorphic loci reported here contribute to the broadening of the existing EST-SSRs resource, being a useful asset in future genetic studies of T. thynnus.

The choice of bait is one of the fisheries tactics used to increase selectivity for particular target species. The performance of three bait types (mackerel, sardine, squid) was evaluated with a commercial vessel operating in the Equatorial Atlantic Ocean using the deep-set pelagic longline deployment method to target large yellowfin and bigeye tunas. The effect of different factors and covariates on the Capture per Effort Unit - CPUE was evaluated through Generalized Linear Models (GLM). In 121 experimental sets using three bait types, 2385 individuals of the two target species were captured, 1166 yellowfin tuna and 1219 bigeye tuna. The results suggest a preference between bait types for each target species, with the yellowfin tuna being mostly caught by the hooks using squid and bigeye tuna with fish bait mackerel. Stratifying the results for three depth ranges of the hooks, the combination of bait and depth for yellowfin tuna resulted in an increase of catch probability in the intermediary depth layer using mackerel. For bigeye tuna, using mackerel in the intermediary layer resulted in a reduction in the catch rate. Bycatch represented around 11.15% of total captures. These results will provide important information to choosing the most efficient bait for the pelagic longline fishing operation and will help future decisions of fisheries management.

One of the fishery commodities with high economic value is tuna, where in the Maluku region in 2021, tuna production will be 35.56% (BPS, 2022). Tuna is caught using handlines which are classified as small-scale fisheries. The existence of tuna that changes over time causes fishermen to experience uncertainty in finding suitable fishing areas. Temperature is an important indicator in the distribution and abundance of tuna. This study aims to determine the composition of the hand line catch and to analyze the temperature distribution based on the area of ​​the hand line fishing operation in Central Maluku Regency. The research was conducted in the waters with the method used is a survey method by following fishing trips and using GPS satellite-based Spot Trace to track vessel movement activities during fishing operations. Descriptive data analysis was used to determine the composition of fisherman catches and used SeaWiFS Data Analysis System (SEADAS) 7.3.1 and Surfer 12 to analyze the distribution of water temperatures at fishing locations. The results showed that yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) dominated the catch by 70.30%, bigeye tuna (Thunnus obesus) by 20.19% and skipjack tuna (Katsuwonus pelamis) by 0.52%. The frequency distribution of yellowfin tuna length ranges from 23-171 cmFL where during 2019 it was dominated by sizes <100 cmFL as much as 82.42%. The SST range in January is 290C-310C, optimal fishing is at 29.80C-30.40C, April is in the range of 30.20C-31.70C, optimal fishing is at 30.90C-31.30C, in May is in the range of 27.40C-31,40C the optimal catch is in the temperature range of 27.80C -30.80C, in June is 27.40C -280C the optimal catch is in the temperature range 27.60C-27.850C, in September 27.40C-29.50C the optimal catch is at a temperature range of 27, 80C -28.50C, and in December the range of 29.40C-31.50C is optimal for catching at a temperature range of 30.40C -31.20C

One of the greatest threats to the conservation of transboundary stocks is the failure of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) to equitably allocate future fishing opportunities. Across RFMOs, catch history remains the principal criterion for catch allocations, despite being recognized as a critical barrier to governance stability. This paper examines if and how subsidies have driven catch histories, thereby perpetuating the legacy of unfair resource competition between distant water fishing nations (DWFNs) and coastal States, and how this affects ongoing allocation negotiations in the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC). Using limited publicly available data on subsidies to Indian Ocean tuna fleets, we show that subsidies have inflated catch histories of many DWFN's. As long as historical catch remains the key allocation criterion, future fishing opportunities will continue to be skewed in favor of DWFNs, in turn marginalizing half of the IOTC member States, which collectively account for a paltry 4% of the current catch. Without better transparency in past subsidies data, accounting for this distortion will be difficult. We provide alternative allocation options for consideration, with our analysis showing that re-attributing DWFN catch to the coastal State in whose waters it was caught may begin to alleviate this historical injustice.

Skipjack (Katsuwonus pelamis) belongs to a large pelagic fish, which is one of the leading commodity in North Sulawesi fishery sector. The fishing gear which is specifically intended for catching skipjack is pole and line; that has been used by fishermen of North Sulawesi before the second world war. But it does not have high competitiveness compared to other Asean countries, because the production process is not fully efficient yet. Therefore, this study aims to monitor the trend and productivity of pole and liner based in Bitung Oceanic Fishing Port (OFP) with used descriptive method; Secondary data was collected by recording information at Bitung OFP and related institutions, in the form of catch data, statistical reports and annual reports, as well as relevant literature review. Trend of pole and liner catch were analyzed by linear trend method through least square approach; While the productivity of the vessel is analyzed by comparing the catch and tonnage of the vessel. The main target of pole and liner is skipjack, but caught also yellowfin tuna and other species; with total catches ranging from 3,730.46 tons to 14,253.98 tons per year; and there are increasing trend. Estimated production of skipjack that will be landed at Bitung OFP in 2017 is amounted to 6,988.49 tons and yellowfin tuna 2,188.76 tons. While skipjack in 2018 amounted to 8,475.89 tons and yellowfin tuna of 2861.58 tons.Pole and liner are considered productive on average per year by 62% while the unproductive at 38%.Keywords: Pole and liner, Monitoring Trend and Productivity, skipjack, yellowfin tunaABSTRAKIkan cakalang (Katsuwonus pelamis) tergolong ikan pelagis besar, yang merupakan salah satu komoditi unggulan di sektor perikanan Sulawesi Utara. Alat tangkap yang digunakan untuk menangkap ikan cakalang adalah huhate; telah digunakan oleh nelayan Sulawesi Utara sebelum perang dunia kedua. Namun belum memiliki daya saing yang tinggi dibandingkan dengan negara Asean lainnya, karena proses produksi belum sepenuhnya efisien. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memonitoring trend dan produktivitas kapal huhate yang berpangkalan di Pelabuhan Perikanan Samudera (PPS) Bitung dengan menggunakan metode deskriptif; data sekunder dikumpulkan dengan cara mencatat informasi di PPS Bitung dan instansi terkait, berupa data hasil tangkapan, laporan statistik dan laporan tahunan, serta telaah pustaka yang relevan. Tren tangkapan kapal huhate dianalisis dengan metode tren linier melalui pendekatan least square; sedangkan produktivitas kapal dianalisis dengan membandingkan hasil tangkapan dan tonase kapal Target utama kapal huhate adalah ikan cakalang, tetapi tertangkap juga madidihang dan jenis lain; dengan jumlah tangkapan berkisar antara 3.730,46 ton - 14.253,98 ton per tahun; dan kecenderungan meningkat. Perkiraan produksi cakalang yang akan didaratkan di PPS Bitung untuk tahun 2017 adalah sebesar 6.988,49 ton dan madidihang 2.188,76 ton. Sedangkan cakalang untuk 2018 sebesar 8.475,89 ton dan madidihang sebesar 2.861,58 ton.Kapal huhate yang dinilai produktif, rata-rata per tahun sebesar 62% sedangkan yang tidak produktif sebesar 38%.Kata kunci: Kapal huhate, Monitoring Tren dan Produktivitas, Cakalang, Madidihang

The continuing decline in catch rates instigates various fishing adjustments to keep up with the demands of a growing population. Fishery resources are being caught before they can attain their optimum harvestable size. Undersized catch elicits lower economic value; thus, considered as losses in postharvest fisheries. The present study focused on generating actual data on the volume of undersized catches in selected landing sites in the Philippines. It aims to quantify the magnitude of postharvest and financial losses incurred from catching fishery commodities below their marketable sizes. The estimated loss at 0.97% and 4.02% for capture and aquaculture commodities, respectively, was equivalent to PHP 15,235,290 financial loss. Estimation of losses by commodity showed that squid recorded the highest at 20.14%, followed by tilapia (9.61%), blue swimming crab (4.48%), shrimp (2.75%), small pelagics (1.98%), mussel (1.46%), oceanic tuna (0.91%), by-catch (0.79%), milkfish (0.09%), and oyster (0.02%). Excessive catching of undersized BSC and squid in Western Visayas may lead to overexploitation of resources and may adversely affect subsequent recruitment in the long run. The study's results indicate that catching undersized species could lead to substantial postharvest losses and subsequent loss of potential revenue to the industry players. Allowing the stocks to attain their maximum biomass level will minimize postharvest losses; thus, maximizing utilization of resources and benefits derived from the sector. Unrestrained catching of undersized fishery commodities undermines resource sustainability, economic potential, and food security. The strengthening of regulatory frameworks is, therefore, necessary to address both economic and ecological impacts.

Scenario: You are exhausted after a long day at work and collapse in front of the television for some mindless entertainment. One of your favourite comedy shows is on. You begin to relax. You laugh a couple of times. There's a commercial break. You watch the first ad for a hardware store, giving it only half your attention. And then there's another ad, something about a father and son in a car together and then ". WOOOMPH! A truck slams into the car. The message is "Speed kills!" Or there are people playing and sunbathing on a beach, happy holidays, and then vultures descend and surround them. The message is "Slip! Slop! Slap! Don't die in the sun this summer". Or someone is shown smoking a cigarette and the caption reads : "Give up now. You'll soon stop dying for a cigarette". This might be accompanied by scenes of a post-mortem, dissections of human lungs or brain. Context Threat appeals are used frequently in health and road safety promotion. Many use the threat of death as the consequence of undesirable behaviours, for example, "Quit smoking or you'll die' (Henley and Donovan). ("Non-death threats' appeal to other consequences such as "Quit smoking or your skin will age'.) There is an implicit notion of premature death threat, although this is rarely stated explicitly. When reminded of our risk of premature death, we are reminded by extension of the ultimate inevitability of our death. An understanding of the philosophy of existentialism can help us understand why consumers may, quite reasonably, tune out, or literally switch off health promotion messages that remind them of their own death. This paper explores the effect on consumers of these mass media invocations of the fear of death, or "death threats'. Verbatim comments are included from six focus groups conducted on fear and health promotion. Groups were delineated by age (16-20 years, 21-29 years and 30-49 years), gender, and socio-economic status (blue collar/white collar) (Henley). What is existential dread? Fear is one of the primary human emotions (along with anger, sadness, love, joy and surprise) and "dread' is one of the emotion names associated with fear (Shaver et al. 1067). We do not need to learn how to feel fear. We have to learn what to fear, however. Despite the joke about death and taxes, death is uniquely inevitable. (Some people do manage to avoid taxes!) In his definitive work, Denial of Death, Becker stated his belief that knowledge of our own death is the source of 'man's peculiar and greatest anxiety' (70); it's what makes us human. Existentialists think that knowing about the inevitability of our own death can be overwhelming, arousing the worst fear imaginable, "existential dread' (Bugental 287). Existential philosophers and psychologists believe that part of this anxiety stems from the existential dread of "not being'. Discussing Heidegger's analysis of the meaning of death in Being and Time, Barrett put it this way: The point is that I may die at any moment, and therefore death is my possibility now. It is like a precipice at my feet. It is also the most extreme and absolute of my possibilities: extreme, because it is the possibility of not being and hence cuts off all other possibilities; absolute, because man can surmount all other heartbreaks, even the deaths of those he loves, but his own death puts an end to him (201). The essence of existential philosophy is this idea that we are all deeply, terribly afraid of death. Fear of death can be seen even in very young children (Anthony, The child's; Anthony, The discovery; Nagy) who express considerable anxiety about death, but quickly learn from their parents and others how to deny it (Yalom). Existential psychologists have suggested that the fear of our own death is the cause of much of our psychopathology (Yalom). Existentialists believe that the most common response to existential anxiety is to deny it, creating in oneself a 'state of forgetfulness of being' as far as possible. Weisman described three levels of denial in terminally ill patients: "first-order denial' of the facts of illness; "second-order denial' of the implications of the illness; and "third-order denial' of death itself. He noted that often a patient moves from first and second order denial into "middle knowledge' (i.e., acceptance of near death), but then relapses. Weisman remarked that this relapse is often the signal that the terminal phase has begun. This aspect of denial is a complicated factor in the complex measurement of death anxiety. When people say they are not afraid of death, who can say whether they are denying fear or truly not afraid? In either case, health promotion appeals that threaten death may not be effective, either because the fear is denied or because there is no fear. In focus groups exploring people's concepts of death (Henley 111), few people acknowledged being afraid of their own death and many specifically stated that they were not afraid of their own death. One woman voiced the universal difficulty of truly conceiving what it might be like "not to be' (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg) when she said: 'death seems like such an unrealistic proposition'. People did acknowledge fears about death, such as dying painfully, so health promotion messages that threaten these other dimensions of death anxiety may be more effective. Health promotion practitioners frequently use these related death fears. The fear of causing death, for example, is used in road safety advertisements. However, this discussion on existential fear is limited to threat appeals of death per se. Death threats in health promotion Is arousing existential dread an effective way to market healthy behaviours? At first sight, it seems logical that the threat of death would be more persuasive than lesser threats and yet it may not be the most effective approach. There is some evidence that lesser threats may be more effective for some groups of adolescents and young adults for smoking (Donovan and Leivers), and for road safety behaviours (Donovan et al.). For example, for some 18 year old males, the threat of being caught drinking and driving, of losing their driving licence and, thus, their new-found independence may be a more effective deterrent than the threat of dying in a car accident (Donovan et al.). The humiliation of being arrested and charged for drink-driving may be the most powerful persuader for adults of all ages (Bevins). For men attending the Jerusalem Centre for Impotency and Fertility, impotence was reported a more persuasive threat than death: 78% of men who were told that smoking causes impotence quit smoking, compared to 40% who quit when told that smoking causes heart attacks ("No smoking tip"). One woman in a focus group said, 'you tend to think short-term, "can I afford a $100 fine?" rather than long-term, "this is my life." If I stop to think about it, obviously I'm more afraid of dying than $100 [fine], but that's not what I think about' (Henley 95). This makes sense in the context of forgetfulness, the denial of death. We don't want to be reminded of our death so we switch off the death message. Lesser threats may be more easily internalised. Does arousing existential dread do any harm? Perhaps. Job suggested that fear arousal is likely to be effective only for specific behaviours that successfully reduce the level of fear arousal and that high-fear messages may actually increase behaviours that people employ to reduce anxiety, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. People high in anxiety are hypothesised to be hypersensitive to threats and likely to employ a restricted range of self-soothing coping behaviours to reduce negative affect (Wickramasekera and Price). Death threat appeals such as "Quit smoking or you'll die' may arouse defensive, counter-productive responses, at least in some people, because it is impossible to identify any specific behaviour that could successfully reduce the particular, unique fear of death per se. Firestone identified a number of psychological defences against death anxiety, including self-nourishing and addictive habits, such as smoking and overeating. Ironically, these same behaviours are frequently the subject of health promotion campaigns. If such campaigns arouse death anxiety in an effort to curb defensive responses to death anxiety, there clearly could be an increase rather than a decrease in those defensive responses. Arousing death anxiety might contribute to fatalistic thinking. Job described some people's defenses against very high fear, for example, "...you've got to go sometime' or "...when your number's up, your number's up'. In focus groups, people commented, 'if an accident is going to happen, it's going to happen' and 'what's the point of giving up [unhealthy behaviours] if you get run over by a bus tomorrow?' (Henley 95, 108). Rippetoe and Rogers found that fatalistic thinking occurred when subjects did not believe that the recommended behaviour would avert the threat. That is, people may realise that quitting smoking could avert lung cancer and even some causes of premature death but that nothing can avert death itself. Fatalism may be one of the most maladaptive responses because the threat is acknowledged but rendered ineffective (Rippetoe and Rogers). Social marketers can make some of their persuasive communications more effective if they are more mindful of consumers' existential fears. A sensitivity to consumers' psychological defences against existential fear may result in more effective use of threat appeals in health promotion. Mindfulness Mindful that the title of this paper itself may arouse some existential dread, I end with a comment on the existentialist alternative to denial. Existentialists advocate a state of 'mindfulness of being' or 'ontological mode' (Heidegger, quoted in Yalom 31) in which "one remains mindful of being, not only mindful of the fragility of being but mindful, too ... of one's responsibility for one's own being." (Yalom 31). The existentialist strives to be as mindful, as present in the moment, and therefore as authentic as possible. This involves the acceptance of existential anxiety as an appropriate and reasonable response to the human condition (Bugental). Some focus group participants wanted to know in advance that they were going to die, 'so you can fit things in you'd want to do and say goodbye'. Others thought it was better not to know or 'you'd start having regrets'. One person pointed out that we do know in advance: 'you know you're going to die sometime!'. This last comment was followed by a sober, almost shocked silence suggesting that, even while we are freely discussing death on one level, the full meaning of death may still elude us. As consumers of health promotion messages, we are exposed to many reminders of our finite existence. If we sit mindlessly in front of the television receiving these messages, we may feel some unresolved discomfort. People talk about looking away, or switching channels when particularly shocking ads are shown. The existentialist alternative response would be to embrace these reminders and use them to sustain a state of mindfulness. With this state of mindfulness comes a heightened sense of responsibility for one's own being. It is in this ontological mode that we are most likely to adopt the healthy behaviours recommended in health promotion messages. By hearing the death threat openly, and acting to protect ourselves from at least those causes of premature death that may lie within our control, we may be able to discover a fuller experience of what it means to be alive. References Anthony, Sylvia. The Child's Discovery of Death. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1940. Anthony, Sylvia. The Discovery of Death in Childhood and After. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Education, 1973. Barrett, W. Irrational Man, A Study in Existential Philosophy. London: Heinemann, 1958. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press, 1973. Bevins, John. "Using Advertising to Sell and Promote Health and Healthy Products". Paper presented at the ACHPER Health Products and Services Marketing Seminar. Kuring-gai College, Sydney, 1987. Bugental, J. F. T. The Search for Authenticity: An Existential-analytic Approach to Psychotherapy. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1965. Donovan, Robert J., and Sue Leivers. Young Women and Smoking. Report to Commonwealth Department of Human Services and Health. Perth: Donovan Research, 1988. Donovan, Robert J., Nadine Henley, Geoffrey Jalleh, and Clive Slater. Road Safety Advertising: An Empirical Study and Literature Review. Canberra: Federal Office of Road Safety, 1995. Firestone, Robert W. "Psychological Defenses against Death Anxiety." Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, and Application. Series in Death Education, Aging, and Health Care. Ed. Robert A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis, 1994. 217-241. Henley, Nadine R. "Fear Arousal in Social Marketing: Death vs Non-death Threats." Doctoral Dissertation, University of Western Australia, Perth, 1997. Henley, Nadine and Robert J. Donovan. "Threat Appeals in Social Marketing: Death as a "Special Case'". International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing, 4.4 (1999): 300-319. Job, R. F. Soames. "Effective and Ineffective Use of Fear in Health Promotion Campaigns." American Journal of Public Health, 78 (1988): 163-167. Kastenbaum, R., and R. Aisenberg. The Psychology of Death. London: Duckworth, 1974. Nagy, Maria H. "The Child's View of Death." The Meaning of Death. Ed. Herman Feifel. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1959. 79-98. "No Smoking Tip for Lovers". Daily Telegraph, (1994, September 24): p. 4. Rippetoe, P.A. and Rogers, R.W. "Effects of components of protection-motivation theory on adaptive and maladaptive coping with a health threat." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52.3 (1987): 596-604. Shaver, P., J. Schwartz, D. Kirson, and C. O'Connor. "Emotion Knowledge: Further Exploration of a Prototype Approach." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52.6 (1987): 1061-1086. Weisman, A.D. On dying and denying: A psychiatric study of terminality. New York: Behavioral Publications, 1972. Wickramasekera, Ian and Daniel C. Price. "Morbid Obesity, Absorption, Neuroticism, and the High Risk Model of Threat Perception." American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 39 (1997): 291-301. Yalom, I. D. Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books, 1980. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Henley, Nadine. "You will die! " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/youwilldie.php>. Chicago Style Henley, Nadine, "You will die! " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/youwilldie.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Henley, Nadine. (2002) You will die! . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/youwilldie.php> ([your date of access]).

The brand began, quite literally, as a method for ranchers to identify their cattle. By burning a distinct symbol into the hide of a baby calf, the owner could insure that if it one day wandered off his property or was stolen by a competitor, he’d be able to point to that logo and claim the animal as his rightful property. When the manufacturers of products adopted the brand as a way of guaranteeing the quality of their goods, its function remained pretty much the same. Buying a package of oats with the Quaker label meant the customer could trace back these otherwise generic oats to their source. If there was a problem, he knew where he could turn. More important, if the oats were of satisfactory or superior quality, he knew where he could get them again. Trademarking a brand meant that no one else could call his oats Quaker. Advertising in this innocent age simply meant publicizing the existence of one’s brand. The sole objective was to increase consumers awareness of the product or company that made it. Those who even thought to employ specialists for the exclusive purpose of writing ad copy hired newspaper reporters and travelling salesmen, who knew how to explain the attributes of an item in words that people tended to remember. It wasn’t until 1922 that a preacher and travelling “medicine show” salesman-turned-copywriter named Claude Hopkins decided that advertising should be systematized into a science. His short but groundbreaking book Scientific Advertising proposed that the advertisement is merely a printed extension of the salesman¹s pitch and should follow the same rules. Hopkins believed in using hard descriptions over hype, and text over image: “The more you tell, the more you sell” and “White space is wasted space” were his mantras. Hopkins believed that any illustrations used in an ad should be directly relevant to the product itself, not just a loose or emotional association. He insisted on avoiding “frivolity” at all costs, arguing that “no one ever bought from a clown.” Although some images did appear in advertisements and on packaging as early as the 1800s - the Quaker Oats man showed up in 1877 - these weren¹t consciously crafted to induce psychological states in customers. They were meant just to help people remember one brand over another. How better to recall the brand Quaker than to see a picture of one? It wasn’t until the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as Americans turned toward movies and television and away from newspapers and radio, that advertisers’ focus shifted away from describing their brands and to creating images for them. During these decades, Midwestern adman Leo Burnett concocted what is often called the Chicago school of advertising, in which lovable characters are used to represent products. Green Giant, which was originally just the Minnesota Valley Canning Company’s code name for an experimental pea, became the Jolly Green Giant in young Burnett’s world of animated characters. He understood that the figure would make a perfect and enticing brand image for an otherwise boring product and could also serve as a mnemonic device for consumers. As he watched his character grow in popularity, Burnett discovered that the mythical figure of a green giant had resonance in many different cultures around the world. It became a kind of archetype and managed to penetrate the psyche in more ways than one. Burnett was responsible for dozens of character-based brand images, including Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, and the Marlboro Man. In each case, the character creates a sense of drama, which engages the audience in the pitch. This was Burnett’s great insight. He still wanted to sell a product based on its attributes, but he knew he had to draw in his audience using characters. Brand images were also based on places, like Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, or on recognizable situations, such as the significant childhood memories labelled “Kodak moments” or a mother nurturing her son on a cold day, a defining image for Campbell’s soup. In all these cases, however, the moment, location, or character went only so far as to draw the audience into the ad, after which they would be subjected to a standard pitch: ‘Soup is good food’, or ‘Sorry, Charlie, only the best tuna get to be Starkist’. Burnett saw himself as a homespun Midwesterner who was contributing to American folklore while speaking in the plain language of the people. He took pride in the fact that his ads used words like “ain’t”; not because they had some calculated psychological effect on the audience, but because they communicated in a natural, plainspoken style. As these methods found their way to Madison Avenue and came to be practiced much more self-consciously, Burnett¹s love for American values and his focus on brand attributes were left behind. Branding became much more ethereal and image-based, and ads only occasionally nodded to a product’s attributes. In the 1960s, advertising gurus like David Ogilvy came up with rules about television advertising that would have made Claude Hopkins shudder. “Food in motion” dictated that food should always be shot by a moving camera. “Open with fire” meant that ads should start in a very exciting and captivating way. Ogilvy told his creatives to use supers - text superimposed on the screen to emphasize important phrases and taglines. All these techniques were devised to promote brand image, not the product. Ogilvy didn’t believe consumers could distinguish between products were it not for their images. In Ogilvy on Advertising, he explains that most people cannot tell the difference between their own “favourite” whiskey and the closest two competitors’: ‘Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don¹t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn¹t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is ninety percent of what the distiller has to sell.’ (Ogilvy, 1993). Thus, we learned to “trust our car to the man who wears the star” not because Texaco had better gasoline than Shell, but because the company’s advertisers had created a better brand image. While Burnett and his disciples were building brand myths, another school of advertisers was busy learning about its audience. Back in the 1920s, Raymond Rubicam, who eventually founded the agency Young and Rubicam, thought it might be interesting to hire a pollster named Dr. Gallup from Northwestern University to see what could be gleaned about consumers from a little market research. The advertising industry’s version of cultural anthropology, or demographics, was born. Like the public-relations experts who study their target populations in order to manipulate them later, marketers began conducting polls, market surveys, and focus groups on the segments of the population they hoped to influence. And to draw clear, clean lines between demographic groups, researchers must almost always base distinctions on four factors: race, age, sex, and wages. Demographic research is reductionist by design. I once consulted to an FM radio station whose station manager wanted to know, “Who is our listener?” Asking such a question reduces an entire listenership down to one fictional person. It’s possible that no single individual will ever match the “customer profile” meant to apply to all customers, which is why so much targeted marketing often borders on classist, racist, and sexist pandering. Billboards for most menthol cigarettes, for example, picture African-Americans because, according to demographic research, black people prefer them to regular cigarettes. Microsoft chose Rolling Stones songs to launch Windows 95, a product targeted at wealthy baby boomers. “The Women’s Global Challenge” was an advertising-industry-created Olympics for women, with no purpose other than to market to active females. By the 1970s, the two strands of advertising theory - demographic research and brand image - were combined to develop campaigns that work on both levels. To this day, we know to associate Volvos with safety, Dr. Pepper with individuality, and Harley-Davidson with American heritage. Each of these brand images is crafted to appeal to the target consumer’s underlying psychological needs: Volvo ads are aimed at upper-middle-class white parents who fear for their children’s health and security, Dr. Pepper is directed to young nonconformists, and the Harley-Davidson image supports its riders’ self-perception as renegades. Today’s modern (or perhaps postmodern) brands don’t invent a corporate image on their own; they appropriate one from the media itself, such as MetLife did with Snoopy, Butterfinger did with Bart Simpson, or Kmart did by hiring Penny Marshall and Rosie O’Donnell. These mascots were selected because their perceived characteristics match the values of their target consumers - not the products themselves. In the language of today’s marketers, brand images do not reflect on products but on advertisers’ perceptions of their audiences’ psychology. This focus on audience composition and values has become the standard operating procedure in all of broadcasting. When Fox TV executives learned that their animated series “King of the Hill”, about a Texan propane distributor, was not faring well with certain demographics, for example, they took a targeted approach to their character’s rehabilitation. The Brandweek piece on Fox’s ethnic campaign uncomfortably dances around the issue. Hank Hill is the proverbial everyman, and Fox wants viewers to get comfortable with him; especially viewers in New York, where “King of the Hill”’s homespun humor hasn’t quite caught on with the young urbanites. So far this season, the show has pulled in a 10.1 rating/15 share in households nationally, while garnering a 7.9 rating/12 share in New York (Brandweek, 1997) As far as Fox was concerned, while regular people could identify with the network’s new “everyman” character, New Yorkers weren’t buying his middle-American patter. The television show’s ratings proved what TV executives had known all along: that New York City’s Jewish demographic doesn’t see itself as part of the rest of America. Fox’s strategy for “humanizing” the character to those irascible urbanites was to target the group’s ethnographic self-image. Fox put ads for the show on the panels of sidewalk coffee wagons throughout Manhattan, with the tagline “Have a bagel with Hank”. In an appeal to the target market’s well-developed (and well-researched) cynicism, Hank himself is shown saying, “May I suggest you have that with a schmear”. The disarmingly ethnic humor here is meant to underscore the absurdity of a Texas propane salesman using a Jewish insider’s word like “schmear.” In another Upper West Side billboard, Hank’s son appeals to the passing traffic: “Hey yo! Somebody toss me up a knish!” As far as the New York demographic is concerned, these jokes transform the characters from potentially threatening Southern rednecks into loveable hicks bending over backward to appeal to Jewish sensibilities, and doing so with a comic and, most important, nonthreatening inadequacy. Today, the most intensely targeted demographic is the baby - the future consumer. Before an average American child is twenty months old, he can recognize the McDonald’s logo and many other branded icons. Nearly everything a toddler encounters - from Band-Aids to underpants - features the trademarked characters of Disney or other marketing empires. Although this target market may not be in a position to exercise its preferences for many years, it pays for marketers to imprint their brands early. General Motors bought a two-page ad in Sports Illustrated for Kids for its Chevy Venture minivan. Their brand manager rationalized that the eight-to-fourteen-year-old demographic consists of “back-seat consumers” (Leonhardt, 1997). The real intention of target marketing to children and babies, however, goes deeper. The fresh neurons of young brains are valuable mental real estate to admen. By seeding their products and images early, the marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition; they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed. A nine-year-old child who can recognize the Budweiser frogs and recite their slogan (Bud-weis-er) is more likely to start drinking beer than one who can remember only Tony the Tiger yelling, “They¹re great!” (Currently, more children recognize the frogs than Tony.) This indicates a long-term coercive strategy. The abstraction of brand images from the products they represent, combined with an increasing assault on our demographically targeted psychological profiles, led to some justifiable consumer paranoia by the 1970s. Advertising was working on us in ways we couldn’t fully understand, and people began to look for an explanation. In 1973, Wilson Bryan Key, a communications researcher, wrote the first of four books about “subliminal advertising,” in which he accused advertisers of hiding sexual imagery in ice cubes, and psychoactive words like “sex” onto the airbrushed surfaces of fashion photographs. Having worked on many advertising campaigns from start to finish, in close proximity to everyone from copywriters and art directors to printers, I can comfortably put to rest any rumours that major advertising agencies are engaging in subliminal campaigns. How do images that could be interpreted as “sexual” show up in ice cubes or elbows? The final photographs chosen for ads are selected by committee out of hundreds that are actually shot. After hours or days of consideration, the group eventually feels drawn to one or two photos out of the batch. Not surprising, these photos tend to have more evocative compositions and details, but no penises, breasts, or skulls are ever superimposed onto the images. In fact, the man who claims to have developed subliminal persuasion, James Vicary, admitted to Advertising Age in 1984 that he had fabricated his evidence that the technique worked in order to drum up business for his failing research company. But this confession has not assuaged Key and others who relentlessly, perhaps obsessively, continue to pursue those they feel are planting secret visual messages in advertisements. To be fair to Key, advertisers have left themselves open to suspicion by relegating their work to the abstract world of the image and then targeting consumer psychology so deliberately. According to research by the Roper Organization in 1992, fifty-seven percent of American consumers still believe that subliminal advertising is practiced on a regular basis, and only one in twelve think it “almost never” happens. To protect themselves from the techniques they believe are being used against them, the advertising audience has adopted a stance of cynical suspicion. To combat our increasing awareness and suspicion of demographic targeting, marketers have developed a more camouflaged form of categorization based on psychological profiles instead of race and age. Jim Schroer, the executive director of new marketing strategy at Ford explains his abandonment of broad-demographic targeting: ‘It’s smarter to think about emotions and attitudes, which all go under the term: psychographics - those things that can transcend demographic groups.’ (Schroer, 1997) Instead, he now appeals to what he calls “consumers’ images of themselves.” Unlike broad demographics, the psychographic is developed using more narrowly structured qualitative-analysis techniques, like focus groups, in-depth interviews, and even home surveillance. Marketing analysts observe the behaviors of volunteer subjects, ask questions, and try to draw causal links between feelings, self-image, and purchases. A company called Strategic Directions Group provides just such analysis of the human psyche. In their study of the car-buying habits of the forty-plus baby boomers and their elders, they sought to define the main psychological predilections that human beings in this age group have regarding car purchases. Although they began with a demographic subset of the overall population, their analysis led them to segment the group into psychographic types. For example, members of one psychographic segment, called the ³Reliables,² think of driving as a way to get from point A to point B. The “Everyday People” campaign for Toyota is aimed at this group and features people depending on their reliable and efficient little Toyotas. A convertible Saab, on the other hand, appeals to the ³Stylish Fun² category, who like trendy and fun-to-drive imports. One of the company’s commercials shows a woman at a boring party fantasizing herself into an oil painting, where she drives along the canvas in a sporty yellow Saab. Psychographic targeting is more effective than demographic targeting because it reaches for an individual customer more directly - like a fly fisherman who sets bait and jiggles his rod in a prescribed pattern for a particular kind of fish. It’s as if a marketing campaign has singled you out and recognizes your core values and aspirations, without having lumped you into a racial or economic stereotype. It amounts to a game of cat-and-mouse between advertisers and their target psychographic groups. The more effort we expend to escape categorization, the more ruthlessly the marketers pursue us. In some cases, in fact, our psychographic profiles are based more on the extent to which we try to avoid marketers than on our fundamental goals or values. The so-called “Generation X” adopted the anti-chic aesthetic of thrift-store grunge in an effort to find a style that could not be so easily identified and exploited. Grunge was so self-consciously lowbrow and nonaspirational that it seemed, at first, impervious to the hype and glamour normally applied swiftly to any emerging trend. But sure enough, grunge anthems found their way onto the soundtracks of television commercials, and Dodge Neons were hawked by kids in flannel shirts saying “Whatever.” The members of Generation X are putting up a good fight. Having already developed an awareness of how marketers attempt to target their hearts and wallets, they use their insight into programming to resist these attacks. Unlike the adult marketers pursuing them, young people have grown up immersed in the language of advertising and public relations. They speak it like natives. As a result, they are more than aware when a commercial or billboard is targeting them. In conscious defiance of demographic-based pandering, they adopt a stance of self-protective irony‹distancing themselves from the emotional ploys of the advertisers. Lorraine Ketch, the director of planning in charge of Levi¹s trendy Silvertab line, explained, “This audience hates marketing that’s in your face. It eyeballs it a mile away, chews it up and spits it out” (On Advertising, 1998). Chiat/Day, one of the world’s best-known and experimental advertising agencies, found the answer to the crisis was simply to break up the Gen-X demographic into separate “tribes” or subdemographics - and include subtle visual references to each one of them in the ads they produce for the brand. According to Levi’s director of consumer marketing, the campaign meant to communicate, “We really understand them, but we are not trying too hard” (On Advertising, 1998). Probably unintentionally, Ms. Ketch has revealed the new, even more highly abstract plane on which advertising is now being communicated. Instead of creating and marketing a brand image, advertisers are creating marketing campaigns about the advertising itself. Silvertab’s target market is supposed to feel good about being understood, but even better about understanding the way they are being marketed to. The “drama” invented by Leo Burnett and refined by David Ogilvy and others has become a play within a play. The scene itself has shifted. The dramatic action no longer occurs between the audience and the product, the brand, or the brand image, but between the audience and the brand marketers. As audiences gain even more control over the media in which these interactive stories unfold, advertising evolves ever closer to a theatre of the absurd. excerpted from Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say)? Works Cited Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Vintage, 1983. Brandweek Staff, "Number Crunching, Hollywood Style," Brandweek. October 6, 1997. Leonhardt, David, and Kathleen Kerwin, "Hey Kid, Buy This!" Business Week. June 30, 1997 Schroer, Jim. Quoted in "Why We Kick Tires," by Carol Morgan and Doron Levy. Brandweek. Sept 29, 1997. "On Advertising," The New York Times. August 14, 1998 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Rushkoff, Douglas. "Coercion " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>. APA Style Rushkoff, D. (2003, Jun 19). Coercion . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>

There are days when having a child with Down syndrome can mean losing all hope of being an ordinary mother: a mother with run of the mill concerns, a mother with run of the mill routines. I know. I’ve had such days. I’ve also found that sharing these feelings with other mothers, even those who have a child with a disability, isn’t always easy. Or straightforward. In part I believe my difficulty sharing my experience with other mothers is because the motherhood issues surrounding the birth of a child with Down syndrome are qualitatively different to those experienced by mothers who give birth to children with other disabilities. Disabilities such as autism or cerebral palsy. The mother who has a child with autism or cerebral palsy is usually viewed as a victim - as having had no choice – of life having dealt her a cruel blow. There are after all no prenatal tests that can currently pick up these defects. That she may not see herself as a victim or her child as a victim often goes unreported, instead in the eyes of the popular media to give birth to a child with a disability is seen as a personal tragedy – a story of suffering and endurance. In other words disability is to be avoided if at all possible and women are expected to take advantage of the advances in reproductive medicine – to choose a genetically correct pregnancy – thus improving their lives and the lives of their offspring. Within this context it is not surprising then that the mother of a child with Down syndrome is likely to be seen as having brought the suffering on herself – of having had choices – tests such as amniocentesis and CVS – but of having failed to take control, failed to prevent the suffering of her child. But how informative are tests such as pre-implantation diagnosis, CVS or amniocentesis? How meaningful? More importantly, how safe is it to assume lives are being improved? Could it be, for example, that some lives are now harder rather than easier? As one mother who has grappled with the issues surrounding prenatal testing and disability I would like to share with you our family’s experience and hopefully illuminate some of the more complex and troubling issues these technological advances have the capacity to create. Fraser’s Pregnancy I fell pregnant with Fraser in 1995 at the age of thirty-seven. I was already the mother of a fifteen-month old and just as I had during his pregnancy – I took the routine maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein blood screen for chromosomal abnormalities at sixteen weeks. It showed I was at high risk of having a child with Down syndrome. However as I’d had a similarly high-risk reading in my first pregnancy I wasn’t particularly worried. The risk with Fraser appeared slightly higher, but other than knowing we would have to find time to see the genetic counsellor again, I didn’t dwell on it. As it happened Christopher and I sat in the same office with the same counsellor and once again listened to the risks. A normal foetus, as you both know, has 46 chromosomes in each cell. But given your high AFP reading Fiona, there is a significant risk that instead of 46 there could be 47 chromosomes in each cell. Each cell could be carrying an extra copy of chromosome 21. And as you both know, she continued her voice deepening; Trisomy 21 is associated with mild to severe intellectual disability. It also increases the risk of childhood leukaemia; certain cardiac disorders and is associated with other genetic disorders such as Hirschsprung’s disease. We listened and just as we’d done the first time – decided to have a coffee in the hospital café. This time for some reason the tone was different, this time we could feel the high-octane spiel, feel the pressure pound through our bodies, pulsate through our veins – we should take the test, we should take the test, we should take the test. We were, were we not, intelligent, well-educated and responsible human beings? Surely we could understand the need to invade, the need to extract a sample of amniotic fluid? Surely there were no ifs and buts this time? Surely we realised we had been very lucky with our first pregnancy; surely we understood the need for certainty; for reliable and accurate information this time? We did and we didn’t. We knew for example, that even if we ruled out the possibility of Down syndrome there was no guarantee our baby would be normal. We’d done our research. We knew that of all the children born with an intellectual disability only twenty five percent have a parentally detectable chromosomal disorder such as Down syndrome. In other words, the majority of mothers who give birth to a child with an intellectual disability will have received perfectly normal, utterly reassuring amniocentesis results. They will have put themselves at risk and will have been rewarded with good results. They will have been expecting a baby they could cherish, a baby they could feel proud of – a baby they could love. Our Decision Should we relent this time? Should we accept the professional advice? We talked and we talked. We knew if we agreed to the amniocentesis it would only rule out Down syndrome – or a less common chromosomal disorder such as Trisomy 18 or Trisomy 13. But little else. Four thousand other known birth defects would still remain. Defects such as attention deficit disorder, cleft lip, cleft palate, clubfoot, congenital cardiac disorder, cystic fibrosis, epilepsy, ... would not magically disappear by agreeing to the test. Neither would the possibility of giving birth to a child with autism or cerebral palsy. Or a child with vision, hearing or speech impairment. Neurological problems, skin problems or behavioural difficulties... We were however strongly aware the drive to have a normal child was expected of us. That we were making our decision at a time when social and economic imperatives dictated that we should want the best. The best partner, the best career, the best house ... the best baby. I had already agreed to a blood test and an ultrasound, so why not an amniocentesis? Why stop now? Why not proceed with a test most women over the age of thirty-five consider essential? What was wrong with me? Put simply, the test didn’t engage me. It seemed too specific. Too focused. Plus there was also a far larger obstacle. I knew if I agreed to the test and the words chromosomal disorder were to appear – a certain set of assumptions, an as yet unspoken trajectory would swiftly emerge. And I wasn’t sure I would be able to follow its course. Beyond the Test I knew if the test results came back positive I would be expected to terminate immediately. To abort my affected foetus. The fact I could find it difficult to fall pregnant again after the termination or that any future foetus may also be affected by a birth defect would make little difference. Out the four thousand known birth defects it would be considered imperative not to proceed with this particular one. And following on from that logic it would be assumed that the how – the business of termination – would be of little importance to me given the perceived gravity of the situation. I would want to solve the problem by removing it. No matter what. Before the procedure (as it would be referred to) the staff would want to reassure me, would want to comfort me – and in soothing voices tell me that yes; yes of course this procedure is in your best interests. You and your baby shouldn’t be made to suffer, not now or ever. You’re doing the right thing, they would reassure me, you are. But what would be left as unsaid would be the unavoidable realities of termination. On the elected day, during what would be the twenty-second week of my pregnancy, I would have to consent to the induction of labour. Simultaneously, I would also be expected to consent to a foetal intra-cardiac injection of potassium chloride to ensure the delivery of a dead baby. I would be advised to give birth to a dead baby because it would be considered better if I didn’t hear the baby cry. Better if I didn’t see the tiny creature breathe. Or try to breathe. The staff would also prefer I consent, would prefer I minimised everyone else’s distress. Then after the event I would be left alone. Left alone to my own devices. Left alone with no baby. I would be promised a tiny set of foot and handprints as a memento of my once vibrant pregnancy. And expected to be grateful, to be thankful, for the successful elimination of a pending disaster. But while I knew the staff would mean well, would believe they were doing the right thing for me, I knew it wasn’t the road for me. That I just couldn’t do it. We spent considerably longer in the hospital café the second time. And even though we tried to keep things light, we were both subdued. Both tense. My risk of having a baby with Down syndrome had come back as 1:120. Yes it was slightly higher than my first pregnancy (1:150), but did it mean anything? Our conversation was full of bumps and long winding trails. My Sister’s Experience of Disability Perhaps the prospect of having a child with Down syndrome didn’t terrify me because my sister had a disability. Not that we ever really referred to it as such, it was only ever Alison’s epilepsy. And although it was uncontrollable for most of her childhood, my mother tried to make her life as normal as possible. She was allowed to ride a bike, climb trees and swim. But it wasn’t easy for my mother because even though she wanted my sister to live a normal life there were no support services. Only a somewhat pessimistic neurologist. No one made the link between my sister’s declining school performance and her epilepsy. That she would lose the thread of a conversation because of a brief petit mal, a brief moment when she wouldn’t know what was going on. Or that repeated grand mal seizures took away her capacity for abstract thought and made her more and more concrete in her thinking. But despite the lack of support my mother worked long and hard to bring up a daughter who could hold down a full time job and live independently. She refused to let her use her epilepsy as an excuse. So much so that even today I still find it difficult to say my sister had a disability. I didn’t grow up with the word and my sister herself rarely used it to describe herself. Not surprisingly she went into the field herself working at first as a residential worker in a special school for disabled children and later as a rehabilitation counsellor for the Royal Blind Society. Premature Babies I couldn’t understand why a baby with Down syndrome was something to be avoided at all costs while a baby who was born prematurely and likely to emerge from the labour-intensive incubator process with severe life-long disabilities was cherished, welcomed and saved no matter what the expense. Other than being normal to begin with – where was the difference? Perhaps it was the possibility the premature baby might emerge unscathed. That hope remained. That there was a real possibility the intense and expensive process of saving the baby might not cause any damage. Whereas with Down syndrome the damage was done. The damage was known. I don’t know. Perhaps even with Down syndrome I felt there could be hope. Hope that the child might only be mildly intellectually disabled. Might not experience any of the serious medical complications. And that new and innovative treatments would be discovered in their lifetime. I just couldn’t accept the conventional wisdom. Couldn’t accept the need to test. And after approaching the decision from this angle, that angle and every other angle we could think of we both felt there was little more to say. And returned to our genetic counsellor. The Pressure to Conform Welcome back, she smiled. I’d like to introduce you to Dr M. I nodded politely in the doctor’s direction while immediately trying to discern if Christopher felt as caught off guard as I did. You’ll be pleased to know Dr M can perform the test today, she informed us. Dr M nodded and reached out to shake my hand. It’s a bit of a squeeze, she told me, but I can fit you in at around four. And don’t worry; she reassured me, that’s what we’re here for. I was shocked the heavy artillery had been called in. The pressure to conform, the pressure to say yes had been dramatically heightened by the presence of a doctor in the room. I could also sense the two women wanted to talk to me alone. That they wanted to talk woman to woman, that they thought if they could get me on my own I would agree, I would understand. That it must be the male who was the stumbling block. The problem. But I could also tell they were unsure; Christopher was after all a doctor, a member of the medical profession, one of them. Surely, they reasoned, surely he must understand why I must take the test. I didn’t want to talk to them alone. In part, because I felt the decision was as much Christopher’s as it was mine. Perhaps a little more mine, but one I wanted to make together. And much to their dismay I declined both the talk and the amniocentesis. Well, if you change your mind we’re here the counsellor reassured me. I nodded and as I left I made a point of looking each woman in the eye while shaking her hand firmly. Thank you, but no thank you, I reassured them. I wanted the baby I’d felt kick. I wanted him or her no matter what. After that day the whole issue pretty much faded, in part because soon after I developed a heart problem, a tachycardia and was fairly restricted in what I could do. I worried about the baby but more because of the medication I had to take rather than any genetic issue to do with its well being. The Birth Despite my heart condition the birth went well. And I was able to labour naturally with little intervention. I knew however, that all was not right. My first glimmer of recognition happened as I was giving birth to Fraser. He didn't push against me, he didn't thrust apart the walls of my birth canal, didn’t cause me to feel as though I was about to splinter. He was soft and floppy. Yet while I can tell you I knew something was wrong, knew instinctively – at another level I didn't have a clue. So I waited. Waited for his Apgar score. Waited to hear what the standard assessment of newborn viability would reveal. How the individual scores for activity (muscle tone), pulse (heart rate), grimace (reflex response), appearance (colour) and respiration (breathing) would add up. I knew the purpose of the Apgar test was to determine quickly whether or not Fraser needed immediate medical care – with scores below 3 generally regarded as critically low, 4 to 6 fairly low, and over 7 generally normal. Fraser scored 8 immediately after birth and 9 five minutes later. His markers of viability were fine. However all was not fine and within minutes he received a tentative diagnosis – whispers and murmurs placing a virtual sticker on his forehead. Whispers and murmurs immediately setting him apart from the normal neonate. Whispers and murmurs of concern. He was not a baby they wanted anything to do with – an experience they wanted anything to do with. In a very matter of fact voice the midwife asked me if I had had an amniocentesis. I said no, and thankfully because I was still feeling the effects of the gas, the bluntness and insensitivity of her question didn't hit me. To tell the truth it didn't hit me until years later. At the time it registered as a negative and intrusive question – certainly not the sort you want to be answering moments after giving birth – in the midst of a time that should be about the celebration of a new life. And while I can remember how much I disliked the tenor of her voice, disliked the objectifying of my son, I too had already begun a process of defining, of recognising. I had already noted he was floppy and too red. But I guess the real moment of recognition came when he was handed to me and as a way of making conversation I suggested to Christopher our baby had downsy little eyes. At the time Christopher didn’t respond. And I remember feeling slightly miffed. But it wasn’t until years later that I realised his silence had been not because he hadn’t wanted to chat but because at that moment he’d let his dread, fear and sadness of what I was suggesting go straight over my head. Unconsciously though – even then – I knew my son had Down syndrome, but I couldn't take it in, couldn't feel my way there, I needed time. But time is rarely an option in hospital and the paediatrician (who we knew from the birth of our first son) was paged immediately. Disability and the Medical Paradigm From the perspective of the medical staff I was holding a neonate who was displaying some of the 50 signs and symptoms suggestive of Trisomy 21. Of Down syndrome. I too could see them as I remembered bits and pieces from my 1970s nursing text Whaley and Wong. Remembered a list that now seems so de-personalised, so harsh and objectifying. Flat faceSmall headFlat bridge of the noseSmaller than normal, low-set noseSmall mouth, causing the tongue to stick out and look unusually largeUpward slanting eyesExtra folds of skin at the inside corner of each eyeRounded cheeksSmall, misshapened earsSmall, wide handsA deep crease across the center of each palmA malformed fifth fingerA wide space between the big and second toesUnusual creases on the soles of the feetOverly-flexible joints (as in people who are double-jointed)Shorter than normal height Christopher and I awaited the arrival of the paediatrician without the benefits of privacy, only able to guess at what the other was thinking. We only had the briefest of moments alone when they transferred me to my room and Christopher was able to tell me that the staff thought our son had what I had blurted out. I remember being totally devastated and searching his face, trying to gauge how he felt. But there was no time for us to talk because as soon as he had uttered the words Down syndrome the paediatrician entered the room and it was immediately apparent he perceived our birth outcome a disaster. You’re both professionals he said, you both know what we are thinking. But he couldn’t bring himself to say the words, say Down syndrome, and instead went on about the need for chromosomal testing and the likelihood of a positive result. The gist, the message about our son was that while he would walk, might even talk, he would never cook, never understand danger and never live independently, never, never, never... Fraser was only an hour or so old and he’d already been judged, already been found wanting. Creating Fraser’s Cultural Identity The staff wanted me to accept his diagnosis and prognosis. I on the other hand wanted to de-medicalise the way in which his existence was being shaped. I didn’t want to know right then and there about the disability services to which I would be entitled, the possible medical complications I might face. And in a small attempt to create a different kind of space, a social space that could afford my son an identity that wasn’t focused on his genetic make-up, I requested it not be assumed by the staff that he had Down syndrome until the results of the blood tests were known – knowing full well they wouldn’t be available until after I’d left hospital. Over the next few days Fraser had to spend some time in the neonatal intensive care unit because of an unrelated medical problem. His initial redness turning out to be a symptom of polycythemia (too many red blood cells). And in many ways this helped me to become his mother – to concentrate on looking after him in the same way you would any sick baby. Yet while I was deeply confident I was also deeply ashamed. Deeply ashamed I had given birth to a baby with a flaw, a defect. And processing the emotions was made doubly difficult because I felt many people thought I should have had prenatal testing – that it was my choice to have Fraser and therefore my fault, my problem. Fortunately however these feelings of dejection were equally matched by a passionate belief he belonged in our family, and that if he could belong and be included in our lives then there was no reason why he couldn’t be included in the lives of others. How Prenatal Testing Shapes Our Lives It is now twelve years since I gave birth to Fraser yet even today talking about our lives can still mean having to talk about the test – having to explain why I didn’t agree to an amniocentesis. Usually this is fairly straightforward, and fairly painless, but not always. Women have and still do openly challenge my decision. Why didn’t I take control? Aren’t I a feminist? What sort of a message do I think I am sending to younger women? Initially, I wasn’t able to fathom how anyone could perceive the issue as being so simple – take test, no Down syndrome. And it wasn’t until I saw the film Gattaca in 1997 that I began to understand how it could seem such a straightforward issue. Gattaca explores a world in which genetic discrimination has been taken to its logical conclusion – a world in which babies are screened at birth and labeled as either valids or in-valids according to their DNA status. Valids have every opportunity open to them while in-valids can only do menial work. It is a culture in which pre-implantation screening and prenatal testing are considered givens. Essential. And to challenge such discrimination foolish – however in the film the main character Vincent does just that and despite his in-valid status and its inherent obstacles he achieves his dream of becoming an astronaut. The film is essentially a thriller – Vincent at all times at risk of his true DNA status being revealed. The fear and loathing of imperfection is palpable. For me the tone of the film was a revelation and for the first time I could see my decision through the eyes of others. Feel the shock and horror of what must appear an irrational and irresponsible decision. Understand how if I am not either religious or anti-abortion – my objection must seem all the more strange. The film made it clear to me that if you don’t question the genes as destiny paradigm, the disability as suffering paradigm then you probably won’t think to question the prenatal tests are routine and essential paradigm. That you will simply accept the conventional medical wisdom – that certain genetic configurations are not only avoidable, but best avoided. Paradoxically, this understanding has made mothering Fraser, including Fraser easier and more enjoyable. Because I understand the grounds on which he was to have been excluded and how out of tune I am with the conventional thinking surrounding pregnancy and disability – I am so much freer to mother and to feel proud of my son. I Would Like to Share with You What Fraser Can Do He canget dressed (as long as the clothes are already turned the right side out and have no buttons!) understand most of what mum and dad sayplay with his brothers on the computermake a cup of coffee for mumfasten his own seatbeltwait in the car line with his brothersswim in the surf and catch waves on his boogie boardcompete in the school swimming carnivaldraw for hours at a time (you can see his art if you click here) Heis the first child with Down syndrome to attend his schoolloves the Simpsons, Futurama and Star Wars begs mum or dad to take him to the DVD store on the weekendsloves sausages, Coke and salmon rissottoenjoys life is always in the now Having fun with Photo Booth His brothers Aidan and Harrison Brotherly Love – a photo taken by Persia (right) and exhibited in Local Eyes. It also appeared in The Fitz Files (Sun-Herald 30 Mar. 2008) What Excites Me Today as a Mother I love that there is now hope. That there is not just hope of a new test, a reliable non-invasive prenatal test, but hope regarding novel treatments – of medications that may assist children with Down syndrome with speech and memory. And an increasingly vocal minority who want to talk about how including children in mainstream schools enhances their development, how children with Down syndrome can, can, can … like Persia and Tyler for example. That perhaps in the not too distant future there will be a change in the way Down syndrome is perceived – that if Fraser can, if our family can – then perhaps mothering a child with Down syndrome will be considered culturally acceptable. That the nexus between genetics and destiny will be weakened in the sense of needing to choose one foetus over another, but strengthened by using genetic understandings to enhance and assist the lives of all individuals no matter what their genetic make-up. And perhaps one day Down syndrome will be considered a condition with which you can conceive. Can imagine. Can live. And not an experience to be avoided at all costs.

Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture .Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “Which Technology and Which Democracy?” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. 33–48. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cheshire, D. F. Music Hall in Britain. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. Chevalier, Albert. Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d’Industrie. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. Lake, Marilyn. “White Man’s Country: The Trans-National History of a National Project”. Australian Historical Studies 122 ( 2003): 346–63. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. London: Routledge, 2002. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993. Moore, Richard K. “Democracy and Cyberspace”. Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. Eds. Barry Hague and Brian D. Loader. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 39–59. Neville, Richard. “Crass, Corny, But Still a Woodstock Moment for a New Generation”. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 2004. Pittinger, Peach R. “The Cherry Sisters in Early Vaudeville: Performing a Failed Femininity”. Theatre History Studies 24 (2004): 73–97. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage, 2004. ———. “The Mass Production of Celebrity: ‘Celetoids’, Reality TV and the ‘Demotic Turn’”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 153–165. Waterhouse, Richard. From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. Watson, Bobby. Fifty Years Behind the Scenes. Sydney: Slater, 1924. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bellanta, Melissa. "Voting for Pleasure, Or a View from a Victorian Theatre Gallery." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/02-bellanta.php>. APA Style Bellanta, M. (Apr. 2008) "Voting for Pleasure, Or a View from a Victorian Theatre Gallery," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/02-bellanta.php>.

Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture .Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “Which Technology and Which Democracy?” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. 33–48. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cheshire, D. F. Music Hall in Britain. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. Chevalier, Albert. Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d’Industrie. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. 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IntroductionClowns can be seen as enacting catastrophe with a small “c.” They are experts in “failing better” who perhaps live on the cusp of turning catastrophe into a metaphorical whirlwind while ameliorating the devastation that lies therein. They also have the propensity to succumb to the devastation, masking their own sense of the void with the gestures of play. In this paper, knowledge about clowns emerges from my experience, working with circus clowns in Circus Knie (Switzerland) and Circo Tihany (South America), observing performances and films about clowns, and reading, primarily in European fiction, of clowns in multiple guises. The exposure to a diverse range of texts, visual media and performance, has led me to the possibility that clowning is not only a conceptual discipline but also a state of being that is yet to be fully recognised.Diminutive CatastropheI have an idea (probably a long held obsession) of the clown as a diminutive figure of catastrophe, of catastrophe with a very small “c.” In the context of this incisive academic dialogue on relationships between catastrophe and creativity where writers are challenged with the horrendous tragedies that nature and humans unleash on the planet, this inept character appears to be utterly insignificant and, moreover, unworthy of any claim to creativity. A clown does not solve problems in the grand scheme of society: if anything he/she simply highlights problems, arguably in a fatalistic manner where innovation may be an alien concept. Invariably, as Eric Weitz observes, when clowns depart from their moment on the stage, laughter evaporates and the world settles back into the relentless shades of oppression and injustice. In response to the natural forces of destruction—earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, and volcanic eruptions—as much as to the forces of rage in war and ethnic cleansing that humans inflict on one another, a clown makes but a tiny gesture. Curiously, though, those fingers brushing dust off a threadbare jacket may speak volumes.Paradox is the crux of this exploration. Clowns, the best of them, project the fragility of human value on a screen beyond measure and across many layers and scales of metaphorical understanding (Big Apple Circus; Stradda). Why do odd tramps and ordinary inept people seem to pivot against the immense flows of loss and outrage which tend to pervade our understanding of the global condition today? Can Samuel Beckett’s call to arms of "failing better” in the vein of Charles Chaplin, Oleg Popov, or James Thiérrée offer a creative avenue to pursue (Bala; Coover; Salisbury)? Do they reflect other ways of knowing in the face of big “C” Catastrophes? Creation and CatastropheTo wrestle with these questions, I wish to begin by proposing a big picture view of earth-life wherein, across inconceivable aeons, huge physical catastrophes have wrought unimaginable damage on the ecological “completeness” of the time. I am not a palaeontologist or an evolutionary scientist but I suspect that, if human life is taken out of the equation, the planet since time immemorial has been battered by “disaster” which changed but ultimately did not destroy the earth. Evolution is replete with narratives of species wiped out by ice-ages, volcanoes, earthquakes, and meteors and yet the organism of this planet has survived and even regenerated. In metaphorical territory, the Sanskrit philosophers have a wise take on this process. Indian concepts are always multiple, crowded with possibilities, but I find there is something intriguing in the premise (even if it is impossible to tie down) of Shiva’s dance:Shiva Nataraja destroys creation by his Tandava Dance, or the Dance of Eternity. As he dances, everything disintegrates, apparently into nothingness. Then, out of the thin vapours, matter and life are recreated again. Shiva also dances in the hearts of his devotees as the Great Soul. As he dances, one’s egotism is consumed and one is rendered pure in soul and without any spiritual blemish. (Ghosh 109–10)For a dancer, the central location of dance in life’s creation forces is a powerful idea but I am also interested in how this metaphysical perspective aligns with current scientific views. How could these ancient thinkers predict evolutionary processes? Somehow, in the mix of experiential observation and speculation, they foresaw the complexity of time and, moreover, appreciated the necessary interdependence of creation and destruction (creativity and catastrophe). In comparison to western thought which privileges progression—and here evolution is a prime example—Hindu conceptualisation appears to prefer fatalism or a cyclical system of understanding that negates the potential of change to make things better. However, delving more closely into scientific narratives on evolution, the progression of life forms to the human species has involved the decimation of an uncountable number of other living possibilities. Contrariwise, Shiva’s Dance of Eternity is premised on endless diachronic change crossed vertically by reincarnation, through which progression and regression are equally expressed. I offer this simplistic view of both accounts of creation merely to point out that the interdependency of destruction and creation is deeply embodied in human knowledge.To introduce the clown figure into this idea, I have to turn to the minutiae of destruction and creation; to examples in the everyday nature of regeneration through catastrophe. I have memories of touring in the Northern Territory of Australia amidst strident green shoots bursting out of a fire-tortured landscape or, earlier in Paris, of the snow-crusted earth being torn asunder by spring’s awakening. We all have countless memories of such small-scale transformations of pain and destruction into startling glimpses of beauty. It is at this scale of creative wrestling that I see the clown playing his/her role.In the tension between fatalism and, from a human point of view, projections of the right to progression, a clown occupying the stage vacated by Shiva might stamp out a slight rhythm of his/her own with little or no meaning in the action. The brush on the sleeve might be hard to detect in an evolutionary or Hindu time scale but zoom down to the here and now of performance exchange and the scene may be quite different?Turning the Lens onto the Small-ScaleSmall-scale, clowns tend to be tiny bundles or, sometimes, gangly unbundles of ineptitude, careering through the simplest tasks with preposterous incompetence or, alternatively, imbibing complexity with the virtuosic delicacy—take Charles Chaplin’s shoe-lace spaghetti twirling and nibbling on nail-bones as an example. Clowns disrupt normalcy in small eddies of activity which often wreak paths of destruction within the tightly ordered rage of social formations. The momentum is chaotic and, not dissimilar to storms, clownish enactment bears down not so much to threaten human life but to disrupt what we humans desire and formulate as the natural order of decorum and success. Instead of the terror driven to consciousness by cyclones and hurricanes, the clown’s chaos is superficially benign. When Chaplin’s generous but unrealistic gesture to save the tightrope-act is thwarted by an escaped monkey, or when Thiérrée conducts a spirited debate with the wall of his abode in the midst of an identity crisis (Raoul), life is not threatened. Such incongruous and chaotic trajectories generate laughter and, sometimes, sadness. Moreover, as Weitz observes, “the clown-like imagination, unfettered by earthly logic, urges us to entertain unlikely avenues of thought and action” (87). While it may seem insensitive, I suggest that similar responses of laughter, sadness and unlikely avenues of thought and action emerge in the aftermath of cataclysmic events.Fear, unquestionably, saturates big states of catastrophe. Slide down the scale and intriguing parallels between fear and laughter emerge, one being a clown’s encapsulation of vulnerability and his/her stoic determination to continue, to persevere no matter what. There are many ways to express this continuity: Beckett’s characters are forever waiting, fearful that nothing will arrive, yet occupy themselves with variations of cruelty and amusement through the interminable passage of time. A reverse action occurs in Grock’s insistence that he can play his tiny violin, in spite of his ever-collapsing chair. It never occurs to him to find another chair or play standing up: that, in an incongruous way, would admit defeat because this chair and his playing constitute Grock’s compulsion to succeed. Fear of failure generates multiple innovations in his relationship with the chair and in his playing skills. Storm-like, the pursuit of a singular idea in both instances triggers chaotic consequences. Physical destruction may be slight in such ephemeral storms but the act, the being in the world, does leave its mark on those who witness its passage.I would like to offer a mark left in me by a slight gesture on the part of a clown. I choose this one among many because the singular idea played out in Circus Knie (Switzerland) back in the early 1970s does not conform to the usual parameters. This Knie season featured Dimitri, an Italian-Swiss clown, as the principal attraction. Following clown conventions, Dimitri appeared across the production as active glue between the various circus acts, his persona operating as an odd-jobs man to fix and clean. For instance, he intervened in the elephant act as a cleaner, scrubbing and polishing the elephant’s skin with little effect and tuned, with much difficulty, a tiny fiddle for the grand orchestration to come. But Dimitri was also given moments of his own and this is the one that has lodged in my memory.Dimitri enters the brightly lit and empty circus ring with a broom in hand. The audience at this point have accepted the signal that Dimitri’s interludes prepare the ring for the next attraction—to sweep, as it were, the sawdust back to neutrality. He surveys the circle for a moment and then takes a position on the periphery to begin what appears to be a regular clean-up. The initial brushes over the sawdust, however, produce an unexpected result—the light rather than the sawdust responds to his broom stokes. Bafflement swiftly passes as an idea takes hold: the diminutive figure trots off to the other side of the ring and, after a deep breath and a quick glance to see if anyone is looking (we all are), nudges the next edge of light. Triumphantly, the pattern is pursued with increasing nimbleness, until the figure with the broom stands before a pin-spot of light at the ring’s centre. He hesitates, checks again about unwanted surveillance, and then, in a single strike (poof), sweeps light and the world into darkness.This particular clown gesture contradicts usual commentaries of ineptitude and failure associated with clown figures but the incongruity of sweeping light and the narrative of the little man who scores a win lie thoroughly in the characteristic grounds of clownish behaviour. Moreover, the enactment of this simple idea illustrates for me today, as much as it did on its initial viewing, how powerful a slight clown gesture can be. This catastrophe with a very small “c:” the little man with nothing but a broom and an idea destroyed, like the great god Shiva, the world of light.Jesse McKnight’s discussion of the peculiar attraction of two little men of the 20th century, James Joyce’s Bloom and Charles Chaplin, could also apply to Dimitri:They are at sixes and sevens here on earth but in tune with the stars, buffoons of time, and heroes of eternity. In the petty cogs of the causal, they appear foolish; in the grand swirl of the universe, they are wise, outmaneuvering their assailants and winning the race or the girl against all odds or merely retaining their skins and their dignity by nightfall. (496) Clowning as a State of Mind/ConsciousnessAnother perspective on a clown’s relationship to ideas of catastrophe which I would like to examine is embedded in the discussion above but, at the same time, deviates by way of a harsh tangent from the beatitude and almost sacred qualities attributed by McKnight’s and my own visions of the rhythmic gestures of these diminutive figures. Beckett’s advice in Worstward Ho (1983) is a fruitful starting place wherein the directive is “to keep on trying even if the hope of success is dashed again and again by failure: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better’” (Le Feuvre 13). True to the masterful wordsmith, these apparently simple words are not transparent; rather, they deflect a range of contradictory interpretations. Yes, failure can facilitate open, flexible and alternative thought which guards against fanatical and ultra-orthodox certitude: “Failure […] is free to honour other ways of knowing, other construals of power” (Werry & O’Gorman 107). On the other hand, failure can mask a horrifying realisation of the utter meaninglessness of human existence. It is as if catastrophe is etched lightly in external clown behaviour and scarred pitilessly deep in the psyches that drive the comic behaviour. Pupils of the pre-eminent clown teacher Jacques Lecoq suggest that theatrical clowning pivots on “finding that basic state of vulnerability and allowing the audience to exist in that state with you” (Butler 64). Butler argues that this “state of clowning” is “a state of anti-intellectualism, a kind of pure emotion” (ibid). From my perspective, there is also an emotional stratum in which the state or condition involves an adult anxiety desiring to protect the child’s view of the world with a fierceness equal to that of a mother hen protecting her brood. A clown knows the catastrophe of him/herself but refuses to let that knowledge (of failure) become an end. An obstinate resilience, even a frank acknowledgement of hopelessness, makes a clown not so much pure emotion or childlike but a kind of knowledgeable avenger of states of loss. Here I need to admit that I attribute the clowning state or consciousness to an intricate lineage inclusive of the named clowns, Grock, Chaplin, Popov, Dimitri, and Thiérrée, which extends to a whole host of others who never entered a circus or performance ring: Mikhail Dostoyevsky’s Mushkin (the holy Russian fool), Henry Miller’s Auguste, Salman Rushdie’s Saleem, Jacques Tati, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Eric Satie’s sonic whimsy, and Pina Bausch’s choreography. In the following observation, the overlay of catastrophe and play is a crucial indication of this intricate lineage:Heiner Müller compared Pina Bausch's universe to the world of fairy tales. “History invades it like trouble, like summer flies [...] The territory is an unknown planet, an emerging island product of an ignored (forgotten or future) catastrophe [...] The whole is nothing but children's play”. (Biro 68)Bausch clearly recognises and is interested in the catastrophic moments or psychological wiring of life and her works are not exempt from comic (clownish) modulations in the play of violence and despair that often takes centre stage. In fact, Bausch probably plays on ambivalence between despair and play more explicitly than most artists. From one angle, this ambivalence is generational, as her adult performers bear the weight of oppression within the structures (and remembering of) childhood games. An artistic masterstroke in this regard is the tripling reproduction over many years of her work exploring gender negotiations at a social dance gathering: Kontakhof. Initially, the work was performed by Bausch’s regular company of mature, if diverse, dancers (Bausch 1977), then by an elderly ensemble, some of whom had appeared in the original production (Kontakhof), and, finally, by a group of adolescents in 2010. The latter version became the subject of a documentary film, Dancing Dreams (2010), which revealed the fidelity of the re-enactment, subtly transformed by the brashness and uncertainty of the teenage protagonists playing predetermined roles and moves. Viewing the three productions side-by-side reveals socialised relations of power and desire, resonant of Michel Foucault’s seminal observations (1997), and the catastrophe of gender relations subtly caught in generational change. The debility of each age group becomes apparent. None are able to engage in communication and free-play (dream) without negotiating an unyielding sexual terrain and, more often than not, the misinterpretation of one human to another within social conventions. Bausch’s affinity to the juxtaposition of childhood aspiration and adult despair places her in clown territory.Becoming “Inhuman” or SacrificialA variation on this condition of a relentless pursuit of failure is raised by Joshua Delpech-Ramey in an argument for the “inhuman” rights of clowns. His premise matches a “grotesque attachment to the world of things” to a clown’s existence that is “victimized by an excessive drive to exist in spite of all limitation. The clown is, in some sense, condemned to immortality” (133). In Delpech-Ramey’s terms:Chaplin is human not because his are the anxieties and frustrations of a man unable to realize his destiny, but because Chaplin—nearly starving, nearly homeless, a ghost in the machine—cannot not resist “the temptation to exist,” the giddiness of making something out of nothing, pancakes out of sawdust. In some sense the clown can survive every accident because s/he is an undead immortal, demiurge of a world without history. (ibid.)The play on a clown’s “undead” propensity, on his/her capacity to survive at all costs, provides a counterpoint to a tragic lens which has not been able, in human rights terms, to transcend "man’s inhumanity to man.” It might also be argued that this capacity to survive resists nature’s blindness to the plight of humankind (and visa versa). While I admire the skilful argument to place clowns as centrepieces in the formulation of alternative and possibly more potent human rights legislations, I’m not absolutely convinced that the clown condition, as I see it, provides a less mysterious and tragic state from which justice can be administered. Lear and his fool almost become interchangeable at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy: both grapple with but cannot resolve the problem of justice.There is a little book written by Henry Miller, The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder (1948), which bears upon this aspect of a clown’s condition. In a postscript, Miller, more notorious for his sexually explicit fiction, states his belief in the unique status of clowns:Joy is like a river: it flows ceaselessly. It seems to me this is the message which the clown is trying to convey to us, that we should participate through ceaseless flow and movement, that we should not stop to reflect, compare, analyse, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music. This is the gift of surrender, and the clown makes it symbolically. It is for us to make it real. (47)Miller’s fictional Auguste’s “special privilege [was] to re-enact the errors, the foibles, the stupidities, all the misunderstandings which plague human kind. To be ineptitude itself” (29). With overtones of a Christian resurrection, Auguste surrenders himself and, thereby, flows on through death, his eyes “wide open, gazing with a candour unbelievable at the thin sliver of a moon which had just become visible in the heavens” (40). It may be difficult to reconcile ineptitude with a Christ figure but those clowns who have made some sort of mark on human imagination tend to wander across territories designated as sacred and profane with a certain insouciance and privilege. They are individuals who become question marks: puzzles not meant to be solved. Maybe similar glimpses of the ineffable occur in tiny, miniscule shifts of consciousness, like the mark given to me by Dimitri and Chaplin and...—the unending list of clowns and clown conditions that have gifted their diminutive catastrophes to the problem of creativity, of rebirth after and in the face of destruction.With McKnight, I dedicate the last word to Chaplin, who speaks with final authority on the subject: “Be brave enough to face the veil and lift it, and see and know the void it hides, and stand before that void and know that within yourself is your world” (505).Thus poised, the diminutive clown figure may not carry the ferment of Shiva’s message of destruction and rebirth, he/she may not bear the strength to creatively reconstruct or re-birth normality after catastrophic devastation. But a clown, and all the humanity given to the collisions of laughter and tears, may provide an inept response to the powerlessness which, as humans, we face in catastrophe and death. Does this mean that creativity is inimical with catastrophe or that existing with catastrophe implies creativity? As noted at the beginning, these ruminations concern small “c” catastrophes. They are known otherwise as clowns.ReferencesBala, Michael. “The Clown.” Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 4.1 (2010): 50–71.Bausch, Pina. Kontakthof. Wuppertal Dance Theatre, 1977.Big Apple Circus. Circopedia. 27 Feb. 2013 ‹http://www.circopedia.org/index.php/Main_Page›.Biro, Yvette. “Heartbreaking Fragments, Magnificent Whole: Pina Bausch’s New Minimyths.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 20.2 (1998): 68–72.Butler, Lauren. “Everything Seemed New: Clown as Embodied Critical Pedagogy.” Theatre Topics 22.1 (2012): 63–72.Coover, Robert. “Tears of a Clown.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 42.1 (2000): 81–83.Dancing Dreams. Dirs. Anne Linsel and Rainer Hoffmann. 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