Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "France – Social life and customs – Juvenile literature"

The literature of Afghanistan speaks the voice of every violated soul either it is male or female. Specially, it speaks the voice of violence, taking place towards every male, female and child. Violence is not only a harsh threat to our life but it blocks our happiness. Violence totally kills our ambition, and simultaneously our every future positivity by which we can face the bold incidents coming in front of us. Actually violence has no clear cut definition and explanation. A process of creative fiction has always been a segment of the creative evolution of the society itself. Afghan fiction has also the same segment and immersed in the social and political milieu. In the tumultuous era of past three or more decades and especially after 1979, there is change of patterns and subjectivity of Afghan writers. These writers have almost created a body of a literature that is homeless in every respect and the almost literature is produced largely by the diasporas creative souls of Afghanistan. These writers due to the miserable condition left the country and now living in foreign lands. The phases of different type of war and violence have affected Afghanistan and inflicted so much harm on the country. This harm was to such extent that the social life of common people along with their customs and traditions are completely in disorder and a state of disarray. So Afghan writers worked for the improvements and every Afghan artist became so much conscious and keen to preserve and worked for the recreation of Afghanistan’s post. It is quite natural Afghan writers blend their fiction in their memory of time they lived in the country to and their highly emotional and experiences in Afghanistan. Afghan writers, haunted strongly by memories, and they prefer talking about only Afghanistan. They rarely talks about their plight as exiled and refuge in the host country like U.S.A and France. The diverse area of study finds its face in the faithful exploration of day to day life exclusively from the perspective of the common victimized Afghan. This study presents a sequence and execution of violence as well as guilt and redemption in the novel the Kite Runner by Khalid Housseini.

This paper describes types of phrases expressed in Ternate oral literature. As various types of Indonesian literature, it is also found that oral literature of Ternate consists of many different forms and type, this variety can be classified into different classification such as based on the period of before and after the establishment of Islamic teaching in this area. Ternate oral literature has a close relationship with the tradition of its society such as its ethics, social and economic life both internally and externally. Oral tradition in the sultanate of Ternate is a set of habits and behaviors of daily life inherited from generation to generation. Before the introduction of Islam which is known as the period ofmomoleperiod, this country already has a number of oral traditions that includes cultural values, customs, community systems and belief systems.In line with the development of Ternate language into lingua-france in North Maluku, Ternate literature then became the property of the community as North Maluku. Even it expands spreading alongside the development of the power of the Sultanate of Ternate from XV to XVII century. It is no wonder that if the oral literature is influenced by local languages as well as Malay, Arabic and Javanese languages.

This article explores the intersecting processes of construction of the home, social, and individual identities through domestic practices inside French housing. It examines the design and occupation of French homes as crucial moments for the consolidation of subjectivities, beliefs, and ideologies manifested through daily actions that are influenced by normative cultural systems. In specific, it looks at codified domestic behaviours and their aesthetic dimension, focusing on how the French “art of living” has influenced taste, design, appropriation, and decoration of domestic interiors. Architectural treatises along with etiquette manuals are analysed as they both represent—through the written word and architectural drawings—cultural and gender stereotypes as well as societal norms and expectations that inform housing design and domestic practices. These documents directly assist in the cultural construction of the domestic space, uncovering mechanisms of reproduction and representation that inform the use and design of residential architecture. By focusing on women’s lived experiences, this research looks at the consolidation of feminine domestic cultures and how they fostered small-scale physical transformations of dwellings’ interiors through daily negotiations that define self-identity and interpersonal power relations. These dynamics are referred to as “cultural domesticity.” The latter frames this study along with feminist literature, situating women’s contribution to the aesthetic and spatial development of French apartments. What emerges from this study is that the French state historically exercised a regulatory power that impacted daily life and housing design.

The authors have considered the topic, rarely mentioned in the scientific literature, which are the inscriptions and symbols placed on polonical banners. A three-volume dissertation by Monika Salmon-Siama, entitled Vexillological heritage of the Polish immigration in northern France (1919-2018), turned out to be a contributing factor to this kind of scientific digression. In the introduction, they analyzed the state of research on Polish emigration, settled in northern France, indicating the main reasons for their poor representativeness in comparison with the entire emigre history of the Polish diaspora. Referring to the proper vexological studies, they brought closer the richness of sources that we deal with in the discussed region, and then showed the complexity of this type of bibliological-semiotic research. Taking up the subject matter from the Westphalian-French borderline, inevitably, after M. Salmon Siama, they showed aesthetic and axiological values, including patriotic values, a group of symbols and inscriptions discussed, and in turn showed the durability of the Polish immigrant identity of subsequent generations living in northern France. The article is also an attempt to show the reader the diversity and richness of organizational and social life over almost a century, introduces the mentality and customs of the Polish Diaspora, and shows the underestimated role of the Polish banner.

At a time when almost every human transgression, illness, profession and other personal aspect of life has been chronicled in autobiographical writing (Rak)—in 1998 Zinsser called ours “the age of memoir” (3)—writing about fat is one of the most recent subjects to be addressed in this way. This article surveys a range of contemporary autobiographical texts that are titled with, or revolve around, that powerful and most evocative word, “fat”. Following a number of cultural studies of fat in society (Critser; Gilman, Fat Boys; Fat: A Cultural History; Stearns), this discussion views fat in socio-cultural terms, following Lupton in understanding fat as both “a cultural artefact: a bodily substance or body shape that is given meaning by complex and shifting systems of ideas, practices, emotions, material objects and interpersonal relationships” (i). Using a case study approach (Gerring; Verschuren), this examination focuses on a range of texts from autobiographical cookbooks and memoirs to novel-length graphic works in order to develop a preliminary taxonomy of these works. In this way, a small sample of work, each of which (described below) explores an aspect (or aspects) of the form is, following Merriam, useful as it allows a richer picture of an under-examined phenomenon to be constructed, and offers “a means of investigating complex social units consisting of multiple variables of potential importance in understanding the phenomenon” (Merriam 50). Although the sample size does not offer generalisable results, the case study method is especially suitable in this context, where the aim is to open up discussion of this form of writing for future research for, as Merriam states, “much can be learned from […] an encounter with the case through the researcher’s narrative description” and “what we learn in a particular case can be transferred to similar situations” (51). Pro-Fat Autobiographical WritingAlongside the many hundreds of reduced, low- and no-fat cookbooks and weight loss guides currently in print that offer recipes, meal plans, ingredient replacements and strategies to reduce fat in the diet, there are a handful that promote the consumption of fats, and these all have an autobiographical component. The publication of Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes in 2008 by Ten Speed Press—publisher of Mollie Katzen’s groundbreaking and influential vegetarian Moosewood Cookbook in 1974 and an imprint now known for its quality cookbooks (Thelin)—unequivocably addressed that line in the sand often drawn between fat and all things healthy. The four chapter titles of this cookbook— “Butter,” subtitled “Worth It,” “Pork Fat: The King,” “Poultry Fat: Versatile and Good For You,” and, “Beef and Lamb Fats: Overlooked But Tasty”—neatly summarise McLagan’s organising argument: that animal fats not only add an unreplaceable and delicious flavour to foods but are fundamental to our health. Fat polarised readers and critics; it was positively reviewed in prominent publications (Morris; Bhide) and won influential food writing awards, including 2009 James Beard Awards for Single Subject Cookbook and Cookbook of the Year but, due to its rejection of low-fat diets and the research underpinning them, was soon also vehemently criticised, to the point where the book was often described in the media as “controversial” (see Smith). McLagan’s text, while including historical, scientific and gastronomic data and detail, is also an outspokenly personal treatise, chronicling her sensual and emotional responses to this ingredient. “I love fat,” she begins, continuing, “Whether it’s a slice of foie gras terrine, its layer of yellow fat melting at the edges […] hot bacon fat […] wilting a plate of pungent greens into submission […] or a piece of crunchy pork crackling […] I love the way it feels in my mouth, and I love its many tastes” (1). Her text is, indeed, memoir as gastronomy / gastronomy as memoir, and this cookbook, therefore, an example of the “memoir with recipes” subgenre (Brien et al.). It appears to be this aspect – her highly personal and, therein, persuasive (Weitin) plea for the value of fats – that galvanised critics and readers.Molly Chester and Sandy Schrecengost’s Back to Butter: A Traditional Foods Cookbook – Nourishing Recipes Inspired by Our Ancestors begins with its authors’ memoirs (illness, undertaking culinary school training, buying and running a farm) to lend weight to their argument to utilise fats widely in cookery. Its first chapter, “Fats and Oils,” features the familiar butter, which it describes as “the friendly fat” (22), then moves to the more reviled pork lard “Grandma’s superfood” (22) and, nowadays quite rarely described as an ingredient, beef tallow. Grit Magazine’s Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient utilises the rhetoric that fat, and in this case, lard, is a traditional and therefore foundational ingredient in good cookery. This text draws on its publisher’s, Grit Magazine (published since 1882 in various formats), long history of including auto/biographical “inspirational stories” (Teller) to lend persuasive power to its argument. One of the most polarising of fats in health and current media discourse is butter, as was seen recently in debate over what was seen as its excessive use in the MasterChef Australia television series (see, Heart Foundation; Phillipov). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that butter is the single fat inspiring the most autobiographical writing in this mode. Rosie Daykin’s Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes from a Little Neighborhood Bakery is, for example, typical of a small number of cookbooks that extend the link between baking and nostalgia to argue that butter is the superlative ingredient for baking. There are also entire cookbooks dedicated to making flavoured butters (Vaserfirer) and a number that offer guides to making butter and other (fat-based) dairy products at home (Farrell-Kingsley; Hill; Linford).Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef is typical among chef’s memoirs in using butter prominently although rare in mentioning fat in its title. In this text and other such memoirs, butter is often used as shorthand for describing a food that is rich but also wholesomely delicious. Hamilton relates childhood memories of “all butter shortcakes” (10), and her mother and sister “cutting butter into flour and sugar” for scones (15), radishes eaten with butter (21), sautéing sage in butter to dress homemade ravoli (253), and eggs fried in browned butter (245). Some of Hamilton’s most telling references to butter present it as an staple, natural food as, for instance, when she describes “sliced bread with butter and granulated sugar” (37) as one of her family’s favourite desserts, and lists butter among the everyday foodstuffs that taste superior when stored at room temperature instead of refrigerated—thereby moving butter from taboo (Gwynne describes a similar process of the normalisation of sexual “perversion” in erotic memoir).Like this text, memoirs that could be described as arguing “for” fat as a substance are largely by chefs or other food writers who extol, like McLagan and Hamilton, the value of fat as both food and flavouring, and propose that it has a key role in both ordinary/family and gourmet cookery. In this context, despite plant-based fats such as coconut oil being much lauded in nutritional and other health-related discourse, the fat written about in these texts is usually animal-based. An exception to this is olive oil, although this is never described in the book’s title as a “fat” (see, for instance, Drinkwater’s series of memoirs about life on an olive farm in France) and is, therefore, out of the scope of this discussion.Memoirs of Being FatThe majority of the other memoirs with the word “fat” in their titles are about being fat. Narratives on this topic, and their authors’ feelings about this, began to be published as a sub-set of autobiographical memoir in the 2000s. The first decade of the new millennium saw a number of such memoirs by female writers including Judith Moore’s Fat Girl (published in 2005), Jen Lancaster’s Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer, and Stephanie Klein’s Moose: A Memoir (both published in 2008) and Jennifer Joyne’s Designated Fat Girl in 2010. These were followed into the new decade by texts such as Celia Rivenbark’s bestselling 2011 You Don’t Sweat Much for a Fat Girl, and all attracted significant mainstream readerships. Journalist Vicki Allan pulled no punches when she labelled these works the “fat memoir” and, although Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson’s influential categorisation of 60 genres of life writing does not include this description, they do recognise eating disorder and weight-loss narratives. Some scholarly interest followed (Linder; Halloran), with Mitchell linking this production to feminism’s promotion of the power of the micro-narrative and the recognition that the autobiographical narrative was “a way of situating the self politically” (65).aken together, these memoirs all identify “excess” weight, although the response to this differs. They can be grouped as: narratives of losing weight (see Kuffel; Alley; and many others), struggling to lose weight (most of these books), and/or deciding not to try to lose weight (the smallest number of works overall). Some of these texts display a deeply troubled relationship with food—Moore’s Fat Girl, for instance, could also be characterised as an eating disorder memoir (Brien), detailing her addiction to eating and her extremely poor body image as well as her mother’s unrelenting pressure to lose weight. Elena Levy-Navarro describes the tone of these narratives as “compelled confession” (340), mobilising both the conventional understanding of confession of the narrator “speaking directly and colloquially” to the reader of their sins, failures or foibles (Gill 7), and what she reads as an element of societal coercion in their production. Some of these texts do focus on confessing what can be read as disgusting and wretched behavior (gorging and vomiting, for instance)—Halloran’s “gustatory abject” (27)—which is a feature of the contemporary conceptualisation of confession after Rousseau (Brooks). This is certainly a prominent aspect of current memoir writing that is, simultaneously, condemned by critics (see, for example, Jordan) and popular with readers (O’Neill). Read in this way, the majority of memoirs about being fat are about being miserable until a slimming regime of some kind has been undertaken and successful. Some of these texts are, indeed, triumphal in tone. Lisa Delaney’s Secrets of a Former Fat Girl is, for instance, clear in the message of its subtitle, How to Lose Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes—And Find Yourself Along the Way, that she was “lost” until she became slim. Linden has argued that “female memoir writers frequently describe their fat bodies as diseased and contaminated” (219) and “powerless” (226). Many of these confessional memoirs are moving narratives of shame and self loathing where the memoirist’s sense of self, character, and identity remain somewhat confused and unresolved, whether they lose weight or not, and despite attestations to the contrary.A sub-set of these memoirs of weight loss are by male authors. While having aspects in common with those by female writers, these can be identified as a sub-set of these memoirs for two reasons. One is the tone of their narratives, which is largely humourous and often ribaldly comic. There is also a sense of the heroic in these works, with male memoirsts frequently mobilising images of battles and adversity. Texts that can be categorised in this way include Toshio Okada’s Sayonara Mr. Fatty: A Geek’s Diet Memoir, Gregg McBride and Joy Bauer’s bestselling Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped, Fred Anderson’s From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. As can be seen in their titles, these texts also promise to relate the stratgies, regimes, plans, and secrets that others can follow to, similarly, lose weight. Allen Zadoff’s title makes this explicit: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin. Many of these male memoirists are prompted by a health-related crisis, diagnosis, or realisation. Male body image—a relatively recent topic of enquiry in the eating disorder, psychology, and fashion literature (see, for instance, Bradley et al.)—is also often a surprising motif in these texts, and a theme in common with weight loss memoirs by female authors. Edward Ugel, for instance, opens his memoir, I’m with Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks, with “I’m haunted by mirrors … the last thing I want to do is see myself in a mirror or a photograph” (1).Ugel, as that prominent “miserable” in his subtitle suggests, provides a subtle but revealing variation on this theme of successful weight loss. Ugel (as are all these male memoirists) succeeds in the quest be sets out on but, apparently, despondent almost every moment. While the overall tone of his writing is light and humorous, he laments every missed meal, snack, and mouthful of food he foregoes, explaining that he loves eating, “Food makes me happy … I live to eat. I love to eat at restaurants. I love to cook. I love the social component of eating … I can’t be happy without being a social eater” (3). Like many of these books by male authors, Ugel’s descriptions of the food he loves are mouthwatering—and most especially when describing what he identifies as the fattening foods he loves: Reuben sandwiches dripping with juicy grease, crispy deep friend Chinese snacks, buttery Danish pastries and creamy, rich ice cream. This believable sense of regret is not, however, restricted to male authors. It is also apparent in how Jen Lancaster begins her memoir: “I’m standing in the kitchen folding a softened stick of butter, a cup of warmed sour cream, and a mound of fresh-shaved Parmesan into my world-famous mashed potatoes […] There’s a maple-glazed pot roast browning nicely in the oven and white-chocolate-chip macadamia cookies cooling on a rack farther down the counter. I’ve already sautéed the almonds and am waiting for the green beans to blanch so I can toss the whole lot with yet more butter before serving the meal” (5). In the above memoirs, both male and female writers recount similar (and expected) strategies: diets, fasts and other weight loss regimes and interventions (calorie counting, colonics, and gastric-banding and -bypass surgery for instance, recur); consulting dieting/health magazines for information and strategies; keeping a food journal; employing expert help in the form of nutritionists, dieticians, and personal trainers; and, joining health clubs/gyms, and taking up various sports.Alongside these works sit a small number of texts that can be characterised as “non-weight loss memoirs.” These can be read as part of the emerging, and burgeoning, academic field of Fat Studies, which gathers together an extensive literature critical of, and oppositional to, dominant discourses about obesity (Cooper; Rothblum and Solovay; Tomrley and Naylor), and which include works that focus on information backed up with memoir such as self-described “fat activist” (Wann, website) Marilyn Wann’s Fat! So?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologise, which—when published in 1998—followed a print ’zine and a website of the same title. Although certainly in the minority in terms of numbers, these narratives have been very popular with readers and are growing as a sub-genre, with well-known actress Camryn Manheim’s New York Times-bestselling memoir, Wake Up, I'm Fat! (published in 1999) a good example. This memoir chronicles Manheim’s journey from the overweight and teased teenager who finds it a struggle to find friends (a common trope in many weight loss memoirs) to an extremely successful actress.Like most other types of memoir, there are also niche sub-genres of the “fat memoir.” Cheryl Peck’s Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs recounts a series of stories about her life in the American Midwest as a lesbian “woman of size” (xiv) and could thus be described as a memoir on the subjects of – and is, indeed, catalogued in the Library of Congress as: “Overweight women,” “Lesbians,” and “Three Rivers (Mich[igan]) – Social life and customs”.Carol Lay’s graphic memoir, The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude, has a simple diet message – she lost weight by counting calories and exercising every day – and makes a dual claim for value of being based on both her own story and a range of data and tools including: “the latest research on obesity […] psychological tips, nutrition basics, and many useful tools like simplified calorie charts, sample recipes, and menu plans” (qtd. in Lorah). The Big Skinny could, therefore, be characterised with the weight loss memoirs above as a self-help book, but Lay herself describes choosing the graphic form in order to increase its narrative power: to “wrap much of the information in stories […] combining illustrations and story for a double dose of retention in the brain” (qtd. in Lorah). Like many of these books that can fit into multiple categories, she notes that “booksellers don’t know where to file the book – in graphic novels, memoirs, or in the diet section” (qtd. in O’Shea).Jude Milner’s Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! is another example of how a single memoir (graphic, in this case) can be a hybrid of the categories herein discussed, indicating how difficult it is to neatly categorise human experience. Recounting the author’s numerous struggles with her weight and journey to self-acceptance, Milner at first feels guilty and undertakes a series of diets and regimes, before becoming a “Fat Is Beautiful” activist and, finally, undergoing gastric bypass surgery. Here the narrative trajectory is of empowerment rather than physical transformation, as a thinner (although, importantly, not thin) Milner “exudes confidence and radiates strength” (Story). ConclusionWhile the above has identified a number of ways of attempting to classify autobiographical writing about fat/s, its ultimate aim is, after G. Thomas Couser’s work in relation to other sub-genres of memoir, an attempt to open up life writing for further discussion, rather than set in placed fixed and inflexible categories. Constructing such a preliminary taxonomy aspires to encourage more nuanced discussion of how writers, publishers, critics and readers understand “fat” conceptually as well as more practically and personally. It also aims to support future work in identifying prominent and recurrent (or not) themes, motifs, tropes, and metaphors in memoir and autobiographical texts, and to contribute to the development of a more detailed set of descriptors for discussing and assessing popular autobiographical writing more generally.References Allan, Vicki. “Graphic Tale of Obesity Makes for Heavy Reading.” Sunday Herald 26 Jun. 2005. Alley, Kirstie. How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Life: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2005.Anderson, Fred. From Chunk to Hunk: Diary of a Fat Man. USA: Three Toes Publishing, 2009.Bhide, Monica. “Why You Should Eat Fat.” Salon 25 Sep. 2008.Bradley, Linda Arthur, Nancy Rudd, Andy Reilly, and Tim Freson. “A Review of Men’s Body Image Literature: What We Know, and Need to Know.” International Journal of Costume and Fashion 14.1 (2014): 29–45.Brien, Donna Lee. “Starving, Bingeing and Writing: Memoirs of Eating Disorder as Food Writing.” TEXT: Journal of Writers and Writing Courses Special Issue 18 (2013).Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. “Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace.” M/C Journal 10.4 (2007).Brooks, Peter. Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.Chester, Molly, and Sandy Schrecengost. Back to Butter: A Traditional Foods Cookbook – Nourishing Recipes Inspired by Our Ancestors. Vancouver: Fair Winds Press, 2014.Cooper, Charlotte. “Fat Studies: Mapping the Field.” Sociology Compass 4.12 (2010): 1020–34.Couser, G. Thomas. “Genre Matters: Form, Force, and Filiation.” Lifewriting 2.2 (2007): 139–56.Critser, Greg. Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. New York: First Mariner Books, 2004. Daykin, Rosie. Butter Baked Goods: Nostalgic Recipes from a Little Neighborhood Bakery. New York: Random House, 2015.Delaney, Lisa. Secrets of a Former Fat Girl: How to Lose Two, Four (or More!) Dress Sizes – and Find Yourself along the Way. New York: Plume/Penguin, 2008.Drinkwater, Carol. The Olive Farm: A Memoir of Life, Love and Olive Oil in the South of France. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2001.Farrell, Amy Erdman. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011.Farrell-Kingsley, Kathy. The Home Creamery: Make Your Own Fresh Dairy Products; Easy Recipes for Butter, Yogurt, Sour Cream, Creme Fraiche, Cream Cheese, Ricotta, and More! North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2008.Gerring, John. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Gill, Jo. “Introduction.” Modern Confessional Writing: New Critical Essays, ed. Jo Gill. London: Routledge, 2006. 1–10.Gilman, Sander L. Fat Boys: A Slim Book. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.———. Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008.Grit Magazine Editors. Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2012.Gwynne, Joel. Erotic Memoirs and Postfeminism: The Politics of Pleasure. Houndsmills, UK: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013.Halloran, Vivian Nun. “Biting Reality: Extreme Eating and the Fascination with the Gustatory Abject.” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 4 (2004): 27–42.Hamilton, Gabrielle. Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. New York: Random House, 2013.Heart Foundation [Australia]. “To Avoid Trans Fat, Avoid Butter Says Heart Foundation: Media Release.” 27 Sep. 2010.Hill, Louella. Kitchen Creamery: Making Yogurt, Butter & Cheese at Home. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2015.Jordan, Pat. “Dysfunction for Dollars.” New York Times 28 July 2002.Joyne, Jennifer. Designated Fat Girl: A Memoir. Guilford, CT: Skirt!, 2010.Katzen, Mollie. The Moosewood Cookbook. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1974.Klein, Stephanie. Moose: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.Kuffel, Frances. Passing for Thin: Losing Half My Weight and Finding My Self. New York: Broadway, 2004. Lancaster, Jen. Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist’s Quest to Discover If Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer. New York: New American Library/Penguin, 2008.Lay, Carol. The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude. New York: Villard Books, 2008.Levy-Navarro, Elena. “I’m the New Me: Compelled Confession in Diet Discourse.” The Journal of Popular Culture 45.2 (2012): 340–56.Library of Congress. Catalogue record 200304857. Linder, Kathryn E. “The Fat Memoir as Autopathography: Self-Representations of Embodied Fatness.” Auto/biography Studies 26.2 (2011): 219–37.Linford, Jenny. The Creamery Kitchen. London: Ryland Peters & Small, 2014.Lorah, Michael C. “Carol Lay on The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude.” Newsarama 26 Dec. 2008. Lupton, Deborah. Fat. Milton Park, UK: Routledge, 2013.Manheim, Camryn. Wake Up, I’m Fat! New York: Broadway Books, 2000.Merriam, Sharan B. Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.McBride, Gregg. Weightless: My Life as a Fat Man and How I Escaped. Las Vegas, NV: Central Recovery Press, 2014.McLagan, Jennifer. Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2008.Milner, Jude. Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Woman! New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006.Mitchell, Allyson. “Big Judy: Fatness, Shame, and the Hybrid Autobiography.” Embodied Politics in Visual Autobiography, eds. Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014. 64–77.Moore, Judith. Fat Girl: A True Story. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005. Morris, Sophie. “Fat Is Back: Rediscover the Delights of Lard, Dripping and Suet.” The Independent 12 Mar. 2009. Multiple Sclerosis Society, New York. “Books for a Better Life Awards: 2007 Finalists.” Book Reporter 2006. Okada, Toshio. Sayonara Mr. Fatty: A Geek’s Diet Memoir. Trans. Mizuho Tiyishima. New York: Vertical Inc., 2009.O’Neill, Brendan. “Misery Lit … Read On.” BBC News 17 Apr. 2007. O’Shea, Tim. “Taking Comics with Tim: Carol Lay.” Robot 6 16 Feb. 2009. Peck, Cheryl. Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs. New York: Warner Books, 2004. 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New York and London: New York University Press, 2002.Story, Carol Ann. “Book Review: ‘Fat Free: The Amazing All-True Adventures of Supersize Women’.” WLS Lifestyles 2007. Teller, Jean. “As American as Mom, Apple Pie & Grit.” Grit History Grit. c. 2006. Thelin, Emily Kaiser. “Aaron Wehner Transforms Ten Speed Press into Cookbook Leader.” SF Gate 7 Oct. 2014. Tomrley, Corianna, and Ann Kaloski Naylor. Fat Studies in the UK. York: Raw Nerve Books, 2009.Ugel, Edward. I’m with Fatty: Losing Fifty Pounds in Fifty Miserable Weeks. New York: Weinstein Books, 2010.Vaserfirer, Lucy. Flavored Butters: How to Make Them, Shape Them, and Use Them as Spreads, Toppings, and Sauces. Boston, MA: Harvard Common Press, 2013.Verschuren, Piet. “Case Study as a Research Strategy: Some Ambiguities and Opportunities.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 6.2 (2003): 121–39.Wann, Marilyn. Fat!So?: Because You Don’t Have to Apologize for Your Size. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1998.———. 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The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). 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Introduction The term monster might have its roots in the Latin word monere (to warn), but it has since evolved to have various symbolic meanings, from a terrifying mythical creature to a person of extreme cruelty. No matter the flexibility in use, the term is mostly meant to be derogatory (Asma). As Gilmore puts it, monsters “embody all that is dangerous and horrible in the human imagination” (1). However, it may be argued that monsters sometimes perform the much-needed work of defining and policing our norms (Mittman and Hensel). Since their archetype is predisposed to transgressing boundaries of human integrity (Gilmore), they help establish deviation between human and in-human. Their cognition and action are considered ‘other’ (Kearney) and a means with which people can understand what is right and wrong, and what is divergent from appropriate ways of being. The term monster need not even refer to the werewolves, ogres, vampires, zombies and the like that strike fear in audiences through their ‘immoral, heinous or unjust’ appearance or behaviours. Rather, the term monster can be, and has been, readily applied as a metaphor to describe the unthinkable, unethical, and brutal actions of human beings (Beville 5). Inadvertently, “through their bodies, words, and deeds, monsters show us ourselves” (Mittman and Hensel 2), or what we consider monstrous about ourselves. Therefore, humans acting in ways that deviate from societal norms and standards can be viewed as monstrous. This is evident in the representations of public relations practitioners in media offerings. In the practice of public relations, ethical standards are advocated as the norm, and deviating from them considered unprofessional (Fawkes), and as we contend: monstrous. However, the practice has long suffered a negative stereotypical perception of being deceptive, and with public relations roles receiving less screen time than shows and films about lawyers, accountants, teachers and the like, these few derogatory depictions can distort how audiences view the occupation (Johnston). Depictions of professions (lawyers, cops, journalists, etc.) tend to be cliché, but our contention is that fewer depictions of public relations practitioners on screen further limit the possibility for diverse depictions. The media can have a socialising impact and can influence audiences to view the content they consume as a reflection of the real world around them (Chandler). Television, in particular, with its capacity to prompt heuristic processing in audiences (Shurm), has messages that can be easily decoded by people of various literacies as they become immersed in the viewing experiences (Gerbner and Gross). These messages gain potency because, despite being set in fictional worlds, they can be understood as reflective of the world and audiences’ experiences of it (Gerbner and Gross). Tsetsura, Bentley, and Newcomb add that popular stories recounted in the media have authoritative power and can offer patterns of meaning that shape individual perceptions. Admittedly, as Stuart Hall suggests, media offerings can be encoded with ideologies and representations that are considered appropriate according to the dominant elite, but these may not necessarily be decoded as preferred meanings. In other words, those exposed to stories of monstrous public relations practitioners can agree with such a position, oppose this viewpoint, or remain neutral, but this is dependent on individual experiences. Without other frames of reference, it could be that viewers of negative portrayals of public relations accept the encoded representation that inevitably does a disservice to the profession. When the representations of the field of public relations suggest, inaccurately, that the industry is dominated by men (Johnston), and women practitioners are shown as slick dressers who control and care little about ethics (Dennison), the distortions can adversely impact on the identities of public relations practitioners and on how they are collectively viewed (Tsetsura et al.). Public relations practitioners view this portrayal as the ‘other’ and tend to distance the ideal self from it, continuing to be stuck in the dichotomy of saints and sinners (Fawkes). Our observation of television offerings such as Scandal, Flack, Call My Agent!, Absolutely Fabulous, Sex and the City, You’re the Worst, and Emily in Paris reveals how television programmes continue to perpetuate the negative stereotypes about public relations practice, where practitioners are anything but ethical—therefore monstrous. The characters, mostly well-groomed women, are shown as debased, liars and cheaters who will subvert ethical standards for personal and professional gain. Portrayals of Public Relations Practitioners in Television and Media According to Miller, the eight archetypical traits identified in media representations of public relations practitioners are: ditzy, obsequious, cynical, manipulative, money-minded, isolated, accomplished, or unfulfilled. In later research, Yoon and Black found that television representations of public relations tended to suggest that people in these roles were heartless, manipulative bullies, while Lambert and White contend that the depiction of the profession has improved to be more positive, but nonetheless continues to do a disservice to the practice by presenting female workers, especially, as “shallow but loveable” (18). We too find that public relations practitioners continue to be portrayed as morally ambiguous characters who are willing to break ethical codes of conduct to suit the needs of their clients. We discuss three themes prevalent as popular tropes in television programmes that characterise public relations practitioners as monstrous. To Be or Not to Be a Slick and Skilful Liar? Most television programmes present public relations practitioners as slick and skilful liars, who are shown as well-groomed and authoritative, convinced that they are lying only to protect their clients. In fact, in most cases the characters are shown to not only believe but also advocate to their juniors that ‘a little bit of lying’ is almost necessary to maintain client relationships and ensure campaign success. For example, in the British drama Flack, the main character of Robyn (played by Anna Paquin) is heard advising her prodigy “just assume we are lying to everyone”. The programmes also feature characters who are in dilemma about the monstrous expectations from their roles, struggling to accept that that they engage in deception as part of their jobs. However, most of them are presented as somewhat of an ugly duckling or the modest character in the programme, who is not always rational or in an explicit position of power. For example, Emily from Emily in Paris (played by Lily Collins), while working as a social media manager, regularly questions the approaches taken by the firm she works for. Her boss Sylvie Grateux (played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), who embodies the status quo, is constantly disapproving of Emily’s lack of sophisticated self-presentation, among other aspects. In the episode ‘Faux Amis’, Sylvie quips “it’s not you personally. It’s everything you stand for. You’re the enemy of luxury because luxury is defined by sophistication and taste, not emilyinparis”. Similarly, in the first episode of Call My Agent!, Samuel Kerr (played by Alain Rimoux), the head of a film publicity firm, solves the conundrum faced by his anxious junior Gabriel (played by Grégory Montel) by suggesting that he lie to his client about the real reason why she lost the film. When a modestly dressed Gabriel questions how he can lie to someone he cares for, Samuel, towering over him in an impeccable suit and a confident demeanour, advises “who said anything about lying? Don’t lie. Simply don’t tell her the truth”. However, the subtext here is that the lie is to protect the client from unnecessary hurt and in doing so nurtures the client relationship. So, it lets the audience decide the morality of lying here. It may be argued that moral ambiguity may not necessarily be monstrous. Such grey characters are often crafted because they allow audiences to relate more readily to themselves by encouraging what Hawkins refers to as mental play. Audiences are less interested in the black and white of morality and veer towards shows such as Call My Agent! where storylines hone in on the need to do bad for the greater good. In these ways, public relations practitioners still transgress moral standards but are less likely to be considered monstrous because the impact and effect on others is utilitarian in nature. It is also interesting to note that in these programmes physical appearance is made to play a crucial role in showcasing the power and prestige of the senior public relations practitioner. This focus on attire can tend to further perpetuate unfavourable stereotypes about public relations practitioners being high income earners (Grandien) who are styled with branded apparel but lacking in substance and morals (Fröhlich and Peters). Promiscuous Women The urge to attract audiences to a female character can also lead to developing and cementing unfavourable stereotypes of public relations practitioners as uninhibited women who live on blurred lines between personal and professional. These characters are not portrayed as inherently bad, but instead are found to indulge in lives of excess. In her definition of the monstrous, Arumugam suggests that excess and insatiable appetites direct the monster’s behaviour, and Kearney outlines that this uncontainable excess is what signals the difference between humans and others. Such excess is readily identifiable in the character of Patsy Stone (played by Joanna Lumley) in Absolutely Fabulous. She is an alcoholic, regularly uses recreational drugs, is highly promiscuous, and chain-smokes throughout the series. She is depicted as prone to acting deceptively to maintain her vices. In Flack, Robyn is shown as regularly snorting cocaine and having sex with her clients. Those reviewing the show highlight how it will attract those interested in “its dark, acidic sense of humour” (Greene) while others condemn it because it emphasises the “depraved publicist” trope (Knibbs) and call it “one of the worst TV shows ever made” even though it is trying to highlight concerns raised in the MeToo movement about how men need to respect women (McGurk). Female characters such as Robyn, with her willingness to question why a client has not tried to sleep with her, appear to undermine the empowerment of the movement rather than support it, and continue to maintain the archetypes that those working in the field of public relations abhor. Similarly, Samantha Jones (played by Kim Cattrell) of Sex and the City is portrayed as sexually liberated, and in one episode another character describes Samantha’s vagina as “the hottest spot in town: it’s always open”. In many ways Samantha’s sexual behaviour reflects a post-feminist narrative of empowerment, agency, and choice, but it could also be read as a product of being a public relations practitioner frequenting parties and bars as she rubs shoulders with clients, celebrities, and high-profile businesspeople. To this end, Patsy, Samantha, and Robyn glamourise public relations and paint it as simply an extension of their liberated and promiscuous selves, with little care for any expectation of professionalism or work ethic. This is also in stark contrast to the reality, where women often tend to occupy technical roles that see much of their time spent in doing the hard yards of publicity and promotion (Krugler). Making Others Err Public relations practitioners are not just shown as being morally ambiguous themselves, but often quite adept at making others do deceitful acts on their behalf, thus nonchalantly oppressing others to get their way. For example, although lauded for elevating an African-American woman to the lead role despite the show maintaining misrepresentations of race (Lambert), the main character of Olivia Pope (played by Kerry Washington) in the television programme Scandal regularly subverts the law for her clients despite considering herself one of the “good guys” and wearing a “white hat”. Over the course of seven seasons, Olivia Pope is found to rig elections, plant listening devices in political figures’ offices, bribe, threaten, and conduct an affair with the President. In some cases, she calls on the services of her colleague Huck to literally, and figuratively, get rid of the barriers in the way of protecting her clients. For example, in season one’s episode Crash and Burn she asks Huck to torture a suspect for information about a dead client. Her willingness to request such actions of her friend and colleague, regardless of perceived good motivations, reinforces Mittman’s categorisation that monsters are identified by their effect and impact on others. Here, the impact includes the torturing of a suspect and the revisiting of psychological trauma by Huck’s character. Huck struggles to overcome his past as a killer and spends much of the show trying to curb his monstrous tendencies which are often brought on by PR woman Olivia’s requests. Although she is sometimes striving for justice, Olivia’s desire for results can lead her to act monstrously, which inadvertently contributes to the racist and sexist ideologies that have long been associated with monsters and perceptions of the Other. Across time and space, certain ethnic groups, such as those of African descent, have been associated with the demonic (Cohen). Similarly, all that is feminine often needs to be discarded as the monster to conform to the patriarchal order of society (Creed). Therefore, Olivia Pope’s monstrous behaviour not only does a disservice to representations of public relations practitioners, but also inadvertently perpetuates negative and inaccurate stereotypes about women of African American descent. Striving to be Ethical The majority of public relations practitioners are encouraged, and in some cases expected, to conform to ethical guidelines to practice and gain respect, admiration, and in-group status. In New Zealand, those who opt to become members of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand (PRINZ) are required to abide by the association’s code of ethics. The code stipulates that members are bound to act in ways that serve public interests by ensuring they are honest, disclose conflict of interests, follow the law, act with professionalism, ensure openness and privacy are maintained, and uphold values of loyalty, fairness, and independence (PRINZ). Similarly, the Global Alliance of Public Relations and Communication Management that binds practitioners together identifies nine guiding principles that are to be adhered to to be recognised as acting ethically. These include obeying laws, working in the public’s interest, ensuring freedom of speech and assembly, acting with integrity, and upholding privacy in sensitive matters (to name a few). These governing principles are designed to maintain ethical practice in the field. Of course, the trouble is that not all who claim to practice public relations become members of the local or global governing bodies. This implies that professional associations like PRINZ are not able to enforce ethics across the board. In New Zealand alone, public relations consultants have had to offer financial reparations for acting in defamatory ways online (Fisher), or have been alleged to have bribed an assault victim to prevent the person giving evidence in a court case (Hurley). Some academics have accused the industry of being engaged in organised lying (Peacock), but these are not common, nor are these moral transgressors accepted into ethical bodies that afford practitioners authenticity and legitimacy. In most cases, public relations practitioners view their role as acting as the moral conscience of the organisations they support (Schauster, Neill, Ferrucci, and Tandoc). Furthermore, they rated better than the average adult when it came to solving ethical dilemmas through moral reasoning (Schuaster et al.). Additionally, training of practitioners through guidance of mentors has continued to contribute to the improved ethical ratings of public relations. What these findings suggest is that the monsters of public relations portrayed on our television screens are exaggerations that are not reflective of most of the practice. Women of Substance, But Not Necessarily Power Exploring the role of women in public relations, Topic, Cunha, Reigstad, Jele-Sanchez, and Moreno found that female practitioners were subordinated to their male counterparts but were found to be more inclined to practice two-way communication, offer balanced perspectives, opt to negotiate, and build relationships through cooperation. The competitiveness, independence, and status identified in popular media portrayals were found to be exhibited more by male practitioners, despite there being more women in the public relations industry than men. As Fitch argues, popular culture continues to suggest that men dominate public relations, and their preferred characteristics end up being those elements that permeate the media messages, regardless of instances where the lead character is a woman or the fact that feminist values of “loyalty, ethics, morality, [and] fairness” are advocated by female practitioners in real life (Vardeman-Winter and Place 333). Additionally, even though public relations is a feminised field, female practitioners struggle to break the glass ceiling, with male practitioners dominating executive positions and out-earning women (Pompper). Interestingly, in public relations, power is not just limited due to gender but also area of practice. In her ethnographic study of the New Zealand practice, Sissons found that practitioners who worked in consultancies were relatively powerless vis-à-vis their clients, and often this asymmetry negatively affected the practitioner’s decision-making. This implies that in stark contrast to the immoral, glamourous, and authoritative depiction of public relations women in television programmes, in reality they are mired by the struggles of a gendered occupation. Accordingly, they are not in fact in a position to have monstrous power over and impact on others. Therefore, one of the only elements the shows seem to capture and emphasise is that public relations is an occupation that specialises in image management; but what these shows contribute to is an ideology that women are expected to look and carry themselves in particular ways, ultimately constructing aesthetic standards that can diminish women’s power and self-esteem. Conclusion Miller’s archetypes may be over twenty years old, but the trend towards obsequious, manipulative, and cynical television characters remains. Although there have been identifiable shifts to loveable, yet shallow, public relations practitioners, such as Alexis Rose on Schitt’s Creek, the appeal of monstrous public relations practitioners remains. As Cohen puts it, monsters reveal to audiences “what a member of that society can become when those same dictates are rejected, when the authority of leaders or customs disintegrates and the subordination of individual to hierarchy is lost” (68). In other words, audiences enjoy watching the stories of metaphorical monsters because they exhibit the behaviours that are expected to be repressed in human beings; they depict what happens when the social norms of society are disturbed (Levina and Bui). At the very least, these media representations can act, much as monster narratives do, as a cautionary tale on how not to think and act to remain accepted as part of the in-group rather than being perceived as the Other. As Mittman and Hensel argue, society can learn much from monsters because monsters exist within human beings. According to Cohen, they offer meaning about the world and can teach audiences so they can learn, in this case, how to be better. Although the representations of public relations in television can offer insights into roles that are usually most effective when they are invisible (Chorazy and Harrington), the continued negative stereotypes of public relations practitioners can adversely impact on the industry if people are unaware of the practices of the occupation, because lacking a reference point limits audiences’ opportunities to critically evaluate the media representations. This will certainly harm the occupation by perpetuating existing negative stereotypes of charming and immoral practitioners, and perhaps add to its struggles with gendered identity and professional legitimacy. References Absolutely Fabulous. Created by Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. 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The focus of this study is an investigation of cross-channel exchanges represented in travelogues, historical works, journalism, letters and journals written by English women Frances Trollope, Lady Margaret Blessington, George Eliot and Julia Kavanagh on France and by French women Flora Tristan and Marie Dronsart on England. The work is based on the view that narratives about another culture betray preconceptions and beliefs and are never innocent descriptions. Nineteenth-century English descriptions of France, for instance, are not only marked by the stereotype of the gregarious French bon vivant but also by the often tense political relationship and economical concurrence between the two countries. French descriptions of England reflect the consciousness of England's superiority in the domains of economy, industry and colonialism as well as the stereotype of the boring, monosyllabic, haughty, egoistic and often xenophobic Englishman. Given that writings on the other culture are marked by practices and belief systems as well as notions of superiority and inferiority like texts emerging from a colonial context, ideas which have been developed in this field by scholars such as Sara Mills and Reina Lewis have been used as a basis for this investigation. I argue that the women whose texts I analyse strategically employ 'discourses of difference' (to use Sara Mills' term), or alignment and 'othering' in regard to nation, class, and political opinion, in order to gain positions which allow them to challenge contemporary ideologies of femininity. They take advantage of their positions in very different ways, according to their personal, class and economic situations, their agenda, and their gendered position within society which changes significantly during the century. The English women Frances Trollope, Lady Margaret Blessington, George Eliot and Julia Kavanagh construct themselves as part of the tradition of French salonnières from the seventeenth century to the present, while the French women Flora Tristan and Marie Dronsart align themselves with English travel writers, particularly Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Through a careful construction of these foremothers, which often differed from other representations of them, they criticise gender politics in their own country and endeavour to normalise their own activities as intellectuals and writers, in the case of Tristan as a socialist and feminist activist. This strategy is complemented by 'othering' with regard to nation, class and political convictions which confers on the women an authoritative authorial voice and / or allows them to support their argument. They endorse ideologies of gender, nation and class at the same time as they reject some aspects of them. This study reveals new aspects of nineteenth-century discussions of the so-called 'woman question' through a broader approach which encompasses not only the parameters of gender, class and political orientation but also cross-cultural experience.