Articles de revues : « Captive Romance »

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McCracken, Peggy. « Romance Captivities in the Context of Crusade : The Prose Lancelot ». PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 124, n^o 2 (mars 2009) : 576–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2009.124.2.576.

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The Taking of captives was a common practice in crusade warfare. Although men were more easily ransomed, many women were also taken captive. Women were not combatants on the battlefield, but when the fighting overran crusader camps, women in the camps were likely to be taken. Women were also captured when cities were taken or besieged cities were abandoned by their defenders. Albert of Aachen notes that in 1101 when the crusaders lost the battle at Paphlagonia, they left the undefended women to be captured by their enemies:The Christians left their tents and all their equipment with all their wagons, with their delicate and beloved wives, with all the goods which are needed by so many nobles and so great an army…. The Turks … cruelly attacked these noble women and eminent matrons, seized them wickedly and held them in fetters, sending over a thousand into barbarous lands where the language was unknown; they plundered them like dumb animals and sent them into perpetual exile … as if they were in a cage or prison. (qtd. in Friedman, “Captivity” 123)

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Rosen, Tova. « Love and Race in a Thirteenth-Century Romance in Hebrew, with a Translation of The Story of Maskil and Peninah by Jacob Ben El‘azar ». Florilegium 23, n^o 1 (janvier 2006) : 155–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/flor.23.010.

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This romance, composed by a thirteenth-century Jewish author living in Christian Toledo, is written in biblical Hebrew and cast it in the form of the Arabic maqamāh. The plot (an army invades an Arab territory; its commander, the "King of Beauty," falls in love with a female captive; the couple encounter a giant black warrior, kill him, and live happily ever after) invites a three-tiered reading: (a) a literal reading of the work as a conventional romance, in which the lovers are young and noble, the geography is mythical, and the hero wins his beloved after slaying a giant; (b) an allegorical reading of the union of Maskil (representing Intellect) and Peninah (signifying Beauty) as illustrative of the Platonic nexus of Eros, Beauty, Intellect, and the Good, while the monstrous Cushan represents unbridled sexuality, ugliness, bestiality, and evil; and (c) a historicized reading, anchoring the work in the religio-ethnic politics of the Reconquista (according to which Maskil is Christian, Peninah is an Andalusian Arab, and the giant Cushan is in an Almohad warrior, either a dark-skinned Berber or a sub-Saharan African). Read thus, the story problematizes historical issues of territory, border, conflict, contact, relocation, cultural transition, and hybridity.

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Marrero Henríquez, José Manuel. « The Identity of Hispanic Literatures : One Breath, a Million Words ». Ecozon@ : European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 11, n^o 2 (25 septembre 2020) : 74–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.37536/ecozona.2020.11.2.3496.

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Nothing can stop the tides of innovation in art: it is this idea that a captive, dirty, weak, and hungry Don Quixote embraced to affirm himself as the heroic referent for the emerging Romance literatures. Indeed, this adaptability has been the secret of his longevity in the Western canon. Like Don Quixote, Hispanic literatures cannot build their identity on a pristine, metropolitan, and uniform Spanish language elevated by its exclusivity. If literary Hispanism is to be alive, it needs to evolve into a complex cultural construction that binds together the oral and literate languages of America and Spain and takes into account transatlantic flows and contradictions. Breathing, a common feature of both literary patterns and a rhythm of nature, will serve as the much-needed metaphor to bridge Latin American oral cultures, which have found permanence and expression in written texts, with literate cultures, including even the most urban, digital, and technologically advanced from Mexico, Chile or Spain.

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Ben Ayoun, Emma. « Bodies in Water : Disability Cinemas and Creatures of the Sea ». Camera Obscura : Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 37, n^o 3 (1 décembre 2022) : 115–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/02705346-10013646.

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Abstract Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone (France, 2012) and Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (US, 2017) tell, in very different ways, a familiar story: a disabled, female protagonist is rehabilitated by romance, restored in her role as the object of heterosexual desire. Stephanie, in Audiard's film, has both her legs amputated after an accident at her job training orca whales. The mute Eliza, in del Toro's, falls in love with an amphibian creature held captive in the laboratory where she works as a cleaner. Why these invocations of the sea and its creatures? What makes marine life such a compelling metaphor in disability narrative? Here the author considers the ways that water and aquatic animals trouble the boundary between life and nonlife, gesture toward the always-uninhabitable space of the other, and become points of contact between the visual and the material. In both films, these images, the author argues, reveal cinema's fantasies of weightlessness and containment, ableist fantasies that are always steeped in the desire to preserve the spectator's imagined bodily integrity. But these metaphors also reveal cinema's ability to confound space and visibility, to produce discontinuous and immaterial forms of life, and, in so doing, to challenge dominant notions of embodiment and wholeness. Drawing on contemporary work in disability theory as well as the writings of John Berger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze, the author offers a reading of these films that both lays bare the extent of their ableism and locates the moments in which they offer us ways of thinking otherwise.

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Grieve, Patricia E. « Conversion in Early Modern Western Mediterranean Accounts of Captivity : Identity, Audience, and Narrative Conventions ». Journal of Arabic Literature 47, n^o 1-2 (11 juillet 2016) : 91–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341319.

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In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries captivity narratives written by Spanish and English captives abounded. There is a smaller corpus of such texts by Muslim captives in Spain and England, and by some travelers from the Ottoman Empire who observed their fellow Muslims in captivity. A comparative analysis illuminatingly reveals similar usage of narrative conventions, especially of hagiography and pious romances, as well as the theoretical stance of “resistance literature” taken on by many writers. I consider accounts written as truthful, historical texts alongside fictional ones, such as Miguel de Cervantes’ “The Captive’s Tale,” from Don Quixote, Part I. Writers both celebrated monolithic categories such as Protestant, Catholic, Spanish, English, and Muslim, and challenged them for differing ideological reasons. Writers constructed heroic narratives of their own travails and endurance. In the case of English narratives, didacticism plays an important role. In one case, that of John Rawlins, the account reads like Christian theology: to keep in mind, no matter how grim the situation of captivity may be, one’s identity as an Englishman. Raḍwān al-Janawī used his letters about Muslims in captivity in Portuguese-occupied Africa, in which he points out the vigorous efforts of Christian rulers to secure the liberty of their own people, to criticize Muslim rulers who, in his opinion, exerted far too little energy in rescuing their brothers and sisters from captivity. Ultimately, this essay explores the fictionality of truthful narratives and the truth in fictional ones, and the ways in which people from different cultures identified their own identities, especially against those of “the enemy.”

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Damayanti, Ni Kadek Manik, et I. Dewa Ayu Devi Maharani Santika. « Code Switching Found in Photo and Video Captions Instagram of Angela Tanoesoedibjo ». Humanis 28, n^o 2 (13 mai 2024) : 214. http://dx.doi.org/10.24843/jh.2024.v28.i02.p07.

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Humans possess the capacity to seek social engagement with individuals, employing not only a singular language but also several languages over the course of their life. The ability of mastering and using more than one language has the effect of producing code switching. The aims of this study are to describe the types of code switching and language functions used by Angela Tanoeoedibjo's Instagram caption. Angela Tanoesoedibjo Instagram caption in 2021 which consist of code switching used as a data source in this study. The analysis is conducted using the descriptive qualitative method. This study used the theory from Poplack and Romaine (1995). Code switching consists of three types tag switching, intra-sentential switching, and inter-sentential switching. Additionally, Leech (1974) theories were used to analyze the language function of Angela Tanoesoedibjo Instagram caption. There has identified 6 tag switching, 16 inter-sentential switching, and 42 intra-sentential switching in this study. Furthermore, the five language functions are expressive, informative, directive, aesthetic, and phatic that found in this study

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Rusek, Iwona E. « Obrzęd(y) w "Lilijach" Adama Mickiewicza ». Bibliotekarz Podlaski Ogólnopolskie Naukowe Pismo Bibliotekoznawcze i Bibliologiczne 55, n^o 2 (4 novembre 2022) : 47–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.36770/bp.690.

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The author of the paper focuses on the phenomenon of rites in Lilije, a ballad by Adam Mickiewicz. The author claims that the whole rite has been triggered by a crime, when the wife kills her husband. She murders him upon his return to her and their children from war. Mickiewicz’s Ballads and Romances published two hundred years ago, still captivate us today with their language and, above all, with the power of imagination that the author offers the reader in every work, through descriptions of folk beliefs and stories which, linked to the rhythm of life, reveal its meaning and the mystery contained in rites. On the one hand, these rites or magical practices help to explain reality and, on the other, emphasise that reality also has another face, which we will never know, as it belongs to beings from the beyond.

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Dresher, B. Elan. « The influence of loanwords on Norwegian and English stress ». Nordlyd 40, n^o 1 (15 février 2013) : 55. http://dx.doi.org/10.7557/12.2475.

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<span style="font-size: 9.0pt; font-family: Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: "ＭＳ明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;">Rice (2006) presents a unified analysis of Norwegian word stress that applies equally to native words and to loanwords. In this analysis, stress is oriented to the right edge of the word, which suggests that the loanwords were responsible for changing what was originally a left-oriented grammar of stress. In this paper I consider a similar reorientation that took place in the history of English, also under the influence of Romance loanwords. Closer examination shows that the two cases appear to be different. Many loanwords of the sort that caused a change in Norwegian entered Middle English without causing any significant change in English stress. It was only in the Early Modern English period that the loanwords were able to impose a right-oriented stress pattern on English. Rice (2006) observes that the loanwords were able to change the Norwegian stress pattern without overtly contradicting the native words; that is, the loanwords could make a change only in aspects of the grammar where the native words were ambiguous. I argue that this principle also accounts for the English case.</span>

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Heylighen, Ann, et Daniel S. Friedman. « Imagining a More Inclusive World ». idea journal 19, n^o 01 (5 octobre 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.37113/ij.v19i01.469.

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Fiction can stimulate empathy toward others by deepening sensitivity to difference. Pragmatist philosophers like Richard Rorty and John Dewey consider imaginative capacity the root of empathy and promote fiction as a source of ethical insight. Understanding others who are different is fundamental to designing more inclusive spaces. We explore how The Shape of Water illuminates the current discourse on inclusive design, particularly how design practices influence encounters between and among diverse bodies and environments. The Shape of Water is a non-trivial, award-winning, commercial film about the inter-species romance between a mute janitor, Elisa Esposito, who works in a top-secret, 1960s military research facility, and her love interest, the captive Amphibian Man, a tall, green, biped, bi-respiratory humanoid. We explore the film’s ethos as a speculative (even magic) ‘realm’ in which excluded individuals find agency and power in their very marginalisation and exclusion. This is most evident in its depictions of mutism and non-normative communication, which inspire fundamental reformulations of the nature of otherness and disability inrelation to the material environment. We address both the film’s narrative action and its scenography, with interest in how production design embodies the protagonists’ exclusion and agency. The Shape of Water illuminates the discourse on inclusive design in multiple respects. First, through narrative depiction of individuals’ interactions and lives, it demonstrates how divisions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ materialise in objects and spaces, and how differences considered a deficit in one context may manifest as an advantage in another. Second, through the agency of magical realism, the film invites us to explore the potential of spaces that accommodate such a/symmetry through environmental hybridity. Finally, while social and material environments are are known to disable or enable, The Shape of Water represents how they interact, highlighting the role of everyday design(ers) in making spaces more inclusive.

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SANTOS, Gilberto de Assis Barbosa dos. « A VIOLÊNCIA DO ESCRAVISMO EM MACHADO DE ASSIS ». Revista LEVS 15 (31 mai 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.36311/1983-2192.2015.v15n0.5054.

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Resumo: Este artigo objetiva compreender como a violência do escravismo é retratada em dois romances do escritor brasileiro Machado de Assis: Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas e Esaú e Jacó, eem duas crônicas que o ficcionista publicou na imprensa carioca no final do século XIX. O foco analítico deter-se-á na maneira invertida como a questão aparece nos textos literários, isto é, não a partir das sevicias que os cativos sofriam dos capatazes nas propriedades rurais ou nas residências urbanas, mas nas agressões praticadas pelos próprios escravos contra seus semelhantes de infortúnios e também por meio da violência, personificada através de um poder simbólico, na qual um alforriado compra um escravo, ou mesmo quando o dono torna livre sua propriedade humana, mas não elimina as agressões habituais, mantendo-a na servidão, mediante salário irrisório. Palavras-chave:Violência, Escravidão, Literatura, Machado de Assis, História do Brasil Abstract: This article aims to understand how the violence of the slavery is portrayed in two romances written by a Brazilian writer Machado de Assis: “Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas” and “Esaú e Jacó” and also in two chronicles where the fiction writer published in the Carioca media in the late nineteenth century. The analytical focus mind in the reversed way how the question appears in the literary texts, in other words, not from abuse that the captives suffered of their foremen in the farms or of their urban owners, but in the aggressions practiced by the slaves themselves against their similar misfortune and also through of the personified violence over a symbolic power, where a manumitted acquires other slave, or when the owner makes free your human property, but doesn’t eliminate the aggressions by the slave habit, beyond keep it in the servile condition by derisive salary. Keywords:Violence, Slavery, Literature, Machado de Assis, Brazil History

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Caines, Rebecca, et Michelle Stewart. « The Limit and Promise of Augmentation ». M/C Journal 16, n^o 6 (11 décembre 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.749.

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Always desiring, we create, enhance, and augment: never satiated, we experiment, refine and repeat. Somatic and spatial practices collide on the promise of something more. … In this issue of M/C Journal we called upon our colleagues to share their forays into multi-media landscapes as they considered augmentation through investigations/collaborations with humans, cyborgs, and nonhumans alike. From computer science to cultural theory, augmentation brings to the table a wide variety of researchers, artists, and practitioners—a wide range of practices and concepts. The pieces in this edition are a strong reflection of how the topic of “augment” can bring together a truly interdisciplinary group. Our goal was to facilitate a critical engagement, and we are thrilled that the call for papers resonated and generated this cluster of articles. Our call for papers was itself meant as a provocation to bring into discussion artists, practitioners, and critical theorists. We asked a series of generative questions to which the authors responded. What Is at Stake When One Engages in Augmentation? Although all the pieces are engaged in discussions about augmentation, some point directly to what is at stake in different fields. For example, Brandt presses together the science fiction novel Ender’s Game and current military practices of remote combatants that operate drone vessels. She argues that in this moment, and as we look to the future of this type of warfare and its associated trauma, that we might need to turn to post humanist stories and cyborg assemblages to better understand how agency is being distributed. Potts questions the hypocrisies of public perception and surveillance practices surrounding the augmented body. He traces the “copyrighting of digital augmentations (our data-flesh), their privatization and ownership by others from a vast distance,” and then examines the next step, the augmentation and rewriting of cellular bodies through hormonal and other supplements. Using recent cases, like athlete Lance Armstrong’s drug expose, and examples from the anti-aging industry, he shows how upgrading flesh is open to corporate hypocrisies, but also has the potential for “biopolitical rebellion.” Kenner’s piece considers augmentation through a discussion of health as she illustrates the ways in which asthma and the asthmatic are being reshaped through an “imagined healthy norm.” The transformative capacity of technology is critically taken up in the piece to highlight the ways in which the “new healthy is augmented living.” We received pieces that contemplate the contemporary moment, but also those that forecast. The authors in this issue deliberate on necessary questions about promise and limitation. They also engage with ethical challenges, placing these technologies within broader contexts and histories. Kerasidou, for example, offers a history of the contemporary investigation, in which she takes her reader back to the 1980s and 1990s to the promise of ubiquitous computing. She reminds the reader about the romance of the technology, and the roots of these ideas, as she discusses an imagined world in which no one would notice the presence of a computer or computing object. Who/What Pays the Price When It Falters, Miscarries, or Backfires? The challenge of new technology can include discussions of productive failures and unexpected success. In the case of Gerhard’s piece we are given a short history of the accelerometer and the ways in which technology is taken up at different times in different fields, and yet its potential remains largely unrealized—as various individuals, from artists to computer programmers, do not use this device to its full potential when they seek to augment through the interpretation of body/object movement. As we might expect, when thinking about augmentation, the user can lack the capacity to develop the technology to its utmost potential. We were interested in the ways in which “lack” might be taken up in the pieces and how mistakes and confusion with technology can itself be productive and drive innovation. For every innovation there is the tension between the developer’s vision of the technological capacity, the user’s ability, and the space in between. Loess draws out these tensions when he describes a live performance played over a film that threatened to snap. In so doing, he examines how augmentation in digital and analogue image-making approaches is shaped by the improvisatory impulse. As the musicians continued to improvise until they found an ending, Loess delivers to the reader a story—in which everything teetered on the brink of failure—that seizes our attention. Whether as user, viewer, audience, or inventor—failure, possible or realized, inspires action. Which Actors Are Engaged—or Enrolled—in the Practice? Hands critically examines the augmentation of cognition in social media. He explores how people become enrolled as collective participants in micro-blogging through Twitter. His work shows how the social media affordances of brevity, mobility, and speed affect how memory and culture operate, and interrogates the ongoing tensions in augmented media between agency and volition. Caines, Knowles, and Anderson take up the question of enrolment in their piece that focuses on the blending of traditional beading practices with augmenting technologies such as QR codes. In their work, the user/creator/participant is layered as the QR code is created through beading that is then use to hold stories or technological engagement. Beads, codes, storytelling, translation, success, and failure collide in the art installment. Artists Irwin and Morton examine the role of the public in the augmentation of symbolic objects. Through their technologically enhanced, site-specific piano installation, they engage participants in the process of building layers to the work, leaving behind remnants of audio and embodied practices to create rich collective histories and reimaginings of the piano as an historical object that is considered obsolete, yet draws in people to augmented play. Similarly, Jonathan Stewart traces the layers of augmentation in the history of enigmatic musician Robert Johnson; a figure that is continually enrolled in augmented myth-making. For Hunter, the question of enrolment is reversed, as he suggests humans have in fact become interfaces for their devices, rather than the other way around. Using examples from science fiction in advertising, popular culture, and film, he traces the ways humans fantasize about the potential for augmentation, highlighting the irony where we “depict ourselves as the medium, and it is our digital devices that bear the message.” In Foith’s piece, the user of a videogame can effectively test-drive augmented body parts in a virtual world that presumes augmentation is a baseline human condition. Foith includes an analysis of how diegetic prototypes are delivered and levels of authenticity become themselves aesthetics in the game to mobilize desire(s) for that which does exist–or may exist in the future. Which Subjects Are Left Vulnerable? There are arguably many vulnerable subjects moving around in all these pieces, just as there are also deeply empowered subjects. That said, what some of the pieces offered was a reminder about the potential for augmentation to captivate the user, startle, and surprise: Gibson’s robot answers a note from the audience, and in so doing asks us to think about robotic agency; Campbell’s machine bothers, and offers the opportunity to do the impossible—see one's self become stirred to consciousness. For both Gibson and Campbell we are left with the uneasy/fascinating question of machine consciousness. In these stories, in these projects of augmentation, objects are created in the world to coexist with humans and it is in the making of these technologies and these technological imaginaries that we find a critical space in which the subject and the object act upon each other. Questions about Layered Information Space, Power, and Statecraft In addition to these questions, we asked contributors to interrogate the layered information space of Augmented Reality (AR), as well as how augmented media intersects with power and statecraft. Michelle Stewart’s piece investigates the augmented map as a mechanism to examine statecraft. Focusing on a police-mapping project, she illustrates the work needed for augmented objects to come into being in the world. She interrogates the ways in which labour is erased in the process of producing the maps, and how this erasure can facilitate the production of expertise and authority. Avram and Fedorova examine augmentation in media art. Avram explores AR practices, with a focus on AR art. He traces the imperfections and flaws between digital and real spaces in AR, highlighting the unique reflexive strategies and reference to material reality, and showing the play between illusion and its subversion that marks this emerging practice. For Fedorova, augmented media art practices allow the senses themselves to become augmented. She asks, “ how [these art practices] serve as mechanisms of enhancing the feeling of presence” and sense of proprioception. Through reference to artworks that stimulate, reorient, sense input, and respond to biofeedback, she suggests that “media art practices offer particularly valuable scenarios of activating such mechanisms, as the employment of digital technology allows them to operate on a more subtle level of perception.” The feature article by Otuski delivers Japanese pop band Perfume, and explores the world of pop bands and their songs and images, to analyze the underlying contexts that inform prop selection and band promotion. Nothing is accidental in the creation of this pop brand as Otsuki describes their current incarnation of imagery that moves away from robotics towards information technologies and connectivity—the story of a nation is told through a band and its props. We thought Otsuki’s piece would be an excellent feature as it traces the ways in which power moves through popular culture through augmentation. His work also brings together many of the worlds our contributors are critically engaging, including new media art and science and technology. We thank each of the contributors, all of our reviewers, and all those that assisted with the production of this issue, with special thanks to Anna Dipple and John Campbell. — Rebecca Caines and Michelle Stewart.

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Chen, Jasmine Yu-Hsing. « Beyond Words ». M/C Journal 27, n^o 2 (16 avril 2024). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3033.

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Introduction Despite the expansive and multimodal realm of Chinese Boys’ Love (BL) culture (also known as danmei in Chinese), audio works have been notably absent from scholarly discussions, with the focus predominantly being on novels (e.g. Bai; Zhang). This article aims to fill this gap by delving into the transformative impact of sound on narrative engagement within the Chinese BL culture. Focussing on the audio drama adaptations of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (modao zushi, hereafter Grandmaster), originally a serialised Chinese BL novel, this analysis aims to unravel the meticulously crafted BL fantasy in these auditory renditions. The audio drama format delivers an intimate storytelling experience directly to the listener’s ears. Unlike textual media, audio dramas allow listeners to immerse themselves in narratives during various daily activities, deepening their connection with the content. The audio drama Grandmaster, produced by the renowned Chinese platform MissEvan, has garnered a vast fan base and over 640 million plays across three seasons (the episodes and numbers of plays can be found on MissEvan: Season 1, Season 2, and Season 3). Unlike the serialised Web-drama adaption diluted by censorship regulations, the audio drama retains the utmost BL fidelity to the original novel, highlighting the significant potential of this medium in the Chinese BL culture. BL culture has surged in popularity within China, partly due to the export of Japanese culture and the burgeoning Chinese Internet accessibility (Feng). The BL genre encompasses diverse media forms such as novels, fanfiction, comics, animation, and audio/Web dramas, rooted in shared fantasies of romantic love between men. The growing interest in BL culture reflects a response to societal structures like Confucianism and the oppressive education system, which, due to their restrictedness, inadvertently foster the exploration of alternative narratives and identities within the genre (Kwon). While initially inspired by Japanese subculture, Chinese BL has evolved under diverse global influences, including American and other Asian subcultures (Lavin et al.). Chinese BL narratives delve into themes of identity, sexuality, power dynamics, and societal norms, reflecting a rich blend of modern and traditional Chinese culture (Madill and Zhao). Moreover, the rise of BL fandom has empowered female readers to engage in questions about gendered politics, questions that enable them to turn a voyeuristic gaze upon men (Zhang). The versatility of Chinese BL media reflects not only the evolving nature of the genre but also its enduring appeal and cultural significance within contemporary Chinese society. This article initiates a concise review of audio drama in China and the transformative impact of earphone technology, shifting listening experiences from public to intimate settings. It subsequently explores the intricate interplay between Chinese BL novels and audio dramas, elucidating the unique dynamics involved. The analysis then examines specific scenes from Grandmaster, providing insights into its role in facilitating a mesmerising BL audio fantasy. Grandmaster, originating as an Internet novel, has gained a dedicated following. MissEvan, recognising its potential, secured copyrights and commissioned Triones Penguin Studio for a radio drama adaptation in Mandarin. This full-cast dramatisation involves skilled editors, playwrights, and composers, thereby enriching character portrayals and interactions. The professional teamwork and meticulous oversight at each production stage guaranteed regular updates and high audio quality (Shao). Despite the collaborative nature of teamwork, I argue that the power of sound technology personalises the auditory journey as it creates an immersive experience for individual listeners. My analyses mainly rely on research involving actual listeners, along with examinations of specific content within Grandmaster with an idealised listener in consideration, to elucidate the factors contributing to its auditory allure. This examination contributes to a nuanced understanding of Chinese BL culture and its constitutive relationship to audio. From Public Broadcasting to Intimate Voicing: Audio Drama in China Radio broadcasting in China, with roots dating back to the early twentieth century, initially served as a propaganda instrument for mass mobilisation and communication. Chinese storytelling, rooted in acoustics, emphasises the sensory appeal of sound (Chan). It intertwines oral and written traditions in classical literature, particularly fiction and drama (Børdahl). Local vernaculars commonly feature in oral storytelling traditions, whereas Chinese radio programs adopt Mandarin to foster a cohesive national identity via linguistic uniformity. The Communist Party tactically expanded its audience through a radio reception network, establishing a wired broadcasting infrastructure with over 100 million loudspeakers by the 1970s. This revolutionised politics, everyday life, and perceptions of time and space (Li). The interplay between radio and social change reflected China’s pursuit of modernity, as the Communist Party utilised radio to institute a national communication system and monopolise news production. Radio thus served as a crucial tool for constructing and sustaining revolutionary fervor (Lei; He). Radio dramas, often cross-media adaptations from edited films in the 1970s, contributed to everyday sensory pleasure amidst a totalising revolutionary soundscape (Huang). The growth of radio and loudspeaker infrastructure played diverse roles in the revolution, fostering political communication, labour mobilisation, propaganda, surveillance, and even nurturing the Mao cult, turning radio drama into a potent tool for mass mobilisation and communication (Li). As a result, before the widespread availability of televisions in the 1990s, radio structured Chinese people’s daily activities and served as the primary information medium. Technological advancements in earphones, transitioning from larger wired headphones to smaller wireless earbuds like AirPods, have shifted auditory experiences in China from a collective identity tool used in political propaganda to a medium for individualistic entertainment. This change is marked by the personal nature of headphone usage, which can extend social interactions in and beyond physical dimensions (Grusin). The transition from wired headphones to wireless earbuds implements the interiorisation of one person’s body/voice within another, initiating a profound connection that transcends physical limitations (Stankievech). Since 2018, wireless earbuds have exceeded wired headphones in output value in China (Insight and Info), with the online audio market surging to 22 billion yuan in 2021, a 67.9% increase year-on-year. Audiobooks and audio dramas are the most popular genres, with a predominantly female audience under forty who prefer listening at night after work (iimedia). Among audio dramas, BL works generate the most traffic and revenue in China (Y. Wang). Along with such content, putting wireless earbuds inside the ear intensifies the intimacy of listening, transmitting voices directly into the listener’s head and sitting alongside their thoughts (Weldon). This physical closeness underscores the exclusive bond between the listener and the audio content, redefining oral narratives and transforming public and political audio content into a more personal and intimate medium. The use of wireless earbuds even extends listening beyond mere auditory experience, empowering haptic sensations that create an intimate bond. The acousmatic voice envelops the listener’s ears, establishing a connection even before the message’s content is considered (Madsen and Potts). The ear’s sensitivity prompts consciousness and memory, unlocking the imaginative world (C. Wang 91-94). This sensory engagement surpasses traditional auditory limits, resembling a physical encounter where listeners feel like their body has joined with the body of sound. Dermot Rattigan, discussing radio drama, notes how listeners fill the void with mental visualisations and imagination, entering a state of individual ‘virtual reality’ through aural stimulation (Rattigan 118). Drawing from visual psychology, Shaffer likens the soundscape to a dynamic landscape painting, emphasising the fluidity of auditory experiences (Schafer). Listening becomes a multi-dimensional journey involving the entire body and mind, a compelling tool for reception and connection that transcends reality’s boundaries. The advent of MP3 technologies and the podcasting boom also extends the former spatial and temporal limitations of listening. In contrast to traditional real-time broadcasting, MP3 technologies enable voices to persist indefinitely into the future (Madsen and Potts). This temporal flexibility further builds a private sound sphere for listeners (Euritt). Listeners no longer need to share time and space with others around loudspeakers or radios, so they can freely indulge in their subcultural preferences, such as BL stories, without concern for societal judgment. Many listeners strategically incorporate audio dramas into their daily schedule, choosing moments of solitude such as before sleep or upon waking, where they can detach from the expectations of their physical space and identity roles. This is particularly evident among devoted fans of Chinese BL audio dramas, who carve out personal time for these works and seek a quiet space for focussed engagement (Wang 55). This intentional, focussed engagement differs from the typical mode of everyday radio listening as it serves an expanded, widespread dissemination environment that is also highly intimate (Madsen and Potts). Thus, the convergence of temporal flexibility and immersive technology shapes listener engagement and interaction dynamics. The fusion of intimacy, physical closeness, and temporal flexibility heightens the allure of the voice in programs with erotic undertones, such as BL audio dramas. Euritt introduces the concept of ‘breathing out into you’ to explain queer eroticism in podcasts, emphasising shared breaths and potential haptic exchanges that enhance the sensual dimensions of sound (Euritt 27-53). This wireless, intimately riveting auditory experience transforms the soundscape and reshapes contemporary social interactions. This shift is particularly noteworthy for popular Chinese radio and audio content as they began as a public, propaganda-oriented tool and transitioned into forms as novel as the intimate domain of BL audio dramas. This change underscores the transformative power of sound in shaping interactions, surpassing conventional storytelling boundaries, and ushering in a new era of engaging narratives. The 2.5-Dimensional: Auralising Chinese Boys’ Love Fiction The BL genre emerges as a cultural and social force that can potentially challenge traditional Chinese values. Its focus on male-male love inherently questions societal expectations around gender and sexuality in ways that disrupt Confucian ideology’s emphasis on heterosexual marriage and lineage (Welker). Furthermore, the genre’s similarity to the melodramatic ‘soap opera’ storytelling style resonates with Western ideals of individualism and aligns more with a feminist viewpoint that contrasts with the male-dominant heterosexism often found in traditional Chinese narratives (Mumford). This emphasis on individual desires also implicitly disputes the collectivist and socialist values, as well as the importance of the extended family, traditionally embraced in Chinese cultures. In short, the love, sex, and romance depicted in BL represent a departure from traditional Chinese values, positioning the BL genre as a vehicle for cultural exchange and societal transformation in terms of gender norms. The surge of Internet radio and social media in the 2010s has substantially contributed to the professionalisation and commercialisation of Chinese BL audio dramas. MissEvan, a prominent barrage-audio and live-broadcasting Website, has been crucial to this proliferation (Hu et al.). Before the advent of commercial dubbing, enthusiasts of BL novels voluntarily recorded non-profit Chinese audio dramas and disseminated them online. The popularity of BL novels subsequently prompted their adaptation into animation and television dramas, creating a demand for dubbing services. This demand inaugurated a niche for professional voice actors to hone and showcase their skills. The integration of technology and capital by commercial production teams has markedly elevated the quality of Chinese BL audio dramas. Amidst tightening censorship in 2021, Chinese BL online novels and their television/Web-drama adaptations faced restrictions. Audio drama emerged as a less restrictive medium, which can relatively directly present explicit gay relationships (Hu et al.). Listeners of Chinese BL audio dramas typically read the online novel beforehand, engaging in dual consumption for pleasure in both reading and listening (Wang 58). Their engagement transcends plot comprehension, focussing instead on appreciating sophisticated voice performances. Exploring how audio dramas derived from novels can transcend textual narratives and captivate audiences has become a central focus in the production process, highlighting the flourishing landscape of audio drama. The listening process provides informed listeners with a re-experience, offering multiple sensory and emotional pleasures by translating words into voice and sounds. Unlike film and television dubbing, which requires synchronisation with actors’ lip movements and speech rhythms, dubbing for animation, audio dramas, and games gives greater creative autonomy to voice actors. The thriving market for audio dramas has shaped the Chinese dubbing industry, cultivating a devoted fan base for previously overlooked voice actors. The character voices (CVs, also known as voice actors, or VAs) have emerged as central figures, attracting fans and driving media traffic. In the late 2010s, collaborations between MissEvan and renowned CVs resulted in the adaptation of popular online fiction into paid audio dramas, exemplified by Grandmaster, which aired in 2017 and 2018 (Hu et al.). Fans’ motivation for engaging with BL audio dramas extends beyond intertextual and trans-media entertainment but incorporates an appreciation for their beloved CVs, thereby fostering a culture of support within the burgeoning Chinese BL audio drama market. In the storytelling of aural media, CVs are crucial in bridging the auditor’s BL imagination between the text and the characters as their performances breathe life into characters. CVs fill a gap between two-dimensional works (fiction, comic, and animation) and the three-dimensional real world, forging ‘2.5-dimensional’ content. This term originated in the 1970s-80s to describe anime voice actors, who imbue two-dimensional characters with a sense of existence and generate interrelations between the real, fictional, and cyber worlds (Sugawa-Shimada and Annett). In BL audio dramas, CVs commonly stimulate listeners’ sensations through male moans that facilitate an erotic flow between sound and body, arousing desire through the auditory channel. The incorporation of scenes with sexual innuendo between the male protagonists creates a space for listeners to indulge in these moments with earphones on, enveloped in their own private, eroticised sphere of engagement between fiction and reality. The deliberate pauses, gasps, and panting become the silent dialogue that intertwines inner voices with external narratives, enhancing comprehensive sensory engagement for listeners. Audio Fantasy in Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Grandmaster is a seminal Chinese BL novel that blends martial arts, supernatural fantasies, and emotional depth. Set in a richly imagined world where immortal cultivation techniques bestow individuals with extraordinary powers, the story follows protagonists Wei Wuxian’s and Lan Wangji’s intertwined fates. Its captivating narrative and nuanced characters have garnered a global fanbase, solidifying its place as a cornerstone of Chinese BL literature and media. The audio drama Grandmaster faithfully mirrors the novel’s narrative structure, unfolding from the protagonist Wei’s perspective after his reincarnation, weaving memories of his past and present life, including his romantic involvement with Lan. Wei’s establishment of the forbidden Demonic Path leads to his death, but he is reincarnated thirteen years later and reunites with Lan. After his reincarnation, Wei gradually realises Lan’s concealed profound affection and scarification for him. Diverging from the television/Web-drama adaptation, which replaces the romance with platonic ‘bromance’ due to censorship (Lei), the audio drama accentuates the impassioned soundscapes of their relationship. The three-season series, comprising episodes of 30-40 minutes, offers the first three episodes for free, with subsequent content requiring payment (approximately four to six dollars per season). Impressively, the series has driven earnings exceeding $1.5 million (Asia Business Leaders). This success highlights the captivating and profitable potential of audio dramas as a BL storytelling medium. Unlike the original novel, which uses an omniscient narrator, the audio drama advances the plot solely through character dialogue. Consequently, listeners navigate the storyline guided by the rhythm of the CVs’ delivery and the accompanying music. Different from Japanese BL audio dramas that feature as ‘voice porn’ for women (Ishida), Grandmaster subtly implies the romance between Lan and Wei, with the most intimate interactions limited to kisses. Rather than sexually explicit content, the drama focusses on the characters’ affective fulfillment after a prolonged thirteen-year anticipation. For instance, in Season 1, Episode 4, Wei attempts to hide his identity and flee from Lan. When Wei creeps back towards Lan’s bed to steal the pass for exiting Lan’s residence, Lan catches him. Rather than simply saying ‘Get off’ as in the novel, Lan instructs Wei in the audio drama to ‘Get off from my body,’ offering listeners additional physical contact cues (the quotes from the novel and audio drama in this article are translations from Chinese to English). Following Wei’s intentional refusal, the CV Wei Chao, portraying Lan, strategically breathes before his next line, ‘then stay like this for the whole night’. The breath conveys Lan’s deep, restrained affection and evokes the listener’s nuanced emotional resonance. To represent Lan’s affection within his minimal and often monosyllabic lines requires the CV to convey emotions through breaths and intonations, which commonly elicit an autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) in listeners. ASMR is a tingling sensation often triggered by soft low-tone spoken or whispered voices (Barratt and Davis). Wei Chao intentionally lowers his voice to interpret how Lan’s sighs encapsulate unspoken sentiments (Wei). In contrast, the CV Lu Zhixing employs a playful and sweet tone in his portrayal of Wei Wuxian. When Lu delivers flirtatious lines, online real-time comments frequently express listeners’ admiration, suggesting that his voice is even more captivating than women’s. The contrasting restraint and playfulness intensify the listener’s empathy for Lan’s unspeakable passion. Thus, Lan’s subtle expressions of his restrained love become the primary attraction for listeners (KikuHonda). The high-quality sound further amplifies the breath sounds, making each of Lan’s ‘hmm’ responses—indifferent, melancholy, or indulgent—a nuanced emotional trigger. Listeners, through their wireless earbuds, engage in the meticulously crafted expressions of Lan within a profoundly personal soundscape. This listening mode is a crucial component of the overall enthralling auditory voyage, augmenting the appreciation of the characters’ subdued emotions. The layered integration of music and sound in Grandmaster constructs a three-dimensional sonic storytelling landscape. Effective soundscapes for storytelling are crafted by multiple dimensions: sound source, temporal progression, simultaneous layers, and spatialisation. Sound editing allows for source selection, with listeners experiencing these dimensions as integrated, not separate or sequential (Stedman et al.). The audio drama Grandmaster distinguishes itself from the novel by using voice flashbacks for narrative enhancement. In Season Three, Episode 12, when Lan’s brother recounts Lan’s sacrifice for Wei, particularly the moment when Lan endured severe punishment to save Wei thirteen years ago, the soundscape instantly transports listeners to that intense scene. Listeners vividly hear the swishing force of the whip and its impact, immersing them in the sounds of Lan’s anguish and unwavering love. This direct auditory impact allows listeners to feel as if they are experiencing the events firsthand, physically sensing the hardships encountered by the protagonists in understanding each other’s affection, intensifying their hard-won love. The musical orchestration and vocal interplay are also pivotal to conveying the story. In the storyline, Wei and Lan showcase proficiency in their respective instruments: Wei with the flute and Lan with the guqin (a seven-string Chinese zither). The tonal features of these instruments—the flute’s melodious brightness and the guqin’s deep lingering resonance—symbolise the protagonists’ distinct personalities, adding ingenious layers to their relationship. In the Guanyin Temple scene (Season Three, Episode 13), as Wei confesses to Lan, the initial background music features the flute, guqin, and rain sounds, foreshadowing the confessional moment with Wei’s worries that Lan will not believe his words. As Wei promises to remember Lan’s every word from now on, the music incorporates the guzheng, a Chinese string instrument with a brighter timbre than guqin. The tremolo technique of guzheng is reminiscent of the characters’ heartstring vibrations. Through auditory cues, the narrative climaxes with Wei’s heartfelt confession of love for Lan. When Wei straightforwardly confesses, ‘I fancy you, I love you, I want you, I cannot leave you. … I do not want anyone but you—it cannot be anyone but you’ (Season Three, Episode 13), his heartfelt words are accompanied by layered sounds, including the duet of the flute and guqin, and the sound of thunder and rain, accelerating the affective climax. Lan echoes Wei’s words, underscored by erhu, thereby showing how this string instrument resembles humans’ sobbing voices through its sliding technique, rendering the touching melody. The heartbeat and rain sound with Lan’s panting highlight the painful loneliness of Lan’s thirteen-year wait. The intricate fusion of musical and vocal elements enables listeners to not only hear but also to feel the mutual affection between the characters, culminating in a sense of delight upon the disclosure of their reciprocal love following numerous adventures. Using earbuds amplifies listeners’ capacity to fully receive auditory details and stereo effects, thereby contributing to the popularity of BL audio dramas that skillfully convey unspoken love through detailed soundscapes. Epilogue The Grandmaster audio dramas provide crafted episodes that fulfill fans’ passionate needs that exceed the novel’s scope. In addition to adapting the novel, the team has conceived original mini-dramas that enrich the character images. Listeners can access additional content such as iconic quotes, ringtones, and ‘lullaby’ episodes recorded by the leading CVs, maximising the captivating power of sound and justifying listeners’ investment. The multi-layered use of sounds and instrumental arrangements effectively constructs a three-dimensional soundscape, reinforcing the audience’s understanding of the story and characters. Unlike television/Web-drama adaptations, the audio drama fully amplifies the tragic elements of the novel, pushing the immersed listener’s imagination past textual limitations. While casting choices and modelling in visual adaptions may disappoint viewers’ expectations at times, the audio drama leverages the power of sound to stimulate listeners’ imaginations, encouraging them to visualise their own specific character images. Skillful orchestration, along with sound effects, breaths, and dialogues in Grandmaster intensifies emotional expression, forming a rich and dimensional soundscape and unlocking new possibilities for audio drama artistic expression for Chinese BL fantasy. 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Servais, Olivier, et Sarah Sepulchre. « Towards an Ordinary Transmedia Use : A French Speaker’s Transmedia Use of Worlds in Game of Thrones MMORPG and Series ». M/C Journal 21, n^o 1 (14 mars 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.1367.

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Game of Thrones (GoT) has become the most popular way of referring to a universe that was previously known under the title A Song of Ice and Fire by fans of fantasy novels. Indeed, thanks to its huge success, the TV series is now the most common entry into what is today a complex narrative constellation. Game of Thrones began as a series of five novels written by George R. R. Martin (first published in 1996). It was adapted as a TV series by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for HBO in 2011, as a comic book series (2011—2014), several video games (Blood of Dragons, 2007; A Game of Thrones: Genesis, 2011; Game of Thrones, 2012; Game of Thrones Ascent, 2013; Game of Thrones, 2014), as well as several prequel novellas, a card game (A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, 2002), and a strategy board game (2003), not to mention the promotional transmedia developed by Campfire to bring the novels’ fans to the TV series. Thus, the GoT ensemble does indeed look like a form of transmedia, at least at first sight.Game of Thrones’ UniverseGenerally, definitions of transmedia assemble three elements. First, transmedia occurs when the content is developed on several media, “with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. … Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained so you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game, and vice versa” (Jenkins 97-98). The second component is the narrative world. The authors of Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États notice that transmedia stories “are in some cases reduced to a plain link between two contents on two media, with no overall vision” (Collective 4). They consider these ensembles weak. For Gambarato, the main point of transmedia is “the worldbuilding experience, unfolding content and generating the possibilities for the story to evolve with new and pertinent content,” what Jenkins called “worldmaking” (116). The third ingredient is the audience. As the narrative extends itself over several platforms, consumers’ participation is essential. “To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels” (Jenkins 21).The GoT constellation does not precisely match this definition. In the canonical example examined by Jenkins, The Matrix, the whole was designed from the beginning of the project. That was not the case for GoT, as the transmedia development clearly happened once the TV series had become a success. Not every entry in this ensemble unfolds new aspects of the world, as the TV series is an adaptation of the novels (until the sixth season when it overtook the books). Not every component is self-contained, as the novels and TV series are at the narrative system’s centre. This narrative ensemble more closely matches the notion of “modèle satellitaire” conceived by Saint-Gelais, where one element is the first chronologically and hierarchically. However, this statement does not devalue the GoT constellation, as the canonical definition is rarely actualized (Sepulchre “La Constellation Transmédiatique,” Philipps, Gambarato “Transmedia”), and as transmedia around TV series are generally developed after the first season, once the audience is stabilized. What is most noticeable about GoT is the fact that the TV series has probably replaced the novels as the centre of the ensemble.Under the influence of Jenkins, research on transmedia has often come to be related to fan studies. In this work, he describes very active and connected users. Research in game studies also shows that gamers are creative and form communities (Berry 155-207). However, the majority of these studies focused on hardcore fans or hardcore gamers (Bourdaa; Chen; Davis; Jenkins; Peyron; Stein). Usual users are less studied, especially for such transmedia practices.Main Question and MethodologyDue to its configuration, and the wide spectrum of users’ different levels of involvement, the GoT constellation offers an occasion to confront two audiences and their practices. GoT transmedia clearly targets both fiction lovers and gamers. The success of the franchise has led to heavy consumption of transmedia elements, even by fans who had never approached transmedia before, and may allow us to move beyond the classical analysis. That’s why, in that preliminary research, by comparing TV series viewers in general with a quite specific part of them, ordinary gamers of the videogame GOT Ascent, we aim to evaluate transmedia use in the GOT community. The results on viewers are part of a broader research project on TV series and transmedia. The originality of this study focuses on ordinary viewers, not fans. The goal is to understand if they are familiar with transmedia, if they develop transmedia practices, and why. The paper is based on 52 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2012 (11) and 2013 (41). Consumers of fictional extensions of TV series and fans of TV series were selected. The respondents are around twenty years old, university students, white, mostly female (42 women, 10 men), and are not representative outside the case study. Therefore, the purpose of this first empirical sample was simply to access ordinary GOT viewers’ behaviours, and to elaborate an initial landscape of their use of different media in the same world.After that, we focused our analysis on one specific community, a subset of the GOT’s universe’s users, that is, players of the GoT Ascent videogame (we use “gamers” as synonym for “players” and “users”). Through this online participative observation, we try to analyse the players’ attitudes, and evaluate the nature of their involvement from a user perspective (Servais). Focusing on one specific medium in the GOT constellation should allow us to further flesh out the general panorama on transmedia, by exploring involvement in one particular device more deeply. Our purpose in that is to identify whether the players are transmedia users, and so GoT fans, or if they are firstly players. During a three month in-game ethnography, in June-August 2013, we played Aren Gorn, affiliated to House Tyrell, level 91, and member of “The Winter is Dark and Full of Terrors” Alliance (2500 members). Following an in-game ethnography (Boellstorff 123-134), we explored gamers’ playing attitudes inside the interface.The Users, TV Series, and TransmediaThe respondents usually do not know what transmedia is, even if a lot of them (36) practice it. Those who are completely unaware that a narrative world can be spread over several media are rare. Only ten of them engage in fan practices (cosplay, a kind of costuming community, fan-fiction, and fan-vidding, that is fans who write fiction or make remix videos set in the world they love), which tends to show that transmedia does not only concern fans.Most of the ordinary viewers are readers, as 23 of them cite books (True Blood, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Les Piliers de la Terre), one reads a recipe book (Plus Belle la Vie), and seven consume comics (The Walking Dead, Supernatural). They do not distinguish between novelisation (the novel adapted from a TV series) and the original book. Other media are also consumed, however a lot less: animation series, special episodes on the Internet, music, movies, websites (blogs, fictional websites), factual websites (about the story, the production, actors), fan-fiction, and cosplay.Transmedia does not seem to be a strong experience. Céline and Ioana respectively read the novels adapted from Plus Belle la Vie and Gossip Girl, but don’t like them. “It is written like a script … There’s no description, only the dialogues between characters” (Ioana). Lora watched some webisodes of Cougar Town but didn’t find them funny. Aurélie has followed the Twitter of Sookie Stackouse (True Blood) and Guilleaume D. sometimes consumes humoristic content on 9gag, but irregularly. “It’s not my thing” (Aurélie). The participants are even more critical of movies, especially the sequels of Sex and the City.That does not mean the respondents always reject transmedia components. First, they enjoy elements that are not supposed to belong to the world. These may be fan productions or contents they personally inject into the universe. Several have done research on the story’s topic: Alizée investigated mental disorders to understand United States of Tara; Guilleaume G. wandered around on Google Earth to explore Albuquerque (Breaking Bad); for Guilleaume D., Hugh Laurie’s music album is part of the character of Gregory House; Julie adores Peter Pan and, for her, Once Upon A Time, Finding Neverland, and Hook are part of the same universe. Four people particularly enjoy when the fictional characters’ couples are duplicated by real relationships between actors (which may explain all the excitement surrounding Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie’s real-life love story, paralleling their characters’ romance on GOT). If there is a transmedia production, it seems that there is also a kind of “transmedia reception,” as viewers connect heteroclite elements to build a coherent world of their own. Some respondents even develop a creative link to the world: writing fan-fiction, poetry, or building scale models (but that is not this paper’s topic, see Sepulchre “Les Constellations Narratives”, “Editorial”).A second element they appreciate is the GOT TV series. Approximately half of the respondents cite GoT (29/52). They are not fundamentally different from the other viewers except that more of them have fan practices (9 vs. 1), and a few more develop transmedia consumption (76% against 61%). To the very extent that there is consensus over the poor quality of the novels (in general), A Song of Ice and Fire seems to have seduced every respondent. Loic usually hates reading; his relatives have pointed out to him that he has read more with GoT than in his entire lifetime. Marie D. finds the novels so good that she stopped watching the TV series. Marine insists she generally reads fan-fiction because she hates the novelisations, but the GoT books are the only good ones. The novels apparently allow a deeper immersion into the world and that is the manifest benefit of consuming them. Guilleaume G. appreciates the more detailed descriptions. Céline, Florentin, Ioana, and Marine like to access the characters’ thoughts. Julie thinks she feels the emotions more deeply when she reads. Sometimes, the novels can change their opinions on a character. Emilie finds Sansa despicable in the TV series, but the books led her to understand her sensibility.Videogames & TransmediaThe vast majority of transmedia support from the GoT universe primarily targets “world lovers,” that is, users involved in media uses because they love the fantasy of the universe. However, only video games allow a personalized incarnation as a hero over a long term of time, and thus a customized active appropriation. This is in fact undoubtedly why the GoT universe’s transmedia galaxy has also been deployed in video games. GOT Ascent is a strategy game edited by Disruptor Beam, an American company specialising in TV games. Released in February 2013, the franchise attracted up to 9,000,000 players in 2014, but only 295,107 monthly active users. This significant difference between the accumulated number of players and those actually active (around 3 %) may well testify that those investing in this game are probably not a community of gamers.Combining role playing and strategy game, GoT Ascent is designed in a logic that deeply integrates the elements, not only from the TV series, but also from books and other transmedia extensions. In GoT Ascent, gamers play a small house affiliated to one of the main clans of Westeros. During the immersive game experience, the player participates in all the GoT stories from an insider’s point of view. The game follows the various GoT books, resulting in an extension whenever a new volume is published. The player interacts with others by PVE (Player versus Environment) or PVP (Player versus Player) alliances with a common chat and the possibility of sending goods to other members. With a fair general score (4,1 on 10), the game is evaluated weakly by the players (JeuxOnLine). Hence a large majority of them are probably not looking for that kind of experience.If we focus on the top players in GoT Ascent, likely representing those most invested, it is interesting to examine the names they choose. Indeed, that choice often reveals the player’s intention, either to refer to a gamer logic or the universe of GoT. During our research, we clearly distinguished two types of names, self-referential ones or those referring to the player’s general pseudonym. In concrete terms, the name is a declination of a pseudonym of more general avatars, or else refers to other video game worlds than GoT. In GoT Ascent, the second category of names, those very clearly anchored in the world of Martin, are clearly dominant.Is it possible to correlate the name chosen and the type of player? Can we affirm that people who choose a name not related to the GoT universe are players and that the others are GoT fans? Probably not obviously, but the consistency of a character’s name with the universe is, in the GoT case, very important for an immersive experience. The books’ author has carefully crafted his surnames and, in the game, assuming a name is therefore very clearly a symbolically important act in the desire to roleplay in that universe. Choosing one that is totally out of sync with the game world clearly means you are not there to immerse yourself in the spirit of GoT, but to play. In short, the first category is representative of the gamers, but the players are not restricted to those naming their avatar out of the world’s spirit.This intuition is confirmed by a review of the names related to the rank of the players. When we studied high-level players, we realized that most of them use humorous names, which are totally out of the mood of the GoT universe. Thus, in 2013, the first ranked player in terms of power was called Flatulence, a French term that is part of a humorous semantics. Yet this type of denomination is not limited to the first of the list. Out the top ten players, only two used plausible GoT names. However, as soon as one leaves the game’s elite’s sphere, the plausible names are quickly in the majority. There is a sharp opposition between the vast majority of players, who obviously try to match the world, and pure gamers.We found the same logic for the names of the Alliances, the virtual communities of players varying from a few to hundreds. Three Alliances have achieved the #1 rank in the game in the game’s first two years: Hear Me Roar (February 2013), Fire and Blood (January 2014), and Kong's Landing (September 2014). Two of those Alliances are of a more humoristic bent. However, an investigation into the 400 alliances demonstrates that fewer than 5 % have a clear humoristic signification. We might estimate that in GoT Ascent the large majority of players increase their immersive experience by choosing a GoT role play related Alliance name. We can conclude that they are mainly GoT fans playing the game, and that they seek to lend the world coherence. The high-level players are an exception. Inside GOT Ascent, the dominant culture remains connected to the GoT world.ConclusionA transmedia story is defined by its networked configuration, “worldmaking,” and users’ involvement. The GoT constellation is clearly a weak ensemble (Sepulchre, 2012). However, it has indeed developed on several platforms. Furthermore, the relationship between the novels and the TV series is quite unprecedented. Indeed, both elements are considered as qualitative, and the TV series has become the main entry for many fans. Thus, both of them acquire an equal authority.The GoT transmedia storyworld also unfolds a fictional world and depends on users’ activities, but in a peculiar way. If the viewers and gamers are analysed from fan or game studies perspectives, they appear to be weak users. Indeed, they do not seek new components; they are mainly readers and do not enjoy the transmedia experience; the players are not regular ones; and they are much less creative and humorous than high-level gamers.These weak practices have, however, one function: to prolong the pleasure of the fictional world, which is the third characteristic of transmedia. The players experiment with GoT Ascent by incarnating characters inserted into Alliances whose names may exist in the original world. This appears to be a clear attempt to become immersed in the universe. The ordinary viewers appreciate the deeper experience the novels allow. When they feed the world with unexpected elements, it is also to improve the world.Thus, transmedia appropriation by users is a reality, motivated by a taste for the universe, even if it is a weak consumption in comparison with the demanding, creative, and sometimes iconoclastic practices gamers and fans usually develop. It is obvious, in both fields, that they are new TV series fans (they quote mainly recent shows) and beginners in the world of games. For a significant part of them, GoT was probably their first time developing transmedia practices.However, GoT Ascent is not well evaluated by gamers and many of them do not repeat the experience (as the monthly number of gamers shows). Likewise, the ordinary viewers neglect the official transmedia components as too marketing oriented. The GoT novels are the exception proving the rule. They demonstrate that users are quite selective: they are not satisfied with weak elements. The question that this paper cannot answer is: was GoT a first experience? Will they persevere in the future? Yet, in this preliminary research, we have seen that studying ordinary users’ weak involvement (series viewers or gamers) is an interesting path in elaborating a theory of transmedia user’s activities, which takes the public’s diversity into account.ReferencesBerry, Vincent. L’Expérience Virtuelle: Jouer, Vivre, Apprendre Dans un Jeu Video. Rennes: UP Rennes, 2012.Boellstorff, Tom. “A Typology of Ethnographic Scales for Virtual Worlds.” Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. Ed. William Sim Bainbridge. London: Springer, 2009.Bourdaa, Mélanie. “Taking a Break from All Your Worries: Battlestar Galactica et Les Nouvelles Pratiques Télévisuelles des Fans.” Questions de Communication 22 (2012) 2014. <http://journals.openedition.org/questionsdecommunication/6917>.Chen, Mark. Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of An Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. New York: Peter Lang, 2012.Collective. Le Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États: Les Cahiers de Veille de la Fondation Télécom. Paris: Fondation Télécom, 2012. 29 Dec. 2017 <https://www.fondation-mines-telecom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2012-cahier-veille-transmedia.pdf\>.Davis, C.H. “Audience Value and Transmedia Products.” Media Innovations. Eds. T. Storsul and A. Krumsvik. Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2013. 179-190.Gambarato, Renira. “How to Analyze Transmedia Narratives?” Conference New Media: Changing Media Landscapes. Saint Petersburg, 2012. 2017 <http://prezi.com/fovz0jrlfsn0/how-to-analyze-transmedia-narratives>.Gambarato, Renira. “Transmedia Storytelling.” Serious Science, 2016. 2017 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thZnd_K8Vfs>.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. Updated ed. New York: New York UP, 2006.JeuxOnLine. “Game of Thrones Ascent.” 2013. <http://www.jeuxonline.info/jeu/Game_of_Thrones_Ascent>.Peyron, David. Culture Geek. Limoges: FYP Editions, 2013.Philipps, Andrea. A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2012.Saint-Gelais, Richard. Fictions Transfuges. La Transfictionnalité et Ses Enjeux. Paris: Seuil, 2011.Sepulchre, S. Le Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États: Les Cahiers de Veille de la Fondation Télécom. Paris: Fondation Télécom, 2012. 29 Dec. 2017 <https://www.fondation-mines-telecom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2012-cahier-veille-transmedia.pdf>.———. “La Constellation Transmédiatique de Breaking Bad: Analyse de la Complémentarité Trouvée entre la Télévision et Internet.” ESSACHESS-Journal for Communication 4.1 (2011). 29 Dec. 2017 <http://www.essachess.com/index.php/jcs/article/view/111>. ———. “Les Constellations Narratives: Que Font les Téléspectateurs des Adaptations Multimédiatiques des Séries Télévisées?” TV/Series 3 (2013). 29 Dec. 2017 <http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/729>. ———. “Editorial.” Inter Pares: Revue Électronique de Jeunes Chercheurs en Sciences Humains et Sociales 6 (2016). 29 Dec. 2017 <https://epic.univ-lyon2.fr/medias/fichier/inter-pares-6-maquette-v8web_1510576660265-pdf>.Servais, Olivier. “Funerals in the “World of Warcraft”: Religion, Polemic, and Styles of Play in a Videogame Universe.” Social Compass 62.3 (2015): 362-378.Stein, Louisa Ellen, and Kristina Busse. Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC series. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.

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Heřmanová, Marie. « Sisterhood in 5D ». M/C Journal 25, n^o 1 (16 mars 2022). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2875.

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Introduction Online influencers play an increasingly important role in political communication – they serve as both intermediaries and producers of political messages. As established opinion leaders in areas such fashion and lifestyle consumption, many influencers recently turned towards more political content (Riedl et al.). For influencers who built their personal brands around aspirational domestic and lifestyle content, the COVID-19 global pandemic created an opportunity (and sometimes even a necessity) to engage in political discourse. The most basic everyday acts and decisions – such as where to shop for food, how to organise playdates for children, if and where to go on holiday – suddenly turned into political discussions and the influencers found themselves either promoting or challenging anti-pandemic restrictions imposed by national governments as they were forced to actively defend their decisions on such matters to their followers. Within this process that I call politicisation of the domestic (Heřmanová), many influencers explored new ways to build authority and leadership within their communities and positioning themselves as experts or “lifestyle gurus” (Baker and Rojek). While the proliferation of political content, including disinformation and conspiracy narratives, on digital communication platforms has been the focus of both public and academic attention in recent years, the focus has mostly been on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (Finlayson). Instagram, the traditional “home” of lifestyle influencers, only recently became the focus of political communication research (Larsson). This article builds on recent scholarship that focusses on the intersection of lifestyle, spiritual, and wellness content on Instagram and the proliferation of political conspiracy narratives on the platform (Remski, Argentino). I use the example of a prominent Czech spiritual influencer Helena Houdová to illustrate the blending of spiritual, aspirational and conspiracy content among Instagram influencers and argue that the specific aesthetics of Instagram conspiracies needs to be understood in the context of gendered, predominantly female “third spaces” (Wright) in the male-coded global digital space. Case Study – Helena When you look at Helena’s Instagram profile, all you see at first is the usual aspirational influencer content – pictures of ocean, beaches, sunsets, and Helena herself in white dresses or swimsuits. Sometimes she’s alone in the pictures, sometimes with her children, and sometimes with a group of similarly serene-looking women with sun-kissed skin and flowers in their hair. In the captions under her Instagram posts, Helena often talks about self-acceptance, self-love, and womanhood, and gives her followers advice how they can, in her own words, “create their own reality” (@helenahoudova, 8 Aug. 2021). Her recipe for the creation of one’s own reality sounds very simple – open your heart, accept the love that the Universe is giving you, accept that you are love. Helena is 41 years old, a divorced mother of 3 children, and a former model and philanthropist. Born in the Czech Republic, Helena won the title of Czech Miss in 1999, when she was 20 years old. She competed in the Miss World competition and started a successful modelling career. After a complicated marriage and divorce, she struggled to obtain an Australian visa and finally found a home in Bali. Over the past few years, Helena managed to build a successful business out of her online presence – she markets online courses and Webinars to her 50,000 followers and offers personal coaching. In this regard, she is a representative example of an “spiritual influencer” (Schwartz), an emerging group of (mostly) female influencers who focus their content on New Age type spirituality, personal healing, and teach their followers the practice of “manifesting”, based on the belief that “the world we perceive, either positively or negatively, is a projection of our own consciousness and that we can transform our reality for the better by transforming ourselves internally” (Urban 226). Helena’s Instagram account is bilingual, and she posts both in Czech and English, though her audience seems to be mostly Czech – most comments left under her posts are also in Czech. Within the Czech influencer community, she is one of the most famous spiritual influencers. Influencers, (Con)spirituality and COVID-19 Spiritual influencers like Helena are part of a global phenomenon (Chia et al.) that has generated lot of media attention over the past year (Schwartz). With their focus on wellbeing and health, they overlap with wellness influencers (O’Neill), but the content they produce also explores various types of New Age spirituality and references to different religious traditions as well as neo-pagan spiritual movements. From this perspective, spiritual influencers often position themselves in opposition to a Western lifestyle (interpreted as materialistic and based on consumption). In this aspect they fit into the category of ‘lifestyle gurus’ as defined by Baker and Rojek: “Lifestyle gurus define themselves in opposition to professional cultures. Selectively and instrumentally, they mix elements from positive thinking, esoteric systems of knowledge and mediate them through folk culture” (390). While prominent figures of the wellness spirituality movement such as Gwyneth Paltrow would be more likely defined as celebrities rather than influencers (see Abidin), spiritual influencers are native to the Internet, and the path to spiritual awakening they showcase on their Instagram profiles is also their source of income. It is this commodified aspect of their online personas that generated a significant backlash from the media as well as from the influencer community itself over the past year. What provoked many critical reactions is the way spiritual influencers became involved in the debate around the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-COVID vaccination all around the world. As I argued elsewhere (Heřmanová), the pandemic impacted on the way influencers build boundaries between ‘domestic’ and ‘political’ within their content and inside the communities of their followers. For women who build their brands around aspirational domesticity (Duffy), the pandemic lockdowns presented a significant challenge in terms of the content they could post. Within the spiritual influencer culture, the discussion around vaccines intersected with influencers’ focus on spiritual and physical health, natural remedies, and so-called ‘natural immunity’. The pandemic thus accelerated the above-mentioned process of the “politicization of the domestic” (Heřmanová). The increasing engagement of spiritual influencers in political debates around COVID-19 and vaccines can be interpreted within the broader context of the conspirituality phenomenon. The term, first coined by Charlotte Ward and David Voas in 2011, describes a “web movement expressing an ideology fuelled by political disillusionment and the popularity of alternative worldview“ (103). The conspirituality phenomenon is native to the Internet and appears at the intersection of New Age-inspired spirituality and distrust towards established authorities. The conspirituality approach successfully bridges the gap between the spiritual focus on the self and the conspiratorial focus on broader political processes. For spiritual influencers and other types of lifestyle gurus, conspirituality thus offers a way to accommodate the hyper-individualistic, commodified nature of global influencer culture with their message of collective awakening and responsibility to educate wider audiences, because it enables them to present their personal spiritual path as a political act. For the predominantly female wellness/spirituality influencers of Instagram, the term conspirituality has been widely used in the public and media debate, with reference to the involvement of influencers in the QAnon movement (Tiffany, Petersen, and Wang). Argentino coined the term “pastel QAnon” to refer to the community of female influencers initially found on Instagram, but who are increasingly present on various dark platforms, such as Parler or Gab (Zeng and Schäfer), or, in the Czech context, the messaging platform Telegram (Šlerka). “Pastel” refers “to the unique aesthetic and branding these influencers provided to their pages and in turn QAnon by using social media templates like Canva” (Argentino) that is used to soften and aesthetically adapt QAnon messages to Instagram visuality. Many adherents to the pastel version of QAnon are members of the spiritual, yoga, and wellness community of Instagram and were “recruited” to the movement through concerns about COVID-19 vaccines (Remski). This was also the case for Helena. Before the pandemic, her content mostly focussed on her family life and promoting her Webinars and retreats. She rarely commented on political events beyond general proclamations about the materialistic nature of our culture, in which we are losing connection to our true selves. As the pandemic advanced, Helena started to make more and more explicit references to the current global situation. For a long time, however, she resisted openly political, critical proclamations. Then on 12 July 2021 Helena posted a picture of herself standing at the beach in a flowy dress, holding a big golden cup in her hand and accompanied it with the caption: There are barricades on the streets. There are tanks on the streets. We cannot move freely. We must identify ourselves with designated signs. And we must wear a yellow star to sign we’re not against it. But they say it’s for our own protection. The year 1941. There are barricades on the streets. There are tanks on the streets. (THIS AFTERNOON). We cannot move freely. We must identify ourselves, we have to cover our face as a sign we’re not against it. But they say it’s for our own protection. The year 2021. She continues with a call to action and praises her followers, the people who have “woken up” and realised that the pandemic is a global conspiracy meant to enslave people and the vaccination at attempt at “genocide” (@helenahoudova, translated from Czech by author). Fig. 1: Helena's post about COVID-19. This post can be interpreted as a symbolic transgression from spiritual to conspiritual content on Helena’s profile. In the past year, the narrative explaining COVID-19 as an orchestrated political event organised by the global elites to curb the civic and personal freedoms of all citizens has become central in her communication towards her followers. Interestingly, in some of her videos and Instagram stories, she addresses the Czech audience specifically when she compares the anti-pandemic restrictions implemented by the Czech government as an attempt to return the country to its authoritarian, pre-1989 past. Within post-socialist media spaces, the symbolic references to the former totalitarian regime became an important feature of pandemic conspiracies, creating interesting instances of online context collapse. For example, when influencers (including Helena) post content originating from US-based QAnon-related Websites, they tend to frame it as “the return of communism as it we have experienced it before 1989” (Heřmanová). While Helena dedicates her profile almost exclusively to her own content, other Czech spiritual influencers use also other Instagram features such as sharing posts in Stories or sharing content from various Websites, both Czech- and English-speaking, with links to calls for direct actions and petitions against the anti-COVID restrictions and/or vaccination. A few other well-known Czech influencers interact with Helena’s posts by liking them or leaving comments. In this way, the whole community interlinks via different types of political content that is then on the individual profiles blended with lifestyle, wellness, and other ‘typical’, less overtly political, influencer content. Conclusion: Gendered Third Spaces of Instagram Helena’s Instagram presence, along with that of many other women who post similar content, presents an interesting conundrum when we try to decipher how conspiracy theories proliferate in digital spaces. She has, since her ‘coming-out’ as anti-vax adherent and COVID-denialist, branched out her business activities. She now also offers Webinars to teach women how to operate their business in 5D reality that includes intuition as a tool to establish ‘extrasensory’ perception and enables connection to other dimensions of reality (as opposed to the limited 3D perception we typically apply to the world around us). Her journey is representative of a wider trend of politicisation of formerly non-political online spaces in at least two aspects: her prominent focus on women, womanhood, and “sisterhood” as a unit of political organisation, and her successful blend of Instagram-friendly, aspirational, ‘pastel’ aesthetics with overtly political messaging. Both the aesthetics and content of the conspirituality movement on Instagram are significantly gendered. The gendered character of influencers’ work on social media often leads to the assumption that politics has no place in the feminised space of influencer communities on Instagram because it is seen as a male domain (Duffy; Duffy and Hund). Social media, nonetheless, has offered women a tool of political expression, where dedication to domestic affairs may be seen as a political act in itself (Stern). Conspiritual communities on Instagram, such as the one Helena has managed to build, could also be seen as an example of what Scott Wright calls “third spaces” – neutral, inclusive, and accessible virtual spaces where political talk happens (11). A significant body of research has shown that global digital spaces for political discussion tend to be male-coded and women are actively discouraged from participating in them. If they do participate, they are at much higher risk of being exposed to hate-speech and gender-based online violence (Poletta and Chen). The same trend has been analysed within Czech-speaking online communities as well (Vochocová and Rosenfeldová). The COVID-19 pandemic on the other hand opened the opportunity and sometimes necessity (as mentioned above) to engage in political discussion to many women who previously never expressed an interest in political matters. Profiles of conspiritual influencers are perceived both by supportive influencers and by their followers as safe spaces where political opinions can be explicitly discussed precisely because these spaces are not typically designed as political arenas. Helena herself quite often uses the notion of “sisterhood” as a reference to a safe, strong, female community and praises her followers for being awake, being political, and being open to what she calls ‘inner truths’. In a very recent 16-minute video that was originally livestreamed and then saved on her profile, she reflects on current geopolitical developments and makes a direct connection to “liberating sisterhood” as a tool for solving world problems such as wars. The video was posted on 7 March 2022, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine and thus brought war to the near proximity of Helena’s home country. In the video, Helena addresses her followers in Czech and talks about “dark and fragile times”, praises “the incredible energy of sisterhood” that she wants to bring to her followers, and urges them to sign up for her course, because the world needs this energy more than ever (@helenahoudova). Her followers often reflect these sentiments in the comments. They talk about the experience of being judged for embracing their femininity and speaking up against evil (war, vaccination) and mention that they feel encouraged by the community they found. Helena connects with them via liking their comments or leaving responses such as “I stand with you, my love.” The originally non-political character of the third spaces of conspiritual communities on Instagram also partly explains their success in bringing fringe political narratives towards the aspirational mainstream. Helena’s Instagram profile was not originally created, and neither is it run now by her as an openly political/conspiracy account. She does not use hashtags related to QAnon, anti-vax, or any other openly ‘conspiracy-branded’ content. The overall tone of her account and her communication towards her followers has not changed after her ‘coming-out’: she still focusses on highly feminised spiritual aesthetics. She uses light colours, beach photos, and flowy white dresses as a visual frame to her content, and while the content gets politicised, the form still conforms to the standards of Instagram as a platform with its focus on first-person storytelling via selfies and pictures documenting everyday life (Leaver, Highfield, and Abidin). In this respect, Helena’s content can also be seen as an example of what Crystal Abidin calls “subversive frivolity”. Abidin shows how influencers use highly gendered and often mocked and marginalised tools (such as the selfie) and turn them into a productive and powerful means to achieve both economic and social capital (Abidin). In this aspect, the proliferation of conspiracy narratives on Instagram differs significantly from the mechanisms of Twitter and YouTube (Finlayson). While it would be unwise to underestimate the role of recommendation algorithms and filter bubbles (Pariser) in spreading COVID-19-related conspiracies on Instagram, it is also true that the content often circulates despite these mechanisms, as Forberg demonstrated in the example of QAnon communities in the U.S. He proposes to look closely at the “routines” that individual members of these communities employ to make their content visible in mainstream spaces (Forberg). In the case of Helena and members of her community, these routines of engaging with COVID-related content in a way that becomes more and more overtly political form the process of the politicisation of the domestic. While it could be argued that ‘personal is always political’ especially for women (Hanish), Helena and her peers and followers are actively making personal matters political both by naming them as such and by directly connecting themselves, via the notion of sisterhood, to geopolitical developments. In this way, conspirituality influencers are successfully bridging the gap between the individualist ethos of influencer cultures and the collective identity-building of conspiracy movements. 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Waterhouse-Watson, Deb, et Adam Brown. « Women in the "Grey Zone" ? Ambiguity, Complicity and Rape Culture ». M/C Journal 14, n^o 5 (18 octobre 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.5204/mcj.417.

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Probably the most (in)famous Australian teenager of recent times, now-17-year-old Kim Duthie—better known as the “St Kilda Schoolgirl”—first came to public attention when she posted naked pictures of two prominent St Kilda Australian Football League (AFL) players on Facebook. She claimed to be seeking revenge on the players’ teammate for getting her pregnant. This turned out to be a lie. Duthie also claimed that 47-year-old football manager Ricky Nixon gave her drugs and had sex with her. She then said this was a lie, then that she lied about lying. That she lied at least twice is clear, and in doing so, she arguably reinforced the pervasive myth that women are prone to lie about rape and sexual abuse. Precisely what occurred, and why Duthie posted the naked photographs will probably never be known. However, it seems clear that Duthie felt herself wronged. Can she therefore be held entirely to blame for the way she went about seeking redress from a group of men with infinitely more power than she—socially, financially and (in terms of the priority given to elite football in Australian society) culturally? The many judgements passed on Duthie’s behaviour in the media highlight the crucial, seldom-discussed issue of how problematic behaviour on the part of women might reinforce patriarchal norms. This is a particularly sensitive issue in the context of a spate of alleged sexual assaults committed by elite Australian footballers over the past decade. Given that representations of alleged rape cases in the media and elsewhere so often position women as blameworthy for their own mistreatment and abuse, the question of whether or not women can and should be held accountable in certain situations is particularly fraught. By exploring media representations of one of these complex scenarios, we consider how the issue of “complicity” might be understood in a rape culture. In doing so, we employ Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi’s highly influential concept of the “grey zone,” which signifies a complex and ambiguous realm that challenges both judgement and representation. Primo Levi’s “Grey Zone,” Patriarchy and the Problem of Judgement In his essay titled “The Grey Zone” (published in 1986), Levi is chiefly concerned with Jewish prisoners in the Nazi-controlled camps and ghettos who obtained “privileged” positions in order to prolong their survival. Reflecting on the inherently complex power relations in such extreme settings, Levi positions the “grey zone” as a metaphor for moral ambiguity: a realm with “ill-defined outlines which both separate and join the two camps of masters and servants. [The ‘grey zone’] possesses an incredibly complicated internal structure, and contains within itself enough to confuse our need to judge” (27). According to Levi, an examination of the scenarios and experiences that gave rise to the “grey zone” requires a rejection of the black-and-white binary opposition(s) of “friend” and “enemy,” “good” and “evil.” While Levi unequivocally holds the perpetrators of the Holocaust responsible for their actions, he warns that one should suspend judgement of victims who were entrapped in situations of moral ambiguity and “compromise.” However, recent scholarship on the representation of “privileged” Jews in Levi’s writings and elsewhere has identified a “paradox of judgement”: namely, that even if moral judgements of victims in extreme situations should be suspended, such judgements are inherent in the act of representation, and are therefore inevitable (see Brown). While the historical specificity of Levi’s reflections must be kept in mind, the corruptive influences of power at the core of the “grey zone”—along with the associated problems of judgement and representation—are clearly far more prevalent in human nature and experience than the Holocaust alone. Levi’s “grey zone” has been appropriated by scholars in the fields of Holocaust studies (Petropoulos and Roth xv-xviii), philosophy (Todorov 262), law (Luban 161–76), history (Cole 248–49), theology (Roth 53–54), and popular culture (Cheyette 226–38). Significantly, Claudia Card (The Atrocity Paradigm, “Groping through Gray Zones” 3–26) has recently applied Levi’s concept to the field of feminist philosophy. Indeed, Levi’s questioning of whether or not one can—or should—pass judgement on the behaviour of Holocaust victims has considerable relevance to the divisive issue of how women’s involvement in/with patriarchy is represented in the media. Expanding or intentionally departing from Levi’s ideas, many recent interpretations of the “grey zone” often misunderstand the historical specificity of Levi’s reflections. For instance, while applying Levi’s concept to the effects of patriarchy and domestic violence on women, Lynne Arnault makes the problematic statement that “in order to establish the cruelty and seriousness of male violence against women as women, feminists must demonstrate that the experiences of victims of incest, rape, and battering are comparable to those of war veterans, prisoners of war, political prisoners, and concentration camp inmates” (183, n.9). It is important to stress here that it is not our intention to make direct parallels between the Holocaust and patriarchy, or between “privileged” Jews and women (potentially) implicated in a rape culture, but to explore the complexity of power relations in society, what behaviour eventuates from these, and—most crucial to our discussion here—how such behaviour is handled in the mass media. Aware of the problem of making controversial (and unnecessary) comparisons, Card (“Women, Evil, and Gray Zones” 515) rightly stresses that her aim is “not to compare suffering or even degrees of evil but to note patterns in the moral complexity of choices and judgments of responsibility.” Card uses the notion of the “Stockholm Syndrome,” citing numerous examples of women identifying with their torturers after having been abused or held hostage over a prolonged period of time—most (in)famously, Patricia Hearst. While the medical establishment has responded to cases of women “suffering” from “Stockholm Syndrome” by absolving them from any moral responsibility, Card writes that “we may have a morally gray area in some cases, where there is real danger of becoming complicit in evildoing and where the captive’s responsibility is better described as problematic than as nonexistent” (“Women, Evil, and Gray Zones” 511). Like Levi, Card emphasises that issues of individual agency and moral responsibility are far from clear-cut. At the same time, a full awareness of the oppressive environment—in the context that this paper is concerned with, a patriarchal social system—must be accounted for. Importantly, the examples Card uses differ significantly from the issue of whether or not some women can be considered “complicit” in a rape culture; nevertheless, similar obstacles to understanding problematic situations exist here, too. In the context of a rape culture, can women become, to use Card’s phrase, “instruments of oppression”? And if so, how is their controversial behaviour to be understood and represented? Crucially, Levi’s reflections on the “grey zone” were primarily motivated by his concern that most historical and filmic representations “trivialised” the complexity of victim experiences by passing simplistic judgements. Likewise, the representation of sexual assault cases in the Australian mass media has often left much to be desired. Representing Sexual Assault: Australian Football and the Media A growing literature has critiqued the sexual culture of elite football in Australia—one in which women are reportedly treated with disdain, positioned as objects to be used and discarded. At least 20 distinct cases, involving more than 55 players and staff, have been reported in the media, with the majority of these incidents involving multiple players. Reports indicate that such group sexual encounters are commonplace for footballers, and the women who participate in sexual practices are commonly judged, even in the sports scholarship, as “groupies” and “sluts” who are therefore responsible for anything that happens to them, including rape (Waterhouse-Watson, “Playing Defence” 114–15; “(Un)reasonable Doubt”). When the issue of footballers and sexual assault was first debated in the Australian media in 2004, football insiders from both Australian rules and rugby league told the media of a culture of group sex and sexual behaviour that is degrading to women, even when consensual (Barry; Khadem and Nancarrow 4; Smith 1; Weidler 4). The sexual “culture” is marked by a discourse of abuse and objectification, in which women are cast as “meat” or a “bun.” Group sex is also increasingly referred to as “chop up,” which codes the practice itself as an act of violence. It has been argued elsewhere that footballers treating women as sexual objects is effectively condoned through the mass media (Waterhouse-Watson, “All Women Are Sluts” passim). The “Code of Silence” episode of ABC television program Four Corners, which reignited the debate in 2009, was even more explicit in portraying footballers’ sexual practices as abusive, presenting rape testimony from three women, including “Clare,” who remains traumatised following a “group sex” incident with rugby league players in 2002. Clare testifies that she went to a hotel room with prominent National Rugby League (NRL) players Matthew Johns and Brett Firman. She says that she had sex with Johns and Firman, although the experience was unpleasant and they treated her “like a piece of meat.” Subsequently, a dozen players and staff members from the team then entered the room, uninvited, some through the bathroom window, expecting sex with Clare. Neither Johns nor Firman has denied that this was the case. Clare went to the police five days later, saying that professional rugby players had raped her, although no charges were ever laid. The program further includes psychiatrists’ reports, and statements from the police officer in charge of the case, detailing the severe trauma that Clare suffered as a result of what the footballers called “sex.” If, as “Code of Silence” suggests, footballers’ practices of group sex are abusive, whether the woman consents or not, then it follows that such a “gang-bang culture” may in turn foster a rape culture, in which rape is more likely than in other contexts. And yet, many women insist that they enjoy group sex with footballers (Barry; Drill 86), complicating issues of consent and the degradation of women. Feminist rape scholarship documents the repetitive way in which complainants are deemed to have “invited” or “caused” the rape through their behaviour towards the accused or the way they were dressed: defence lawyers, judges (Larcombe 100; Lees 85; Young 442–65) and even talk show hosts, ostensibly aiming to expose the problem of rape (Alcoff and Gray 261–64), employ these tactics to undermine a victim’s credibility and excuse the accused perpetrator. Nevertheless, although no woman can be in any way held responsible for any man committing sexual assault, or other abuse, it must be acknowledged that women who become in some way implicated in a rape culture also assist in maintaining that culture, highlighting a “grey zone” of moral ambiguity. How, then, should these women, who in some cases even actively promote behaviour that is intrinsic to this culture, be perceived and represented? Charmyne Palavi, who appeared on “Code of Silence,” is a prime example of such a “grey zone” figure. While she stated that she was raped by a prominent footballer, Palavi also described her continuing practice of setting up footballers and women for casual sex through her Facebook page, and pursuing such encounters herself. This raises several problems of judgement and representation, and the issue of women’s sexual freedom. On the one hand, Palavi (and all other women) should be entitled to engage in any consensual (legal) sexual behaviour that they choose. But on the other, when footballers’ frequent casual sex is part of a culture of sexual abuse, there is a danger of them becoming complicit in, to use Card’s term, “evildoing.” Further, when telling her story on “Code of Silence,” Palavi hints that there is an element of increased risk in these situations. When describing her sexual encounters with footballers, which she states are “on her terms,” she begins, “It’s consensual for a start. I’m not drunk or on drugs and it’s in, [it] has an element of class to it. Do you know what I mean?” (emphasis added). If it is necessary to define sex “on her terms” as consensual, this implies that sometimes casual “sex” with footballers is not consensual, or that there is an increased likelihood of rape. She also claims to have heard about several incidents in which footballers she knows sexually abused and denigrated, if not actually raped, other women. Such an awareness of what may happen clearly does not make Palavi a perpetrator of abuse, but neither can her actions (such as “setting up” women with footballers using Facebook) be considered entirely separate. While one may argue, following Levi’s reflections, that judgement of a “grey zone” figure such as Palavi should be suspended, it is significant that Four Corners’s representation of Palavi makes implicit and simplistic moral judgements. The introduction to Palavi follows the story of “Caroline,” who states that first-grade rugby player Dane Tilse broke into her university dormitory room and sexually assaulted her while she slept. Caroline indicates that Tilse left when he “picked up that [she] was really stressed.” Following this story, the program’s reporter and narrator Sarah Ferguson introduces Palavi with, “If some young footballers mistakenly think all women want to have sex with them, Charmyne Palavi is one who doesn’t necessarily discourage the idea.” As has been argued elsewhere (Waterhouse-Watson, “Framing the Victim”), this implies that Palavi is partly responsible for players holding this mistaken view. By implication, she therefore encouraged Tilse to assume that Caroline would want to have sex with him. Footage is then shown of Palavi and her friends “applying the finishing touches”—bronzing their legs—before going to meet footballers at a local hotel. The lighting is dim and the hand-held camerawork rough. These techniques portray the women as artificial and “cheap,” techniques that are also employed in a remarkably similar fashion in the documentary Footy Chicks (Barry), which follows three women who seek out sex with footballers. In response to Ferguson’s question, “What’s the appeal of those boys though?” Palavi repeats several times that she likes footballers mainly because of their bodies. This, along with the program’s focus on the women as instigators of sex, positions Palavi as something of a predator (she was widely referred to as a “cougar” following the program). In judging her “promiscuity” as immoral, the program implies she is partly responsible for her own rape, as well as acts of what can be termed, at the very least, sexual abuse of other women. The problematic representation of Palavi raises the complex question of how her “grey zone” behaviour should be depicted without passing trivialising judgements. This issue is particularly fraught when Four Corners follows the representation of Palavi’s “nightlife” with her accounts of footballers’ acts of sexual assault and abuse, including testimony that a well-known player raped Palavi herself. While Ferguson does not explicitly question the veracity of Palavi’s claim of rape, her portrayal is nevertheless largely unsympathetic, and the way the segment is edited appears to imply that she is blameworthy. Ferguson recounts that Palavi “says she was able to put [being raped] out of her mind, and it certainly didn’t stop her pursuing other football players.” This might be interpreted a positive statement about Palavi’s ability to move on from a rape; however, the tone of Ferguson’s authoritative voiceover is disapproving, which instead implies negative judgement. As the program makes clear, Palavi continues to organise sexual encounters between women and players, despite her knowledge of the “dangers,” both to herself and other women. Palavi’s awareness of the prevalence of incidents of sexual assault or abuse makes her position a problematic one. Yet her controversial role within the sexual culture of elite Australian football is complicated even further by the fact that she herself is disempowered (and her own allegation of being raped delegitimised) by the simplistic ideas about “assault” and “consent” that dominate social discourse. Despite this ambiguity, Four Corners constructs Palavi as more of a perpetrator of abuse than a victim—not even a victim who is “morally compromised.” Although we argue that careful consideration must be given to the issue of whether moral judgements should be applied to “grey zone” figures like Palavi, the “solution” is far from simple. No language (or image) is neutral or value-free, and judgements are inevitable in any act of representation. In his essay on the “grey zone,” Levi raises the crucial point that the many (mis)understandings of figures of moral ambiguity and “compromise” partly arise from the fact that the testimony and perspectives of these figures themselves is often the last to be heard—if at all (50). Nevertheless, an article Palavi published in Sydney tabloid The Daily Telegraph (19) demonstrates that such testimony can also be problematic and only complicate matters further. Palavi’s account begins: If you believed Four Corners, I’m supposed to be the NRL’s biggest groupie, a wannabe WAG who dresses up, heads out to clubs and hunts down players to have sex with… what annoys me about these tags and the way I was portrayed on that show is the idea I prey on them like some of the starstruck women I’ve seen out there. (emphasis added) Palavi clearly rejects the way Four Corners constructed her as a predator; however, rather than rejecting this stereotype outright, she reinscribes it, projecting it onto other “starstruck” women. Throughout her article, Palavi reiterates (other) women’s allegedly predatory behaviour, continually portraying the footballers as passive and the women as active. For example, she claims that players “like being contacted by girls,” whereas “the girls use the information the players put on their [social media profiles] to track them down.” Palavi’s narrative confirms this construction of men as victims of women’s predatory actions, lamenting the sacking of Johns following “Code of Silence” as “disgusting.” In the context of alleged sexual assault, the “predatory woman” stereotype is used in place of the raped woman in order to imply that sexual assault did not occur; hence Palavi’s problematic discourse arguably reinforces sexist attitudes. But can Palavi be considered complicit in validating this damaging stereotype? Can she be blamed for working within patriarchal systems of representation, of which she has also been a victim? The preceding analysis shows judgement to be inherent in the act of representation. The paucity of language is particularly acute when dealing with such extreme situations. Indeed, the language used to explore this issue in the present article cannot escape terminology that is loaded with meaning(s), which quotation marks can perhaps only qualify so far. Conclusion This paper does not claim to provide definitive answers to such complex dilemmas, but rather to highlight problems in addressing the sensitive issues of ambiguity and “complicity” in women’s interactions with patriarchal systems, and how these are represented in the mass media. Like the controversial behaviour of teenager Kim Duthie described earlier, Palavi’s position throws the problems of judgement and representation into disarray. There is no simple solution to these problems, though we do propose that these “grey zone” figures be represented in a self-reflexive, nuanced manner by explicitly articulating questions of responsibility rather than making simplistic judgements that implicitly lessen perpetrators’ culpability. Levi’s concept of the “grey zone” helps elucidate the fraught issue of women’s potential complicity in a rape culture, a subject that challenges both understanding and representation. Despite participating in a culture that promotes the abuse, denigration, and humiliation of women, the roles of women like Palavi cannot in any way be conflated with the roles of the perpetrators of sexual assault. These and other “grey zones” need to be constantly rethought and renegotiated in order to develop a fuller understanding of human behaviour. References Alcoff, Linda Martin, and Laura Gray. “Survivor Discourse: Transgression or Recuperation.” Signs 18.2 (1993): 260–90. 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Waterhouse-Watson, Deb. “All Women Are Sluts: Australian Rules Football and Representations of the Feminine.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 27 (2007): 155–62. ———. “Framing the Victim: Sexual Assault and Australian Footballers on Television.” Australian Feminist Studies (2011, in press). ———. “Playing Defence in a Sexual Assault ‘Trial by Media’: The Male Footballer’s Imaginary Body.” Australian Feminist Law Journal 30 (2009): 109–29. ———. “(Un)reasonable Doubt: Narrative Immunity for Footballers against Allegations of Sexual Assault.” M/C Journal 14.1 (2011). Weidler, Danny. “Players Reveal Their Side of the Story.” Sun Herald 29 Feb. 2004: 4. Young, Alison. “The Waste Land of the Law, the Wordless Song of the Rape Victim.” Melbourne University Law Review 2 (1998): 442–65.

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