Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Dragon Ball GT (Television program) »

Professional sport has always tried to entertain an audience to make money. Since the advent of the electronic mass media, the focus of the entertainment has shifted from the live audience to the remote. This has forced changes to the rules and structure of the more popular sports to increase their compatibility with the media. Although the driving force behind the alterations is ultimately economic profit, the nature of the changes is determined by the technological needs of the media. Many fans and devotees of particular sports see these changes as breaks with tradition which will have a detrimental effect on the future of their game. However, it could also be argued that "the technology is the message" (Potts 1) because sport has a long history of being changed by new technologies. To gain a true understanding of why the focus of professional sport has shifted to the remote audience all you have to do is attend a match on a rainy day. Early this year I went to watch Essendon play the Sydney Swans at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The game was close until the last five minutes and was an extremely exciting spectacle, which would have had me on the edge of my seat if it weren't pouring. I didn't have an umbrella and I was trying to make sure no water got down between my jacket and the bottom of my seat. I was faced with an interesting emotional situation of enjoying a highly skilled game and wanting the whole pointless exercise to finish so I could get dry. I wished I'd stayed home and caught the game on TV. Being wet and suddenly not knowing whether it was worth the effort annoyed me. The thought of TV made my mood worse because it was then that I noticed something for the first time. In Australian Rules, every time a goal is kicked the ball is returned to the centre of the field and bounced again to restart the game. I have memories of playing in many games where a goal was kicked and the ball raced back to the centre by an over-zealous umpire who then bounced the ball, smugly re-beginning the game before any of the actual players made it back. This was not happening at the SCG. When the ball returned to the centre the umpire waited. Once he saw a light flashed from the Channel 7 box, he bounced the ball. I knew immediately what was going on from the number of times I'd watched a game on TV and it had restarted before the ad finished. The ad light was holding up the excitement of the game and prolonging my stay in the rain. The umpire had to wait for the light to flash so the drama for the TV audience was heightened. Sport is perfectly suited to the medium of TV because "the intrinsic properties of TV will favour expression, spectacle and emotion over reason and argument" (Potts 8). Professional sport is almost entirely spectacle. The skills, the costumes and the physiques of the players all appeal to the public. The skills, the costumes, the physiques of the players all appeal to the public. The expressions on the faces of the players in close-up provoke emotion in the audience. The score has a narrative movement that creates a dramatic tension for the audience. Watching a delayed telecast, people go out of their way to not know the score in advance so that the tension and entertainment will be higher. The relationship between sport, television and, to a lesser extent, other forms of media, "is commonly described as the happiest of marriages" (Rowe 32). The media offers exposure (which generates sponsorship) as well as rights fees. Sport offers the media an almost perfect composition. Viewers are drawn to watch because "it presents a spectacle of content, drama, excitement and eventual resolution" (Wilson 37). The rate at which goals are kicked in Australian Rules allows the TV broadcaster regular opportunities to get on with its primary work: advertising. Before the flashing light was introduced, an advertisement would often finish after the game had restarted. The TV audience would be bought back to attention by the return of the program only to find the narrative already in progress. With the light this is no longer the case. A goal is scored, the narrative moves, and an ad allows the viewer freedom to move around or change the channel (a vital requirement of the ease necessary in the medium). The viewer returns to see the tension mount again. But what does this gain for the TV broadcaster? It is unlikely that this single change would determine a significant shift in audience size. A viewer may be momentarily put off by coming back to an already moving game but not to the point where they change channels. It doesn't affect the advertiser because their ad is played in full whatever happens. The light doesn't actually do anything to boost the broadcaster's income or ratings. It does, however, signify a change in the public consumption of professional sport. The focus of sport as entertainment has shifted from the live audience to the remote audience. The flashing light is not the first example. It simply stood out to me because of my background and the situation I was in. Most US sports have undergone tremendous change, affecting everything from the length of the game to the basic structure of the rules. Changes have occurred in these sports to suit the remote audience, via the media. This audience would rather stay at home and view a more detailed coverage in the comfort of their own home where the benefits far outweigh the losses. They have instant replays, commentary, statistics, no foul weather or uncomfortable seats and, most importantly, if the game turns out to be boring, they can watch something else. It is "a more satisfying and pleasant way of experiencing sport" (Rowe 147) and can attract new fans. Professional sport is trying to appeal to a larger audience as a whole, trying to get its share of the ratings. Audience shares have become a medium of exchange: the larger the audience the greater the revenue. This audience needs to be constantly entertained to stop it from pressing another button on the remote. But this is not the first example of technology changing the nature of sport. Every sport has been integrally linked with technology from its very beginning. As technologically induced change occurs in society it is reflected by changes in the nature of sport. Cricket is bound by the technology involved in the manufacture of the bat and the ball. As rubber developed and wood machining advanced, the bat advanced and batting became easier; as leather working advanced, the ball advanced and the bounce off the pitch became truer; as mechanical engines advanced, the lawn mower advanced and the ground became smoother and easier to play on. All these technological advances make changes to the way the game is played. The scientific study of physiology advanced the technology of the shoe and thereby athletics. The medically derived technology of the performance-enhancing drug changes almost all professional sports. The list goes on. Advances that affect society are reflected by professional sport. This encompasses more than just advances in materials and engineering processes. It includes the way culture follows economic systems and divides itself up into markets and work forces. Hence, the development of the professional sportsperson. Sport must capture its market in order to survive and must be compatible with changes in culture. Information technology is becoming a force in most areas of our lives and is changing the way our culture operates. Sport will change along with this and will be modified by the introduction of digital technology and the Internet. Technology creates an excess of information which changes the consumption of sport which introduces an ad light at the SCG which makes (me) the viewer want to go home and watch the TV. The technology is the message. References Potts, J. "The Technology is the Message." Thinking Media. Ed. M. Wark. Sydney: Pluto Press, forthcoming. Rowe, D. Sport, Culture and the Media: The Unruly Trinity. Buckingham: Open UP, 1999. Wilson, B. "Pumping Up the Footy: The Commercial Expansion of Professional Football in Australia." Sport and Leisure: Trends in Australian Popular Culture. Ed. D. Rowe and G. Lawrence. Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Greg Levine. "Technology and Sport." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/sport.php>. Chicago style: Greg Levine, "Technology and Sport," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/sport.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Greg Levine. (2000) Technology and Sport. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/sport.php> ([your date of access]).

Online shopping is all the rage these days and the murderabilia industry in particular, which specializes in selling serial killer artifacts, is booming. At Spectre Studios, sculptor David Johnson sells flexible plastic action figures of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy and plans to produce a figure of Jack the Ripper in the future. Although some might think that making action figures of serial killers is tasteless, Johnson hastens to assure the potential consumer that he does have standards: “I wouldn’t do Osama bin Laden . . . I have some personal qualms about that” (Robinson). At Serial Killer Central, you can buy a range of items made by serial killers themselves, including paintings and drawings by Angelo Buono (one of the “Hillside Stranglers”) and Henry Lee Lucas. For the more discerning consumer, Supernaught.com charges a mere $300 for a brick from Dahmer’s apartment building, while a lock of Charles Manson’s hair is a real bargain at $995, shipping and handling not included. The sale of murderabilia is just a small part of the huge serial killer industry that has become a defining feature of American popular culture over the last twenty-five years. This industry is, in turn, a prime example of what Mark Seltzer has described as “wound culture,” consisting of a “public fascination with torn and open bodies and torn and opened persons, a collective gathering around shock, trauma, and the wound” (1). According to Seltzer, the serial killer is “one of the superstars of our wound culture” (2) and his claim is confirmed by the constant stream of movies, books, magazines, television shows, websites, t-shirts, and a tsunami of ephemera that has given the figure of the serial murderer an unparalleled degree of visibility and fame in the contemporary American public sphere. In a culture defined by celebrity, serial killers like Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy are the biggest stars of all, instantly recognized by the vast majority of Americans. Not surprisingly, murderabilia has been the focus of a sustained critique by the (usually self-appointed) guardians of ‘decency’ in American culture. On January 2, 2003 The John Walsh Show, the daytime television vehicle of the long-time host of America’s Most Wanted, featured an “inside look at the world of ‘murderabilia,’ which involves the sale of artwork, personal effects and letters from well-known killers” (The John Walsh Show Website). Featured guests included Andy Kahan, Director of the Mayor’s Crime Victim Assistance Office in Houston, Texas; ‘Thomas,’ who was horrified to find hair samples from “The Railroad Killer,” the individual who killed his mother, for sale on the Internet; Elmer Wayne Henley, a serial killer who sells his artwork to collectors; Joe, who runs “Serial Killer Central” and sells murderabilia from a wide range of killers, and Harold Schechter, a professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. Despite the program’s stated intention to “look at both sides of the issue,” the show was little more than a jeremiad against the murderabilia industry, with the majority of airtime being given to Andy Kahan and to the relatives of crime victims. The program’s bias was not lost on many of those who visited Joe’s Serial Killer Central site and left messages on the message board on the day The John Walsh Show aired. There were some visitors who shared Walsh’s perspective. A message from “serialkillersshouldnotprofit@aol.com,” for example, stated that “you will rot in hell with these killers,” while “Smithpi@hotmail.com” had a more elaborate critique: “You should pull your site off the net. I just watched the John Walsh show and your [sic] a fucking idiot. I hope your [sic] never a victim, because if you do [sic] then you would understand what all those people were trying to tell you. You [sic] a dumb shit.” Most visitors, however, sympathized with the way Joe had been treated on the show: “I as well [sic] saw you on the John Walsh show, you should [sic] a lot of courage going on such a one sided show, and it was shit that they wouldnt [sic] let you talk, I would have walked off.” But whether the comments were positive or negative, one thing was clear: The John Walsh Show had created a great deal of interest in the Serial Killer Central site. As one of the messages put it, “I think that anything [sic] else he [John Walsh] has put a spark in everyones [sic] curiousity [sic] . . . I have noticed that you have more hits on your page today than any others [sic].” Apparently, even the most explicit rejection and condemnation of serial killer celebrity finds itself implicated in (and perhaps even unwittingly encouraging the growth of) that celebrity. John Walsh’s attack on the murderabilia industry was the latest skirmish in a campaign that has been growing steadily since the late 1990s. One of the campaign’s initial targets was the internet trading site eBay, which was criticized for allowing serial killer-related products to be sold online. In support of such criticism, conservative victims’ rights and pro-death penalty organizations like “Justice For All” organized online petitions against eBay. In November 2000, Business Week Online featured an interview with Andy Kahan in which he argued that the online sale of murderabilia should be suppressed: “The Internet just opens it all up to millions and millions more potential buyers and gives easy access to children. And it sends a negative message to society. What does it say about us? We continue to glorify killers and continue to put them in the mainstream public. That’s not right” (Business Week). Eventually bowing to public pressure, eBay decided to ban the sale of murderabilia items in May 2001, forcing the industry underground, where it continues to be pursued by the likes of John Walsh. Apart from highlighting how far the celebrity culture around serial killers has developed (so that one can now purchase the nail clippings and hair of some killers, as if they are religious icons), focusing on the ongoing debate around the ethics of murderabilia also emphasizes how difficult it is to draw a neat line between those who condemn and those who participate in that culture. Quite apart from the way in which John Walsh’s censoriousness brought more visitors to the Serial Killer Central site, one could also argue that few individuals have done more to disseminate information about violent crime in general and serial murder in particular to mainstream America than John Walsh. Of course, this information is presented in the unimpeachably moral context of fighting crime, but controversial features of America’s Most Wanted, such as the dramatic recreations of crime, pander to the same prurient public interest in crime that the program simultaneously condemns. An ABCNews.Com article on murderabilia inadvertently highlights the difficulty of distinguishing a legitimate from an illegitimate interest in serial murder by quoting Rick Staton, one of the biggest collectors and dealers of murderabilia in the United States, who emphasizes that the people he sells to are not “ghouls and creeps [who] crawl out of the woodwork”, but rather “pretty much your average Joe Blow.” Even his family, Staton goes on to say, who profess to be disgusted by what he does, act very differently in practice: “The minute they step into this room, they are glued to everything in here and they are asking questions and they are genuinely intrigued by it . . . So it makes me wonder: Am I the one who is so abnormal, or am I pretty normal?” (ABCNews.Com). To answer Staton’s question, we need to go back to 1944, when sociologist Leo Lowenthal published an essay entitled “Biographies in Popular Magazines,” an essay he later reprinted as a chapter in his 1961 book, Literature, Popular Culture And Society, under a new title: “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Lowenthal argues that biographies in popular magazines underwent a striking change between 1901 and 1941, a change that signals the emergence of a new social type. According to Lowenthal, the earlier biographies indicate that American society’s heroes at the time were “idols of production” in that “they stem from the productive life, from industry, business, and natural sciences. There is not a single hero from the world of sports and the few artists and entertainers either do not belong to the sphere of cheap or mass entertainment or represent a serious attitude toward their art” (112-3). Sampling biographies in magazines from 1941, however, Lowenthal reaches a very different conclusion: “We called the heroes of the past ‘idols of production’: we feel entitled to call the present-day magazine heroes ‘idols of consumption’” (115). Unlike the businessmen, industrialists and scientists who dominated the earlier sample, almost every one of 1941’s heroes “is directly, or indirectly, related to the sphere of leisure time: either he does not belong to vocations which serve society’s basic needs (e.g., the worlds of entertainment and sport), or he amounts, more or less, to a caricature of a socially productive agent” (115). Lowenthal leaves his reader in no doubt that he sees the change from “idols of production” to “idols of consumption” as a serious decline: “If a student in some very distant future should use popular magazines of 1941 as a source of information as to what figures the American public looked to in the first stages of the greatest crisis since the birth of the Union, he would come to a grotesque result . . . the idols of the masses are not, as they were in the past, the leading names in the battle of production, but the headliners of the movies, the ball parks, and the night clubs” (116). With Lowenthal in mind, when one considers the fact that the serial killer is generally seen, in Richard Tithecott’s words, as “deserving of eternal fame, of media attention on a massive scale, of groupies” (144), one is tempted to describe the advent of celebrity serial killers as a further decline in the condition of American culture’s “mass idols.” The serial killer’s relationship to consumption, however, is too complex to allow for such a hasty judgment, as the murderabilia industry indicates. Throughout the edition of The John Walsh Show that attacked murderabilia, Walsh showed clips of Collectors, a recent documentary about the industry. Collectors is distributed by a small company named Abject Films and on their website the film’s director, Julian P. Hobbs, discusses some of the multiple connections between serial killing and consumerism. Hobbs points out that the serial killer is connected with consumerism in the most basic sense that he has become a commodity, “a merchandising phenomenon that rivals Mickey Mouse. From movies to television, books to on-line, serial killers are packaged and consumed en-masse” (Abject Films). But as Hobbs goes on to argue, serial killers themselves can be seen as consumers, making any representations of them implicated in the same consumerist logic: “Serial killers come into being by fetishizing and collecting artifacts – usually body parts – in turn, the dedicated collector gathers scraps connected with the actual events and so, too, a documentary a collection of images” (Abject Films). Along with Rick Staton, Hobbs implies that no one can avoid being involved with consumerism in relation to serial murder, even if one’s reasons for getting involved are high-minded. For example, when Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison in 1994, the families of his victims were delighted but his death also presented them with something of a problem. Throughout the short time Dahmer was in prison, there had been persistent rumors that he was in negotiations with both publishers and movie studios about selling his story. If such a deal had ever been struck, legal restrictions would have prevented Dahmer from receiving any of the money; instead, it would have been distributed among his victims’ families. Dahmer’s murder obviously ended this possibility, so the families explored another option: going into the murderabilia business by auctioning off Dahmer’s property, including such banal items as his toothbrush, but also many items he had used in commission of the murders, such as a saw, a hammer, the 55-gallon vat he used to decompose the bodies, and the refrigerator where he stored the hearts of his victims. Although the families’ motives for suggesting this auction may have been noble, they could not avoid participating in what Mark Pizzato has described as “the prior fetishization of such props and the consumption of [Dahmer’s] cannibal drama by a mass audience” (91). When the logic of consumerism dominates, is anyone truly innocent, or are there just varying degrees of guilt, of implication? The reason why it is impossible to separate neatly ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ expressions of interest in famous serial killers is the same reason why the murderabilia industry is booming; in the words of a 1994 National Examiner headline: “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” Christopher Sharrett has suggested that: “Perhaps the fetish status of the criminal psychopath . . . is about recognizing the serial killer/mass murderer not as social rebel or folk hero . . . but as the most genuine representative of American life” (13). The enormous resistance to recognizing the representativeness of serial killers in American culture is fundamental to the appeal of fetishizing serial killers and their artifacts. As Sigmund Freud has explained, the act of disavowal that accompanies the formation of a fetish allows a perception (in this case, the Americanness of serial killers) to persist in a different form rather than being simply repressed (352-3). Consequently, just like the sexual fetishists discussed by Freud, although we may recognize our interest in serial killers “as an abnormality, it is seldom felt by [us] as a symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering” (351). On the contrary, we are usually, in Freud’s words, “quite satisfied” (351) with our interest in serial killers precisely because we have turned them into celebrities. It is our complicated relationship with celebrities, affective as well as intellectual, composed of equal parts admiration and resentment, envy and contempt, that provides us with a lexicon through which we can manage our appalled and appalling fascination with the serial killer, contemporary American culture’s ultimate star. References ABCNews.Com. “Killer Collectibles: Inside the World of ‘Murderabilia.” 7 Nov. 2001. American Broadcasting Company. 9 May 2003 http://www.abcnews.com>. AbjectFilms.Com. “Collectors: A Film by Julian P. Hobbs.” Abject Films. 9 May 2003 http://www.abjectfilms.com/collectors.html>. BusinessWeek Online. 20 Nov. 2000. Business Week. 9 May 2003 http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708056.htm>. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.” On Sexuality. Trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin Books, 1977. 351-7. The John Walsh Show. Ed. Click Active Media. 2 Jan. 2003. 9 May 2003 http://www.johnwalsh.tv/cgi-bin/topics/today/cgi?id=90>. Lowenthal, Leo. “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Literature, Popular Culture and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961. 109-40. National Examiner. “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” 7 Jun. 1994: 7. Pizzato, Mark. “Jeffrey Dahmer and Media Cannibalism: The Lure and Failure of Sacrifice.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 85-118. Robinson, Bryan. “Murder Incorporated: Denver Sculptor’s Serial Killer Action Figures Bringing in Profits and Raising Ire.” ABCNews.Com 25 Mar. 2002. American Broadcasting Company. 27 Apr. 2003 http://abcnews.com/>. Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998. Sharrett, Christopher. “Introduction.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 9-20. Tithecott, Richard. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Schmid, David. "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>. APA Style Schmid, D. (Nov. 2004) "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>.

Introduction The construction of meaning is specifically denoted by texts that are created and published by the mass media. To highlight how that meaning is constructed, we might take a communication research approach which then enables us to understand how mass media texts impact society. To undertake such an approach it is useful to reflect on two methods outlined by Adoni and Mane who suggest there are two communication research methodologies. “The first focuses on the social construction of reality as an important aspect of the relationship between culture and society. The second approach concentrates on the social construction of reality as one type of media effect.” (Adoni and Mane 323). Relying on Adoni and Mane’s second communication research approach and combining this with the practice of remix, we can begin to understand how practitioners construct a reality from the mass audience perspective and not the mass media’s construction. This aligns with the approach taken by the ABC Pool remix practitioners in that they are informed by the mass media’s construction of meaning, yet oppose their understanding of the text as the basis for their altered construction of meaning. The oppositional reading of the media text also aligns with Hall’s encoding/decoding theory, specifically the oppositional reading where audiences resist the dominant or preferred reading of the text (Long & Wall). If we align Deuze’s (Media Work) thinking to mass media that suggests we live in media as opposed to with media, the effects of the construction of reality have a major impact on how we construct our own lives. Until recently, that media and consequent meaning has been constructed by the mass media and broadcast into our living rooms, headphones, billboards and other public spaces where media resides. The emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and the affordances these information and communication technologies provide for the audience to talk back in new and innovative ways has challenged that traditional model of meaning construction. Now, instead of the mass media designing and disseminating meaning through our media consumption channels, the audience also has an opportunity to participate in this consumption and production process (Bruns; Jenkins; Shirky). “Remix means to take cultural artifacts and combine and manipulate them into new kinds of creative blends,” according to (Knobel & Lankshear 22) where Lessig argues that digital remix is writing on a mass cultural practice scale (Remix). Remix within this paper is considered a practice that takes the affordances of the technology and couples that with the creative ability of the artists to create socially constructed meanings through new and inventive methods. In considering socially constructed meaning, it is useful to reflect on media dependency theory, which suggests the amount of subjective reality depends on direct experience with various phenomena and the exposure to the media in relation to those phenomena (Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur). “According to the media dependency hypothesis, the degree of media contribution to the individual's construction of subjective reality is a function of one's direct experience with various phenomena and consequent dependence on the media for information about these phenomena” (Adoni and Mane 324). Remix requires a parent piece of media (the original meaning) to create a remixed child (the re-constructed meaning). There is a clear dependency relationship between the parent and child pieces of media in this arrangement, which realistically shapes how the child will be created. If this material is published in a non-institutional environment, the artist is more or less free to demonstrate what ever meaning they wish to express. However when this practice emerges from within an institutional environment, this raises concerns of the media production, namely is the media institution challenging the original meaning they placed on certain texts and are they endorsing the new socially constructed meaning provided by remix artists? Constructing new forms of meaning and challenging the preferred meaning of institutionally generated texts intrinsically connects remix to the act of online activism. Activism can be defined as “people and organisations that work to promote social or political changes” for the benefit of society (Jones 1). Scholars have noted the significance of online technologies to aid in the mobilisation of mass groups of individuals in protest. In light of the recent Arab Spring uprisings, González-Bailón et al. note “the number of events connecting social media with social unrest has multiplied, not only in the context of authoritarian regimes exemplified by the recent wave of upsurges across the Arab world but also in western liberal democracies, particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis and changes to welfare policies” (para 1). Although the majority of work that is remixed on ABC Pool is not related to an authoritarian regime, it is representative of the frustrations many citizens have towards the inequality of distribution of wealth and power to a few privileged individuals. Remix as an online activism activity also explicitly demonstrates Hall’s oppositional reading of encoded texts. This paper will use media dependency theory as a lens to investigate how remix occurs outside of the institution to challenge the meanings created by authorities within the institutional setting, while challenging the mass media approach towards social discourse construction. To do this, the paper will focus on the case study of one remix artist, Main$treaM, who was an active participant within the institutional online community, ABC Pool. ABC Pool was a user created content space that ceased to operate during May 2013 from within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). The Pool project enabled users to publish their audio, video, photography and writing on a platform that was developed and resourced by the ABC. ABC Pool was open to everyone and was governed by the same editorial policies that regulated all media and activities across the ABC in relation to the ABC Charter (ABC Act 1983). ABC Pool also operated under a Creative Commons licensing regime which enabled media to flow across platforms, for example the Internet, radio and television, while providing attribution to the original author (generally under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license). Main$treaM was one active user that engaged in remix to pursue his creative direction but to also challenge the meanings of texts that had been created by the mass media. Max Prophet$ equals Ca$h for Comments Main$treaM had been active in Pool for several months when he began publishing his remixed works. His approach towards media and its production is especially important as his technique involved challenging the societal discourse that is accepted from traditional forms of media production and reappropriating them to reflect how an audience would reconstruct them, from their Deuzian lived in experience. Main$treaM can also be classified as an oppositional reader of text in regards to how he decodes the meaning within the message (Hall). His online activist approach is obvious in his self-described profile. Main$treaM’s profile on ABC Pool says: Making animations, music & loads of max prophet$ However, his profile on Discogs (Discogs is one of the largest online music databases, where users can contribute music information and data while locating collectables within the global marketplace) reveals the artist’s creative and political perspectives: Main$treaM started off wanting to piss people off. He loathed the studio recording industry professionals & Sound Production Mass Media Culture in general. How could it be that a TV Camera can record what you say in the street, then edit it into something YOU DID NOT SAY but take a little news sample off the TV & bam: "WE WILL SUE YOU" These days it makes me sick that hard breaks & media cut ups are trendy. Not sick enough to actually stop. Main$treaM’s approach is one that challenges the stereotypical rhetoric tropes of the mass media and is concerned with choosing a remix style that aligns with the media dependency theory. That is, he draws on the one perspective which is garnered by the traditional media figureheads and applies his lived in experience with those same societal discourses to provide a significantly different meaning (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur). The tool he uses to operationalise this is the art of remix by taking multiple cultural artefacts to create new creative blends (Knobel & Lankshear). John Laws is a radio celebrity who has dominated the Australian media landscape for decades with his at times controversial ‘shock jock’ talk back radio program. He is right wing in his political alignment and has at times been the centre of controversial programming efforts that has riled Australian audiences, which also involved input from Australian media authorities. His political alignment coupled with his disregard for audience sensitivities makes Laws an ideal character for an activist remix artist such as Main$treaM to target. Main$treaM had taken comments that Laws had made, placed them out of context and remixed them to deliberately misrepresent Laws’s opinion. One track in particular, Max Prophet$, is a reaction to the controversial Cash for Comments scandal (Johnson). In this case, John Laws was accused of receiving remuneration from Toyota to endorse their products on his radio program without acknowledging this activity as advertising. Main$treaM, through one of his ABC Pool contributions Max Prophet$, selected various comments that Laws had made during his radio broadcasts, and remixed them in a format that had John Laws say he was indeed receiving large amounts of money from Toyota. His remix, in the tradition of Pauline Pantsdown, took Laws’s comments and connected them to say “That really is a terrific vehicle that Hilux Workmate, great name too isn’t it”, highlighting a clear endorsement of the Toyota product by the radio presenter. However, Main$treaM did not stop at proving his point with this one remix contribution. He also provided in addition to the Max Prophet$ contribution, many other controversial social commentary works, including Cock Cheek parts One and Two, Prickseye Picture of You and I, and Ca$h for Comment$. Each contribution focussed on a particular character trait that Laws had become known for, such as inviting input from his listeners and then hanging up on them when they provided commentary that was contrary to his opinion. “Did I call you or did you call me” was Main$treaM’s method of whimsically suggesting that Laws is a rude, right wing conservative. The public opinion within Australia of John Laws is split between support from the conservatives and disdain from the liberals. Main$treaM was attempting to provide a voice from within the liberal perspective that illuminates the public opinion of Laws. The public opinion of Laws is one cultural discourse that is difficult to define, and almost impossible to publish to the broader public. Remix, as Lessig suggests, provides the most suitable genre of mass cultural practice to interrogate both perspectives of someone as controversial as Laws, where ABC Pool provides the most suitable platform to publish remixed societal perspectives on contemporary controversial issues. However, as outlined earlier, ABC Pool is contained within the same regulatory framework as any other publication space of the ABC. Essentially by publishing this controversial work on an ABC platform is blurring the boundaries between the ABC providing a place to publish the material and the ABC endorsing the material. ABC Pool operated under a reactive mode of moderation which suggests that content can be published without any form of moderation but if it were flagged as inappropriate by another user or audience member it had to be investigated by the ABC Pool team. Main$treaM’s contemporary material contained confronting concepts, language and techniques and was flagged as inappropriate by an anonymous Pool user during 2011. In this instance, it becomes clear that remix within an institutional setting is a complicated activity to facilitate. By providing a Creative Commons licensing regime, the ABC Pool project is endorsing remix as an institutional activity, and given the ethos of ABC Pool to experiment with new and innovative ways of engaging the audience, remix is crucial to its operation. However given the complaints of the other users that Main$treaM’s material was inappropriate, the problem arose of how to manage contentious remix activity. Aligning with Jenkins’s convergent cultures and Bruns’s produsage theories which incorporates the audience into the production process, the ABC Pool project was required to promote remix as a suitable activity for its users. Remix as an online activist activity in turn attracted the societal dissent approach from remix artists, providing a problem of adhering to the rules and regulations of the ABC more broadly. In the immediacy of the complaint, a large proportion of Main$treaM’s material was temporarily unpublished from ABC Pool until the team could provide a suitable solution on how to solve the tensions. The Legal Consultation Process In an instance such as this, an ABC employee is required to consult the editorial policy people to seek their advice on the most appropriate approach on the problematic material. The ABC Editorial Policies representatives referenced the material in the then Section 9 of the Editorial Policies, which relates to user-generated content. After the consultation process, they could see no breach of the guidelines; however, given the obscene constitution of the material, they suggested the Pool team refer the material to ABC Legal, a process in the ABC known as ‘referring up’. ABC Legal had a team of media lawyers interrogate the material from a criminal law perspective. It is worth noting, in both departments, Legal and Editorial Policies, there was support for Main$treaM’s creative expression (Fieldnotes, 2011). However, both parties were approaching the material and acting in a risk management capacity to protect the integrity of the ABC brand. After receiving the approval of the editorial policy people, the ABC Pool team had to seek the advice from ABC Legal. After two weeks of investigation, ABC Legal returned the following recommendations for the Pool team: Ultimately, risk management is the deciding factor to determine if the material should be published or not, supported by a solid defense should the case go to court.There are three areas to be considered with Main$treaM’s content:CopyrightDefamatoryObscenityIn regards to copyright, it is OK to publish in this case because the works are covered by parody or satire as the pieces have a focussed angle, or subject (John Laws).Defamation is more complicated. Firstly, we have to establish if the usual person could identify the defamed person. If yes, we need to establish what imputations there are, i.e. homophobic tendencies, pedophilia, etc. For each imputation, we need to establish if there is a defense. Typical defenses are honest opinion, expressed as one’s view, or truth. Honest Opinion needs to have a base to relate it to and not just a rant – i.e. John Laws was caught in the Cash for Comments scandal but there is no evidence to suggest he is a pedophile (unless the artists knows a truth – which becomes complicated again).Obscenity comes under classification, and since Pool does not have a rating system in place, we cannot offer this as a way to avoid publishing. A standard example of this relates to a younger audience member having the same access to an obscene piece of content (as guided by Pool’s Guidelines Section 4.1 a and b).These rules are premised by how do I read it/hear it. This is how a jury of citizens will approach the same piece of content. Risk management is also present when we ask how will John Laws hear about it, and what will the community think about it.(Fieldnotes, 2011) The suggestions the legal team returned are significant in highlighting the position of a media institution that facilitates remix. What is relevant here is a public service media organisation is a specific type of media organisation that is responsible for facilitating increased citizenry through its activities (Cunningham). Martin builds on the work of Jacka and Hartley to highlight how the ABC should be encouraging ‘DIY citizenry’. She says the combination of the core Reithian values of educate, inform and entertain can be combined with new media technologies that enable a “semiotic self determination model” to construct a “national semiosis model” (Hartley 161). However, there is a clear misalignment between the values of the PSM and the remix artist. What was required was the presence of a cultural intermediary to assist in calibrating those values and engaging in a negotiation phase between the two stakeholders. A cultural intermediary is a human or non-human actor that is located between the production and consumption of cultural artifacts and aids in facilitating the negotiation space between different expertise disciplines. In this case, it was the role of the community manager to attempt to connect the two approaches and enable remix practice to continue under the auspices of the ABC. The ABC had shifted its approach towards some of the Main$treaM material, but given its regulatory framework was unable to facilitate all of his contributions. Unfortunately in this case, Main$treaM did not align with the requirements of the ABC, left the Pool community and did not continue his practice of remix within the ABC any further. Conclusion Remixed texts that are published on PSM platforms demonstrate high levels of dependency on existing mass media texts, aligning them with the approach of the media dependency theory (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur). Remixed texts are also cultural products of artists that live in media and not with media, as noted by Deuze (Media Industries, Work and Life) and are the result of mass cultural practice that manipulates the meaning of multiple cultural artefacts (Lessig). Remix as a form of online activism is also representative of Hall’s oppositional reading of texts which enable the practitioner to deepen their involvement within the social construction of reality (Adoni & Mane). Convergence cultures represent the audience’s ever-increasing desire to participate in the production of media and not merely consume it (Jenkins). The theoretical alignment of remix with these theories suggests remixed texts have a deeper and richer cultural representation than that of its institutionally produced parent text. However, collaboratively produced cultural artefacts via remix are problematised by the digital divide debate, specifically through the access of tools and knowledge for this practice. Lin terms this problem as ‘techno-elite’ where only certain individuals have access and knowledge and tools to engage in these types of cultural activities facilitated by PSM. Further, Carpentier challenges this type of participation by asking if we have access and can interact, are we really participating in a democratising activity, given the promises of online activism? Given that PSM is pursuing the concept of the audience as user, which positions the audience as a producer of content across online environments, facilitating the practice of remix should align with its core values to inform, educate and entertain (Martin). However as we have seen with the Main$treaM case, this is problematic when attempting to align the focus of a remix artist with that of PSM. In these instances the work of the cultural intermediary as the disciplinary expertise negotiator becomes critical to increase the societal representation within the production and consumption of cultural artefacts produced through the activity of remix. A public service broadcaster that is supportive of both institutionally produced texts, along with socially informed text production through remix, will be a rigorous media organisation that supports a better informed citizenry, or as Hartley suggests a self determined national semiosis model. References Adoni, Hanna, and Sherrill Mane. "Media and the Social Construction of Reality: Toward and Integration of Theory and Research." Communication Research 11.3 (1984): 323-40. Ball-Rokeach, Sandra, and DeFluer, Melvin. "A Dependency Model of Mass Media Effects." Communication Research 3 (1976): 3-21. Bruns, Axel. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. Carpentier, Nico. "The Concept of Participation. If They Have Access and Interact, Do They Really Participate?" Communication Management Quarterly 21 (2011): 13-36. Cunningham, Stuart. Hidden Innovation: Policy, Industry and the Creative Sector. Creative Economy and Innovation Culture. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2013. Deuze, Mark. Media Work. London: Polity Press, 2007. Deuze, Mark. "Media Industries, Work and Life." European Journal of Communication 24 (2009): 467. Enli, Gunn Sara. "Redefining Public Service Broadcasting." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14.1 (2008): 105 - 20. González-Bailón, Sandra, et al. "The Dynamics of Protest Recruitment through an Online Network." Scientific Reports 1.197 (2011). Hall, Stuart. Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse. Council of Europe Colloquy on "Training In The Critical Reading of Television Language". 1973. Hartley, John. "Communicative Democracy in a Redactional Society: The Future of Journalism Studies." Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism 1.1 (2001): 39-48. Jacka, Liz. "'Good Democracy': The Role of Public Service Broadcasting." The Centre for Culture and History (2001). 2 Feb. 2013 < http://www.cmchnyu.org/pdfs/jacka.pdf >. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture - Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Johnson, Rob. Cash for Comment: The Seduction of Journo Culture. Media.Culture Series. Sydney: Pluto Press, 2000. Jones, Christopher. "Activism or Slacktivism? The Role of Social Media in Effecting Social Change." Research Paper. School of Engineering and Applied Science: University of Virginia, 2013. Knobel, Michele, and Colin Lankshear. "Remix: The Art and Craft of Endless Hybridization." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 52.1 (2008): 22-33. Lessig, Lawrence. Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. New York: Penguin, 2008. Lin, Yu-Wei. "The Emergence of the Techno-Elite Audience and Free/Open Source Content: A Case Study on Bbc Backstage." Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 9.2 (2012): 597-613. Long, Paul, and Tim Wall. "Investigating Audiences: What Do People Do with Media?" Media Studies: Texts, Production and Context. Eds. P. Long et al. Harlow, England: Pearson Education Limited, 2009. 240-72. Martin, Fiona. "Beyond Public Service Broadcasting? ABC Online and the User/Citizen." Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture 35.1 (2002): 42-62. Rosen, Jay. "The People Formerly Known as the Audience." Pressthink: Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine (2006). 2 Feb. 2013 < http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/apr/25/bbc.broadcasting >. Shirky, Clay. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organising without Organisations. New York: Allen Lane, 2008.

The story of Barbie is a tapestry woven with threads of cultural significance, societal shifts, and corporate narratives. It’s a tale that encapsulates the evolution of American post-war capitalism, mirroring the changing tides of social norms, aspirations, and identities. Barbie’s journey from Germany to Los Angeles, along the way becoming a global icon, is a testament to the power of Ruth Handler’s vision and Barbie’s marketing. Barbie embodies and reflects the rise of mass consumption and the early days of television advertising, where one doll could become a household name and shape the dreams of children worldwide. The controversies and criticisms surrounding Barbie – from promoting a ‘thin ideal’ to perpetuating gender and racial stereotypes – highlight the complexities of representation in popular culture. Yet, Barbie’s enduring message, “You can be anything”, continues to inspire and empower, even as it evolves to embrace a more inclusive and diverse portrayals of power, beauty, and potential. Barbie’s story is not just about a doll; it’s about the aspirations she represents, the societal changes she’s witnessed, and the ongoing conversation about her impact on gender roles, body image, and consumer culture. It’s a narrative that continues to unfold, as Barbie adapts to the times and remains a symbol of possibility. Barbie: A Popular Culture Icon “It is impossible to conceive of the toy industry as being anything other than dependent on a popular culture which shapes and structures the meanings carried by toys” (Fleming 40). The relationship between toys and popular culture is symbiotic. While popular culture influences the creation of toys, toys also contribute to the spread and longevity of cultural icons and narratives. Today, one of the most influential, popular, and contested toys of the twentieth century is Mattel’s Barbie doll. Her launch at the New York Toy Fair on 9 March 1959 by Mattel co-founder Ruth Handler was a game-changer in the toy industry. Her adult appearance, symbolised by her fashionable swimsuit and ponytail, was a bold move by Mattel. Despite the doubts from the toy industry which thought nobody would want to play with a doll that had breasts (Tamkin) and Mattel’s skepticism of its commercial success (Westenhouser 14), Barbie was a success, selling over 350,000 units in her first year, and she quickly became an iconic figure, paving the way for other male and female adult dolls. For the first time in mid-century America, Barbie meant children could play with a doll that looked like a woman, not a little girl or a baby. In a 1965 interview, Ruth Handler argued that American girls needed a doll with a “teen-age figure and a lot of glorious, imaginative, high-fashion clothes” (cited in Giacomin and Lubinski 3). In a 1993 interview, Handler said it was “important that Barbie allowed play situations that little girls could project themselves into … to imagine, pretend and to fantasize”. Hence Ruth Handler’s Barbie could be an “avatar for girls to project their dreams onto” (Southwell). Barbie hit the market with a “sassy ponytail, heavy eyeliner, a healthy dose of side-eye and a distinctly adult body” (Blackmore). Her arched eyebrows were matched with a coy sideways glance reflecting her sexual origins (Thong). Mattel did not reveal that Ruth Handler’s Barbie was inspired by a German novelty men’s toy, Bild Lilli, which Handler had purchased on a European holiday in 1955. Mattel fought several lawsuits and eventually secured the rights to Bild Lilli in 1964, which required the German maker of the Bild Lilli doll to not make her again. Barbie dolls, both blonde and brunette, changed little until 1967, when Mattel launch the ‘new’ Barbie doll which is the foundation for today’s Stereotypical Barbie. The same size as the original, thanks to Mattel engineer Jack Ryan she could twist and turn at the waist. Her facial features were softened, she had ‘real’ eyelashes’ and took on an ‘outdoor look’. The new 1967 version of Barbie originally retailed for US$3.00. Mattel, assuming consumers may not want to buy a new Barbie when they already had one, offered buyers the new Barbie at US$1.50 if they traded in their old 1950s Barbie. The television advertising campaign for the new Barbie featured Maureen McMormick (who would go on to play Marcia Brady in the TV series The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974). The original #1 Barbie today sells for over US$25,000 (Reinhard). The most expensive Barbie sold to date was a Stefano Canturi-designed Barbie that sold in 2010 for US$302,500 at Christies in New York (Clarendon). Barbie has been described as “the most successful doll in history”, “the most popular toy in history”, the “empress of fashion dolls” (Rogers 86), the “most famous doll in the world” (Ferorelli), the biggest-selling fashion doll in history (Green and Gellene), and is one if the world’s “most commercially successful toys” (Fleming 41). Barbie is both “idealistic and materialistic” and characterises an “American fantasy” (Tamkin). More so, she is a popular culture icon and “a unique indicator of women’s history” (Vander Bent). The inclusion of Barbie in America’s twentieth-century Time Capsule “cemented her status as a true American icon” (Ford), as did Andy Warhol when he iconised Barbie in his 1968 painting of her (Moore). During the 1950s and 1960s, Barbie’s name was licenced to over 100 companies; while a strategic move that expanded Barbie’s brand presence, it also provided Mattel with substantial royalty payments for decades. This approach helped solidify Barbie’s status as a cultural icon and enabled her to become a lucrative asset for Mattel (Rogers). Sixty-five years later, Barbie has 99% global brand awareness. In 2021, Mattel shipped more than 86 million Barbies globally, manufacturing 164 Barbies a minute (Tomkins). In 2022, Barbie generated gross sales of US$1.49 billion (Statista 2023). With this fiscal longevity and brand recognition, the success of the Barbie film is not surprising. The 2023 film, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Australian Margot Robbie as Barbie and Canadian Ryan Gosling as Ken, as of March 2024 has a global box office revenue of US$1.45 billion, making it the 14th most successful movie of all time and the most successful movie directed by a woman (Statista 2024). Contested Barbie Despite her popularity, Barbie has been the subject of controversy. Original Barbie’s proportions have been criticised for promoting an unrealistic body image (Thong). Barbie’s appearance has received numerous critiques for “representing an unrealistic beauty standard through its former limited skin tone and hair combination” (Lopez). The original Barbie’s measurements, if scaled to life-size, would mean Barbie is unusually tall and has a slim figure, with a height of 5 feet 9 inches, a waist of just 18 inches, and hips of approximately 33 inches. Her bust would measure around 32 inches with an under-bust of 22 inches, and her shoulder width would be approximately 28 inches. Original Barbie’s legs, which are proportionally longer than an average human’s, would make up more than half her height (Thong). A 1996 Australian study scaled Barbie and Ken to adult sizes and compared this with the physical proportions of a range of women and men. They found that the likelihood of finding a man of comparable shape to Ken was 1 in 50. Barbie was more problematic. The chance of a woman being the same proportion as Barbie was 1 in 100,000 (Norton et al. 287). In 2011, The Huffington Post’s Galia Slayen built a life-sized Barbie based on Barbie’s body measurements for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. Slayen concluded that “if Barbie was a real woman, she’d have to walk on all fours due to her proportions”. One report found that if Barbie’s measurements were those of a real woman her “bones would be so frail, it would be impossible for her to walk, and she would only have half a liver” (Golgowski). A 2006 study found that Barbie is a “possible cause” for young girls’ “body dissatisfaction”. In this study, 162 girls from age 5 to 8 were exposed to images of a thin doll (Barbie), a plus-size doll (US doll Emme, size 16), or no doll, and then completed assessments of body image. Girls exposed to Barbie reported “lower body esteem and greater desire for a thinner body shape than girls in the other exposure conditions”. The study concluded that “early exposure to dolls epitomizing an unrealistically thin body ideal may damage girls' body image, which would contribute to an increased risk of disordered eating and weight cycling” (Dittman and Halliwell 283). Another study in 2016 found that “exposure to Barbie” led to “higher thin-ideal internalization”, but found that Barbie had no “impact on body esteem or body dissatisfaction” (Rice et al. 142). In response to such criticism, Mattel slowly introduced a variety of Barbie dolls with more diverse body types, including tall, petite, and curvy models (Tamkin). These changes aim to reflect a broader range of beauty standards and promote a more positive body image. Barbie has always had to accommodate social norms. For this reason, Barbie always must have underpants, and has no nipples. One of the reasons why Ruth Handler’s husband Elliott (also a co-founder of Mattel) was initially against producing the Barbie doll was that she had breasts, reportedly saying mothers would not buy their daughters a doll with breasts (Gerber). Margot Robbie, on playing Barbie, told one news outlet that while Barbie is “sexualized”, she “should never be sexy” (Aguirre). Early prototypes of Barbie made in Japan in the 1950s sexualised her body, leaving her to look like a prostitute. In response, Mattel hired film make-up artist Bud Westmore to redo Barbie’s face and hair with a softer look. Mattel also removed the nipples from the prototypes (Gerber). Barbie’s body and fashion have always seemed to “replicate history and show what was what was happening at the time” (Mowbray), and they also reflect how the female body is continually surveilled. Feminists have had a long history of criticism of Barbie, particularly her projection of the thin ideal. At the 1970 New York Women’s Strike for Equality, feminists shouted “I am not a Barbie doll!” Such debates exemplify the role and impact of toys in shaping and reforming societal norms and expectations. Even the more recent debates regarding the 2023 Barbie film show that Barbie is still a “lightning rod for the messy, knotty contradictions of feminism, sexism, misogyny and body image” (Chappet). Decades of criticism about Barbie, her meaning and influence, have left some to ask “Is Barbie a feminist icon, or a doll which props up the patriarchy?” Of course, she’s both, because “like all real women, Barbie has always been expected to conform to impossible standards” (Chappet). Diversifying Barbie Over the decades Mattel has slowly changed Barbie’s body, including early versions of a black Barbie-like dolls in the 1960s and 1970s such as Francie, Christie, Julia, and Cara. However, it was not until 1980 that Mattel introduced the first black Barbie. African American fashion designer Kitty Black-Perkins, who worked for Mattel from 1971, was the principal designer for black Barbie, saying that “there was a need for the little Black girl to really have something she could play with that looked like her” (cited in Lafond). Black Barbie was marketed as She’s black! She’s beautiful! She’s dynamite! The following year, Asian Barbie was introduced. She was criticised for her nondescript country of origin and dressed in an “outfit that was a mishmash of Chinese, Korean and Japanese ethnic costumes” (Wong). More recently, the Asian Barbies were again criticised for portraying stereotypes, with a recent Asian Barbie dressed as a veterinarian caring for pandas, and Asian violinist Barbie with accompanying violin props, reflecting typical stereotypes of Asians in the US (Wong). In 2016, Mattel introduced a range of Barbie and Ken dolls with seven body types, including more curvy body shapes, 11 skin tones and 28 hairstyles (Siazon). In 2019, other Barbie body types appeared, with smaller busts, less defined waist, and more defined arms. The 2019 range also included Barbies with permanent physical disabilities, one using a wheelchair and one with a prosthetic leg (Siazon). Wheelchair Barbie comes with a wheelchair, and her body has 22 joints for body movement while sitting in the wheelchair. The Prosthetic Barbie comes with a prosthetic leg which can be removed, and was made in collaboration with Jordan Reeve, a 13-year-old disability activist born without a left forearm. In 2020, a No Hair Barbie and a Barbie with the skin condition vitiligo were introduced, and in 2022, Hearing Aid Barbie was also launched. In 2022 other changes were made to Barbie’s and Ken’s bodies, with bodies that became fuller figured and Kens with smaller chests and less masculine body shapes (Dolan). Down Syndrome Barbie was released in 2023, designed in collaboration with the US National Down Syndrome Society to ensure accurate representation. By 2024, Barbie dolls come in 35 skin tones, 97 hairstyles, and nine body types (Mattel 2024). Spanning hundreds of iterations, today the Barbie doll is no longer a homogenous, blond-haired, blue-eyed toy, but rather an evolving social phenomenon, adapting with the times and the markets Mattel expands into. With dolls of numerous ethnicities and body types, Barbie has also embraced inclusivity, catering to the plethora of different consumers across the world (Green and Gellene 1989). Career Barbie While not dismissing Barbie’s problematic place in feminist, gender and racial critiques, Barbie has always been a social influencer. Her early years were marked by a variety of makeovers and modernisations, as have recent changes to Barbie’s body, reflecting the changing social norms of the times. Stereotypical Barbie had her first major makeover in 1961, with her ponytail swapped for a short ‘Bubble Bob’ hairstyle inspired by Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, reflecting women’s emerging social independence (Foreman). In the early 1970s, Barbie’s original demure face with averted eyes was replaced by a new one that “depicted confidence and a forward-facing gaze” (Vander Bent). Her “soft look” was a departure from the mature image of the original 1959 Barbie (Lafond). The ‘soft look’ on Malibu Barbie with her newly sculpted face featured an open smile for the first time, as well as sun-tanned, make-up free skin and sun-kissed blonde hair. The disappearance of Barbie’s coy, sideways glance and the introduction of forward-looking eyes was a development “welcomed by feminists” (Ford). Barbie’s early makeovers, along with her fashion and accessories, including her homes, cars, and pets, contributed to shaping her image as a fashionable and independent woman. Barbie’s various careers and roles have been used to promote ideas of female empowerment. From astronaut to presidential candidate, Barbie has broken barriers in traditionally male-dominated fields. However, the effectiveness of these efforts in promoting female empowerment is a topic of debate. The post-war period in America saw a significant shift in the pattern of living, with a move from urban areas to the suburbs. This was facilitated by a robust post-war economy, favourable government policies like the GI Bill, and increasing urbanisation. The GI Bill played a crucial role by providing low-interest home loans to veterans, making home ownership accessible to a large segment of the population. It was a significant transformation of the American lifestyle and shaped the country’s socio-economic landscape. It is in this context that Barbie’s first Dreamhouse was introduced in the early 1960s, with its mid-century modern décor, hi-fi stereo, and slim-line furniture. This was at a time when most American women could not get a mortgage. Barbie got her first car in 1962, a peach-colored Austin-Healey 3000 MKII convertible, followed short afterwards by a Porsche 911. She has also owned a pink Jaguar XJS, a pink Mustang, a red Ferrari, and a Corvette. Barbie’s car choices of luxurious convertibles spoke to Barbie’s social and economic success. In 1998, Barbie became a NASCAR driver and also signed up to race in a Ferrari in the Formula 1. Barbie’s ‘I Can Be Anything’ range from 2008 was designed to draw kids playing with the dolls toward ambitious careers; one of those careers was as a race car driver (Southwell). While Barbie’s first job as a baby-sitter was not as glamourous or well-paying as her most of her other over 250 careers, it does reflect the cultural landscape Barbie was living in in the 1960s. Babysitter Barbie (1963) featured Barbie wearing a long, pink-striped skirt with ‘babysitter’ emblasoned along the hem and thick-framed glasses. She came with a baby in a crib, a telephone, bottles of soda, and a book. The book was called How to Lose Weight and had only two words of advice, ‘Don’t Eat’. Even though there was a backlash to the extreme dieting advice, Mattel included the book in the 1965 Slumber Party Barbie. Barbie wore pink silk pajamas with a matching robe and came prepared for her sleepover with toiletries, a mirror, the controversial diet book, and a set of scales permanently set at 110 pounds (approx. 50kg), which caused further backlash (Ford). Barbie’s early careers were those either acceptable or accessible to women of the era, such as the Fashion Designer Barbie (1960), Flight Attendant Barbie (1961), and Nurse Barbie (1962). However, in 1965 Barbie went into space, two years after cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, and four years before the American moon landing. Barbie’s career stagnated in the 1970s, and she spends the decade being sports Barbie, perhaps as a response to her unpopularity among vocal second wave feminists and reflecting the economic downturn of the era. America’s shift to the right in the 1980s saw in the introduction of the Yuppie, the young urban professional who lived in the city, had a high-powered career, and was consumption-driven. More women were entering the workforce than ever before. Barbie also entered the workforce, spending less time doing the passive leisure of her earlier self (Ford). It also signals the beginning of neoliberalism in America, and a shift to individualism and the rise of the free market ethos. In 1985, Day-to-Night Barbie was sold as the first CEO Barbie who “could go from running the boardroom in her pink power suit to a fun night out on the town”. For Mattel she “celebrated the workplace evolution of the era and showed girls they could have it all”. But despite Barbie’s early careers, the focus was on her "emphasized femininity”, meaning that while she was now a career woman, her appearance and demeanor did not reflect her job. Astronaut Barbie (1985) is a good example of Barbie’s ‘emphasised femininity’ in how career Barbies were designed and dressed. Astronaut Barbie is clearly reflecting the fashion and culture trends of the 1980s by going into space in a “shiny, hot pink spacesuit”, comes with a second space outfit, a shiny “peplum miniskirt worn over silver leggings and knee-high pink boots” (Bertschi), and her hair is too big to fit into the helmet. A dark-skinned US Astronaut Barbie was released in 1994, which coincided with the start of the Shuttle-Mir Program, a collaboration between the US and Russia which between 1994 and 1998 would see seven American astronauts spend almost 1,000 days living in orbit with Russian cosmonauts on the Mir space station. Throughout the 1990s, Barbie increasingly takes on careers more typically considered to be male careers. But again, her femininity in design, dressing and packaging takes precedence over her career. Police Officer Barbie (1993), for example, has no gun or handcuffs. Instead, she comes with a "glittery evening dress" to wear to the awards dance where she will get the "Best Police Officer Award for her courageous acts in the community”. Police Office Barbie is pictured on the box "lov[ing] to teach safety tips to children". Barbie thus “feminizes, even maternalises, law enforcement” (Rogers 14). In 1992, Teen Talk Barbie was released. She had a voice box programmed to speak four distinct phrases out of a possible 270. She sold for US$25, and Mattel produced 350,000, expecting its popularity. The phrases included ‘I Love Shopping’ and ‘Math class is tough’. The phrase ‘Math class is tough’ was seen by many as reinforcing harmful stereotypes about girls and math. The National Council of American Teachers of Maths objected, as did the American Association of University Women (NYT 1992). In response to criticisms of the gendered representations of Barbie’s careers, Mattel have more recently featured Barbie in science and technology fields including Paleontologist Barbie (1996 and 2012), Computer Engineer Barbie (2010), Robotics Engineer Barbie (2018), Astrophysicist Barbie (2019), Wildlife Conservationist Barbie, Entomologist Barbie (2019), and Polar Marine Biologist Barbie (all in collaboration with National Geographic), Robotics Engineer Barbie (2018), Zoologist Barbie (2021), and Renewable Energy Barbie (2022), which go some way to providing representations that at least encompass the ideal that ‘Girls Can Do Anything’. Barbie over her lifetime has also taken on swimming, track and field, and has been a gymnast. Barbie was an Olympic gold medallist in the 1970s, with Mattel releasing four Barbie Olympians between 1975 and 1976, arguably cashing in on the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Gold Medal Barbie Doll Skier was dressed in a red, white, and blue ski suit completed with her gold medal. Gold Medal Barbie Doll is an Olympic swimmer wearing a red, white, and blue tricot swimsuit, and again wears an Olympic gold medal around her neck. The doll was also produced as a Canadian Olympian wearing a red and white swimsuit. Gold Medal Barbie Skater looks like Barbie Malibu and is dressed in a long-sleeved, pleated dress in red, white, and blue. The outfit included white ice skates and her gold medal. Mattel also made a Gold Medal P.J. Gymnast Doll who vaulted and somersaulted in a leotard of red, white, and blue tricot. She had a warm-up jacket with white sleeves, red cuffs, white slippers, and a gold medal. Mattel, as part of a licencing agreement with the International Olympic Committee, produced a range of toys for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The collection of five Barbies represented the new sports added to the 2020 Olympics: baseball and softball, sport climbing, karate, skateboarding, and surfing. Each Barbie was dressed in a sport-specific uniform and had a gold medal. Barbie Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 Surfer, for example, was dressed in a pink wetsuit top, with an orange surfboard and a Tokyo 2020 jacket. For the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Mattel released a new collection of Barbie dolls featuring among others a para-skiing Barbie who sits on adaptive skis and comes with a championship medal (Douglas). As part of Mattel’s 2023 Barbie Career of the Year doll, the Women in Sports Barbie range shows Barbie in leadership roles in the sports industry, as manager, coach, referee, and sport reporter. General Manager Barbie wears a blue-and-white pinstripe suit accessorised with her staff pass and a smartphone. Coach Barbie has a pink megaphone, playbook, and wears a two-piece pink jacket and athletic shorts. Referee Barbie wears a headset and has a whistle. Sports Reporter Barbie wears a purple, geometric-patterned dress and carries a pink tablet and microphone (Jones). Political Barbie Barbie has run for president in every election year since 1992. The first President Barbie came with an American-themed dress for an inaugural ball and a red suit for her duties in the Oval Office. In 2016, Barbie released an all-female presidential ticket campaign set with a president and vice-president doll. The 2000 President Barbie doll wore a blue pantsuit and featured a short bob cut, red lipstick pearl necklace, and a red gown to change into, “presumably for President Barbie’s inaugural ball” (Lafond). This followed the introduction of UNICEF Ambassador Barbie in 1989. She is packaged as a member of the United States Committee for UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund), which is mandated to provide humanitarian and development aid to children worldwide. Rather problematically, and again with a focus on her femininity rather than the importance of the organisation she represents, she wears a glittery white and blue full length ball gown with star patterning and a red sash. While some proceeds did go to the US Committee for UNICEF, the dressing and packaging featuring an American flag overshadows the career and its philanthropic message. The period signalled the end of the Cold War and was also the year the United States invaded Panama, resulting in a humanitarian disaster when US military forces attacked urban areas in order to overthrow the Noriega administration. Military Barbie Barbie has served in every US military branch (Sicard). Barbie joined the US army in 1989, wearing a female officer’s evening uniform, though with no sense of what she did. While it may be thought Barbie would increase female in interest in a military career, at the time more women were already enlisting that in any other period from the early 1970s to 2012 (Stillwell). Barbie rejoined the army for the 1990-1991 Gulf War, wearing a Desert Combat Uniform and the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagle" patch, and serving as a medic. Barbie also joined the Air Force in 1990, three years before Jeannie Leavitt became the first female Air Force fighter pilot. Barbie wore a green flight suit and leather jacket, and gold-trimmed flight cap. She was a fighter pilot and in 1994, she joined the USAF aerial demonstration team, The Thunderbirds. Busy in the 1990s, she also enlisted in the US Navy wearing women's Navy whites. Marine Corps Barbie appeared in 1992, wearing service and conduct medals (Stillwell). All of Barbie’s uniforms were approved by the Pentagon (Military Women’s Memorial). The 2000 Paratrooper Barbie Special Edition was released with the packaging declaring “let’s make a support drop with first aid and food boxes”. She was dressed in undefined military attire which includes a helmet, dog tags, parachute, boots, and hairbrush. Barbie’s Influence In 2014, Barbie became a social media influencer with the launch of the @barbiestyle Instagram account, and in 2015, Barbie launched a vlog on YouTube to talk directly to girls about issues they face. The animated series features Barbie discussing a range of topics including depression, bullying, the health benefits of meditation, and how girls have a habit of apologising when they don’t have anything to be sorry about. The Official @Barbie YouTube channel has over eleven million global subscribers and 23 billion minutes of content watched, making Barbie the #1 girls’ brand on YouTube. Barbie apps average more than 7 million monthly active users and the Instagram count boasts over 2 million followers. The 2023 Barbie film really does attest to Barbie’s influence 70 years after her debut. Barbie, as this article has shown, is more than an influencer and more than a doll, if she ever really was only a doll. She is a popular culture icon, regardless of whether we love her or not. Barbie has sometimes been ahead of the game, and sometimes has been problematically represented, but she has always been influential. Her body, race, ability, careers, independence, and political aspirations have spoken different things to those who play with her. She is fiercely defended, strongly criticised, and shirks from neither. She is also liberating, empowering, straight, and queer. As the articles in this issue reflect, Barbie, it seems, really can be anything. Imagining and Interrogating Barbie in Popular Culture The feature article in this issue outlines how Australian Barbie fans in the 1960s expressed their creativity through the designing and making of their own wardrobes for the doll. Through examining articles from the Australian Women’s Weekly, Donna Lee Brien reveals this rich cultural engagement that was partly driven by thrift, and mostly by enjoyment. Eva Boesenberg examines the social and environmental effects of a plastic doll that is positioned as an ecological ambassador. While there is no doubt that climate change is one of our most pressing social issues, Boesenberg questions the motivations behind Barbie’s eco-crusade: is she an apt role-model to teach children the importance of environmental issues, or is this just a case of corporate greenwashing? Emma Caroll Hudson shifts the focus to entertainment, with an exploration of the marketing of the 2023 blockbuster film Barbie. Here she argues that the marketing campaign was highly successful, utilising a multi-faceted approach centred on fan participation. She highlights key components of the campaign to reveal valuable insights into how marketing can foster a cultural phenomenon. Revna Altiok’s article zooms in on the depiction of Ken in the 2023 film, revealing his characterisation to be that of a ‘manic pixie dream boy’ whose lack of identity propels him on a journey to self-discovery. This positioning, argues Altiok, pulls into focus social questions around gender dynamics and how progress can be truly achieved. Rachel Wang turns the spotlight to Asian identity within the Barbie world, revealing how from early iterations a vague ‘Oriental’ Barbie was accompanied by cultural stereotyping. Despite later, more nuanced interpretations of country-specific Asian dolls, problematic features remained embedded. This, Wang argues, positions Asian Barbies as the racial ‘other’. Kaela Joseph, Tanya Cook, and Alena Karkanias’s article examines how the 2023 Barbie film reflects different forms of fandom. Firstly, Joseph interrogates how the Kens’ patriarchal identity is expressed through acts of collective affirmational fandom. Here, individual fans legitimise their positions within the group by mastering and demonstrating their knowledge of popular culture phenomena. Joseph contrasts this with transformational fandom, which is based upon reimagining the source material to create new forms. The transformation of the titular character of the Barbie movie forms the basis of Eli S’s analysis. S examines how the metaphor of ‘unboxing’ the doll provides an avenue through which to understand Barbie’s metamorphosis from constrained doll to aware human as she journeys from the pink plastic Barbie Land to the Real World. Anna Temel turns her critical gaze to how the 2023 film attempts to reposition Barbie’s image away from gender stereotypes to a symbol of feminist empowerment. Director Greta Gerwig, Temel argues, critiques the ‘ideal woman’ and positions Barbie as a vehicle through which contemporary feminism and womanhood can be interrogated. Temel finds that this is not always successfully articulated in the depiction of Barbie in the film. The reading of the Barbie movie’s Barbie Land as an Asexual Utopia is the focus of Anna Maria Broussard’s article. Here Broussard draws the focus to the harmonious community of dolls who live without social expectations of sexuality. Barbie provides a popular culture reflection of the Asexual experience, expressed through Barbie’s rejection of a heteronormative relationship both in Barbie Land and the Real World. Completing this collection is Daisy McManaman’s article interrogating the multiple iterations of the doll’s embodied femininity. Incorporating an ethnographic study of the author’s relationship with the doll, McManaman uncovers that Barbie serves as a site of queer joy and a role model through which to enjoy and explore femininity and gender. These articles have been both intellectually stimulating to edit, and a joy. We hope you enjoy this collection that brings a new academic lens to the popular cultural phenomenon that is Barbie. References Aguirre, Abby. “Barbiemania! Margot Robbie Opens Up about the Movie Everyone’s Waiting For.” Vogue, 24 May 2023. 16 Mar. 2024 <https://www.vogue.com/article/margot-robbie-barbie-summer-cover-2023-interview>. Bertschi, Jenna. “Barbie: An Astronaut for the Ages.” Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, 18 Jul. 2023. 11 Mar. 2024 <https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/barbie-astronaut-ages>. Blackmore, Erin. “Barbie’s Secret Sister Was a German Novelty Doll.” History.com, 14 Jul. 2023. 11 mar. 2024 <https://www.history.com/news/barbie-inspiration-bild-lilli>. Chappet, Marie-Claire. “Why Is Barbie So Controversial? How Ever-Changing Standards for Women Have Affected the Famous Doll.” Harpers Bazaar, 18 Jul. 2023. 11 Mar. 2024 <https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/culture-news/a44516323/barbie-controversial-figure/>. Clarendon, Dan. “The Most Valuable Barbie Doll Auctioned for $302,500 — Which Others Carry Value?” Market Realist, 14 Apr. 2023. 15 Mar. 2o24 <https://marketrealist.com/fast-money/most-valuable-barbies/>. Dittman, Helga, and Emma Halliwell. “Does Barbie Make Girls Want to Be Thin? The Effect of Experimental Exposure to Images of Dolls on the Body Image of 5- to 8-Year Old Girls.” Developmental Psychology 42.2 (2006): 283-292. DOI: 10.1037/0012-1649.42.2.283. Dolan, Leah. “Barbie Unveils Its First-Ever Doll with Hearing Aids.” CNN, 11 May 2022. 16 Mar. 2024 <https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/barbie-hearing-aid-ken-vitiligo/index.html>. 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Giacomin, Valeria, and Christina Lubinski. 2023. “Entrepreneurship as Emancipation: Ruth Handler and the Entrepreneurial Process ‘in Time’ and ‘over Time’, 1930s–1980s.” Business History Online. 20 Mar. 2024 <https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2023.2215193>. Golgowski, Nina. “Bones So Frail It Would Be Impossible to Walk and Room for Only Half a Liver: Shocking Research Reveals What Life Would Be Like If a REAL Woman Had Barbie's body.” Daily Mirror, 14 Apr. 2013. 19 Mar. 2024 <https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308658/How-Barbies-body-size-look-real-life-Walking-fours-missing-half-liver-inches-intestine.html>. Green, Michelle, and Denise Gellene. “As a Tiny Plastic Star Turns 30, the Real Barbie and Ken Reflect on Life in the Shadow of the Dolls.” People, 6 Mar. 1989. 15 Mar. 2024 <https://people.com/archive/as-a-tiny-plastic-star-turns-30-the-real-barbie-and-ken-reflect-on-life-in-the-shadow-of-the-dolls-vol-31-no-9/>. Jones, Alexis. “Barbie's New 'Women in Sports' Dolls Are a Major Win For Athletes and Fans.” Popsugar, 9 Aug. 2023. 17 Mar. 2024 <https://www.popsugar.com/family/mattel-women-in-sports-barbie-49268194>. Lafond, Hannah. “How Barbies Have Changed over the Years.” The List, 7 Jul. 2023. 16 Mar. 2024 <https://www.thelist.com/1333916/barbies-changed-over-the-years/>. Lopez, Sandra. “10 Barbie Dolls Inspired by Real-Life Iconic Latinas.” Remezcla, 19 Jul. 2023. 20 Mar. 2024 <https://remezcla.com/lists/culture/barbie-dolls-inspired-by-real-life-iconic-latinas/>. Military Women’s Memorial. “Barbie Enlists.” 15 Mar. 2024 <https://womensmemorial.org/curators-corner/barbie-enlists/>. Moore, Hannah. “Why Warhol Painted Barbie.” BBC, 1 Oct. 2015. 15 Mar. 2024 <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34407991>. Mowbray, Nicole. “Dressing Barbie: Meet the Designer Who Created a Miniature Fashion Icon.” CNN, 14 Jul. 2023. 17 Mar. 2024 <https://edition.cnn.com/style/dressing-barbie-iconic-fashion-looks>. 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Siazon, Kevin John. “The New 2019 Barbie Fashionistas Are More Diverse than Ever.” Today’s Parents, 12 Feb. 2019. 19 Mar. 2024 <https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/trending/the-new-2019-barbie-fashionistas-are-more-diverse-than-ever/>. Sicard. Sarah. “A Few Good Dolls: Barbie Has Served in Every Military Branch.” Military Times, 28 Jul. 2023. 15 Mar. 2024 <https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2023/07/27/a-few-good-dolls-barbie-has-served-in-every-military-branch/>. Slayen, Galia. “The Scary Reality of a Real-Life Barbie Doll.” Huffington Post, 8 Apr. 2011. 19 Mar. 2024 <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-scary-reality-of-a-re_b_845239>. Southwell, Haxel. “Plastic on Track: Barbie's History in Motorsport”. Road and Track, 21 Jul. 2023. 15 Mar. 2024 <https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a44588941/plastic-on-track-barbie-history-in-motorsport/>. 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Taishū engeki—Entertainment for the Masses? What do a highway robber, a samurai, and a geisha have in common? They are all played by the same actor, often at the same time, in an incredible flurry of costume change, in a contemporary form of Japanese theatre called taishū engeki. Taishū engeki, translated as vaudeville, literally, “theatre for the masses”, would be better described as a parallel world of fantasy, glitter, and manga-esque beautiful men wearing elaborate wigs and even more elaborate kimonos, who dance and gracefully sway their hips to portray women, and simultaneously do their best to seduce the overwhelmingly female audience. Taishū engeki represents an escape into a world of romances enacted through dance, of tragic love stories that somehow end well when the main character reappears in the second act as a brilliant dragon-slaying god, and of literal dances with dragons. One performance by dance troupe Gekidan Kokoro included onna-gata buyō (traditional Japanese dance performed by a man playing the part of a woman), a play about brotherly love and devotion where the glamorous actor from the first part was a not too bright young boy (depicted with snot running down his nose), more crossdressing and dancing, a few shamisen songs, a totally unexpected breakdancing piece, and a collaboration with Iwami Kagura—a famous group from Shimane who performs sacred dances in association with various Shinto rituals. Despite being able to combine theatrical skills with dance and acrobatic feats, taishū engeki is seen as a minor theatrical genre, often included in the category of folk arts (Kurata 42), or “low art” intended merely for fun and entertainment” (Endo 151). Although the name would indicate that is addresses a wider audience (which may have been the case decades ago, when cheap entertainment was not so readily available as it is today), taishū engeki caters to a specific category of people. The performers are organised in small itinerant troupes who spend about one month in a specific location, putting on two shows daily—one starting at noon, and one in the evening. In most cases, the show has two parts: one is a play, followed by a free program of dancing, acrobatic features, and even playing instruments such as drums or shamisen. The audience itself consists of two categories: the local people, living in the vicinity of the small theatres where performances are held, and who might attend each new show two or three times, and the fans, who follow their favourite actor from place to place to the limit of their time and financial resources. When it comes to performing arts, Japan’s most famous form of theatre is definitely kabuki: a performative genre highly appreciated by the Japanese and whose extravagant costumes and make-up, as well as exaggerated gestures eliminate some of the language barriers and make it (at least to a certain degree) comprehensible to non-Japanese speakers. Besides kabuki, noh (a highly ritualised form of theatre characterised by its use of masks) and bunraku (puppet theatre) are most often mentioned together, popular both within and outside the borders of Japan as entertainment and objects of scholarly research. As a scholar of Japanese studies, I had learned about these three categories in my first year as an undergraduate student, but it took me over ten years in Japan to discover taishū engeki, something that Robert Schneider and Nathan Schneider (256) ironically call “a weed in Japan’s exquisite garden of classical theatre and a living fossil in the detritus of Asian modernity”. Is taishū engeki really a fossil or a weed accidentally left on the stage of classical theatre? Its faithful fans would beg to differ, and so would the accomplishments of some troupes, who are entirely self-sufficient, renting the venues where they perform and travelling with their own light and sound systems, as well as hundreds of exquisite costumes and wigs. To give just an example, Aotsuki Shinya, the leader of Gekidan Kokoro, told me that he possesses more than two hundred wigs, and mid-September this year will attempt to perform 120 different dances, with different costumes, during the three days that will celebrate his birthday. In contrast with noh or kabuki, where each gesture is highly stylised and must be performed in a pre-defined order, in a set context, taishū engeki is flexible: plays are based on known stories, but the plot is overly simplified, so that the audience can focus on the main characters and the way they perform more than on the storyline, and the second act is actually the main attraction of the show, when the actors can showcase their special skills to the delight of the audience. Kabuki developed in the seventeenth century, and it was aimed at the “common people”, while “the true professionals, the performers of the [noh] and the kyōgen [comedy], began to retreat behind the curtain of refinement” (Tsubaki 4). In the twenty-first century, noh has become more of a mixture of performance and ritual, appreciated by a small number of specialists, and often staged to accompany religious manifestations. Kabuki, on the other hand, has taken its place as the most valued theatrical art, with fans and aficionados vying for the best seats (whose prices can go up to 30,000 Japanese yen, and yet are hard to procure), but taishū engeki shows no signs that it might ever reach that level of popularity. In 1995 Marilyn Ivy saw it as a “discourse of the vanishing”, an art that might disappear as, while “it appears to carry on an unarguably Japanese knowledge” (239), it has failed to create a “boom” or a vast audience. While novelty is part of the performance, it seems to somehow be not new enough, not entrancing enough. The actors are talented, creative, and versatile, but they do not attain the fame level of their kabuki counterparts. Despite all these, as an anthropologist, I could not help but wonder why taishū engeki has not attracted more scholarly interest. The studies on this topic, both in Japanese and English, are far less numerous than those on butoh, for example, “a post-modern dance genre” which has been the focus of both practical and theoretical interest on the part of Japanese studies specialists. To give just an example, in his book on Japanese theatre, Benito Ortolani has a subchapter on butoh, but does not even mention taishū engeki. Prince(ss) Charming My first encounters with taishū engeki were due to a class project—I had started teaching a class on theatre as ritual performance, and wanted my students to have a first-hand experience. The project was a success: students who had shown no enthusiasm at all when reading the syllabus were mesmerised once the performance had begun, to the level that they had attended shows by themselves, and even started following the actors on various social networks. Taishū engeki surpasses all expectations of a first-time viewer. It follows a canon, just like kabuki, but that canon is audience-oriented, so without having ever been part of that audience, it is difficult to imagine what will happen on stage. As mentioned above, each performance has two parts: the first one is a play, whose content changes during the one-month performance, usually based on historical events familiar to the audience, but not restricted to that, an intermission during which the leader of the troupe greets the audience, talks about the schedule for the remainder of the month, and promotes the merchandise available for sale (T-shirts, fans, boxes of sweets), followed by a free-style show where the performers are free to display their best skills. Photography is not allowed during the first part—and this may be due to the fact that most troupe leaders create their own plays using the vast available materials, and are reluctant to share that with other troupes—but is encouraged during the second part. Video taking is forbidden at all times. Crossdressing is a significant part of the performance, with men playing the part of women who are attractive to other women, and women playing the part of men who also attract women. The actresses, however, never become the star of the troupe. Just like in the case of Takarazuka Theatre, where the otoko yaku (women playing the male roles) receive significantly more appreciation than the female counterparts, the heavily made-up male actors of taishū engeki represent the dreamy ideal of their dedicated fans. Each performing group is centered around one male actor who is representative of the troupe—usually the leader or the leader’s son, and who gathers a dedicated fan base composed of women (most of whom are middle-aged or older). These women try to attend as many shows as they can, literally showering their favourite actor with money. The few available studies on taishū engeki tended to focus on two major aspects: crossdressing (mostly of the onnagata—men playing women—type) and on the money the actors receive while on stage. Fig. 1: An actor on the Gofukuza Stage (Osaka) displaying money gifts, 13 June 2018. Schneider and Schneider, for example, looked into how gender is performed, and what rules are applied when performing gender. Their conclusion? There are no clear rules, as “taishū engeki plays with gender, but it also quite simply plays gender” (262). My own interest was not in the actual gender performed, but in the most pervasive and permanent element of all taishū engeki performances: seduction. Those who go to see these shows may do so for mere amusement—and their expectations are never disappointed, as the costumes are complex and flamboyant, and the performers are skilled dancers, but those who go faithfully do so due to their admiration for a certain actor. The first act (the historical play) is a convention where the star appears slightly more human—less make-up, sometimes performing the role of a man—always strong and masculine, which is quite an artistic feat seeing that even in the role of a man, the actors will wear specific make-up and false eyelashes. The Takarazuka Revue, an all-female group founded in 1914, has a large and consistent fan base made-up almost entirely of women who fall in love with the actress playing the main male roles—a phenomenon explained by the desire to temporarily live in a fantasy world. The difference between the Takarazuka actresses and the taishū engeki actors is that the former do not aim to seduce, but to invite the audience into a dream world, while the latter’s goal is to fully entrance. Regardless of the gender they play, the taishū engeki stars create erotic characters, just like their kabuki precursors, where, as Samuel L. Leiter (212) puts it, “eros remained primary”. Dressed in kimonos of intricate patterns that go far outside the lines of tradition, and are representative of the creative spirit of the performer, using make-up which completely transforms their physiognomies through the heavy use of eyeliner, glitter, false eyelashes, and wearing exquisite wigs, the actors invite the audience into a dream world where the Fairy Godmother gave the best dress to the prince, not the princess. For hundreds if not thousands of years, the folktales focussed around the image of a beautiful prince, the kalos kagathos hero (beautiful and virtuous, the ancient Greek ideal) who takes the maiden from distress and into a happily ever after. Taishū engeki heroes switch perspectives: it is not Prince Charming, but Princess Charming, an utterly beautiful creature who enchants the female audience by being the impossible. Princess Charming represents an embodiment of the best possible features—beauty, glamour, grace, sex appeal, elegance—and none of the negative ones—lack of manners, roughness, insensitivity. Moreover, Princess Charming is accessible. For a mere 2,000 yen, anybody can spend three hours in her company, and shaking her hand starts at a similarly low price—2,000 or 3,000 yen for a trinket bought during the intermission, to hand over as a gift during the performance. Fig. 2: Aotsuki Shinya as a romantic lady in a flowing kimono, Gofukuza, 9 July 2022. Dressed as females, the actors move their bodies with the grace of a geisha, bat their eyelashes, smile coquettishly, and even wink at the audience. As males, they are either abandoned lovers who drown their sorrows in drink, or fierce warriors dancing with masks and swords. In all circumstances, they present exaggerated feminine or masculine ideals, with the difference that femininity is emphasised through the overuse of garments and accessories, while masculinity will almost always involve a certain degree of nakedness: chest, arms, legs. The reasons are both practical (showing various naked body parts would destroy the dreamy feminine beauty wrapped up in layers of cloth and glitter), and symbolic: femininity is mysterious and fragile, and thus cannot easily be revealed, while masculinity must re-assert its strength and vitality. The body presented on stage is more of an artistic act than the performance itself, because it is there that most of the actor’s talent is poured. Creating a persona means borrowing from the “traditional” Japanese culture which includes geisha, courtesans, heavy wigs, and heavily embroidered kimonos, as well as the contemporary manga and cosplay culture. With exaggerated eyes and hairstyles as the central features of the head, the characters moving in front of the audience seem to have directly descended from (or drawn the viewers into, “Take On Me” style) the pages of a fantasy manga. An interview with Aotsuki Shinya (stage name), leader and star of the Kokoro (“Heart”) troupe conducted on 15 June 2022, did not offer any insightful glimpses into the metamorphosis process. While acknowledging that he cannot present his true self on stage, thus using make-up to become Aotsuki Shinya, the actor did not admit to any conscious attempt of becoming attractive. In his own words, all their efforts are for the benefit of the audience, directed towards helping them have fun. “Tanoshii”, “fun” seemed to be a key concept when staging a new performance, and the reasoning behind that is easy to follow. Unlike the more elevated kabuki, a taishū engeki theatre is a small cosy place where the audience can interact quite freely with the performers, who do not shy away from showing momentarily glimpses of the face behind the mask: forgetting a line and admitting to it, laughing at a joke said by another actor, kneeling prettily to receive gifts from their fans. Rather than gender fluid, the bodies in taishū engeki are genderless because they are not, nor do they claim to be, real. An actor on the traditional stage is a photography, or, if the setting includes fantastic elements, a painting of an imaginable universe. An actor on the taishū engeki stage turns their body into a manga drawing: something that does not exist in real life, but it is highly desirable. Kabuki actors staged eroticism by impersonating women; taishū engeki actors play with desire becoming in turns both Cinderella and the Prince. Figs. 3 & 4: Aotsuki Shinya as a fantastic character (fig. 3) and as the god Susano-wo slaying the dragon (fig. 4). “Fantasy, Sweet Fantasy” Analysing the loyalty that Takarazuka actresses inspire into their fans, Makiko Yamanashi interprets it as something that goes beyond (dreams of) physical love or mere escapism, and sees it as the desire to belong to an ideal community of women—friends, sisters, mothers. While not wrong, this approach seems to gloss over the real erotic feelings and the longing for something not of this world which are most definitely present among performative arts (be they kabuki, revue, vaudeville, butoh, modern theatre) aficionados. The men performed by the Takarazuka actresses do not exist in real life, and just as in the case of taishū engeki actors, make-up plays a crucial role. Lorie Brau even mentions an incident where an American director hired to stage a production of “West Side Story” required the actresses playing male roles to give up their false eyelashes—a change that did not last after the director left (86). The taishū engeki actors are warriors who bring back to life the god Izanagi, the creator of Japan, who fought an army of underworld monsters, while wearing eyeliner, eyelashes, and sparkling make-up. They are completely unrecognisable without make-up, and yet changing their appearance takes approximately ten minutes, much less than it would take a drag queen to turn from ordinary man into glamorous woman (at least forty minutes). I am not mentioning here the drag queens by chance—the two types of performances are similar enough that they lead to collaborations. On 10 June 2022, the troupe Kokoro performed at the Gofukuza Theatre in Umeda in the company of five drag queens well known on the Osaka stage: Feminina, Rulu Daisy, Madame Cocco, Ozu, and Il Rosa. One characteristic of drag performances is that they are actor-centred: they are not about the storyline, but about the performer’s creation—“channeling your inner femininity, fusing it with the male, and creating something otherworldly” (Hastings). The noticeable difference between drag and taishū engeki is that drag is actor-oriented, while taishū engeki is audience-oriented. Drag queens interact with the audiences and entertain, but the focus is internal, towards freeing something that had been developing within. Taishū engeki actors do choose their characters, of course, and have individual preferences, but this is secondary to their goal of captivating the audiences. Both categories of performers learn to re-invent their bodies, to re-create them on stage; however, in one case we witness an individual metamorphosis from real life to theatrical persona, and in the other we have one individual who can shapeshift into whatever character might work better magic on the people in front of him. Drag is about freedom while taishū engeki is about seduction. Fig. 5: Il Rosa and two actors of the Shin troupe, Gofukuza, 10 June 2022 Taishū engeki may not be kabuki: it is not celebrated by the media or the researchers, and many people in contemporary Japanese society see it as an inferior form of entertainment. Considering the low price of the tickets and the fact that shows are seldom sold out, one might worry about its future. Nevertheless, a visit to the backstage of Gofukuza during the month when Shin was performing revealed a large room full of costumes, and another one full of wig boxes—more than two hundred, according to Aotsuki Shinya. The Shin troupe was founded five years ago, so everything was still new and shiny—a sign that the genre will not disappear any time in the near future. The same visit, when I could interact with the actors in their day-to-day attires, using their regular voices, and standing near the costumes and wigs like exhibits in a museum, made one more thing acutely clear: the fact that their performances are a fantasy world. More of a fantasy world than a kabuki performance (to remain consistent with the comparison), where the setting is clearly a setting, separate from the audience. The blurred lines between stage and audience, between performance and flirting of the taishū engeki create a tangible fantasy, where one can not only fall in love with the Prince(ss) Charming, but maybe even take them to a ball. References Brau, Lorie. “The Women’s Theater of Takarazuka”. TDR 34.4 (Winter 1990): 79-95. Endo, Yukihide. “Reconsidering the Traveling Theater of Today’s Japan: An Interdisciplinary Approach to a Stigmatized Form of Japanese Theater.” Athens Journal of Humanities and Arts 2.3. Hastings, Magnus. Why Drag? Hong Kong: Chronicle Books, 2016. Ivy, Marilyn. Discourses of the Vanishing. Modernity Phantasm Japan. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Kurata, Ryosuke. “Taishū Engeki as a Show Business: Exploring the Segmentation of Customers.” Mathesis Universalis 17.2. Leiter, Samuel L. “From Gay to Gei: The Onnagata and the Creation of Kabuki’s Female Characters.” In A Kabuki Reader: History and Performance, ed. Samuel L. Leitner. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. 211-229. Ortolani, Benito. The Japanese Theatre. From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1995. Schneider, Robert, and Nathan Schneider. “A Dive and a Dance with Kabuki Vaudeville: Taishū Engeki Comes Back!” New Theater Quarterly 36.3 (2020). 29 July 2020 <https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-theatre-quarterly/article/abs/dive-and-a-dance-with-kabuki-vaudeville-taishu-engeki-comes-back/BB72486E86C79B70730B6F2DB5EC0FF8>. Yamanashi, Makiko. A History of the Takarazuka Revue Since 1914: Modernity, Girls’ Culture, Japan Pop. Leiden: Global Oriental, 2012.