Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Authors, american – homes and haunts”

Abstract The Allardyce mansion in Burnt Offerings is arguably one of the most unusual homes in supernatural literature. The American novelist and playwright Robert Marasco (1936–1998) published his bestselling novel in 1973. The following year it was translated into Spanish and French and in 1976 was adapted into a successful Hollywood film of the same title (dir. Dan Curtis). The novel is regularly listed on websites and in books as among the best haunted house novels ever written, particularly thanks to Stephen King’s glowing 1988 review. But it has been largely ignored by critics, who see it mainly as portraying a typical haunted house. Instead, this article argues that critics, though noting the novel’s theme of materialism, have missed its religious underpinnings, which present the “Mother” figure as a supernatural force requiring human sacrifice—the titular burnt offerings—to maintain the estate

Women's traditional place on the American frontier has been as invisible helpmate or at best as some shadowy figure who appeared occasionally when describing pioneer homes and lifestyles. Until recently, historians followed the individualistic and linear progression of Frederick Jackson Turner westward across the continent and found no need to discuss the activities of both sexes. Euro-American men were fully capable of explaining the frontier, both as authors and as subjects. But the American frontier is no longer one-dimensional. Increasing numbers of female historians have insisted on not only placing women in the midst of established pioneering ventures, but have widened western horizons to discuss different pioneers and new economic and social roles for women of all ethnic and racial groups. Women's place on the frontier has now become so central that it is impossible to make any sense of new settlement patterns without examining the experiences of both men and women and their relationships to each other.

Although studies indicate that public policy can influence the decrease in smoking behaviors, these policies have not necessarily transferred to home environments at the same rate. The authors surveyed 4,296 students in a southern urban area. African American students were 76.3% of the respondents and Caucasians accounted for 23.7%. African American homes are less likely to have full bans on smoking inside the home. Home smoking bans impact smoking behaviors, acceptance of smoking, susceptibility to smoking, smoking beliefs, and motivation to quit smoking. Along with home smoking bans, there are differences among African American and Caucasian youth in smoking exposure, behaviors, beliefs, and motivation to quit smoking. This study suggests that particularly in African American youth, educational efforts should be directed toward more restrictive home smoking policies to thwart the initiation of smoking in adolescents and to encourage positive attitudes toward smoking behaviors.

Purpose: The article analyzes the image of Sherlock Holmes in the works of some of the contemporary authors. The great detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a major impact not only on literature but on the world culture as a whole. This image spawned a lot of works featuring similar characters or even himself long before the series became public domain, and after that point, the number of works featuring Sherlock Holmes raised drastically. Methodology: The primary method is comparative analysis; we use it to compare the original image of Sherlock Homes with later versions Result: As one would assume, the perception of the image is different from author to author and therefore is different from the original created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this article, we will analyze several works of fiction of contemporary authors (for example, Neil Gaiman and Mitch Cullen), the image of the great detective presented in then and compare it with the one from the original literature series. In conclusion we will discuss Sherlock Holmes as a modern archetype and its most prominent features. Applications: This research can be used for universities, teachers, and students. Novelty/Originality: In this research, the model of The Image of Sherlock Holmes in Contemporary British-American Fiction is presented in a comprehensive and complete manner.

As nutrition educators we must promote sensitivity to the historical roots of eating and food patterns. This analysis of narratives from a sampling of cookbooks written by African Americans, represents an attempt to give voice to an unconventional source of documentation regarding the historical experiences of a people oppressed by enslavement and institutionalized racism as told through recipe sharing. The themes that emerged from an examination of the missions and motivations of the authors included; history, work, cultural tradition, and empowerment in the struggle to survive. Critical Race Theory provided a lens to examine the counter story told by these authors. The counter story documented the unrecognized contributions of African Americans to the culture of all food practices in America, through their roles as cooks in domestic and industrial settings, as well as their own homes. We need to develop an appreciation of the celebration of life that is expressed through food in the African American community. And we must advocate for the right to good food, healthcare and education for all of the communities and people we serve.

For most of the literary historians, the time period between the 1880s and 1920s have generally been accepted as the climax years of the notion of literary travelling not only in Europe but also in England. This type of journeying fashion is seen in the literary works of many English writers such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Arthur Conan Doyle and many others. Literary travel can be considered as roaming of places of literary interest for pleasure where the traveller could experience and re-memory of birthplaces, homes, haunts and even graves of the prominent literary figures. Visiting places related with the particular writers or books coincides with bicycle condensed years of the last quarter of the nineteenth century (fin de siècle) in England. In addition to the above writers, Elizabeth Robins Pennell and Joseph Pennell are two different kind of travellers and their published account namely Our Sentimental Journey through France and Italy is worth scrutinizing. Both as American citizens, the Elizabeth Robins and Joseph Pennells decided to move to England in 1884, where they carried on their artistic and literary engagements for nearly thirty years, and the couple regularly had the chance to travel to Europe and brought their cultural baggage there on their tricycles. Joseph Pennell was born in Philadelphia, and he was an acclaimed lithographer of his time. After graduating from Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Joseph worked on the illustrations of travel articles and books for American publishers for a while. Through the mutual connection and overlapping of these two fin de siècle trends (literary travel and cycle travel) and the above-mentioned text of the Pennells’, this paper argues that the sentimental preconception of cycling complicates the experience of travelling for the above-mentioned couple as they tried to imitate Laurence Sterne, well-known writer of novels and travel accounts. For this respect, some supportive quotations will be given from the Pennells’ text in which they both lack to illustrate their sentimental mood in times and in other times, successfully show their joy enthusiasm in their pedalling with their tricycles. Thus, the foremost aim of this paper is to elaborate on Pennells’ text claiming their intertextual allusions on their former model Laurence Sterne.

Brookgreen Gardens, Georgetown County, South Carolina, includes the remains of Brookgreen Plantation and other historic rice plantations. The property contains archeological resources associated with enslaved African, African-American, and Native American people. Visitors are told that the piers and chimneys of the homes of the enslaved were made of local brick, from clay dug, processed, and fired on-site. The clay mining allegedly formed the ponds and water features still visible today. To test that assertion, the authors conducted experiments, including collecting and geochemically analyzing local clays from these water features, to better understand the brick-making practices of Brookgreen's enslaved workers. Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, we determined that these ponds were not the source of clay used for bricks. Instead, a deposit of clay located closer to the historic rice fields, where much of the work on the plantation occurred, was geochemically consistent with the archeological bricks.

This article analyzes the novels The House on Mango Street (Cisneros, 1984), So Far from God (Castillo, 1993) and Under the Feet of Jesus (Viramontes, 1995) and the drama Heroes and Saints (Moraga, 1994) from the perspective of social and environmental justice, tak- ing into account Cherríe Moraga’s concept of Land, in which home plays a primary role. The sense of justice in these works emerges from an oppressed landscape in which the environment, the homes and the bodies of the protagonists reflect the damage done to the environment and to human beings. The analysis of the above-mentioned literary works shows how different Chicana authors advocate the achievement of concepts such as social and environmental justice, while at the same time denouncing the impossibility of Chicanos achieving the desired American Dream.

Dalit literature seeks to present the struggles and experiences of the oppressed. Bengali Dalit literature has become a powerful tool for social and political action. It provides counter-narratives that talk about their experiences and realities. Bangla Dalit literature depicts the lives of refugees with sensitivity and empathy, emphasizing the struggles and resilience of those displaced from their homes and communities due to political, social and economic factors. The term “refugee” refers to a person who has been forced to flee their country of origin. A large part of the population had to leave their homes and migrate from East Bengal to West Bengal as part of the Partition of Bengal, mainly due to the communal tension. However, most of the refugees who migrated to West Bengal during the Bangladesh Liberation Movement in 1971 were mainly Dalits or other marginalized communities who faced discrimination and oppression in their homeland. Jatin Bala, one of the eminent Dalit writers and one of the refugees, himself reflected the pain and suffering of these Bengali Dalit refugees, on the other hand, Allen Ginsberg, the famous American writer Ginsburg, who visited Bangladesh amid the conflict, he also paints a sad picture of the loss of these Bengali refuges in his long poem “September On Jossor Road”. This study aims to carry out a comparative study of the representations of the two authors about these refugees.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of family-to-family (F2F) information centres by health care providers serving Hispanic and African American families of children with special healthcare needs (CSHCN) and how that information can be used to enhance effective collaboration to address disparities in access to services. Design/methodology/approach – In this second phase of a formative, qualitative multi-phase, collaborative study by a university centre and three F2Fs to develop strategies to increase the use of their centres by Hispanic and African American populations, the authors report the results of key informant interviews with healthcare providers serving the African American and Hispanic families who participated in focus groups at the three centres. Findings – Healthcare providers reported that F2Fs play a unique role in providing families support and skills to advocate within systems. However, barriers to healthcare providers recommending F2Fs to families include a lack of knowledge about the specific services provided, the need for face-to-face contact to feel comfortable making a referral and a lack of a formalised referral and feedback process that is in line with their experiences in the medical services system. Practical implications – F2Fs can increase use of their centres by African American and Hispanic families through provider referrals by: promoting specific services and supports they offer families, rather than describing their programmes; promoting how they can help providers with the care coordination functions that are time consuming; offering providers training opportunities; and developing processes for referrals that include feedback to providers. Originality/value – There are no studies that currently address strengthening the collaboration between medical homes and F2F centres to improve care coordination, access to information and receiving needed services for Hispanic and African American CSHCN and their families. Understanding how healthcare providers serving Hispanic and African American CSHCN perceive F2Fs and currently work with them will enhance this collaboration.

Abstract Background Approximately 300,00 individuals in the United States are estimated to have Chagas disease. To date, only one seroprevalence study in the US has included children. Diagnosis during childhood prevents irreversible sequelae and is better tolerated than during adulthood. Seropositive children may be difficult to identify, as those infected vertically may have never visited an endemic region. We sought to identify children with Chagas disease through a pilot study of serology and risk factors. Methods Participants were recruited from Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH) or an ambulatory pediatric office, both in Suffolk County, New York (population: 1,476,000; 20.2% Hispanic or Latino). Study participants were 1 - 25 years old, resided in Suffolk County, and either the child and/or the child’s mother was born in or had long-term residence (≥ 3 years) in Latin America. T. cruzi serum IgG was determined with a Chagatest ELISA (Weiner Lab) or a Chagas Detect Plus Rapid Test (InBios). Positive screens were confirmed with a second serologic test at the CDC. Participants completed a survey of demographics and Chagas disease knowledge and risk factors, in English or Spanish. Descriptive statistics were applied. SBUH IRB provided study approval. Results We enrolled 93 children (Table 1). Three (3.2%) had a positive IgG screen, of which only one had a confirmed infection (1.1%). This was a 17-year-old who had lived in a rural adobe home and moved to the US at 8 years old. No children or their mothers recalled being bitten by or seeing triatomine insects in their Latin American homes. Of 27 children whose mothers had been screened for infection, 13 were born to 3 mothers with confirmed Chagas disease; all 13 children were seronegative. Of 8 participants reporting other family members with Chagas disease, all were seronegative. Demographics of 93 participants screened for Chagas disease SD standard deviation; US: United States Conclusion Without reliable tools for identifying those at greatest risk of Chagas disease, universal screening of children born in high-risk Latin American regions remains a reasonable strategy. In addition, screening mothers born in Latin America is likely a more cost-efficient means to evaluate second-generation children. A tremendous knowledge gap of pediatric Chagas disease in the US remains. Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures

WELCOME to our 2nd issue of the inaugural volume of Journal of Cardiovascular, Neurovascular, and Stroke (CVNS). With thousands of journals available worldwide, why do we need another one? In this competitive era of publications driven by advancements in research, particularly in the medical field, scientists and clinicians continually strive to publish their research findings. Authors, and particularly those from South East Asian countries, may find it difficult to publish their papers in the more established European or American journals. Thus, we felt that there was a need to provide such a platform for these authors to showcase and share their research. Furthermore, many of the established journals are no longer accepting case reports, yet there is always something to be learned from anecdotal case studies. This journal provides a venue for case reports to be published.We cannot ignore the COVID-19 pandemic that is currently raging throughout the world. It may affect our readers differently. Some of you may be confined to your homes and some may still be able to continue with daily life, albeit with limitations. In terms of research and publications, some may find that their research activities are limited or even completely halted. However, others may choose to use this period of relative inactivity to catch up on their writing, reviews, and publications or merely catch up on the latest findings in medical sciences. Research grants, particularly related to COVID-19, are still being offered and new papers are still being published. The editorial committee members of this journal remain committed to reviewing and publishing submissions in a timely manner. We welcome all submissions related to Cardiovascular, Neurovascular and Stroke and will do our best to expeditiously process them through our peer review system .Our hope is that everyone will stay safe during this trying period. Take care. Thank you.Hilwati HashimCVNS Editor-in-Chief

The debate about exurbanites and exurbs has ever been an Anglo-American phenomenon. Due to the limitless space for growth and the individual preferences of living in single-family homes, the exurban census tracts were the fastest growing urban type in the USA for several decades. The increase in highway infrastructure lead to an auto-centric development of land and an ongoing urban sprawl in search for natural amenities and affordable housing. This was not the case in Europe for a long time as Europeans preferred to live closer to the place of work and the historically grown structures of the urban development. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic and the restructuring of a new office culture with remote work as the new condition and growing preferences for more living space and green amenities, exurbs could also evolve in the European context. In this investigation, the authors try to identify exurbs in the German context based on a multi-criteria analysis. We find that they are mostly located in the east and north of Germany around Hamburg and Berlin, and to a minor extent to the west and south of Germany. While there has not been a significant increase of exurbs in the past years, the question remains whether the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the exurbanisation and the related issues to a sustainable urban development according to SDG 11. Further research on the characteristics of exurbs is needed to provide additional policy recommendations and monitor the development of potential exurbs in the future.

On several occasions during the late 1860s, the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe exhorted readers to adorn their homes with chromolithographs, color prints which reproduced original oil-paintings or, less often, depicted images created specifically for the print medium. In her 1869 domestic advice manual, The American Woman's Home, co-authored with her sister Catharine Beecher, Stowe described chromolithographs (or “chromos,” as they were commonly called) as essential components of a properly embellished home interior. In proposing a hypothetical budget devoted to parlor furnishings, the authors recommended that almost one-fourth of the total be allocated to lithographic reproductions of “really admirable pictures” by some of “America's best artists.” Stowe's advocacy of chromos also appeared in the promotional publications of L. Prang & Company, one of the country's largest publishers of these images. The short-lived quarterly Prang's Chromo: A Journal of Popular Art (published in five issues from January 1868 to April 1869) printed a letter in which Stowe thanked Louis Prang for sending her several free chromolithographs. After praising the “beautiful objects,” Stowe concluded her note with the kind of testimonial Prang no doubt had been seeking when he sent her the complimentary items: “Be assured I shall neglect no opportunity of proving my sympathy with your so charming and beautiful mission, and bringing it to everyone's notice, so far as I can.” And, though it is impossible to know what exact role Stowe's promotions played in the overall sale of chromos, it is clear that she aligned herself with a hot commodity: from 1840 to 1900, chromolithographs in America sold by the millions.

Background: In March 2020, the World Health Organization classified infection and contagion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a worldwide pandemic. Since then, health professionals have been tirelessly researching the symptoms and consequences of this disease in people's daily lives. Occupational therapists have also been mobilized to implement effective actions in order to guarantee the functionality and quality of life of individuals and groups. The aim of this article was to investigate what available resources there are regarding occupational therapy during the pandemic, and thus support and enrich professional practice during this time. Methods: A search for was carried out for materials such as technical notes, guidelines for working with COVID-19 patients, clinical trials, and reflections and debates on occupational therapeutic practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. Articles in English, Portuguese and Spanish were included. The search was carried out in the Virtual Health Library (VHL), Google Scholar, Latin American & Caribbean Health Sciences Literature (LILACS), Scientific Electronic Library Online (SCIELO) databases, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (MEDLINE), Pubmed, and the websites of occupational therapy entities and organizations. Results: A total of 44 materials were found and categorised into performance guides, technical notes and scientific articles. The materials dealt with different themes, with a predominance of guidelines for hospital practices. However, there was also a significant amount of notes on the positioning of representative bodies in the preparation of intervention guides in wards, intensive care units, and outpatient and patient homes to support these professionals. Conclusions: The results demonstrate the quick response of authors in the field of occupational therapy, to combat the challenges and barriers of the COVID-19 pandemic. The texts promote scientifically-based strategies to provide the best assistance to patients during the pandemic period.

Object. The authors assessed the results of extracranial—intracranial (EC—IC) bypass surgery in the treatment of occlusive cerebrovascular disease and intracranial aneurysms in the US between 1992 and 2001 by using population-based methods. Methods. This is a retrospective cohort study based on data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD). Five hundred fifty-eight operations were performed at 158 hospitals by 115 identified surgeons. The indications for surgery were cerebral ischemia in 74% of the operations (2.4% mortality rate), unruptured aneurysms in 19% of the operations (7.7% mortality rate), and ruptured aneurysms in 7% of the operations (21% mortality rate). Overall, 4.6% of the patients died and 4.7% of the patients were discharged to long-term facilities, 16.4% to short-term facilities, and 74.2% to their homes. The annual number of admissions in the US increased from 190 per year (1992–1996) to 360 per year (1997–2001), whereas the mortality rates increased from 2.8% (1992–1996) to 5.7% (1997–2001). The median annual number of procedures was three per hospital (range one–27 operations) or two per surgeon (range one–21 operations). For 29% of patients, their bypass procedure was the only one recorded at their particular hospital during that year; for these institutions the mean annual caseload was 0.4 admissions per year. For 42% of patients, their particular surgeon performed no other bypass procedure during that year. Older patient age (p < 0.001) and African-American race (p = 0.005) were risk factors for adverse outcome. In a multivariate analysis in which adjustments were made for age, sex, race, diagnosis, admission type, geographic region, medical comorbidity, and year of surgery, high-volume hospitals less frequently had an adverse discharge disposition (odds ratio 0.54, p = 0.03). Conclusions. Most EC—IC bypasses performed in the US during the last decade were performed for occlusive cerebrovascular disease. Community mortality rates for aneurysm treatment including bypass procedures currently exceed published values from specialized centers and, during the period under study, the mortality rates increased with time for all diagnostic subgroups. This technically demanding procedure has become a very low-volume operation at most US centers.

Large natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons often produce many refugees, forcing them to live inconvenient and unsanitary lives in temporary places of refuge. Even if they can remain in their homes, hygienic conditions may be worsened by interrupted electricity, water, fuel and other lifelines. Winter disasters bring more concerns, such as influenza and cold weather, while those in summer raise problems of diarrhea-related disease. Two of Japan’s largest recent earthquakes, the 1995 Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, did not cause large infectious disease outbreaks thanks to proper countermeasures. Even so, such outbreaks frequently occur worldwide. One recent example is the 2010 cholera outbreak following an earthquake in Haiti. In an added complication, it is thought that the outbreak was from a foreign source – an Asian epidemic strain of cholera. Many refugees have resulted from ethnic and tribal conflicts in Africa. In a visit to Kenya as a short-term expert for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), I observed a cholera outbreak in a Somali refugee camp. Health facilities at the camp were extremely bad, with the occurrence of drought adding to the suffering in these regions. Many developing countries in tropical and subtropical regions have problems of insufficient food supplies due to recent population growth. Disasters breaking out in these areas leave an unwelcome legacy of undernourishment and malnutrition, especially among young children. In this situation, the number of fatalities due to diarrhea is very high. Such fatalities are fewer in developed countries, but diarrhea in children under 5 years of age in developing countries remains a serious problem. World Health Organization (WHO) statistics published this year show that the global number of deaths in 2010 of children under 5 was some 76 million, 10% of which suffered from diarrhea-related disease. Malaria, pneumonia, premature birth, birth asphyxia and neonatal sepsis are additional causes of these deaths. This special issue details the countermeasures taken against infectious diseases in recent large disasters. As stated above, no serious outbreaks of infection were observed in the Great East Japan Earthquake, but damage to a local atomic power plant was extensive, as reported by the mass media. In addition to refugees from the earthquake and tsunami, many residents near the atomic power plant were forced to move out of their homes and towns because of the possible release of radiation, even though their homes had not been destroyed or even damaged. The lack of serious infectious disease outbreaks were more than made up for, however, by many problems with infectious disease. The subject of infectious disease risk and public health recovery is described by Dr. Hitoshi Oshitani of Tohoku University. Another article covers communicable diseases following the Great Earthquake described by Dr. Kentaro Iwata of Kobe University. The Great Earthquake and resulting tsunami in Sumatra, Indonesia, in December 2005 left more than 2,300,000 victims. Because this happened in a tropical region, public health control, especially food sanitation, was the worst problem. Dr. Nasronudin of Airlangga University in Indonesia communicates his experiences in this situation. The 2011 Haiti earthquake also involved a tropical region. As a Central American country, Haiti has had no experience with cholera in nearly a century and faces a cholera outbreak after the earthquake. Dr. G. B. Nair a cholera specialist at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute of India, investigated the situation in Haiti and found that the causative strain was an Asian epidemic cholera. We therefore asked Dr. Nair to write about the Haiti cholera epidemic. Global microbial culture collection facilities have many microbial stocks that, if somehow released by a disaster, would cause at least two serious problems – one of environmental pollution by pathogenic organisms triggering infectious disease and another of the loss of valuable microbial resources. This makes it vital to maintain safe, secure culture collections against disasters. Dr. Takayuki Ezaki, Gifu University, describes this subject. Finally, we thank the authors for their contributions and the reviewers for their invaluable comments.

Abstract Background Traditionally a hospital-acquired pathogen, Clostridium difficile is increasingly recognized as an important cause of diarrhea in community settings. Health disparities in C. difficileinfection (CDI) have been reported, but little is known about the social determinants of health that influence community-associated (CA) CDI incidence. We sought to identify socioeconomic status (SES) factors associated with increased CA-CDI incidence. Methods Population-based CDI surveillance is conducted in 35 U.S. counties through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Emerging Infections Program. A CA-CDI case is defined as a positive C. difficile stool specimen collected as an outpatient or within three days of hospitalization in a person aged ≥ 1 year who did not have a positive test in the prior 8 weeks or an overnight stay in a healthcare facility in the prior 12 weeks. ArcGIS software was used to geocode 2014–2015 CA-CDI case addresses to a 2010 census tract (CT). Incidence rate was calculated using 2010 Census population denominators. CT-level SES factors were obtained from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey 5-year estimates and divided into deciles. To account for CT-level clustering effects, separate generalized linear mixed models with negative binomial distribution were used to evaluate the association between each SES factor and CA-CDI incidence, adjusted by age, sex and race. Results Of 9686 CA-CDI cases, 9417 (97%) had addresses geocoded to a CT; of these, 62% were female, 82% were white, and 35% were aged ≥65 years. Annual CA-CDI incidence was 42.9 per 100,000 persons. After adjusting for age, sex and race, CT-level SES factors significantly associated with increased CA-CDI incidence included living under the poverty level (rate ratio [RR] 1.12; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09–1.53), crowding in homes (RR 1.11; 95% CI 1.01–1.21), low education (RR 1.11; 95% CI 1.07–1.15), low income (RR 1.15; 95% CI 1.12–1.17), having public health insurance (RR 1.21; 95% CI 1.18–1.24), receiving public assistance income (RR 1.69; 95% CI 1.55–1.84), and unemployment (RR 1.14; 95% CI 1.07–1.22). Conclusion Areas with lower SES have modestly increased CA-CDI incidence. Understanding the mechanisms by which SES factors impact CA-CDI incidence could help guide prevention efforts in these higher-risk areas. Disclosures All authors: No reported disclosures.

Purpose It is becoming increasingly clear that as the pressures of climate change increase around the world, all nations must strive to lower their carbon footprint through conservation. If the growth trend of green building and infrastructure construction is to be continued and improved upon, then evidence must be collected as to the benefits they bring about, and the level of support they enjoy in the market. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the economic performance of green buildings by evaluating whether LEED for Homes and BOMA-BEST properties capture higher market valuations and lower vacancy rates. These types of research questions have not been investigated to a great deal in the Canadian context. The primary analysis concerning municipal market valuation of green buildings was conducted using robust ordinary least squares and logistic regression models. Commercial vacancy rates were compared through the use of χ2 tests. Our analysis did not lead to conclusive evidence that there exists a “green” premium in the real estate market with respect to municipal market valuations. The authors argue that this may largely be due to municipal appraisal methods that currently do not incorporate sustainability factors. As such, they may not adequately reflect market tastes and trends. Furthermore, while the vacancy rates of green commercial buildings were, on the whole, lower than their non-green counterparts, the differences were not statistically significant. Given these results, the authors propose a set of research activities that the academic community should pursue. Design/methodology/approach Statistical techniques are utilized test whether green certification (LEED/BOMA-BEST) leads to higher municipal valuation for both commercial and residential green properties, using regression analysis. Furthermore, χ2 tests are conducted to evaluate whether certification leads to lower vacancy rates for commercial properties. Findings In terms of valuation, certification does not exert (on average) a positive role in terms of higher valuations for both commercial and residential properties. However, with respect to vacancy rates, there is a tendency towards lower vacancy rates for green properties, but the relationship is not statistically significant. Research limitations/implications The next set of research needs to gather greater amount of data with respect to how municipal evaluations are performed since the results are counter-intuitive. Greater tracking of the financial performance of green buildings should be conducted and made available for both public and private bodies. Particularly, rental and sale prices of green buildings need to be tracked in an organized manner. Practical implications The valuation techniques utilized by the municipal authorities need revision as green properties are being assessed without appropriate guidance from educational institutions. Furthermore, the limited amount of “green” valuation techniques in existence may not be applied. Originality/value This is the first Canadian-based research looking into the valuation of green certification using rigorous quantitative statistical techniques and original and publicly available data. Furthermore, it holds important lessons for municipal authorities with respect to green building valuation beyond Canada as the limitations of current practice go mostly likely beyond the North American context.

Dr. Penny Hansen is an international physiology educator. She was born in America and became a Canadian citizen, and her husband is from Sweden. Dr. Hansen has a reputation throughout the world from international meetings and visiting professorships in North America and Europe. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Ohio, and her PhD and entire academic career have been at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland, which is closer to London than to New Orleans. She found a hospitable environment and stayed. Remember how some jet planes were grounded on Sept. 11 at Gander, Newfoundland; the local people opened their homes, transported passengers in school buses, and served them free meals for a couple of days. Dr. Hansen has received local and national awards for her teaching skills. At St. John’s, her ideas about education quickly outgrew the Basic Science Division in the Faculty of Medicine. She went from Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education to Director of Academic Development for Medicine to director of a center for health professional education for five professional schools. With this track record she might have been chosen to be dean of a medical school. Dr. Hansen’s most notable contribution to international physiology has been in editing our Society’s teaching journal, Advances in Physiology Education, for nine years. During that time, she has written provocative editorials, encouraged authors from developing countries, and found ways to incorporate fresh ideas about teaching. As far as I know, no other society in the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology has a journal devoted to teaching. This is a tribute to Dr. Hansen and her associate editors in their encouragement of teachers to do research on teaching and publish their findings. Dr. Hansen will continue writing and is authoring a textbook entitled Physiology of Life Situations, which will have unique organization. Dr. Hansen was recently appointed co-chair of the Education Committee for the International Union of Physiological Sciences. In that role, she is responsible for conducting teaching workshops and providing resources to teachers of physiology worldwide, particularly in developing countries. She spends time each winter teaching at St. George’s Medical School in Granada. Dr. Hansen is also the elected chair of the Teaching Section for the next three years. It is particularly appropriate that, on this Earth Day 2002, whose motto is “One People, One Earth, One Future,” we hear a citizen of Canada who teaches worldwide talk about“Physiology’s Recondite Curriculum.”—Roger TannerThies, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Physiology, The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

“The family” has long been a focus of cross-party attention. While family is perceived as foundational to society’s success, how parents rear their children is perhaps the most conservative or persistent part of concern. While Chinese immigrant families and Chinese families in Asia – in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, mainland China, and elsewhere – are struggling with a socialization process that has emphasized support for traditional values, they are also simultaneously being confronted by modern ideologies and technologies. Professionals have a growing interest in addressing the culturally diverse needs and the gender issues of Chinese families. The theme of this issue of The Open Family Studies Journal, then, is “Gender, family and parenting in the Chinese context”. The heart of this special issue lies in a concern for families, in particular for the challenges posed to families and parenting practices in a changing world. The family, like any social group, is a product of history, culture and context. Because of economic and technological changes, and the increasingly pluralistic nature of our society, both gender relations and family structures have undergone tremendous change, and many challenges await elucidation. The seven papers in this special issue thus feature new perspectives on family, gender and parenting issues. The issue opens with a paper on scale validation. Since intimacy is a construct that has received limited attention in the Chinese context, the first paper, “Intimacy as a distinct construct: validating the intimacy scale among older adults of residential care homes in Hong Kong”, aims to develop a valid measurement for the quality of the relationship between older adults and family caregivers in the Hong Kong Chinese context. The study results demonstrate the reliability and validity of the instrument across samples of older adults. Paper 2 and 3 that follow are qualitative studies adopting cultural perspectives to understand Chinese American immigrant adults and older female survivors of intimate partner violence in Taiwan. In paper 2, “Understanding family connections and help-seeking behavior in Chinese parental lives. These findings illustrate how existentialism provides a new frame of reference and new practice directions for conducting parent-education programs. The final paper titled “Internet supervision and parenting in the digital age: The case of Shanghai” echoes the technological advancement and its impact on parenting. In a changing world, and in a society permeated by the Internet and by nearly instantaneous communication, families constantly need to adapt to different and changing ways of parenting. The paper explores the issue of parenting confidence in supervision of children’s Internet use in Shanghai, China. Multiple-regression models are used to identify factors affecting parents’ confidence about their own parenting. The findings suggest that efforts to assist parents should help them review their attitudes towards the Internet. American immigrant adults who attempt suicide”, the authors investigate beliefs, values and norms in the Chinese family culture and examine Chinese cultural influences on attitudes and beliefs about mental health and mental health services in the immigrant context. Paper 3, “Older female survivors of intimate partner violence in the Taiwanese cultural context” examines the needs of older female IPV survivors in another Chinese cultural context. The findings of both studies reflect the importance of family and the influence of Chinese family culture; they make it clear that traditional family beliefs are still highly valued and hold a prominent position in Chinese culture. The authors of these two papers question the efficacy of service-delivery models based on Western cultures, and they call for ethnically sensitive intervention approaches that incorporate cultural premises into developing viable options for service recipients. Paper 4 is titled “The Macau family-in-transition: the perceived impact of casino employment on family relationships among dealer families”. This paper draws on findings from a qualitative study to explore the impacts of casino employment on family life and family relationships. The family, like other social group, is a product of culture and context, and the specific socio-economic context of Macau poses challenges to dealer families and casino workers in performing their parental role. The paper sheds much-needed light on our understanding of Macau dealer families. The final three papers in this special issue all address the issue of parenting. Paper 5, “Reflective inquiry on professionals’ view on parents and about parenting”, examines professionals’ views of parents, their attitudes and beliefs about parenting, and the values underpinning their practice. The study’s findings on the theme of parent blaming provide an impetus for professionals to reflect on the attitudes and assumptions they hold, and their impact on parents. The paper calls for reflection on parenting work to recognize the difficulties and challenges faced by contemporary families. Paper 6, “Reviving parents’ life momentum: A qualitative evaluation of a parent education program adopting an existential approach”, reports the results of a qualitative analysis of the participants’ perceptions of a parent-education program. The findings of this study demonstrate that a program of this nature can make parents aware of the existential dimensions of being a parent and help them understand the significance of creating meaning in their In fact, family, parenting and gender are vastly contested terms which encompass a range of topics. The seven varied papers recommended for publication in this special issue reflect the considerable attention that we have placed on family, parenting and gender, and also the vision of this special issue. These papers add to the growing body of research and literature, and they provide both food for thought and a platform for discussion. In the last, I offer both my sincere thanks to the authors who have contributed to this special issue, and my gratitude to those who have participated as blind peer reviewers. Their thoughtful comments and criticisms have certainly improved the quality of each and every paper in this special issue.

The paper presents research findings with 56 Roma children from Macedonia and Serbia between the ages of 3-6 years. The children’s knowledge of Romani as their mother tongue was assessed with a specially designed test. The test measures the children’s comprehension and production of different types of grammatical knowledge such as wh–questions, wh-complements, passive verbs, possessives, tense, aspect, the ability of the children to learn new nouns and new adjectives, and repetition of sentences. In addition, two pictured narratives about Theory of Mind were given to the children. The hypothesis of the authors was that knowledge of the complex grammatical categories by children will help them to understand better the Theory of Mind stories. The results show that Roma children by the age of 5 know most of the grammatical categories in their mother tongue and most of them understand Theory of Mind. References Bakalar, P. (2004). The IQ of Gypsies in Central Europe. 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Abstract This essay explores the nineteenth-century development of pilgrimage to authors’ houses and locales in light of British and American regionalism and literary reception. It focuses on the trope of “author country” in the celebrated careers and commemoration of Longfellow and the Brontës, and examines American “homes and haunts” books that represent ritual visits to these different authors. Various representations and sites, including portraits, statues, waterfalls, and houses, mark the indigenous qualities of national literature and international attractions.

The foundation of the Hollywood horror film industry has always been constructed with metaphors of what haunts American society. By utilizing what society fears in daily life and representing it with ghosts or monsters, Hollywood was able to make movies scarier than they appeared to be on the surface. In the 1970s and 1980s, children’s television programming began to take the place of reading or playing as the number of shows and channel rose. Parents began to fear that television programming would take over their children’s lives. Moving through the decades and into the 2010s this fear only grew as cellphones, tablets, and laptops became the obsession of American youth. The Hollywood film industry capitalized on these fears in movies such as Poltergeist (1982) and Poltergeist (2015). These two films worked to represent current issues in society while also predicting what America would become if these issues were not properly dealt with. 1980s America did not resolve the issue of television and technology invading homes; thus, the problem grew as Americans relied more heavily on technological advances. Looking through the lens of Poltergeist (1982) and Poltergeist (2015) reveals the fears of past decades, how those fears have developed in 2010s American culture, and where these representations of cultural fears will lead us next.

Purpose A growing literature emphasizes violence occurring in public places. Yet, police seldom report such violence separately from violent incidents occurring elsewhere. This paper aims to distinguish assaults that occur in public vs private, outdoors vs indoors and in homes vs the night-time economy. Design/methodology/approach The authors reorganize police data to classify 1,062 assault locations for Boulder, Colorado, USA, 2020–2021, providing basic descriptive statistics that are seldom calculated or published. Findings In this city, almost two-thirds of police-recorded assaults occur away from home, often within night-time economy zones. Almost half of police-recorded assaults occur outdoors. Research limitations/implications Public assaults are probably under-reported and under-recorded in police data. The share of assaults occurring in public is likely to vary greatly among cities, along with reporting practices. Practical implications Public assaults can create special problems for police and social services. Poor management of public space can contribute to such violence. Alcohol policy and enforcement in public places is especially relevant to public assaults. Poor urban design might explain some of the problem. Social implications Public assaults are seen by many people and may do extra harm to children and even adults. Originality/value Police reports and academic work based on them seldom distinguish public from private assaults and seldom enumerate outdoor assaults in comparison to those indoors. In addition, statistics estimating violence in the night-time economy might not compare risks to other settings.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relationship between student loan debt and first-time home buying among college graduates aged 23 to 40 years old in the USA. Design/methodology/approach The authors use the Federal Reserve’s 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances data on American households to present descriptive statistics and run logistic regressions that measure the effects of student loan debt on first-time home buying. The authors also present original survey data of mortgage lenders that provides an industry-level perspective. Findings The authors find that having student loan debt does not by itself prohibit first-time home buyers. On the contrary, having student loan debt increases the likelihood of homeownership by 15.1%. People with student loan debt, however, buy homes that are 39.2% less expensive and have 58% less home equity compared to first-time home buyers without student loans. In addition, it is found that the amount of student loan debt is important. People with student loan debt above the median amount among people with student loan debt ($35,000) are 27% less likely to be first-time home buyers. Practical implications This paper provides public policy analysts and other researchers a different perspective on the correlation between student loan debt and home buying. This study focuses narrowly on first-time home buyers who are college graduates between 23 and 40 years. Thus, capturing the youngest cohort of first-time home buyers and examine the primary factors that influence their home buying decisions. Originality/value First-time homebuyers are historically the largest segment of home buyers making them an important subcategory to study. The rise in student loan debt is posited to explain declining homeownership among younger people. The current literature on student loan debt and home buying often studies samples that are too heterogeneous resulting in mixed findings. This paper adds to the existing literature by filtering the sample to study the effects of student loan debt and first-time home buying among people with at least a college degree who are between 23 and 40 years.

OBJECTIVE Accurate triage of minor head injuries remains a challenge for mature trauma systems. More than one-third of trauma transfers are overtriaged, and minor head injuries predominate. Overtriage is inefficient, wasteful of resources, and burdensome for families. The authors studied overtriage at the sole level I pediatric trauma center (PTC) in a small state with a view toward improvement of processes. METHODS Data on transfer patients were extracted from an institutional trauma registry over an 8-year period. Three definitions of overtriage were examined: one based on transfer criteria from the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, one based on resource utilization, and one adapted to the regional environment of the PTC. Associations of demographic, geographic, clinical, and social factors with overtriage were examined. RESULTS There were 1754 unique patients transferred from the emergency departments (EDs) of other institutions to the PTC. Thirty-six percent of transfers were overtriaged by all 3 criteria, and 23% of all transfers were minor head injuries overtriaged by all criteria. Infants were more likely to be overtriaged than other age groups. Among racial categories, Black patients were least likely to be overtriaged. Patients with commercial insurance were more likely to be overtriaged. Overtriaged patients averaged shorter trips from the referring ED to the PTC, even though the PTC was farther from their homes. These observations suggest a sensitivity to social expectations in the exercise of ED physician judgments about transfer. CONCLUSIONS More than one-third of all transfers to the study PTC were overtriaged, and almost one-quarter of all transfers were overtriaged minor head injuries. Minor head injuries are a potentially rewarding focus for system-wide quality improvement, but the interplay of social factors with ED physician judgments must be recognized.

Previously limited and somewhat neglected as a focus of academic scrutiny, interest in home and domesticity is now growing apace across the humanities and social sciences (Mallett; Blunt, “Cultural Geographies of Home”; Blunt and Dowling). This is evidenced in the recent publication of a range of books on home from various disciplines (Chapman and Hockey; Cieraad; Miller; Chapman; Pink; Blunt and Dowling), the advent in 2004 of a new journal, Home Cultures, focused specifically on the subject of home and domesticity, as well as similar recent special issues in several other journals, including Antipode, Cultural Geographies, Signs and Housing, Theory and Society. This increased interest in the home as a site of social and cultural inquiry reflects a renewed fascination with home and domesticity in the media, popular culture and everyday life. Domestic life is explicitly central to the plot and setting of many popular and/or critically-acclaimed television programs, especially suburban dramas like Neighbours [Australia], Coronation Street [UK], Desperate Housewives [US] and The Secret Life of Us [Australia]. The deeply-held value of home – as a place that must be saved or found – is also keenly represented in films such as The Castle [Australia], Floating Life [Australia], Rabbit-Proof Fence [Australia], House of Sand and Fog [US], My Life as a House [US] and Under the Tuscan Sun [US]. But the prominence of home in popular media imaginaries of Australia and other Western societies runs deeper than as a mere backdrop for entertainment. Perhaps most telling of all is the rise and ratings success of a range of reality and/or lifestyle television programs which provide their audiences with key information on buying, building, renovating, designing and decorating home. In Australia, these include Backyard Blitz , Renovation Rescue, The Block, Changing Rooms, DIY Rescue, Location, Location and Our House. Likewise, popular magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and Australian Vogue Living tell us how to make our homes more beautiful and functional. Other reality programs, meanwhile, focus on how we might secure the borders of our suburban homes (Crimewatch [UK]) and our homeland (Border Security [Australia]). Home is also a strong theme in other media forms and debates, including life writing, novels, art and public dialogue about immigration and national values (see Blunt and Dowling). Indeed, notions of home increasingly frame ‘real world’ experiences, “especially for the historically unprecedented number of people migrating across countries”, where movement and resettlement are often configured through processes of leaving and establishing home (Blunt and Dowling 2). In this issue of M/C Journal we contribute to these critical voices and popular debates, seeking to further untangle the intricate and multi-layered connections between home and everyday life in the contemporary world. Before introducing the articles comprising this issue, we want to extend some of the key themes that weave through academic and popular discussions of home and domesticity, and which are taken up and extended here by the subsequent articles. Home is powerful, emotive and multi-faceted. As a basic desire for many, home is saturated with the meanings, memories, emotions, experiences and relationships of everyday life. The idea and place of home is perhaps typically configured through a positive sense of attachment, as a place of belonging, intimacy, security, relationship and selfhood. Indeed, many reinforce their sense of self, their identity, through an investment in their home, whether as house, hometown or homeland. But at the same time, home is not always a well-spring of succour and goodness; others experience alienation, rejection, hostility, danger and fear ‘at home’. Home can be a site of domestic violence or ‘house arrest’; young gay men and lesbians may feel alienated in the family home; asylum seekers are banished from their homelands; indigenous peoples are often dispossessed of their homelands; refugees might be isolated from a sense of belonging in their new home(land)s. But while this may seriously mitigate the affirmative experience of home, many still yearn for places, both figurative and material, to call ‘home’ – places of support, nourishment and belonging. The experience of violence, loss, marginalisation or dispossession can trigger, in Michael Brown’s words, “the search for a new place to call home”: “it means having to relocate oneself, to leave home and reconfigure it elsewhere” (50). Home, in this sense, understood as an ambiguous site of both belonging and alienation, is not a fixed and static location which ‘grounds’ an essential and unchanging sense of self. Rather, home is a process. If home enfolds and carries some sense of desire for positive feelings of attachment – and the papers in this special issue certainly suggest so, most quite explicitly – then equally this is a relationship that requires ongoing maintenance. Blunt and Dowling call these processes ‘homemaking practices’, and point to how home must be understood as a lived space which is “continually created and recreated through everyday practices” (23). In this way, home is posited as relational – the ever-changing outcome of the ongoing and mediated interaction between self, others and place. What stands out in much of the above discussion is the deep inter-connection between home, identity and self. Across the humanities and social sciences, home has been keenly explored as a crucial site “for the construction and reconstruction of one’s self” (Young 153). Indeed, Blunt and Dowling contend that “home as a place and an imaginary constitutes identities – people’s sense of themselves are related to and produced through lived and imaginative experiences of home” (24). Thus, through various homemaking practices, individuals generate a sense of self (and social groups produce a sense of collective identity) while they create a place called home. Moreover, as a relational entity, neither home nor identity are fixed, but mutually and ongoingly co-constituted. Homemaking enables changing and cumulative identities to be materialised in and supported by the home (Blunt and Dowling). Unfolding identities are progressively embedded and reflected in the home through both everyday practices and routines (Wise; Young), and accumulating and arranging personally meaningful objects (Marcoux; Noble, “Accumulating Being”). Consequently, as one ‘makes home’, one accumulates a sense of self. Given these intimate material and affective links between home, self and identity, it is perhaps not surprising that writing about a place called home has often been approached autobiographically (Blunt and Dowling). Emphasising the importance of autobiographical accounts for understanding home, Blunt argues that “through their accounts of personal memories and everyday experiences, life stories provide a particularly rich source for studying home and identity” (“Home and Identity”, 73). We draw attention to the importance of autobiographical accounts of home because this approach is prominent across the papers comprising this issue of M/C Journal. The authors have used autobiographical reflections to consider the meanings of home and processes of homemaking operating at various scales. Three papers – by Brett Mills, Lisa Slater and Nahid Kabir – are explicitly autobiographical, weaving scholarly arguments through deeply personal experiences, and thus providing evocative first-hand accounts of the power of home in the contemporary world. At the same time, several other authors – including Melissa Gregg, Gilbert Caluya and Jennifer Gamble – use personal experiences about home, belonging and exclusion to introduce or illustrate their scholarly contentions about home, self and identity. As this discussion suggests, home is relational in another way, too: it is the outcome of a relationship between material and imaginative qualities. Home is somewhere – it is situated, located, emplaced. But it is also much more than a location – as suggested by the saying, ‘A house is not a home’. Rather, a house becomes a home when it is imbued with a range of meanings, feelings and experiences by its occupants. Home, thus, is a fusion of the imaginative and affective – what we envision and desire home to be – intertwined with the material and physical – an actual location which can embody and realise our need for belonging, affirmation and sustenance. Blunt and Dowling capture this relationship between emplacement and emotion – the material and the imaginative – with their powerful assertion of home as a spatial imaginary, where “home is neither the dwelling nor the feeling, but the relation between the two” (22). Moreover, they demonstrate that this conceptualisation also detaches ‘home’ from ‘dwelling’ per se, and invokes the creation of home – as a space and feeling of belonging – at sites and scales beyond the domestic house. Instead, as a spatial imaginary, home takes form as “a set of intersecting and variable ideas and feelings, which are related to context, and which construct places, extend across spaces and scales, and connects places” (Blunt and Dowling 2). The concept of home, then, entails complex scalarity: indeed, it is a multi-scalar spatial imaginary. Put quite simply, scale is a geographical concept which draws attention to the layered arenas of everyday life – body, house, neighbourhood, city, region, nation and globe, for instance – and this terminology can help extend our understanding of home. Certainly, for many, house and home are conflated, so that a sense of home is coterminous with a physical dwelling structure (e.g. Dupuis and Thorns). For others, however, home is signified by intimate familial or community relationships which extend beyond the residence and stretch across a neighbourhood (e.g. Moss). And moreover, without contradiction, we can speak of hometowns and homelands, so that home can be felt at the scale of the town, city, region or nation (e.g. Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora). For others – international migrants and refugees, global workers, communities of mixed descent – home can be stretched into transnational belongings (e.g. Blunt, “Cultural Geographies of Home”). But this notion of home as a multi-scalar spatial imaginary is yet more complicated. While the above arenas (house, neighbourhood, nation, globe, etc.) are often simply posited as discrete territories, they also intersect and interact in complex ways (Massey; Marston). Extending this perspective, we can grasp the possibility of personal and collective homemaking processes operating across multiple scales simultaneously. For instance, making a house into a home invariably involves generating a sense of home and familiarity in a wider neighbourhood or nation-state. Indeed, Greg Noble points out that homemaking at the scale of the dwelling can be inflected by broader social and national values which are reflected materially in the house, in “the furniture of everyday life” (“Comfortable and Relaxed”, 55) – landscape paintings and national flags and ornaments, for example. He demonstrates that “homes articulate domestic spaces to national experience” (54). For others – those moving internationally between nation-states – domestic practices in dwelling structures are informed by cultural values and social ideals which extend well beyond the nation of settlement. Everyday domestic practices from one’s ‘land of origin’ are integral for ‘making home’ in a new house, neighbourhood and country at the same time (Hage). Many of the papers in this issue reflect upon the multi-scalarity of homemaking processes, showing how home must be generated across the multiple intersecting arenas of everyday life simultaneously. Indeed, given this prominence across the papers, we have chosen to use the scale of home as our organising principle for this issue. We begin with the links between the body – the geography closest to our skin (McDowell) – the home, and other scales, and then wind our way out through evocations of home at the intersecting scales of the house, the neighbourhood, the city, the nation and the diasporic. The rhetoric of home and belonging not only suggests which types of places can be posited as home (e.g. houses, neighbourhoods, nations), but also valorises some social relations and embodied identities as homely and others as unhomely (Blunt and Dowling; Gorman-Murray). The dominant ideology of home in the Anglophonic West revolves around the imaginary ‘ideal’ of white, middle-class, heterosexual nuclear family households in suburban dwellings (Blunt and Dowling). In our lead paper, Melissa Gregg explores how the ongoing normalisation of this particular conception of home in Australian politico-cultural discourse affects two marginalised social groups – sexual minorities and indigenous Australians. Her analysis is timely, responding to recent political attention to the domestic lives of both groups. Scrutinising the disciplinary power of ‘normal homes’, Gregg explores how unhomely (queer and indigenous) subjects and relationships unsettle the links between homely bodies, ideal household forms and national belonging in politico-cultural rhetoric. Importantly, she draws attention to the common experiences of these marginalised groups, urging “queer and black activists to join forces against wider tendencies that affect both communities”. Our first few papers then continue to investigate intersections between bodies, houses and neighbourhoods. Moving to the American context – but quite recognisable in Australia – Lisa Roney examines the connection between bodies and houses on the US lifestyle program, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, in which families with disabled members are over-represented as subjects in need of home renovations. Like Gregg, Roney demonstrates that the rhetoric of home is haunted by the issue of ‘normalisation’ – in this case, EMHE ‘corrects’ and normalises disabled bodies through providing ‘ideal’ houses. In doing so, there is often a disjuncture between the homely ideal and what would be most helpful for the everyday domestic lives of these subjects. From an architectural perspective, Marian Macken also considers the disjuncture between bodily practices, inhabitation and ideal houses. While traditional documentation of house designs in working drawings capture “the house at an ideal moment in time”, Macken argues for post factum documentation of the house, a more dynamic form of architectural recording produced ‘after-the-event’ which interprets ‘the existing’ rather than the ideal. This type of documentation responds to the needs of the body in the inhabited space of domestic architecture, representing the flurry of occupancy, “the changes and traces the inhabitants make upon” the space of the house. Gilbert Caluya also explores the links between bodies and ideal houses, but from a different viewpoint – that of the perceived need for heightened home security in contemporary suburban Australia. With the rise of electronic home security systems, our houses have become extensions of our bodies – ‘architectural nervous systems’ which extend our eyes, ears and senses through modern security technologies. The desire for home security is predicated on controlling the interplay between the house and wider scales – the need to create a private and secure defensible space in hostile suburbia. But at the same time, heightened home security measures ironically connect the mediated home into a global network of electronic grids and military technologies. Thus, new forms of electronic home security stretch home from the body to the globe. Irmi Karl also considers the connections between technologies and subjectivities in domestic space. Her UK-based ethnographic analysis of lesbians’ techo-practices at home also considers, like Gregg, tactics of resistance to the normalisation of the heterosexual nuclear family home. Karl focuses on the TV set as a ‘straightening device’ – both through its presence as a key marker of ‘family homes’ and through the heteronormative content of programming – while at the same time investigating how her lesbian respondents renegotiated the domestic through practices which resisted the hetero-regulation of the TV – through watching certain videos, for instance, or even hiding the TV set away. Susan Thompson employs a similar ethnographic approach to understanding domestic practices which challenge normative meanings of home, but her subject is quite different. In an Australian-based study, Thompson explores meanings of home in the wake of relationship breakdown of heterosexual couples. For her respondents, their houses embodied their relationships in profoundly symbolic and physical ways. The deterioration and end of their relationships was mirrored in the material state of the house. The end of a relationship also affected homely, familiar connections to the wider neighbourhood. But there was also hope: new houses became sources of empowerment for former partners, and new meanings of home were created in the transition to a new life. Brett Mills also explores meanings of home at different scales – the house, neighbourhood and city – but returns to the focus on television and media technologies. His is a personal, but scholarly, response to seeing his own home on the television program Torchwood, filmed in Cardiff, UK. Mills thus puts a new twist on autobiographical narratives of home and identity: he uses this approach to examine the link between home and media portrayals, and how personal reactions to “seeing your home on television” change everyday perceptions of home at the scales of the house, neighbourhood and city. His reflection on “what happens when your home is on television” is solidly but unobtrusively interwoven with scholarly work on home and media, and speaks to the productive tension of home as material and imaginative. As the above suggests, especially with Mills’s paper, we have begun to move from the homely connections between bodies and houses to focus on those between houses, neighbourhoods and beyond. The next few papers extend these wider connections. Peter Pugsley provides a critical analysis of the meaning of domestic settings in three highly-successful Singaporean sitcoms. He argues that the domestic setting in these sitcoms has a crucial function in the Singaporean nation-state, linking the domestic home and national homeland: it is “a valuable site for national identities to be played out” in terms of the dominant modes of culture and language. Thus, in these domestic spaces, national values are normalised and disseminated – including the valorisation of multiculturalism, the dominance of Chinese cultural norms, benign patriarchy, and ‘proper’ educated English. Donna Lee Brien, Leonie Rutherford and Rosemary Williamson also demonstrate the interplay between ‘private’ and ‘public’ spaces and values in their case studies of the domestic sphere in cyberspace, examining three online communities which revolve around normatively domestic activities – pet-keeping, crafting and cooking. Their compelling case studies provide new ways to understand the space of the home. Home can be ‘stretched’ across public and private, virtual and physical spaces, so that “online communities can be seen to be domesticated, but, equally … the activities and relationships that have traditionally defined the home are not limited to the physical space of the house”. Furthermore, as they contend in their conclusion, these extra-domestic networks “can significantly modify practices and routines in the physical home”. Jennifer Gamble also considers the interplay of the virtual and the physical, and how home is not confined to the physical house. Indeed, the domestic is almost completely absent from the new configurations of home she offers: she conceptualises home as a ‘holding environment’ which services our needs and provides care, support and ontological security. Gamble speculates on the possibility of a holding environment which spans the real and virtual worlds, encompassing email, chatrooms and digital social networks. Importantly, she also considers what happens when there are ruptures and breaks in the holding environment, and how physical or virtual dimensions can compensate for these instances. Also rescaling home beyond the domestic, Alexandra Ludewig investigates concepts of home at the scale of the nation-state or ‘homeland’. She focuses on the example of Germany since World War II, and especially since re-unification, and provides an engaging discussion of the articulation between home and the German concept of ‘Heimat’. She shows how Heimat is ambivalent – it is hard to grasp the sense of longing for homeland until it is gone. Thus, Heimat is something that must be constantly reconfigured and maintained. Taken up in a critical manner, it also attains positive values, and Ludewig suggests how Heimat can be employed to address the Australian context of homeland (in)security and questions of indigenous belonging in the contemporary nation-state. Indeed, the next couple of papers focus on the vexed issue of building a sense home and belonging at the scale of the nation-state for non-indigenous Australians. Lisa Slater’s powerful autobiographical reflection considers how non-indigenous Australians might find a sense of home and belonging while recognising prior indigenous ownership of the land. She critically reflects upon “how non-indigenous subjects are positioned in relation to the original owners not through migrancy but through possession”. Slater urges us to “know our place” – we need not despair, but use such remorse in a productive manner to remake our sense of home in Australia – a sense of home sensitive to and respectful of indigenous rights. Nahid Kabir also provides an evocative and powerful autobiographical narrative about finding a sense of home and belonging in Australia for another group ‘beyond the pale’ – Muslim Australians. Hers is a first-hand account of learning to ‘feel at home’ in Australia. She asks some tough questions of both Muslim and non-Muslim Australians about how to accommodate difference in this country. Moreover, her account shows the homing processes of diasporic subjects – transnational homemaking practices which span several countries, and which enable individuals and social groups to generate senses of belonging which cross multiple borders simultaneously. Our final paper also contemplates the homing desires of diasporic subjects and the call of homelands – at the same time bringing our attention back to home at the scales of the house, neighbourhood, city and nation. As such, Wendy Varney’s paper brings us full circle, lucidly invoking home as a multi-scalar spatial imaginary by exploring the diverse and complex themes of home in popular music. Given the prevalence of yearnings about home in music, it is surprising so little work has explored the powerful conceptions of home disseminated in and through this widespread and highly mobile media form. Varney’s analysis thus makes an important contribution to our understandings of home presented in media discourses in the contemporary world, and its multi-scalar range is a fitting way to bring this issue to a close. Finally, we want to draw attention to the cover art by Rohan Tate that opens our issue. A Sydney-based photographer, Tate is interested in the design of house, home and the domestic form, both in terms of exteriors and interiors. This image from suburban Sydney captures the shifting styles of home in suburban Australia, giving us a crisp juxtaposition between modern and (re-valued) traditional housing forms. Bringing this issue together has been quite a task. We received 60 high quality submissions, and selecting the final 14 papers was a difficult process. Due to limits on the size of the issue, several good papers were left out. We thank the reviewers for taking the time to provide such thorough and useful reports, and encourage those authors who did not make it into this issue to keep seeking outlets for their work. The number of excellent submissions shows that home continues to be a growing and engaging theme in social and cultural inquiry. As editors, we hope that this issue of M/C Journal will make a vital contribution to this important range of scholarship, bringing together 14 new and innovative perspectives on the experience, location, creation and meaning of home in the contemporary world. References Blunt, Alison. “Home and Identity: Life Stories in Text and in Person.” Cultural Geography in Practice. Eds. Alison Blunt, Pyrs Gruffudd, Jon May, Miles Ogborn, and David Pinder. London: Arnold, 2003. 71-87. ———. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. Malden: Blackwell, 2005. ———. “Cultural Geographies of Home.” Progress in Human Geography 29.4 (2005): 505-515. ———, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London: Routledge, 2006. Brown, Michael. Closet Space: Geographies of Metaphor from the Body to the Globe. London: Routledge, 2000. Chapman, Tony. Gender and Domestic Life: Changing Practices in Families and Households. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ———, and Jenny Hockey, eds. Ideal Homes? Social Change and Domestic Life. London: Routledge, 1999. Cieraad, Irene, ed. At Home: An Anthropology of Domestic Space. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999. Dupuis, Ann, and David Thorns. “Home, Home Ownership and the Search for Ontological Security.” The Sociological Review 46.1 (1998): 24-47. Gorman-Murray, Andrew. “Homeboys: Uses of Home by Gay Australian Men.” Social and Cultural Geography 7.1 (2006): 53-69. Hage, Ghassan. “At Home in the Entrails of the West: Multiculturalism, Ethnic Food and Migrant Home-Building.” Home/world: Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney’s West. Eds. Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth and Michael Symonds. Annandale: Pluto, 1997. 99-153. Mallett, Shelley. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review 52.1 (2004): 62-88. Marcoux, Jean-Sébastien. “The Refurbishment of Memory.” Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors. Ed. Daniel Miller. Oxford: Berg, 2001. 69-86. Marston, Sally. “A Long Way From Home: Domesticating the Social Production of Scale.” Scale and Geographic Inquiry: Nature, Society and Method. Eds. Eric Sheppard and Robert McMaster. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. 170-191. Massey, Doreen. “A Place Called Home.” New Formations 17 (1992): 3-15. McDowell, Linda. Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Cambridge: Polity, 1999. Miller, Daniel, ed. Home Possessions: Material Culture Behind Closed Doors. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Moss, Pamela. “Negotiating Space in Home Environments: Older Women Living with Arthritis.” Social Science and Medicine 45.1 (1997): 23-33. Noble, Greg. “Comfortable and Relaxed: Furnishing the Home and Nation.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 16.1 (2002): 53-66. ———. “Accumulating Being.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.2 (2004): 233-256. Pink, Sarah. Home Truths: Gender, Domestic Objects and Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg, 2004. Wise, J. Macgregor. “Home: Territory and Identity.” Cultural Studies 14.2 (2000): 295-310. Young, Iris Marion. “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” On Female Body Experience: ‘Throwing Like a Girl’ and Other Essays. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 123-154. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Gorman-Murray, Andrew, and Robyn Dowling. "Home." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/01-editorial.php>. APA Style Gorman-Murray, A., and R. Dowling. (Aug. 2007) "Home," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/01-editorial.php>.

Even when older adults monitor hypertension at home, it is difficult to understand trends and share them with their providers. MyHealthNetwork is a dashboard designed for patients and providers to monitor blood pressure readings to detect hypertension and ultimately warning signs of changes in brain health. A multidisciplinary group in a Digital Health course at Tufts University School of Medicine used Design Thinking to formulate a digital solution to promote brain health among older adults in the United States (US). Older adults (aged 65 and over) are a growing population in the US, with many having one or more chronic health conditions including hypertension. Nearly half of all American adults ages 50-64 worry about memory loss as they age and almost all (90%) wish to maintain independence and age in their homes. Given the well-studied association between hypertension and dementia, we designed a solution that would ultimately promote brain health among older adults by allowing them to measure and record their blood pressure readings at home on a regular basis. Going through each step in the Design Thinking process, we devised MyHealthNetwork, an application which connects to a smart blood pressure cuff and stores users’ blood pressure readings in a digital dashboard which will alert users if readings are outside of the normal range. The dashboard also has a physician view where users’ data can be reviewed by the physician and allow for shared treatment decisions. The authors developed a novel algorithm to visually display the blood pressure categories in the dashboard in a way straightforward enough that users with low health literacy could track and understand their blood pressure over time. Additional features of the dashboard include educational content about brain health and hypertension, a digital navigator to support users with application use and technical questions. Phase 1 in the development of our application includes a pilot study involving recruitment of Primary Care Providers with patients who are at risk of dementia to collect and monitor BP data with our prototype. Subsequent phases of development involve partnerships to provide primary users with a rewards program to promote continued use, additional connections to secondary users such as family members and expansion to capture other health metrics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been heralded as a watershed moment for remote work, an exodus of the American workforce that will never fully reverse. As major corporations debate returning to the office full-time, and other workers press or are pressed into returning to the office, this panel situates the present realities of remote work within telework’s long history. From the paperless office to the electronic cottage, much of the focus in mainstream discourses surrounding telework has been on demonstrating the technological feasibility of leaving workers at home and workforce adaptability, with secondary celebrations of ecological soundness and potential for employment growth. Discourses around the benefit of telework also frequently draw on blanket statements about what remote work affords workers—from wellness and eschewing commute times, to increasing flexibility—but do not directly take up the lived quotidian experiences of doing labor in this configuration. This panel intervenes by yoking the politics and fantasies of remote work with worker experience during work from home, especially of self-management of both individual affect, group and power dynamics, and environment. Within this frame, this collection of papers suggests that, while remote work suggests a dislocation of office and home and the creation of a third space, the overlays of work and home are always top of mind for individual workers, whether in their homes with children or while traveling as “digital nomads.” The panel suggests that navigating this collapse creates a “third space,” and is a site of ever-present negotiation for workers, both individually and in social dynamics across organizations. This panel works across a number of methods including ethnography, archival research of both born-digital and traditional objects and draws on interviews and survey data. The panel points to not only how workers act in front of the screen, but what is supporting remote work off and behind it: domestic architectures, impression management, and paid and unpaid forms of domestic labor. The panel opens with a pair of papers that look at the historical development of work from home in order to situate the COVID-19 pandemic and its use of remote work as both a form of rupture and as a continuation of the logics, fantasies, and environments that pre-date this massive and rapid expansion into remote work. In “Home/Work: The Long History of the Future of Work,” Devon Powers reads the history of progress and futural narratives attached to telework, and the renovations both material and ideological to the spaces that are enfolded into remote work: home and the office. Powers pays special attention to the collapse of work and home, and the creation of a third space that is actually only an expansion of an existing one—the everywhere office. In “Make It Work: Hiding Children in Telework,” Hannah Zeavin takes up the feminization of remote work, which is subtended by the fantasy that, by working from home, women might “have it all”: they can do childcare and paid labor at once. Zeavin examines how workers have negotiated this collapse of waged and unwaged labor by disappearing and hiding the visual and sonic evidence of children during work from home. Nancy Baym et al look to the management of the worker’s own visibility in “Video On/Off: Managing Visibility in Remote Videoconferencing” with 44% of American workers suddenly home in the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors ran a five-month longitudinal diary study of meetings at a large technology company between April and August 2020, comprised of 849 employees. The paper looks at reasons for (dis)comfort with appearing on camera during work and how workers negotiate the contradictions of on and off. In “Abruptly Online: Public Employees’ Adaptation to Virtual Communication in Times of Crisis," Sierra Bray and Cynthia Barboza-Wilkes consider the special category of public employees and the challenges and benefits of work from home in a group of workers who had a novel relationship to working online. Andrea Alarcon, in “Outsourcing the Home: the Digital Nomad Tactic ” looks at the apotheosis of work from home in the rise of the “digital nomad.” Alarcon intervenes by pointing to the unacknowledged support and costs of “nomadic life” in the city of Medellin and the workers who travel and collapse the identities of tourist and laborer, and vacation with work.

With each passing year the number of students worldwide who participate in overseas educational programs of study continues to increase. This number has recently approached 100 million students who have chosen to leave their homes to study in a country or province other than their own. These experiences, traditionally referred to by Americans as "study abroad," include a wide assortment of program options in which students are enrolled in a formal academic context at the same time that they have, at least in principle, the opportunity to participate in the daily experience of living in a culture other than their own. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those who participate in education abroad programs are international students who come to study in the United States (Desruisseaux 1996: A64). However, within the European Union, some 80,000 students have taken part in exchanges of various types (see Coleman, this volume). At the same time, the number of American students who elect to include study abroad as an integral part of their undergraduate program is rapidly rising. While the total number of American students who participate in these programs still represents only 1% of the enrollment in higher education, the number who make study abroad a part of their college experience has increased in the course of the last decade. Recent figures indicate that in 1995-1996 (the last year for which reliable figures are currently available) that almost 90,000 American students participated in a wide variety of educational experiences throughout the world - an increase of almost 6% since the prior year. (Desruisseaux 1997: A42-46). As all those who deal with study abroad programs know, there are numerous compelling reasons to encourage students to participate in a study abroad experience. The personal and academic benefits of these experiences have been dealt with in-depth elsewhere (e.g., Baron and Smith 1987; Byram 1988; Coleman and Rouxeville 1993; Carlson, Burn et al. 1990; Dalichow and Teichler 1986; Goodwin and Nacht 1988; Inkster 1993; Johnson and Edelstein 1993; Koester 1985; Laubscher, 1994; Teichler and Steube 1991) and will not be explored here. Rather, this volume of Frontiers will focus exclusively on one of the most pervasive arguments in favor of study abroad - the opportunity to acquire high levels of proficiency in a another language. As Goodwin and Nacht (1988:16) stated in their comprehensive review of education abroad programs "the mastery of a modern language has traditionally been perceived as the most direct educational benefit of study abroad." Indeed, with the exception of the approximately 20,000 American students who in the recent past have chosen to study in English-speaking countries (Desruisseaux. 1997, A45), those American students who elect to study in non-Anglophone countries (largely concentrated in Western Europe but including as well Japan, China, Russia, Latin America, various parts of Africa and the mid- and far East) do so for the opportunity to learn a language and culture other than their own. For these students, increased language and cultural proficiency become one of the paramount reasons for studying abroad. It is the experiences of students such as these that constitute the basis for the seven articles which follow. Complementary but distinct, they fall naturally into several different general categories. The introductory article, "Methodological Considerations in Data Collection for Language Learning in a Study Abroad Context," by Thom Huebner, discusses the wide array of variables and possible research approaches and techniques that need to be considered in conducting research that investigates the linguistic impact of study abroad experiences. Huebner offers not only a framework for evaluating, assessing and measuring the effectiveness of study abroad but also for integrating and interpreting the diversity of research which appears in this volume. The following two chapters, "An Overview of Issues and Research in Language Learning in a Study Abroad Setting" by Barbara F. Freed and "Sociolinguistics and Language Learning in a Study Abroad Context" by Vera Regan are examples of some of the research options outlined by Huebner. Freed offers a broad overview of much of the current literature which explores the growth of language proficiency among students who have spent a period of time abroad and includes a descriptive linguistic profile of students who have "studied abroad." In deference to the chapters which follow in this specially-edited volume, Freed tends to emphasize research conducted by American scholars and of those, research that is more quantitative in nature. Regan, by contrast, devotes her discussion to the growing body of literature which explores the development of sociolinguistic competence among students who have had out-of-country experiences. The next series of three articles, "Student Perspectives on Language Learning in a Study Abroad Context" by Valerie Pellegrino, "On the Nature of Immersion During Study Abroad: Some Participant Perspectives" by Sharon Wilkinson and "Literacy and Language Learning in a Study Abroad Context" by Rebecca Kline address the topic from a different but related perspective. By contrast to the preceding two articles which focus on precise qualities and/or linguistic features in the language of students who have been abroad, these three authors address the topic of language learning by meticulously investigating the study abroad experience and setting themselves, portrayed primarily in the students' own voices and from their own perspectives. Their goal is to look closely at what actually happens during study abroad in an attempt to elucidate the types of social interactions students have in the study abroad setting, how students interpret these interactions and how they, in turn, may affect their learning. Pellegrino provides a comprehensive overview of qualitative and introspective research, emphasizing individual student perceptions of the value of "in-class" learning as compared to learning which takes place in the native speech community. The work she discusses, emerging from ethnographic, journal, diary and interview data, offers new insights which enriches the study abroad literature. Important among these, as Pellegrino is careful to emphasize, is the value derived from understanding student perceptions and the impact they ultimately have on the actual language learning experience. Wilkinson's approach, similar to Pellegrino's, results in unsuspected findings about the nature of the "immersion" experience itself and a related series of myths about study abroad to which many of us have innocently subscribed. Kline, utilizing a similar qualitative approach to gathering data, addresses a neglected area in the study abroad research-that of literacy. Rather than focusing on the "product" of reading as it has traditionally been understood within the formal language classroom, Kline expands our knowledge by urging an exploration of "literacy as social practice." In so doing, she reveals the benefits of looking at process rather than product as she explores the lives of readers. The final article in this volume "Language Learning and Study Abroad: The European Perspective," by James Coleman, concentrates on the background and rapidly growing literature on exchanges within the European perspective. Coleman provides American readers with a rich and detailed discussion of the European context and a valuably different perspective on the general topic. Not surprisingly, there are complementary overlaps within these chapters as individual authors provide background information and validate their research approaches. Such overlaps serve to highlight some of the crucial issues and contribute to a thematic unity to the volume. Among the recurrent themes that readers will encounter, the following might be listed: 1. a growing recognition of the highly complex nature of the study abroad experience, the significance of individual variables in each student's profile and the inherent risks in making unwarranted generalizations 2. the diversity of research approaches that range from strictly quantitative to richly qualitative and the benefits of combining both approaches in efforts to fully describe and understand language learning that occurs in a study abroad setting 3. the danger of relying on measurement devices that are holistic in nature, that include inherent ceiling effects, that are insufficiently refined to assess linguistic growth among more advanced students, resulting in inappropriate conclusions about the relationship between language learning and the study abroad experience 4. the responsibility of searching beyond long-standing but popular assumptions about the nature and value of residence abroad As will be seen in exploring the articles included in this volume, each author has chosen to describe a slightly different aspect of the potential relationship between language learning and study abroad. Consequently, a variety of perspectives are offered on how best to access, assess and interpret the interlocking questions related to the linguistic impact of the experiences students encounter as part of a sojourn abroad. Read as a group, these seven articles provide the most current exploration of the topic, offering the reader an in-depth summary of the extant literature on the language learning that can and does occur in a study abroad context. Barbara F. Freed Carnegie Mellon University

OPENING Welcome to this special feature of Approaches, which was inspired by the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting. Organised by the Giovanni Ferrari Music Therapy School of Padua, with the support of the Italian Association of Professional Music Therapists (AIM) and the Italian Confederation of Associations and Music Therapy Schools (CONFIAM), this event took place on 22nd September 2018 in Padua, Italy. Reflecting the theme of this meeting, Dialogue on Music Therapy Interventions for Dementia and End-of-Life Care: Voices from Beyond the Sea, this special feature aims to raise awareness and promote dialogue around music therapy in the Mediterranean region with a focus on dementia and end-of-life care settings. The special feature contains brief country reports. Although reports vary in writing style and depth of information, each report has a two-fold overall focus: to outline briefly the current state of music therapy within each country and to describe particular applications of music therapy within dementia and end-of-life care contexts. Additionally, this special feature contains a Preface by Melissa Brotons, who was the keynote speaker at the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting, as well as a conference report outlining key aspects of this meeting. THE SEA AROUND US: A NOTE ON THE MEDITERRANEAN The name of the Mediterranean Sea originates from the Latin mediterraneus, meaning “middle of the earth”. This name was first used by the Romans reflecting their perception of the sea as the middle or the centre of the earth. Interestingly, while perceived as a middle point, the Mediterranean was also experienced as something that surrounded people. Thus, both the Ancient Greeks and the Romans called the Mediterranean “our sea” or “the sea around us” (mare nostrum in Latin, orἡ θάλασσα ἡ καθ’ἡμᾶς [hē thálassa hē kath’hēmâs] in Greek). The Mediterranean Sea is linked to the Atlantic Ocean. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Asia Minor, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by Western Asia. Since antiquity the Mediterranean has been a vital waterway for merchants and travellers, facilitating trade and cultural exchange between peoples of the region. The Mediterranean region has been the birthplace of influential civilizations on its shores, and the history of the region is crucial to understanding the origins and evolvement of the modern Western world. Throughout its history the region has been dramatically affected by conflict, war and occupation. The Roman Empire and the Arab Empire are past examples with lasting footprints in the region; while ongoing conflicts in Syria, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are contemporary examples, some of which have led to a refugee crisis in the region. As such, the history of the region has been accompanied by endeavours and struggles to define and redefine national identities, territories and borders. Interestingly, Cyprus is one of just two nations, and the first one in the world, to include its map on its flag (the second is Kosovo – a Balkan country close to the Mediterranean region). The sea touches three continents, and today the Mediterranean region can be understood, framed and divided differently based on varying geopolitical and other perspectives (see, for example, the Eastern Mediterranean Region of the World Health Organization [WHO, 2020]). For the purposes of this special feature, we understand the Mediterranean region as including 12 countries in Europe, five in Asia and five in Africa. These countries, in clockwise order, are Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Despite its relatively small geographical area, the Mediterranean region is characterised by the richness of cultures, religions and musical traditions. Likewise, there is a dramatic diversity in terms of political and socio-economic situations. This diversity is equally reflected in the development of dementia and end-of-life care in these countries. Regarding dementia care, in 2016, the Monegasque Association for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease, published the Alzheimer and the Mediterranean Report where is underlined that “[in] many Mediterranean countries, there is still little knowledge about the problems surrounding Alzheimer’s disease, which remains under-estimated and insufficiently documented” (AMPA, 2016, p.7). The report identified a concerning rise in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders in the Mediterranean area, but little biomedical, fundamental and clinical research, unequal and unspecialised access to home care services, and also a general lack of training among professionals and a lack of status recognition for family carers. In terms of end-of-life care, in 2017 the first systematic attempt to map and assess the development of palliative care in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region was published (Osman et al., 2017). Results demonstrate that palliative care development in Eastern Mediterranean countries is scarce. Most countries are at the very initial stages of palliative care development, with only a small fraction of patients needing palliative care being able to access it. This situation also applies to the integration and provision of palliative care within care homes and nursing homes offering long-term care for older people (Froggatt et al., 2017). Recent reviews also demonstrate that palliative care is variable and inconsistent across the region, while various barriers exist to the development of palliative care delivery. Examples of such barriers include the lack of relevant national policies, limited palliative care training for professionals and volunteers, as well as weak public awareness around death and dying (Fadhil et al., 2017). Similar barriers around legislation, training and public awareness are met in the development of music therapy in many Mediterranean countries. Music therapy, as a contemporary profession and discipline, and indeed its applications in dementia and end-of-life care, are equally limited and characterised by diversity across the region. As such, this special feature is a modest attempt to bring together perspectives and present initial information for areas of work which are not widely developed, explored or documented so far in most Mediterranean countries. Hopefully this publication will raise further awareness and inform the future development of music therapy with specific reference to its potential applications to dementia and end-of-life care in each country. This becomes even more relevant considering the increase of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including cancer, in the region (Fadhil et al., 2017). BEHIND THE SCENES Inviting authors Although the 1st Mediterranean Music Therapy Meeting included speakers only from a few Mediterranean countries, this special feature attempted to include authors from every single Mediterranean country. In addition to inviting the speakers from the meeting to contribute to this special feature, we invited authors from each of the other Mediterranean countries. After listing all the countries, we tried to identify music therapists in each of them. We drew on our own professional networks, as well as information available on the websites of the European Music Therapy Confederation (EMTC) and the World Federation for Music Therapy (WFMT), along with relevant publications in the open access journals Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy and Voices: A World Forum of Music Therapy. In countries where we could not identify a music therapist (with or without direct experience of working in dementia and end-of-life care), we attempted to identify and invite other relevant professionals with an explicit interest in music therapy. When this second option was impossible, no authors were invited. There were also cases where potential authors who met the above criteria did not respond to the invitation. As such, this special feature does not include a report from every Mediterranean country. The absence of reports from some countries, however, does not necessarily reflect the lack of music therapy work in these countries. Some of the contributing authors are members or representatives of professional associations and some are not. In either case, their contribution to this special feature aims to represent their views and experiences as individuals without claiming to represent national or other professional bodies. Depending on the position of each individual author, different aspects of music therapy may be explored, prioritised, silenced or challenged in each country report. We want to be clear: these reports are not about absolute ‘truths’ and do not provide comprehensive accounts of music therapy and of its applications in dementia and end-of-life care in each country. Instead of being a ‘full stop’, we see these reports as an opening; as invitations for dialogue, debate, critique and mutual growth. We encourage readers to engage with the contents of this special feature critically; being informed by their own experiences and practices, as well as by related literature and historical trajectories in the field (e.g. De Backer et al., 2013; Dileo-Maranto, 1993; Hesser & Heinemann, 2015; Ridder & Tsiris, 2015a; Schmid, 2014; Stegemann et al., 2016). The challenge of the review process All reports were peer-reviewed. Although we strived to ensure a ‘blind’ review process, this was difficult to achieve in certain cases due to the nature of the reports and the small size of the music therapy communities in certain countries. We invited music therapists living and working in Mediterranean countries to serve as reviewers. We also invited some music therapists living in other parts of the world, given their experience and role within international music therapy bodies and initiatives. Reviewers were requested to evaluate not only the accuracy of the information provided in each report but also the reflexive stance of the authors. This comes with acknowledging that in some instances authors and reviewers came from diverse professional and disciplinary spheres, where music therapy can be understood and practised differently. This was particularly relevant to country reports where we could not identify reviewers with ‘inland’ knowledge of the music therapy field and of its relevance to local dementia and end-of-life care contexts. Towards hospitality Professionalisation issues – which seem to be a common denominator across the reports of this special feature – are often an area of controversy and conflict, where alliances and oppositions have emerged over the history of the music therapy profession within and beyond the Mediterranean region. Writing a country report, and indeed reviewing and editing a collection of such reports, can be a ‘hot potato’! Although it is impossible to remain apolitical, we argue (and we have actively tried to promote this through our editorial and reviewing work) that a constructive dialogue needs to be characterised by reflexivity. It needs to be underpinned by openness and transparency regarding our own values and assumptions, our pre-understanding, our standpoint, as well as our invested interests. Professionalisation conflicts within some Mediterranean countries have led to the development of multiple and, at times, antagonistic associations and professional bodies. In Spain, for example, there are over 40 associations (Mercadal-Brotons et al., 2015), whereas in Italy there are four main associations (Scarlata, 2015). In other countries, such as Greece (Tsiris, 2011), there are communication challenges and conflicting situations between professional association, training programmes and governmental departments. Although such challenges tend to remain unarticulated and ‘hidden’ from the professional literature and discourse, they have real implications for the development of the profession within each context and for the morale of each music therapy community. Overall, this special feature aims to promote a spirit of open dialogue and mutual respect. It is underpinned by a commitment to remain in ongoing dialogue while accepting that we can agree to disagree. As editors we tried to remain true to this commitment, and this became particularly evident in cases where reported practices and concepts were at odds with our own perspectives and understandings of music therapy and its development as a contemporary profession and discipline in Western countries. Indeed, the perspectives presented in some of the reports may sit on the edge or even outside the ‘professional canon’ of music therapy as developed in many contemporary Western countries. In line with the vision of Approaches, this special feature opens up a space where local-global tensions can be voiced (Ridder & Tsiris, 2015b), allowing multiple translations, transitions and borders to be explored. What becomes evident is that definitions of music therapy are inextricably linked to cultural, including spiritual and political, meanings and practices of music, health and illness. Mediterranean people are known for their hospitality but also for their passionate temperament. We hope that this special feature creates a hospitable and welcoming environment for professional and intercultural exchange where passion can fuel creative action and collaboration instead of conflict. We invite the readers to engage with each report in this spirit of openness and reflexivity. This special feature will hopefully be only the start of future dialogue, debate and constructive critique. To this end, we also invite people to add their voices and perspectives regarding music therapy in the Mediterranean region in relation to dementia and end-of-life care. Music therapists, palliative care practitioners and other professionals are welcome to submit their own papers in the form of articles, reports or letters to the editor. References AMPA (2016). Alzheimer and the Mediterranean Report 2016: Overview – challenges – perspectives. Retrieved from https://ampa-monaco.com/files/MAA_Rapport_GB_web_sml.pdf De Backer, J., Nöcker Ribaupierre, M., & Sutton, J. (2013). Music therapy in Europe: The identity and professionalisation of European music therapy, with an overview and history of the European Music Therapy Confederation. In J. De Backer & J. Sutton (Eds.), The music in music therapy: Psychodynamic music therapy in Europe: Clinical, theoretical and research approaches (pp. 24-36). London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Dileo-Maranto, C. (Ed.). (1993). Music therapy: International perspectives. Saint Louis, MI: MMB Music, Inc. Fadhil, I., Lyons, G., & Payne, S. (2017). Barriers to, and opportunities for, palliative care development in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Lancet Oncology, 18(3), e176-e184. Froggatt, K., Payne, S., Morbey, H., Edwards, M., Finne-Soveri, H., Gambassi, G., Pasman, H. R., Szczerbinska, K., & Van den Block, L. (2017). Palliative care development in European care homes and nursing homes: Application of a typology of implementation. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 18(6), 550.e7-550.e14. Hesser, B., & Heinemann, H. (Eds.). (2015). Music as a global resource: Solutions for social and economic issues (4th ed.). New York, NY: United Nations Headquarters. Mercadal-Brotons, M., Sabbatella, P. L., & Del Moral Marcos, M. T. (2017). Music therapy as a profession in Spain: Past, present and future. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, 9(1), 111-119. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/mercadal-brotons-a20150509 Osman, H., Rihan, A., Garralda, E., Rhee, J.Y., Pons, J.J., de Lima, L., Tfayli, A., & Centeno, C. (2017). Atlas of palliative care in the Eastern Mediterranean region. Houston: IAHPC Press. Retrieved from https://dadun.unav.edu/handle/10171/43303 Ridder, H. M., & Tsiris, G. (Eds.). (2015a). Special issue on ‘Music therapy in Europe: Paths of professional development’. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1). Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015/ Ridder, H. M., & Tsiris, G. (2015b). ‘Thinking globally, acting locally’: Music therapy in Europe. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1), 3-9. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015/ Scarlata, E. (2015). Italy. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 7(1), 161-162. Retrieved from https://approaches.gr/special-issue-7-1-2015 Schmid, J. (2014). Music therapy training courses in Europe. Thesis at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Austria. Stegemann, T., Schmidt, H. U., Fitzthum, E., & Timmermann, T. (Eds.). (2016). Music therapy training programmes in Europe: Theme and variations. Reichert Verlag. Tsiris, G. (2011). Music therapy in Greece. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. Retrieved from https://voices.no/community/?q=country-of-the-month/2011-music-therapy-greece World Health Organization (WHO) (2020). Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean Countries. Retrieved from: http://www.emro.who.int/countries.html

Over the past two decades in the West, practices of ethical consumption have become increasingly visible within mainstream consumer culture (Lewis and Potter). While they manifest in a variety of forms, such practices are frequently articulated to politics of anti-consumerism, environmentalism, and sustainable consumption through which lifestyle choices are conceived as methods for investing in—and articulating—ethical and social concerns. Such practices are typically understood as both a reflection of the increasing global influence of neoliberal, consumer-oriented modes of citizenship and a response to the destabilisation of capitalism’s certainties in the wake of ongoing climate change and the global financial crisis (Castells et al.; Miller). Consume less, consume differently, recycle, do-it-yourself: activities that have historically been associated with explicitly activist movements (see Bryner) are now increasingly accessible and attractive to people for whom these consumption choices might serve as their first introduction to countercultural practices. While the notion of “counterculture” is today a contested concept—one that no longer refers only to “the” (i.e. 1960s) counterculture, but also to a range of radical movements and practices—it is one which is useful for thinking about the ways in which difference from, and resistance to, the “mainstream” can be asserted. Within contemporary consumer culture, resistance is now often articulated in ways which suggests that the lines between the “countercultural” and the “mainstream” are no longer clear cut (Desmond, McDonagh and O’Donohue 263). For Castells et al. (12), this is especially the case when the structures of capitalism are under strain, as this is when alternative and countercultural ways of living increasingly enter the mainstream. The concept of counterculture, then, is useful for understanding the ways in which progressive political values may be reimagined, rearticulated and represented within the mainstream, thereby offering access points to political participation for people who may not necessarily describe their activities as resistant or even as politically engaged (Barnett et al. 45). One of the most interesting aspects of this phenomenon is how a progressive politics of consumption is expressed through images and aesthetics that are culturally coded as conservative. Across a range of contemporary media and popular cultural forms, notions of ethical consumption are often paralleled by resurgences in practices associated with domesticity and traditional femininities. From retro fashions referencing 1940s and 1950s femininity to the growing popularisation of crafting and cooking, many of the “old-fashioned” practices of domesticity that had been critiqued and rejected by second wave feminism (see Brunsdon The Feminist 216), are being reimagined as simultaneously nostalgic and politically progressive choices for women (and, sometimes, for men). This paper explores how the contemporary mobilisation of traditional femininities can activate progressive, countercultural politics of gender and consumption. Specifically, it will examine the popularisation of the “nanna” as a countercultural icon that exemplifies the contemporary politics of retro femininities. Drawing upon data from our larger, more comprehensive studies, this paper uses two case studies—the rise of “nanna-style” cookbooks and the “nanna culture” of indie lifestyle magazine Frankie—to explore the ways that traditional femininities can be reworked to prompt a rethinking of current consumption practices, foster connection (in the case of nanna-style cookbooks) and challenge the limitations of contemporary gender norms (in the case of Frankie). While we are not suggesting that these politics are necessarily deliberately encoded in the texts (although sometimes they may be) or that these texts are inevitably interpreted in the way that we are suggesting, this paper offers preliminary textual “readings” (Kellner 12) of the ways that countercultural values can be uncovered within mainstream cultural forms. Nanna-style cookbooks and Frankie magazine are each examples of a broader resignification of the nanna that has been occurring across a number of sites of contemporary popular culture. Previous associations of the nanna as old, conservative or uncool are being replaced with new images of nannas as active, skilled, funky women. For example, this is evident in the recent resurgences of craft cultures, which reshape the meanings of contemporary knitting as being “not your grandma’s knitting” (Fields 150), but as a “fun, hip, and political” new hobby (Groeneveld 260). Such craft activities have been described using discourses of “revolution and reclamation” (Groeneveld 266) to mobilise countercultural practices ranging from explicitly activist “craftivism” (Corbett and Housley) to more ordinary, everyday politics of consumption and time management. Through activities such as “knit ins”, yarn bombing, and Stitch “N” Bitch circles, contemporary craft practices can be seen as an expression of the “historically reflexive and community minded new amateur”, whose craft practices facilitate new connections between amateurs to enable “alternative values and ways of living” and reject negative aspects of modern consumer society (Hackney 187). Even for women with less explicit activist commitments, an investment in the practices of retro femininities can provide opportunities for community-building, including across generations, in which participants are offered not only a “welcome respite from the rush and hurry of everyday life”, but also access to a suite of activities through which they can resist dominant approaches to consumption (Nathanson 119). Consequently, nostalgic images of grandmotherly practices need not signal only a conservative marketing strategy or desire to return to a (patriarchal, pre-feminist) past as they are sometimes interpreted (see Trussler), but a means through which images of the past can be resignified and reinterpreted in the context of contemporary needs and politics. Cooking Nanna-Style Nanna-style cookbooks are an example of “emergent uses of the past” (Bramall 15) for present purposes. “Nanna-style” is a currently popular category within the cookbook publishing and retailing industries that, for many critics, has been understood as an essentially conservative response to the financial uncertainties of the economic downturn (Orr). Certainly, nanna-style cookbooks are, on one level at least, uncritically and unreflexively nostalgic for a time when women’s cooking was central to providing the comforts of home. In Nonna to Nana: Stories of Food and Family, grandmothers are presented as part of a “fast-disappearing generation of matriarchs” whose recipes must be preserved so that “we [can] honour the love and dedication [they] give through the simple gift of making and sharing their food” (DiBlasi and DiBlasi, book synopsis). Merle’s Kitchen, written by 79-year-old author and Country Women’s Association (CWA) judge, Merle Parrish, is littered with reminisces about what life was like “in those days” when the “kitchen was the heart of the home” and women prepared baked treats each week for their children and husbands (Parrish vii). Sweet Paul Eat & Make: Charming Recipes and Kitchen Crafts You Will Love is filled with the recipes and stories of author Paul Lowe’s grandmother, Mormor, who doted on her family with delicious pancakes cooked at any time of the day. Such images of the grandmother’s selfless dedication to her family deploy the romance of what Jean Duruz (58) has called “Cooking Woman,” a figure whose entire identity is subsumed within the pleasure and comfort that she provides to others. Through the medium of the cookbook, Cooking Woman serves the fantasies of the “nostalgic cosmopolitan” (Duruz 61) for whom the pleasures of the nanna reflect an essentially (albeit unacknowledged) conservative impulse. However, for others, the nostalgia of Cooking Woman need not necessarily involve endorsement of her domestic servitude, but instead evoke images of an (imagined, utopian) past as a means of exploring the pleasures and contradictions of contemporary femininities and consumption practices (see Hollows 190). Such texts are part of a broader set of practices associated with what Bramall (21) calls “austerity chic.” Austerity chic’s full political potential is evident in explicitly countercultural cookbooks like Heidi Minx’s Home Rockanomics, which invokes the DIY spirit of punk to present recycling, cooking and craft making as methods for investing in an anti-corporate, vegan activist politics. But for Bramall (31), even less challenging texts featuring nostalgic images of nannas can activate progressive demands about the need to consume more sustainably in ways that make these ideas more accessible to a broader range of constituencies. In particular, such texts offer forms of “alternative hedonism” through which practices of ethical consumption need not be characterised by experiences of self-denial but by a reconceptualisation of what constitutes the “good life” (Soper 211). In the practices of austerity chic as they are presented in nanna-style cookbooks, grandmotherly practices of baking and cooking are presented as frugal and self-sufficient, but also as granting access to experiences of pleasure, including the pleasures of familial warmth, cohesion and connection. Specifically, these books emphasise the ways in which cooking, and baking in particular, helps to forge connections between generations. For the authors of Pass It Down and Keep Baking, the recipes of grandmothers and great-aunts are described as “treasures” to be “cherished and passed on to future generations” (Wilkinson and Wilkinson 2). For the authors of Nonna to Nana, the food of the authors’ own grandmother is described as the “thread that bound our family together” (DiBlasi and DiBlasi 2). In contrast to some of the more explicitly political retro-inspired movements, which often construct the new formations of these practices as distinct from those of older women (e.g. “not your grandma’s knitting”), these more mainstream texts celebrate generational cohesion. Given the ways in which feminist histories have tended to discursively pit the various “waves” of feminism in opposition to that which came before, the celebration of the grandmother as a unifying figure becomes a means through which connections can be forged between past and present subjectivities (see Bramall 134). Such intergenerational connections—and the notion that grandmotherly practices are treasures to be preserved—also serve as a way of reimagining and reinterpreting (often devalued) feminine domestic activities as alternative sources of pleasure and of the “good life” at a time when reducing consumption and adopting more sustainable lifestyle practices is becoming increasingly urgent (see Bramall; Soper). While this might nonetheless be interpreted as compliant with contemporary patriarchal and capitalist structures—indeed, there is nothing inherently countercultural about conceiving the domestic as a site of pleasure—the potential radicalism of these texts lies in the ways that they highlight how investment in the fantasies, pleasures and activities of domesticity are not available only to women, nor are they associated only with the reproduction of traditional gender roles. For example in Sweet Paul Eat & Make, Lowe’s adoption of many of Mormor’s culinary and craft practices highlights the symbolic work that the nanna performs to enable his own commitment to forms of traditionally feminine domesticity. The fact that he is also large, hairy, heavily tattooed and pictured with a cute little French bulldog constructs Lowe as a simultaneously masculine and “camp” figure who, much like the playful and excessive femininity of well-known figures like Nigella Lawson (Brunsdon “Martha” 51), highlights the inherent performativity of both gendered and domestic subjectivities, and hence challenges any uncritical investment in these traditional roles. The countercultural potential of nanna-style cookbooks, then, lies not necessarily in an explicitly activist politics, but in a politics of the everyday. This is a politics in which seemingly conservative, nostalgic images of the nanna can make available new forms of identity, including those that emerge between generations, between the masculine and the feminine, and between imagined utopias of domesticity and the economic and environmental realities of contemporary consumer culture. Frankie’s Indie Nanna The countercultural potential of the nanna is also mobilised in fashion and lifestyle publications, including Frankie magazine, which is described as part of a “world where nanna culture is revered” (“Frankie Magazine Beats the Odds”). Frankie exemplifies both a reaction against a particular brand of femininity, and an invitation to consume more sustainably as part of the indie youth trend. Indie, as it manifests in Frankie, blends retro aesthetics with progressive politics in ways that present countercultural practices not as explicitly oppositional, but as access points to inclusive, empowering and pleasurable femininities. Frankie’s version of nanna culture can be found throughout the magazine, particularly in its focus on retro styles. The nanna is invoked in instructions for making nanna-style items, such as issue 46’s call to “Pop on a Cuppa: How to Make Your Own Nanna-Style Tea Cosy” (Lincolne 92-93), and in the retro aesthetics found throughout the magazine, including recipes depicting baked goods served on old-fashioned crockery and features on homes designed with a vintage theme (see Nov.-Dec. 2012 and Mar.-Apr. 2013). Much like nanna-style cookbooks, Frankie’s celebration of nanna culture offers readers alternative ways of thinking about consumption, inviting them to imagine the “satisfactions to be had from consuming differently” (Soper 222) and to construct ethical consumption as both expressions of alternative critical consumer culture and as practices of “cool” consumer connoisseurship (Franklin 165). Here, making your own items, purchasing second-hand items, or repurposing old wares, are presented not as forms of sacrifice, but as pleasurable and fashionable choices for young women. This contrasts with the consumption practices typically promoted in other contemporary women’s magazines. Most clearly, Frankie’s promotion of nanna chic stands in opposition to the models of desirable femininity characteristic of glossies like Cosmopolitan. The archetypal “Cosmo Girl” is represented as a woman seeking to achieve social mobility and desirability through consumption of cosmetics, fashion and sexual relationships (Oullette 366-367). In contrast, the nanna, with her lack of overt sexuality, older age, and conservative approach to consumption, invites identification with forms of feminine subjectivity that resist the patriarchal ideologies that are seen as typical of mainstream women’s magazines (see Gill 217). Frankie’s cover artwork demonstrates its constructed difference from modes of desirable femininity promoted by its glossy counterparts. The cover of the magazine’s 50th issue, for example, featured a embroidered collage depicting a range of objects including a sewing machine, teapot, retro glasses, flowers and a bicycle. This cover, which looks handcrafted and features items that evoke both nanna culture and indie style, offers forms of feminine style and desirability based on homecrafts, domestic self-sufficiency and do-it-yourself sustainability. The nanna herself is directly referenced on the cover of issue 52, which features an illustration of a woman in an armchair, seated in front of vintage-style floral wallpaper, a cup of tea in her hand, and her hair in a bun. While she does not possess physical features that signify old age such as grey hair or wrinkles, her location and style choices can each be read as signifiers of the nanna. Yet by featuring her on the cover of a young women’s magazine—and by dressing her in high-heeled boots—the nanna is constructed as subject position available to young, potentially desirable women. In contrast to glossy women’s magazines featuring images of young models or celebrities in sexualised poses (see Gill 184), Frankie offers a progressive politics of gender in which old-fashioned activities can provide means of challenging identities and consumption practices dominant within mainstream cultural industries. As Bramall (121) argues of “retro femininities in austerity,” such representations provide readers access to “subjectivities [that] may incorporate a certain critique of consumer capitalism.” By offering alternative modes of consumption in which women are not necessarily defined by youth and sexual desirability, Frankie’s indie nanna provides an implicit critique of mainstream consumerism’s models of ideal femininity. This gender politics thus relies not simply on an uncritical “gender reversal” (Plumwood 62), but rather reworks and recombines elements of past and present femininities to create new meanings and identities. Much like nanna-style cookbooks’ grandmotherly figures who unite generations, Frankie constructs the nanna as a source of wisdom and a figure to be respected. For example, a two-page spread entitled “Ask a Nanna” featured Polaroid pictures of nannas answering the question: “What would you tell your 20-year-old self?” (Evans 92-93). The magazine also regularly features older women, such as the profile describing Sonia Grevell as “a champion at crochet and living generously” (Corry 107). The editors’ letter of a recent issue describes the issue’s two major themes as “nannas and dirty, dirty rock”, which are described as having a “couple of things in common”: “they’ve been around for a while, you sometimes have to talk loudly in front of them and they rarely take shit from anyone” (Walker and Burke 6). The editors suggest that such “awesomeness” can be emulated by “eating a bikkie while gently moshing around the living room” or “knitting with drum sticks”—both unlikely juxtapositions that represent the unconventional nanna and her incorporation into indie youth culture. This celebration of the nanna stands in contrast to a mainstream media culture that privileges youth, especially for women, and suggests both common interests and learning opportunities between generations. While neither Frankie nor nanna-style cookbooks present themselves as political texts, when they are read within their particular historical and social contexts, they offer new ways of thinking about how countercultural practices are—and could be—mobilised by, and made accessible to, constituencies who may not otherwise identify with an explicitly oppositional politics. These texts sometimes appear to be located within a politically ambiguous nexus of compliance and resistance, but it is in this space of ambiguity that new identities and new commitments to progressive politics can be forged, normalised and made more widely available. These texts may not ultimately challenge capitalist structures of consumption, and they remain commodified products, but by connecting oppositional and mainstream practices, they offer new ways of conceiving the relationships between age, gender, sustainability and pleasure. 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Manuel Castells, João Caraça, and Gustavo Cardoso. Oxford University Press, 2012. 1–16. Corbett, Sarah, and Sarah Housley. “The Craftivist Collective Guide to Craftivism.” Utopian Studies 22.2 (2011): 344-351. Corry, Lucy. “Stitches in Time.” Frankie Jan.-Feb. 2014: 106-107. Desmond, John, Pierre McDonagh and Stephanie O’Donohoe. “Counter-Culture and Consumer Society.” Consumption, Markets and Culture 4.3 (2000): 207-343. DiBlasi, Jessie, and Jacqueline DiBlasi. Nonna to Nana: Stories of Food and Family. Melbourne: Jessie and Jacqueline DiBlasi, 2014. Duruz, Jean. “Haunted Kitchens: Cooking and Remembering.” Gastronomica 4.1 (2004): 57-68. Evans, Daniel. “Ask a Nanna.” Frankie Mar.-Apr. 2010: 92-93. Fields, Corey D. “Not Your Grandma’s Knitting: The Role of Identity Processes in the Transformation of Cultural Practices.” Social Psychology Quarterly 77.2 (2014): 150-165. Frankie. Mar.-Apr. 2013. ---. Nov.- Dec. 2012. “Frankie Magazine Beats the Odds.” The 7.30 Report. 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For seven months in 1999/2000, six-year old Cuban Elián González was embroiled in a family feud plotted along rival national and ideological lines, and relayed televisually as soap opera across the planet. In Miami, apparitions of the Virgin Mary were reported after Elián’s arrival; adherents of Afro-Cuban santería similarly regarded Elián as divinely touched. In Cuba, Elián’s “kidnapping” briefly reinvigorated a torpid revolutionary project. He was hailed by Fidel Castro as the symbolic descendant of José Martí and Che Guevara, and of the patriotic rigour they embodied. Cubans massed to demand his return. In the U.S.A., Elián’s case was arbitrated at every level of the juridical system. The “Save Elián” campaign generated widespread debate about godless versus godly family values, the contours of the American Dream, and consumerist excess. By the end of 2000 Elián had generated the second largest volume of TV news coverage to that date in U.S. history, surpassed only by the O. J. Simpson case (Fasulo). After Fidel Castro, and perhaps the geriatric music ensemble manufactured by Ry Cooder, the Buena Vista Social Club, Elián became the most famous Cuban of our era. Elián also emerged as the unlikeliest of popular-cultural icons, the focus and subject of cyber-sites, books, films, talk-back radio programs, art exhibits, murals, statues, documentaries, a South Park episode, poetry, songs, t-shirts, posters, newspaper editorials in dozens of languages, demonstrations, speeches, political cartoons, letters, legal writs, U.S. Congress records, opinion polls, prayers, and, on both sides of the Florida Strait, museums consecrated in his memory. Confronted by Elián’s extraordinary renown and historical impact, John Carlos Rowe suggests that the Elián story confirms the need for a post-national and transdisciplinary American Studies, one whose practitioners “will have to be attentive to the strange intersections of politics, law, mass media, popular folklore, literary rhetoric, history, and economics that allow such events to be understood.” (204). I share Rowe’s reading of Elián’s story and the clear challenges it presents to analysis of “America,” to which I would add “Cuba” as well. But Elián’s story is also significant for the ways it challenges critical understandings of fame and its construction. No longer, to paraphrase Leo Braudy (566), definable as an accidental hostage of the mass-mediated eye, Elián’s fame has no certain relation to the child at its discursive centre. Elián’s story is not about an individuated, conscious, performing, desiring, and ambivalently rewarded ego. Elián was never what P. David Marshall calls “part of the public sphere, essentially an actor or, … a player” in it (19). The living/breathing Elián is absent from what I call the virtualizing drives that famously reproduced him. As a result of this virtualization, while one Elián now attends school in Cuba, many other Eliáns continue to populate myriad popular-cultural texts and to proliferate away from the states that tried to contain him. According to Jerry Everard, “States are above all cultural artefacts” that emerge, virtually, “as information produced by and through practices of signification,” as bits, bites, networks, and flows (7). All of us, he claims, reside in “virtual states,” in “legal fictions” based on the elusive and contested capacity to generate national identities in an imaginary bounded space (152). Cuba, the origin of Elián, is a virtual case in point. To augment Nicole Stenger’s definition of cyberspace, Cuba, like “Cyberspace, is like Oz — it is, we get there, but it has no location” (53). As a no-place, Cuba emerges in signifying terms as an illusion with the potential to produce and host Cubanness, as well as rival ideals of nation that can be accessed intact, at will, and ready for ideological deployment. Crude dichotomies of antagonism — Cuba/U.S.A., home/exile, democracy/communism, freedom/tyranny, North/South, godlessness/blessedness, consumption/want — characterize the hegemonic struggle over the Cuban nowhere. Split and splintered, hypersensitive and labyrinthine, guarded and hysterical, and always active elsewhere, the Cuban cultural artefact — an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56) — very much conforms to the logics that guide the appeal, and danger, of cyberspace. Cuba occupies an inexhaustible “ontological time … that can be reintegrated at any time” (Stenger 55), but it is always haunted by the prospect of ontological stalling and proliferation. The cyber-like struggle over reintegration, of course, evokes the Elián González affair, which began on 25 November 1999, when five-year old Elián set foot on U.S. soil, and ended on 28 June 2000, when Elián, age six, returned to Cuba with his father. Elián left one Cuba and found himself in another Cuba, in the U.S.A., each national claimant asserting virtuously that its other was a no-place and therefore illegitimate. For many exiles, Elián’s arrival in Miami confirmed that Castro’s Cuba is on the point of collapse and hence on the virtual verge of reintegration into the democratic fold as determined by the true upholders of the nation, the exile community. It was also argued that Elián’s biological father could never be the boy’s true father because he was a mere emasculated puppet of Castro himself. The Cuban state, then, had forfeited its claims to generate and host Cubanness. Succoured by this logic, the “Save Elián” campaign began, with organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) bankrolling protests, leaflet and poster production, and official “Elián” websites, providing financial assistance to and arranging employment for some of Elián’s Miami relatives, lobbying the U.S. Congress and the Florida legislature, and contributing funds to the legal challenges on behalf of Elián at state and federal levels. (Founded in 1981, the CANF is the largest and most powerful Cuban exile organization, and one that regards itself as the virtual government-in-waiting. CANF emerged with the backing of the Reagan administration and the C.I.A. as a “private sector initiative” to support U.S. efforts against its long-time ideological adversary across the Florida Strait [Arboleya 224-5].) While the “Save Elián” campaign failed, the result of a Cuban American misreading of public opinion and overestimation of the community’s lobbying power with the Clinton administration, the struggle continues in cyberspace. CANF.net.org registers its central role in this intense period with silence; but many of the “Save Elián” websites constructed after November 1999 continue to function as sad memento moris of Elián’s shipwreck in U.S. virtual space. (The CANF website does provide links to articles and opinion pieces about Elián from the U.S. media, but its own editorializing on the Elián affair has disappeared. Two keys to this silence were the election of George W. Bush, and the events of 11 Sep. 2001, which have enabled a revision of the Elián saga as a mere temporary setback on the Cuban-exile historical horizon. Indeed, since 9/11, the CANF website has altered the terms of its campaign against Castro, posting photos of Castro with Arab leaders and implicating him in a world-wide web of terrorism. Elián’s return to Cuba may thus be viewed retrospectively as an act that galvanized Cuban-exile support for the Republican Party and their disdain for the Democratic rival, and this support became pivotal in the Republican electoral victory in Florida and in the U.S.A. as a whole.) For many months after Elián’s return to Cuba, the official Liberty for Elián site, established in April 2000, was urging visitors to make a donation, volunteer for the Save Elián taskforce, send email petitions, and “invite a friend to help Elián.” (Since I last accessed “Liberty for Elián” in March 2004 it has become a gambling site.) Another site, Elian’s Home Page, still implores visitors to pray for Elián. Some of the links no longer function, and imperatives to “Click here” lead to that dead zone called “URL not found on this server.” A similar stalling of the exile aspirations invested in Elián is evident on most remaining Elián websites, official and unofficial, the latter including The Sad Saga of Elian Gonzalez, which exhorts “Cuban Exiles! Now You Can Save Elián!” In these sites, a U.S. resident Elián lives on as an archival curiosity, a sign of pathos, and a reminder of what was, for a time, a Cuban-exile PR disaster. If such cybersites confirm the shipwrecked coordinates of Elián’s fame, the “Save Elián” campaign also provided a focus for unrestrained criticism of the Cuban exile community’s imbrication in U.S. foreign policy initiatives and its embrace of American Dream logics. Within weeks of Elián’s arrival in Florida, cyberspace was hosting myriad Eliáns on sites unbeholden to Cuban-U.S. antagonisms, thus consolidating Elián’s function as a disputed icon of virtualized celebrity and focus for parody. A sense of this carnivalesque proliferation can be gained from the many doctored versions of the now iconic photograph of Elián’s seizure by the INS. Still posted, the jpegs and flashes — Elián and Michael Jackson, Elián and Homer Simpson, Elián and Darth Vader, among others (these and other doctored versions are archived on Hypercenter.com) — confirm the extraordinary domestication of Elián in local pop-cultural terms that also resonate as parodies of U.S. consumerist and voyeuristic excess. Indeed, the parodic responses to Elián’s fame set the virtual tone in cyberspace where ostensibly serious sites can themselves be approached as send ups. One example is Lois Rodden’s Astrodatabank, which, since early 2000, has asked visitors to assist in interpreting Elián’s astrological chart in order to confirm whether or not he will remain in the U.S.A. To this end the site provides Elián’s astro-biography and birth chart — a Sagittarius with a Virgo moon, Elián’s planetary alignments form a bucket — and conveys such information as “To the people of Little Havana [Miami], Elian has achieved mystical status as a ‘miracle child.’” (An aside: Elián and I share the same birthday.) Elián’s virtual reputation for divinely sanctioned “blessedness” within a Cuban exile-meets-American Dream typology provided Tom Tomorrow with the target in his 31 January 2000, cartoon, This Modern World, on Salon.com. Here, six-year old Arkansas resident Allen Consalis loses his mother on the New York subway. His relatives decide to take care of him since “New York has much more to offer him than Arkansas! I mean get real!” A custody battle ensues in which Allan’s heavily Arkansas-accented father requires translation, and the case inspires heated debate: “can we really condemn him to a life in Arkansas?” The cartoon ends with the relatives tempting Allan with the delights offered by the Disney Store, a sign of Elián’s contested insertion into an American Dreamscape that not only promises an endless supply of consumer goods but provides a purportedly safe venue for the alternative Cuban nation. The illusory virtuality of that nation also animates a futuristic scenario, written in Spanish by Camilo Hernández, and circulated via email in May 2000. In this text, Elián sparks a corporate battle between Firestone and Goodyear to claim credit for his inner-tubed survival. Cuban Americans regard Elián as the Messiah come to lead them to the promised land. His ability to walk on water is scientifically tested: he sinks and has to be rescued again. In the ensuing custody battle, Cuban state-run demonstrations allow mothers of lesbians and of children who fail maths to have their say on Elián. Andrew Lloyd Weber wins awards for “Elián the Musical,” and for the film version, Madonna plays the role of the dolphin that saved Elián. Laws are enacted to punish people who mispronounce “Elián” but these do not help Elián’s family. All legal avenues exhausted, the entire exile community moves to Canada, and then to North Dakota where a full-scale replica of Cuba has been built. Visa problems spark another migration; the exiles are welcomed by Israel, thus inspiring a new Intifada that impels their return to the U.S.A. Things settle down by 2014, when Elián, his wife and daughter celebrate his 21st birthday as guests of the Kennedys. The text ends in 2062, when the great-great-grandson of Ry Cooder encounters an elderly Elián in Wyoming, thus providing Elián with his second fifteen minutes of fame. Hernández’s text confirms the impatience with which the Cuban-exile community was regarded by other U.S. Latino sectors, and exemplifies the loss of control over Elián experienced by both sides in the righteous Cuban “moral crusade” to save or repatriate Elián (Fernández xv). (Many Chicanos, for example, were angered at Cuban-exile arguments that Elián should remain in the U.S.A. when, in 1999 alone, 8,000 Mexican children were repatriated to Mexico (Ramos 126), statistical confirmation of the favored status that Cubans enjoy, and Mexicans do not, vis-à-vis U.S. immigration policy. Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon and Camilo Hernández’s email text are part of what I call the “What-if?” sub-genre of Elián representations. Another example is “If Elián Gonzalez was Jewish,” archived on Lori’s Mishmash Humor page, in which Eliat Ginsburg is rescued after floating on a giant matzoh in the Florida Strait, and his Florida relatives fight to prevent his return to Israel, where “he had no freedom, no rights, no tennis lessons”.) Nonetheless, that “moral crusade” has continued in the Cuban state. During the custody battle, Elián was virtualized into a hero of national sovereignty, an embodied fix for a revolutionary project in strain due to the U.S. embargo, the collapse of Soviet socialism, and the symbolic threat posed by the virtual Cuban nation-in-waiting in Florida. Indeed, for the Castro regime, the exile wing of the national family is virtual precisely because it conveniently overlooks two facts: the continued survival of the Cuban state itself; and the exile community’s forty-plus-year slide into permanent U.S. residency as one migrant sector among many. Such rhetoric has not faded since Elián’s return. On December 5, 2003, Castro visited Cárdenas for Elián’s tenth birthday celebration and a quick tour of the Museo a la batalla de ideas (Museum for the Battle of Ideas), the museum dedicated to Elián’s “victory” over U.S. imperialism and opened by Castro on July 14, 2001. At Elián’s school Castro gave a speech in which he recalled the struggle to save “that little boy, whose absence caused everyone, and the whole people of Cuba, so much sorrow and such determination to struggle.” The conflation of Cuban state rhetoric and an Elián mnemonic in Cárdenas is repeated in Havana’s “Plaza de Elián,” or more formally Tribuna Anti-imperialista José Martí, where a statue of José Martí, the nineteenth-century Cuban nationalist, holds Elián in his arms while pointing to Florida. Meanwhile, in Little Havana, Miami, a sun-faded set of photographs and hand-painted signs, which insist God will save Elián yet, hang along the front fence of the house — now also a museum and site of pilgrimage — where Elián once lived in a state of siege. While Elián’s centrality in a struggle between virtuality and virtue continues on both sides of the Florida Strait, the Cuban nowhere could not contain Elián. During his U.S. sojourn many commentators noted that his travails were relayed in serial fashion to an international audience that also claimed intimate knowledge of the boy. Coming after the O.J. Simpson saga and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the Elián story confirmed journalist Rick Kushman’s identification of a ceaseless, restless U.S. media attention shift from one story to the next, generating an “übercoverage” that engulfs the country “in mini-hysteria” (Calvert 107). But In Elián’s case, the voyeuristic media-machine attained unprecedented intensity because it met and worked with the virtualities of the Cuban nowhere, part of it in the U.S.A. Thus, a transnational surfeit of Elián-narrative options was guaranteed for participants, audiences and commentators alike, wherever they resided. In Cuba, Elián was hailed as the child-hero of the Revolution. In Miami he was a savior sent by God, the proof supplied by the dolphins that saved him from sharks, and the Virgins who appeared in Little Havana after his arrival (De La Torre 3-5). Along the U.S.A.-Mexico border in 2000, Elián’s name was given to hundreds of Mexican babies whose parents thought the gesture would guarantee their sons a U.S. future. Day by day, Elián’s story was propelled across the globe by melodramatic plot devices familiar to viewers of soap opera: doubtful paternities; familial crimes; identity secrets and their revelation; conflicts of good over evil; the reuniting of long-lost relatives; and the operations of chance and its attendant “hand of Destiny, arcane and vaguely supernatural, transcending probability of doubt” (Welsh 22). Those devices were also favored by the amateur author, whose narratives confirm that the delirious parameters of cyberspace are easily matched in the worldly text. In Michael John’s self-published “history,” Betrayal of Elian Gonzalez, Elián is cast as the victim of a conspiracy traceable back to the hydra-headed monster of Castro-Clinton and the world media: “Elian’s case was MANIPULATED to achieve THEIR OVER-ALL AGENDA. Only time will bear that out” (143). His book is now out of print, and the last time I looked (August 2004) one copy was being offered on Amazon.com for US$186.30 (original price, $9.95). Guyana-born, Canadian-resident Frank Senauth’s eccentric novel, A Cry for Help: The Fantastic Adventures of Elian Gonzalez, joins his other ventures into vanity publishing: To Save the Titanic from Disaster I and II; To Save Flight 608 From Disaster; A Wish to Die – A Will to Live; A Time to Live, A Time to Die; and A Day of Terror: The Sagas of 11th September, 2001. In A Cry for Help, Rachel, a white witch and student of writing, travels back in time in order to save Elián’s mother and her fellow travelers from drowning in the Florida Strait. As Senauth says, “I was only able to write this dramatic story because of my gift for seeing things as they really are and sharing my mystic imagination with you the public” (25). As such texts confirm, Elián González is an aberrant addition to the traditional U.S.-sponsored celebrity roll-call. He had no ontological capacity to take advantage of, intervene in, comment on, or be known outside, the parallel narrative universe into which he was cast and remade. He was cast adrift as a mere proper name that impelled numerous authors to supply the boy with the biography he purportedly lacked. Resident of an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56), Elián was battled over by virtualized national rivals, mass-mediated, and laid bare for endless signification. Even before his return to Cuba, one commentator noted that Elián had been consumed, denied corporeality, and condemned to “live out his life in hyper-space” (Buzachero). That space includes the infamous episode of South Park from May 2000, in which Kenny, simulating Elián, is killed off as per the show’s episodic protocols. Symptomatic of Elián’s narrative dispersal, the Kenny-Elián simulation keeps on living and dying whenever the episode is re-broadcast on TV sets across the world. Appropriated and relocated to strange and estranging narrative terrain, one Elián now lives out his multiple existences in the Cuban-U.S. “atmosphere in history,” and the Elián icon continues to proliferate virtually anywhere. References Arboleya, Jesús. The Cuban Counter-Revolution. Trans. Rafael Betancourt. Research in International Studies, Latin America Series no. 33. Athens, OH: Ohio Center for International Studies, 2000. Braudy, Leo. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. Buzachero, Chris. “Elian Gonzalez in Hyper-Space.” Ctheory.net 24 May 2000. 19 Aug. 2004: http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=222>. Calvert, Clay. Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture. Boulder: Westview, 2000. Castro, Fidel. “Speech Given by Fidel Castro, at the Ceremony Marking the Birthday of Elian Gonzalez and the Fourth Anniversary of the Battle of Ideas, Held at ‘Marcello Salado’ Primary School in Cardenas, Matanzas on December 5, 2003.” 15 Aug. 2004 http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org.uk/fidel_castro3.htm>. Cuban American National Foundation. Official Website. 2004. 20 Aug. 2004 http://www.canf.org/2004/principal-ingles.htm>. De La Torre, Miguel A. La Lucha For Cuba: Religion and Politics on the Streets of Miami. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. “Elian Jokes.” Hypercenter.com 2000. 19 Aug. 2004 http://www.hypercenter.com/jokes/elian/index.shtml>. “Elian’s Home Page.” 2000. 19 Aug. 2004 http://elian.8k.com>. Everard, Jerry. Virtual States: The Internet and the Boundaries of the Nation-State. London and New York, Routledge, 2000. Fernández, Damián J. Cuba and the Politics of Passion. Austin: U of Texas P, 2000. Hernández, Camilo. “Cronología de Elián.” E-mail. 2000. Received 6 May 2000. “If Elian Gonzalez Was Jewish.” Lori’s Mishmash Humor Page. 2000. 10 Aug. 2004 http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6174/jokes/if-elian-was-jewish.htm>. John, Michael. Betrayal of Elian Gonzalez. MaxGo, 2000. “Liberty for Elián.” Official Save Elián Website 2000. June 2003 http://www.libertyforelian.org>. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Ramos, Jorge. La otra cara de América: Historias de los inmigrantes latinoamericanos que están cambiando a Estados Unidos. México, DF: Grijalbo, 2000. Rodden, Lois. “Elian Gonzalez.” Astrodatabank 2000. 20 Aug. 2004 http://www.astrodatabank.com/NM/GonzalezElian.htm>. Rowe, John Carlos. 2002. The New American Studies. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 2002. “The Sad Saga of Elian Gonzalez.” July 2004. 19 Aug. 2004 http://www.revlu.com/Elian.html>. Senauth, Frank. A Cry for Help: The Fantastic Adventures of Elian Gonzalez. Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2000. Stenger, Nicole. “Mind Is a Leaking Rainbow.” Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1991. 49-58. Welsh, Alexander. George Eliot and Blackmail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1985. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Allatson, Paul. "The Virtualization of Elián González." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>. APA Style Allatson, P. (Nov. 2004) "The Virtualization of Elián González," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>.

In a 1999 interview with the online magazine The AV Club, a subsidiary of satirical news website, The Onion, Bret Easton Ellis claimed: “I’ve never written a single scene that I can say took place, I’ve never written a line of dialogue that I’ve heard someone say or that I have said” (qtd. in Klein). Ten years later, in the same magazine, Ellis was reminded of this quote and asked why most of his novels have been perceived as veiled autobiographies. Ellis responded:Well, they are autobiographical in the sense that they reflect who I was at a particular moment in my life. There was talk of a memoir, and I realized why I couldn’t write a memoir, because the books are the memoir—they completely sum up how I was feeling, what I was thinking about, what my obsessions were, what I was fantasizing about, who I was, in a fictional context over the last 25 years or so (qtd. in Tobias).Despite any protestations to the contrary, Bret Easton Ellis’s novels have included various intentional and unintentional disclosures which reflect the author’s personal experiences. This pattern of self-disclosure became most overt in his most recent novel, Lunar Park (2005), in which the narrator shares a name, vocation and many aspects of his personal history with Ellis himself. After two decades and many assumptions made about Ellis’s personal life in the public media, it seems on the surface as if this novel uses disclosure as the site of closure for several rumours and relationships which have haunted his career. It is possible to see how this fictional text transgresses the boundaries between fiction and fact in an attempt to sever the feedback loop between the media’s representation of Ellis and the interpretation of his fictional texts. Yet it is important to note that with Ellis, there is always more beneath the surface. This is evident after only one chapter of Lunar Park when the novel changes form from an autobiography into a fictional ghost story, both of which are told by Bret Easton Ellis, a man who simultaneously reflects and refracts aspects of the real life author.Before analysing Lunar Park, it is helpful to consider the career trajectory which led to its creation. Bret Easton Ellis made his early fame writing semi-fictional accounts of rich, beautiful, young, yet ambitionless members of generation-X, growing up in the 1980s in America. His first novel, Less Than Zero (1985), chronicled the exploits of his protagonists as they drifted from party to party, from one meaningless sexual encounter to another; all while anesthetised on a cocktail of Valium, Prozac, Percocet and various illegal drugs. The brutal realism of his narrative, coupled with the structure—short vignettes like snapshots and short chapters told in simplistic style—led the text to be hailed as the first “MTV Novel” (Annesley 90; see also: Freese).It is not difficult to discover the many similarities that exist between the creator of Less Than Zero and his fictional creation, Clay, the novel’s narrator-protagonist. Both grew up in Los Angeles and headed east to attend a small liberal-arts college. Both Ellis’s and Clay’s parents were divorced and both young men grew up living in a house with their mother and their two sisters. Ellis’s relationship with his father was, by all accounts, as strained as what is represented in the few meetings Clay has with his own father in Less Than Zero. In these scenes, Clay describes a brief, perfunctory lunch meeting in an expensive restaurant in which Clay’s father is too preoccupied by work to acknowledge his son’s presence.Ellis’s second novel, The Rules of Attraction (1987), is set at Camden College, the same college that Clay attends in Less Than Zero. At one point, Clay even guest-narrates a chapter of The Rules of Attraction; the phrase, “people are afraid to walk across campus after midnight” (205) recalls the opening line of Less Than Zero, “people are afraid to merge on highways in Los Angeles” (5). Camden bears quite a few similarities with Bennington College, the college which Ellis himself was attending when Less Than Zero was published and Ellis was catapulted into the limelight. Even Ellis himself has admitted that the book is, “a completely fictionalized portrait of a group of people, all summations of friends I knew” (qtd. in Tobias).The authenticity of Ellis’s narrative voice was considered as an insight which came from participation (A Conversation with Bret Easton Ellis). The depiction of disenfranchised youth in the Reagan era in America was so compelling because Ellis seemed to personify and even embody the malaise and listlessness of his narrators in his public performances and interviews. In the minds of many readers and critics, Ellis’s narrators were a fictional extrapolation of Ellis himself. The association of Ellis to his fictional narrators backfired when Ellis’s third novel, American Psycho (1991), was published. The novel was criticised for its detached depiction of Patrick Bateman, who narrates in minute detail his daily routine which includes an extensive beauty regime, lunchtimes and dinnertimes spent in extravagant New York restaurants, a relationship with a fiancée and a mistress, a job on Wall Street in which he seems to do no real “work,” and his night-time hobby where brutally murders women, homeless men, gay men and even a small child. Bateman’s choice of victims can be interpreted as unconsciously aimed at anyone why may threaten his dominant position as a wealthy, white, heterosexual male. While Bateman kills as many men as he does women, his male victims are killed quickly in sudden bursts of violence. Bateman’s female victims are the subject of brutal torture, prolonged violent sexualized attacks, and in many cases inhumane post-mortem disfigurement and dismemberment.The public reception of American Psycho has been analysed as much as the text itself, (see: Murphet; Brien). Because American Psycho is narrated in the first-person voice of Bateman, there is no escape from his subjectivity. Many, including the National Organization of Women, interpreted this lack of authorial comment as Ellis’s tacit agreement and acceptance of Bateman’s behaviour. Another similar interpretation was made by Roger Rosenblatt in his pre-publication review of American Psycho in which he forthrightly encourages readers to “Snuff this Book” (Rosenblatt). Rosenblatt finds no ironic critique in Ellis’s representation of Bateman, instead finding himself at a loss to understand Ellis’s intention in writing American Psycho, saying “one only assumes, Mr. Ellis disapproves. It's a bit hard to tell what Mr. Ellis intends exactly, because he languishes so comfortably in the swamp he purports to condemn” (n.p.).In much the same way as Ellis’s previous narrators had reflected his experience and opinions, Ellis was considered as accepting and even glorifying the actions of a misogynistic serial killer. Ellis himself has commented on the popularised “misreading” of his novel: “Because I never step in anywhere and say, ‘Hey, this is all wrong,’ people get upset. That’s outrageous to me! Who’s going to say that serial killing is wrong?! Isn’t that a given? There’s no need to say that” (qtd. in. Klein)Ellis himself was treated as if he had committed the actual crimes that Patrick Bateman describes. The irony being that, as I have argued elsewhere (Phillips), there are numerous signs within the text which point to the possibility that Patrick Bateman did not commit the crimes as he claims: he can be interpreted as an unreliable narrator. Although the unreliability is Bateman’s narration doesn’t remove the effect which the reader experiences, it does indicate a distance between the author and the narrator. This distance was overlooked by many critics who interpreted Ellis as agreeing and condoning Bateman’s views and actions.When Ellis’s fourth novel, Glamorama was published, the decadent lifestyle represented in the text was again considered to be a reflection of Ellis’s personal experience. The star-studded parties and glamorous night clubs seemed to be lifted straight out of Ellis’s experience (although, no-one would ever claim that Ellis was a fashion-model-turned-international-terrorist like his narrator, Victor). One reviewer notes that “even when Bret Easton Ellis writes about killer yuppies and terrorist fashion models, a lot of people still think he's writing about himself” (Waldren).With the critical tendency to read an autobiographical confession out of Ellis’s fictional works firmly in place, it is not hard to see why Ellis decided to make the narrator of his fifth novel, Lunar Park, none other than Bret Easton Ellis himself. It is my contention that Lunar Park is the site of disclosures based on the real life of Bret Easton Ellis. I believe that Ellis chose the form of a mock-autobiography-turned-ghost-story as the site of exorcism for the many ghosts which have haunted his career, namely, his public persona and the publication of American Psycho. Ultimately, it is the exorcism of a more personal ghost, namely his father Robert Martin Ellis which provides the most private disclosure in the text and therefore the most touching, truthful and abiding site of closure for the entire novel and for Ellis himself. For ease, I will refer to the narrator of Lunar Park as Bret and the author of Lunar Park as Ellis.On the surface, it appears that Lunar Park is an autobiographical memoir. In one of the many mixed reviews of the novel (see: Murray; "Behind Bret's Mask"; Hand), Steve Almond’s title describes how Ellis masquerading as Ellis “is not a pretty sight” (Almond). The opening chapter is told in autobiographical style and charts Bret’s meteoric rise from college student to member of the literary brat pack (alongside Jay McInerney and Tama Jancowitz), to reviled author of American Psycho (1991) reaching his washed-up, drug-addled and near-death nadir during the Glamorama (1998) book tour. However, careful reading of this chapter reveals that the real-life Ellis is obscuring as much about himself as he appears to be revealing. Although it takes the form of a candid disclosure of his personal life, there are elements of the narrator’s story which do not agree with the public record of the author Ellis.The fictional Bret claims to have attended Camden College, and that his manuscript for Less Than Zero was a college project, discovered by his professor. While the plot of this story does reflect Ellis’s actual experience, he has set Bret’s story at Camden College, the fictional setting of The Rules of Attraction. By adding an element of fiction into the autobiographical account, Ellis is indicating that he is not identical to his narrating counterpart. It also signifies the Bret that exists in the fictional space whereas Ellis resides in the “real world.”In Lunar Park, Bret also talks about his relationship with Jayne Dennis. Jayne is described as a model-turned-actress, an up and coming Hollywood superstar who in the 1980s performed in films alongside Keanu Reeves. Jayne is one of the truly fictional characters in Lunar Park. She doesn’t exist outside of the text, except in two websites which were established to promote the publication of Lunar Park in 2005 (www.jaynedennis.com and www.jayne-dennis.com). While Bret and Jayne are dating, Jayne falls pregnant. Bret begs her to have an abortion. When Jayne decides to keep the child, her relationship with Bret falls apart. Bret meets his son Robby only twice from birth until the age of 10. The relationship between the fictional Bret and the fictional Jayne creates Robby, a fictional offspring who shares a name with Robert Martin Ellis (Bret and Ellis’s father).Many have been tempted to participate in Ellis’s game, to sift fact from fiction in the opening chapter of Lunar Park. Holt and Abbot published a two page point-by-point analysis of where the real-life Ellis diverged from the fictional Bret. The promotional website established by Ellis’s publisher was named www.twobrets.com to invite such a comparison. Although this game is invited by Ellis, he has also publicly stated that there is more to Lunar Park than the comparison between himself and his fictional counterpart:My worry is that people will want to know what’s true and what’s not […] All the things that are in the book—my quote-unquote autobiography—I just don’t want to answer any of those questions. I don’t like demystifying the text (qtd. in Wyatt n.p.)Although Ellis refuses to demystify the text, one of the purposes of inserting himself into the text is to trap readers in this very game, and to confuse fact with fiction. Although the text opens with a chapter which reads like Ellis’s autobiography, careful reading of the textual Bret against the extra-textual Ellis reveals that this chapter contains almost as much fiction as the “ghost story” which fills the remaining 400-odd pages. This ghost story could have been told by any first-person narrator. By writing himself into the text, Ellis is writing his public persona into the fictional character of Bret. One of the effects of blurring the lines between public and private, reality and fiction is that Ellis’s real-life disclosures invite the reader to read the fictional text against their extra-textual knowledge of Ellis himself. In this way, Ellis is able to address the many ghosts which have haunted his career—most importantly the public reception of American Psycho and his public persona. A more personal ghost is the ghost of Ellis’s father who has been written into the text, literally haunting Bret’s home with messages from beyond the grave. Closure occurs when these ghosts have been exorcised. The question is: is Lunar Park Ellis’s attempt to close down the public debates, or to add more fuel to the fire?One of the areas in which Ellis seeks to find closure is in the controversy surrounding American Psycho. Ellis uses his fictional voice to re-write the discourse surrounding the creation and reception of the text. There are deliberate contradictions in Bret’s version of writing American Psycho. In Lunar Park, Bret describes the writing process of American Psycho. In an oddly ornate passage for Ellis (who seldom uses adverbs), Bret describes how he would “fearfully watch my hands as the pen swept across the yellow legal pads” (19) blaming the “spirit” of Patrick Bateman for visiting and causing the book to be written. When it was finished, the “spirit” was “disgustingly satisfied” and stopped “gleefully haunting” Bret’s dreams. This shift in writing style may be an indication of a shift from reality into a fictionalised account of the writing of American Psycho. Much of the plot of Lunar Park is taken up with the consequences of American Psycho, when a madman starts replicating crimes exactly as they appear in the novel. It is almost as if Patrick Bateman is haunting Bret and his family. When informed that his fictional violence has disrupted his quiet suburban existence, Bret laments, “this was the moment that detractors of the book had warned me about: if anything happened to anyone as a result of the publication of this novel, Bret Easton Ellis was to blame” (181-2). By the end of Lunar Park Bret decides to “kill” Patrick Bateman once and for all, by writing an epilogue in which Bateman is burnt alive.On the surface, it appears that Lunar Park is the site of an apology about American Psycho. However, this is not entirely the case. Much of Bret’s description of writing American Psycho is contradictory to Ellis’s personal accounts where he consciously researched the gruesome details of Bateman’s crimes using an FBI training manual (Rose). Although Patrick Bateman is destroyed by the end of Lunar Park, extra-textually, neither Bret nor Ellis is not entirely apologetic for his creation. Bret argues that American Psycho was “about society and manners and mores, and not about cutting up women. How could anyone who read the book not see this?” (182). Extra-textually, in an interview Ellis admitted that when he re-read “the violence sequences I was incredibly upset and shocked […] I can't believe that I wrote that. Looking back, I realize, God, you really sort of stepped over a line there” (qtd. in Wyatt n.p.). However, in that same interview, Ellis admits to lying to reporters if he feels that the reporter is “out to get” him. Therefore, Ellis’s apology may not actually be an apology at all.Lunar Park presents an explanation about how and why American Psycho was written. This explanation is much akin to claiming that “the devil made me do it”, by arguing that Bret was possessed by “the spirit of this madman” (18). While it may seem that this explanation is an attempt to close the vast amount of discussion surrounding why American Psycho was written, Ellis is actually using his fictional persona to address the public outcry about his most controversial novel, providing an apology for a text, which is really no apology at all. Ultimately, the reliability of Bret’s account depends on the reader’s knowledge of Ellis’s public persona. This interplay between the fictional Bret and the real-life Ellis can be seen in Lunar Park’s account of the Glamorama publicity tour. In Lunar Park, Bret describes his own version of the Glamorama book tour. For Bret, this tour functions as his personal nadir, the point in his life where he hits rock bottom and looks to Jayne Dennis as his saviour. Throughout the tour, Bret describes taking all manner of drugs. At one point, threatened by his erratic behaviour, Bret’s publishers asked a personal minder to join the book tour, reporting back on Bret’s actions which include picking at nonexistent scabs, sobbing at his appearance in a hotel mirror and locking himself in a bookstore bathroom for over an hour before emerging and claiming that he had a snake living in his mouth (32-33).The reality of the Glamorama book tour is not anywhere near as wild as that described by Bret in Lunar Park. In reviews and articles addressing the real-life Glamorama book tour, there are no descriptions of these events. One article, from the The Observer (Macdonald), does describe a meeting over lunch where Ellis admits to drinking way too much the night before and then having to deal with phone calls from fans he can’t remember giving his phone-number to. However, as previously mentioned, in that same article a friend of Ellis’s is quoted as saying that Ellis frequently lies to reporters. Bret’s fictional actions seem to confirm Ellis’s real life “party boy” persona. For Moran, “the name of the author [him]self can become merely an image, either used to market a literary product directly or as a kind of free floating signifier within contemporary culture” (61). Lunar Park is about all of the connotations of the name Bret Easton Ellis. It is also a subversion of those expectations. The fictional Glamorama book tour shows Ellis’s media persona taken to an extreme until it becomes a self-embodying parody. In Lunar Park, Ellis is deliberately amplifying his public persona, accepting that no amount of truthful disclosure will erase the image of Bret-the-party-boy. However, the remainder of the novel turns this image on its head by removing Bret from New York and placing him in middle-American suburbia, married, and with two children in tow.Ultimately, although the novel appears as a transgression of fact and fiction, Bret may be the most fictional of all of Ellis’s narrators (with the exception of Patrick Bateman). Bret is married where Ellis is single. Bret is heterosexual whereas Ellis is homosexual, and used the site of Lunar Park to confirm his homosexuality. Bret has children whereas Ellis is childless. Bret has settled down into the heartland of American suburbia, a wife and two children in tow whereas Ellis has made it clear that this lifestyle is not one he is seeking. The novel is presented as the site of Ellis’s personal disclosure, and yet only creates more fictional fodder for the public image of Ellis, there are elements of true and personal disclosures from Ellis life, which he is using the text as the site for his own brand of closure. The most genuine and heartfelt closure is achieved through Ellis’s disclosure of his relationship with his father.The death of Ellis’s father, Robert Martin Ellis has an impact on both the textual and extra-textual levels of Lunar Park. Textually, the novel takes the form of a ghost story, and it is Robert himself who is haunting Bret. These spectral disturbances manifest themselves in Bret’s house which slowly transforms into a representation of his childhood home. Bret also receives nightly e-mails from the bank in which his father’s ashes have been stored in a safe-deposit box. These e-mails contain an attached video file showing the last few moments of Robert Martin Ellis’s life. Bret never finds out who filmed the video. Extra-textually, the death of Robert Martin Ellis is clearly signified in the fact that Lunar Park is dedicated to him as well as Michael Wade Kaplan, two men close to Ellis who have died. The trope of fathers haunting their sons is further highlighted by Ellis’s inter-textual references to Shakespeare’s Hamlet including a quote in the epigraph: “From the table of my memory / I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, / all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past / that youth and observation copied there” (1.5.98-101). The names of various geographical locations in Bret’s neighbourhood: Bret and Jayne live on Elsinore Lane, named for Elsinore castle, Bret also visits Fortinbras Mall, Osric hotel and Ophelia Boulevard. In Hamlet, the son is called upon by the ghost of his father to avenge his death. In Lunar Park, Bret is called upon to avenge himself against the wrongs inflicted upon him by his own father.The ambiguity of the relationships between fathers and sons is summarised in the closing passage of the novel. So, if you should see my son, tell him I say hello, be good, that I am thinking of him and that I know he’s watching over me somewhere, and not to worry: that he can always find me here, whenever he wants, right here, my arms held out and waiting, in the pages, behind the covers, at the end of Lunar Park (453).Although Bret earlier signals the reader to interpret this passage as a message from Bret to his son Robby (45), it is also possible to interpret is as a message from the fictional Robert Martin Ellis to the fictional Bret. In this reading, Lunar Park is not just a novel, a game or a post-modern deconstruction of the fact and fiction binary, it instead becomes an exorcism for the author. The process of writing Lunar Park to casts the spectre of the real-life Robert Martin Ellis out of his life to a place where Bret (and Ellis) can always find him. This relationship is the site not only of disclosure – reflecting Ellis’s own personal angst with his late father – but of closure, where Ellis has channelled his relationship and indeed exorcised his father into the text.Lunar Park contains several forms of disclosures, most of which transgress the line between fiction and fact. Lunar Park does not provide a closure from the tendency to read autobiography into Ellis’s texts, instead, chapter one provides as much fiction as fact, as evident in the discussions of American Psycho and the Glamorama book tour. Although chapter one presents in an autobiographical form, the remainder of the text reveals how fictional “Bret Easton Ellis” really is. Much of Lunar Park can be interpreted as a puzzle whose answer depends on the reader’s knowledge and understanding of the public perception, persona and profile of Bret Easton Ellis himself. Although seeming to provide closure on the surface, by playing with fiction and fact, Lunar Park only opens up more ground for discussion of Ellis, his novels, his persona and his fictional worlds. These are discussions I look forward to participating in, particularly as 2010 will see the publication of Ellis’s sixth novel (and sequel to Less Than Zero), Imperial Bedrooms.Although much of Ellis’s game in Lunar Park is to tease the reader by failing to provide true disclosures or meaningful and finite closure, the ending of the Lunar Park indicates the most honest, heartfelt and abiding closure for the text and for Ellis himself. Devoid of games and extra-textual riddles, the end of the novel is a message from a father to his son. By disclosing details of his troubled relationship with his father, both Ellis and his fictional counterpart Bret are able to exorcise the ghost of Robert Martin Ellis. As the novel closes, the ghost who haunts the text has indeed been exorcised and is now standing, with “arms held out and waiting, in the pages, behind the covers, at the end of Lunar Park” (453). ReferencesAlmond, Steve. "Ellis Masquerades as Ellis, and It Is Not a Pretty Sight." Boston Globe 14 Aug. 2005.Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel. London: Pluto Press, 1998."Behind Bret's Mask." Manchester Evening News 10 Oct. 2005.Brien, Donna Lee. "The Real Filth in American Psycho: A Critical Reassessment." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). 30 Nov. 2009 < http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php >.Ellis, Bret Easton. Less than Zero. London: Vintage, 1985.–––. The Rules of Attraction. London: Vintage, 1987.–––. American Psycho. London: Picador, 1991.–––. Glamorama. New York: Knopf, 1998.–––. Lunar Park. New York: Knopf, 2005.Freese, Peter. "Bret Easton Ellis, Less than Zero; Entropy in the 'Mtv Novel'?" Modes of Narrative: Approaches to American, Canadian and British Fiction. Eds. Reingard Nishik and Barbara Korts. Wurzburg: Konighausen and Naumann, 1990. 68–87. Hand, Elizabeth. "House of Horrors; Bret Easton Ellis, the Author of 'American Psycho,' Rips into His Most Frightening Subject Yet—Himself." The Washington Post 21 Aug. 2005.Klein, Joshua. "Interview with Bret Easton Ellis." The Onion AV Club 17 Mar.(1999). 5 Sep. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/bret-easton-ellis,13586/ >.Macdonald, Marianna. “Interview—Bret Easton Ellis—All Cut Up.” The Observer 28 June 1998.Moran, Joe. Star Authors. London: Pluto Press, 2000.Murphet, Julian. Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide. New York: Continuum, 2002.Murray, Noel. "Lunar Park [Review]." The Onion AV Club 2 Aug. 2005. 1 Nov. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/lunar-park,4393/ >.Phillips, Jennifer. "Unreliable Narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between Narrative Form and Thematic Content." Current Narratives 1.1 (2009): 60–68.Rose, Charlie. “A Conversation with Bret Easton Ellis”. The Charlie Rose Show. Prod. Charlie Rose and Yvette Vega. PBS. 7 Sep. 1994. Rosenblatt, Roger. "Snuff This Book! Will Bret Easton Ellis Get Away with Murder?" The New York Times 16 Dec. 1990: Arts.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.Tobias, Scott. "Bret Easton Ellis (Interview)". The Onion AV Club 22 Apr. 2009. 31 Aug. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/bret-easton-ellis%2C26988/1/ >.Wyatt, Edward. "Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror." The New York Times 7 Aug. 2005: Arts.

As the distinction between disclosure-fuelled celebrity and lasting fame becomes difficult to discern, the “based on a true story” label has gained a particular traction among readers and viewers. This is despite much public approbation and private angst sometimes resulting from such disclosure as “little in the law or in society protects people from the consequences of others’ revelations about them” (Smith 537). Even fiction writers can stray into difficult ethical and artistic territory when they disclose the private facts of real lives—that is, recognisably biographical information—in their work, with autoethnographic fiction where authors base their fiction on their own lives (Davis and Ellis) not immune as this often discloses others’ stories (Ellis) as well. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously counselled writers to take their subjects from life and, moreover, to look to the singular, specific life, although this then had to be abstracted: “Begin with an individual, and before you know it, you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created—nothing” (139). One of the problems when assessing fiction through this lens, however, is that, although many writers are inspired in their work by an actual life, event or historical period, the resulting work is usually ultimately guided by literary concerns—what writers often term the quest for aesthetic truth—rather than historical accuracy (Owen et al. 2008). In contrast, a biography is, and continues to be, by definition, an accurate account of a real persons’ life. Despite postmodern assertions regarding the relativity of truth and decades of investigation into the incorporation of fiction into biography, other non-fiction texts and research narratives (see, for instance: Wyatt), many biographers attest to still feeling irrevocably tied to the factual evidence in a way that novelists and the scriptors of biographically-based fictional television drama, movies and theatrical pieces do not (Wolpert; Murphy; Inglis). To cite a recent example, Louis Nowra’s Ice takes the life of nineteenth-century self-made entrepreneur and politician Malcolm McEacharn as its base, but never aspires to be classified as creative nonfiction, history or biography. The history in a historical novel is thus often, and legitimately, skewed or sidelined in order to achieve the most satisfying work of art, although some have argued that fiction may uniquely represent the real, as it is able to “play […] in the gap between the narratives of history and the actualities of the past” (Nelson n.p.). Fiction and non-fictional forms are, moreover, increasingly intermingling and intertwining in content and intent. The ugly word “faction” was an attempt to suggest that the two could simply be elided but, acknowledging wide-ranging debates about whether literature can represent the complexities of life with any accuracy and post-structuralist assertions that the idea of any absolute truth is outmoded, contemporary authors play with, and across, these boundaries, creating hybrid texts that consciously slide between invention and disclosure, but which publishers, critics and readers continue to define firmly as either fiction or biography. This dancing between forms is not particularly new. A striking example was Marion Halligan’s 2001 novel The Fog Garden which opens with a personal essay about the then recent death of her own much-loved husband. This had been previously published as an autobiographical memoir, “Cathedral of Love,” and again in an essay collection as “Lapping.” The protagonist of the novel is a recently widowed writer named Clare, but the inclusion of Halligan’s essay, together with the book’s marketing campaign which made much of the author’s own sadness, encourages readers to read the novel as a disclosure of the author’s own personal experience. This is despite Halligan’s attempt to keep the two separate: “Clare isn’t me. She’s like me. Some of her experience, terrors, have been mine. Some haven’t” (Fog Garden 9). In such acts of disclosure and denial, fiction and non-fiction can interrogate, test and even create each other, however quite vicious criticism can result when readers feel the boundaries demarking the two are breached. This is most common when authors admit to some dishonesty in terms of self-disclosure as can be seen, for instance, in the furore surrounding highly inflated and even wholly fabricated memoirs such as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, Margaret B. Jones’s Love and Consequences and Misha Defonseca’s A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years. Related problems and anxieties arise when authors move beyond incorporating and disclosing the facts of their own lives in memoir or (autobiographical) fiction, to using the lives of others in this way. Daphne Patai sums up the difference: “A person telling her life story is, in a sense, offering up her self for her own and her listener’s scrutiny […] Whether we should appropriate another’s life in this way becomes a legitimate question” (24–5). While this is difficult but seemingly manageable for non-fiction writers because of their foundational reliance on evidence, this anxiety escalates for fiction writers. This seems particularly extreme in relation to how audience expectations and prior knowledge of actual events can shape perceptions and interpretations of the resulting work, even when those events are changed and the work is declared to be one of fiction. I have discussed elsewhere, for instance, the difficult terrain of crafting fiction from well-known criminal cases (Brien, “Based on a True Story”). The reception of such work shows how difficult it is to dissociate creative product from its source material once the public and media has made this connection, no matter how distant that finished product may be from the original facts.As the field of biography continues to evolve for writers, critics and theorists, a study of one key text at a moment in that evolution—Jill Shearer’s play Georgia and its reliance on disclosing the life of artist Georgia O’Keeffe for its content and dramatic power—reveals not only some of the challenges and opportunities this close relationship offers to the writers and readers of life stories, but also the pitfalls of attempting to dissemble regarding artistic intention. This award-winning play has been staged a number of times in the past decade but has attracted little critical attention. Yet, when I attended a performance of Georgia at La Boite Theatre in Brisbane in 1999, I was moved by the production and admiring of Shearer’s writing which was, I told anyone who would listen, a powerfully dramatic interpretation of O’Keeffe’s life, one of my favourite artists. A full decade on, aspects of the work and its performance still resonate through my thinking. Author of more than twenty plays performed throughout Australia and New Zealand as well as on Broadway, Shearer was then (and is) one of Australia’s leading playwrights, and I judged Georgia to be a major, mature work: clear, challenging and confident. Reading the Currency Press script a year or so after seeing the play reinforced for me how distinctive and successful a piece of theatre Shearer had created utilising a literary technique which has been described elsewhere as fictionalised biography—biography which utilises fictional forms in its presentation but stays as close to the historical record as conventional biography (Brien, The Case of Mary Dean).The published version of the script indeed acknowledges on its title page that Georgia is “inspired by the later life of the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe” (Shearer). The back cover blurb begins with a quote attributed to O’Keeffe and then describes the content of the play entirely in terms of biographical detail: The great American artist Georgia O’Keeffe is physically, emotionally and artistically debilitated by her failing eyesight. Living amidst the Navajo spiritual landscape in her desert home in New Mexico, she becomes prey to the ghosts of her past. Her solitude is broken by Juan, a young potter, whose curious influence on her life remains until her death at 98 (Georgia back cover). This short text ends by unequivocally reinforcing the relation between the play and the artist’s life: “Georgia is a passionate play that explores with sensitivity and wry humour the contradictions and the paradoxes of the life of Georgia O’Keeffe” (Georgia back cover). These few lines of plot synopsis actually contain a surprisingly large number of facts regarding O’Keeffe’s later life. After the death of her husband (the photographer and modern art impresario Alfred Steiglitz whose ghost is a central character in the play), O’Keeffe did indeed relocate permanently to Abiquiú in New Mexico. In 1971, aged 84, she was suffering from an irreversible degenerative disease, had lost her central vision and stopped painting. One autumn day in 1973, Juan Hamilton, a young potter, appeared at her adobe house looking for work. She hired him and he became her lover, closest confidante and business manager until her death at 98. These facts form not only the background story but also much of the riveting content for Georgia which, as the published script’s introduction states, takes as its central themes: “the dilemma of the artist as a an older woman; her yearning to create against the fear of failing artistic powers; her mental strength and vulnerability; her sexuality in the face of physical deterioration; her need for companionship and the paradoxical love of solitude” (Rider vii). These issues are not only those which art historians identify as animating the O’Keeffe’s later life and painting, but ones which are discussed at length in many of the biographies of the artist published from 1980 to 2007 (see, for instance: Arrowsmith and West; Berry; Calloway and Bry; Castro; Drohojowska-Philp; Eisler; Eldredge; Harris; Hogrefe; Lisle; Peters; Reily; Robinson).Despite this clear focus on disclosing aspects of O’Keeffe’s life, both the director’s and playwright’s notes prefacing the published script declare firmly that Georgia is fiction, not biography. While accepting that these statements may be related to copyright and privacy concerns, the stridency of the denials of the biography label with its implied intention of disclosing the facts of a life, are worthy of analysis. Although noting that Georgia is “about the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe”, director of the La Boite production Sue Rider asserts that not only that the play moves “beyond the biographical” (vii) but, a few pages later, that it is “thankfully not biography” (xii). This is despite Rider’s own underscoring of the connection to O’Keeffe by setting up an exhibition of the artist’s work adjacent to the theatre. Shearer, whose research acknowledgments include a number of works about O’Keeffe, is even more overtly strident in her denial of any biographical links stating that her characters, “this Juan, Anna Marie and Dorothy Norman are a work of dramatic fiction, as is the play, and should be taken as such” (xiii).Yet, set against a reading of the biographies of the artist, including those written in the intervening decade, Georgia clearly and remarkably accurately discloses the tensions and contradictions of O’Keeffe’s life. It also draws on a significant amount of documented biographical data to enhance the dramatic power of what is disclosed by the play for audiences with this knowledge. The play does work as a coherent narrative for a viewer without any prior knowledge of O’Keeffe’s life, but the meaning of the dramatic action is enhanced by any biographical knowledge the audience possesses. In this way, the play’s act of disclosure is reinforced by this externally held knowledge. Although O’Keeffe’s oeuvre is less well known and much anecdotal detail about her life is not as familiar for Australian viewers as for those in the artist’s homeland, Shearer writes for an international as well as an Australian audience, and the program and adjacent exhibition for the Brisbane performance included biographical information. It is also worth noting that large slabs of biographical detail are also omitted from the play. These omissions to disclosure include O’Keeffe’s early life from her birth in 1887 in Wisconsin to her studies in Chicago and New York from 1904 to 1908, as well as her work as a commercial artist and art teacher in Texas and other Southern American states from 1912 to 1916. It is from this moment in 1916, however, that the play (although opening in 1946) constructs O’Keeffe’s life right through to her death in 1986 by utilising such literary devices as flashbacks, dream sequences and verbal and visual references.An indication of the level of accuracy of the play as biographical disclosure can be ascertained by unpacking the few lines of opening stage directions, “The Steiglitz’s suite in the old mid-range Shelton Hotel, New York, 1946 ... Georgia, 59, in black, enters, dragging a coffin” (1). In 1946, when O’Keeffe was indeed aged 59, Steiglitz died. The couple had lived part of every year at the Shelton Towers Hotel at 525 Lexington Avenue (now the New York Marriott East Side), a moderately priced hotel made famous by its depiction in O’Keeffe’s paintings and Steiglitz’s photographs. When Stieglitz suffered a cerebral thrombosis, O’Keeffe was spending the summer in New Mexico, but she returned to New York where her husband died on 13 July. This level of biographical accuracy continues throughout Georgia. Halfway through the first page “Anita, 52” enters. This character represents Anita Pollitzer, artist, critic and O’Keeffe’s lifelong friend. The publication of her biography of O’Keeffe, A Woman on Paper, and Georgia’s disapproval of this, is discussed in the play, as are their letters, which were collected and published in 1990 as Lovingly, Georgia (Gibiore). Anita’s first lines in the play after greeting her friend refer to this substantial correspondence: “You write beautifully. I always tell people: “I have a friend who writes the most beautiful letters” (1). In the play, as in life, it is Anita who introduces O’Keeffe’s work to Stieglitz who is, in turn, accurately described as: “Gallery owner. Two Nine One, Fifth Avenue. Leader of the New York avant-garde, the first to bring in the European moderns” (6). The play also chronicles how (unknown to O’Keeffe) Steiglitz exhibited the drawings Pollitzer gave him under the incorrect name, a scene which continues with Steiglitz persuading Georgia to allow her drawings to remain in his gallery (as he did in life) and ends with a reference to his famous photographs of her hands and nude form. Although the action of a substantial amount of real time is collapsed into a few dramatic minutes and, without doubt, the dialogue is invented, this invention achieves the level of aesthetic truth aimed for by many contemporary biographers (Jones)—as can be assessed when referring back to the accepted biographical account. What actually appears to have happened was that, in the autumn 1915, while teaching art in South Carolina, O’Keeffe was working on a series of abstract charcoal drawings that are now recognised as among the most innovative in American art of that time. She mailed some of these drawings to Pollitzer, who showed them Steiglitz, who exhibited ten of them in April 1916, O’Keeffe only learning of this through an acquaintance. O’Keeffe, who had first visited 291 in 1908 but never spoken to Stieglitz, held his critical opinion in high regard, and although confronting him over not seeking her permission and citing her name incorrectly, eventually agreed to let her drawings hang (Harris). Despite Shearer’s denial, the other characters in Georgia are also largely biographical sketches. Her “Anna Marie”, who never appears in the play but is spoken of, is Juan’s wife (in real life Anna Marie Hamilton), and “Dorothy Norman” is the character who has an affair with Steiglitz—the discovery of which leads to Georgia’s nervous breakdown in the play. In life, while O’Keeffe was in New Mexico, Stieglitz became involved with the much younger Norman who was, he claimed, only his gallery assistant. When O’Keeffe discovered Norman posing nude for her husband (this is vividly imagined in Georgia), O’Keeffe moved out of the Shelton and suffered from the depression that led to her nervous breakdown. “ Juan,” who ages from 26 to 39 in the play, represents the potter Juan Hamilton who encouraged the nearly blind O’Keeffe to paint again. In the biographical record there is much conjecture about Hamilton’s motives, and Shearer sensitively portrays her interpretation of this liaison and the difficult territory of sexual desire between a man and a much older woman, as she also too discloses the complex relationship between O’Keeffe and the much older Steiglitz.This complexity is described through the action of the play, but its disclosure is best appreciated if the biographical data is known. There are also a number of moments of biographical disclosure in the play that can only be fully understood with biographical knowledge in hand. For instance, Juan refers to Georgia’s paintings as “Beautiful, sexy flowers [... especially] the calla lilies” (24). All attending the play are aware (from the exhibition, program and technical aspects of the production) that, in life, O’Keeffe was famous for her flower paintings. However, knowing that these had brought her fame and fortune early in her career with, in 1928, a work titled Calla Lily selling for U.S. $25,000, then an enormous sum for any living American artist, adds to the meaning of this line in the play. Conversely, the significant level of biographical disclosure throughout Georgia does not diminish, in any way, the power or integrity of Shearer’s play as a literary work. Universal literary (and biographical) themes—love, desire and betrayal—animate Georgia; Steiglitz’s spirit haunts Georgia years after his death and much of the play’s dramatic energy is generated by her passion for both her dead husband and her younger lover, with some of her hopeless desire sublimated through her relationship with Juan. Nadia Wheatley reads such a relationship between invention and disclosure in terms of myth—relating how, in the process of writing her biography of Charmain Clift, she came to see Clift and her husband George Johnson take on a larger significance than their individual lives: “They were archetypes; ourselves writ large; experimenters who could test and try things for us; legendary figures through whom we could live vicariously” (5). In this, Wheatley finds that “while myth has no real beginning or end, it also does not bother itself with cause and effect. Nor does it worry about contradictions. Parallel tellings are vital to the fabric” (5). In contrast with both Rider and Shearer’s insistence that Georgia was “not biography”, it could be posited that (at least part of) Georgia’s power arises from the creation of such mythic value, and expressly through its nuanced disclosure of the relevant factual (biographical) elements in parallel to the development of its dramatic (invented) elements. Alongside this, accepting Georgia as such a form of biographical disclosure would mean that as well as a superbly inventive creative work, the highly original insights Shearer offers to the mass of O’Keeffe biography—something of an American industry—could be celebrated, rather than excused or denied. ReferencesArrowsmith, Alexandra, and Thomas West, eds. Georgia O’Keeffe & Alfred Stieglitz: Two Lives—A Conversation in Paintings and Photographs. Washington DC: HarperCollins and Calloway Editions, and The Phillips Collection, 1992.Berry, Michael. Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.Brien, Donna Lee. The Case of Mary Dean: Sex, Poisoning and Gender Relations in Australia. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Queensland University of Technology, 2004. –––. “‘Based on a True Story’: The Problem of the Perception of Biographical Truth in Narratives Based on Real Lives”. TEXT: Journal of Writers and Writing Programs 13.2 (Oct. 2009). 19 Oct. 2009 < http://www.textjournal.com.au >.Calloway, Nicholas, and Doris Bry, eds. Georgia O’Keeffe in the West. New York: Knopf, 1989.Castro, Jan G. The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Crown Publishing, Random House, 1985.Davis, Christine S., and Carolyn Ellis. “Autoethnographic Introspection in Ethnographic Fiction: A Method of Inquiry.” In Pranee Liamputtong and Jean Rumbold, eds. Knowing Differently: Arts-Based and Collaborative Research. New York: Nova Science, 2008. 99–117.Defonseca, Misha. Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years. Bluebell, PA: Mt. Ivy Press, 1997.Drohojowska-Philp, Hunter. Full Bloom: The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: WW Norton, 2004.Ellis, Carolyn. “Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research with Intimate Others.” Qualitative Inquiry 13.1 (2007): 3–29. Eisler, Benita. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz: An American Romance. New York: Doubleday, 1991.Eldredge, Charles C. Georgia O’Keeffe: American and Modern. New Haven: Yale UP, 1993.Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Diamond as Big as the Ritz and Other Stories. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1962.Frey, James. A Million Little Pieces. New York: N.A. Talese/Doubleday, 2003.Gibiore, Clive, ed. Lovingly, Georgia. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990.Halligan, Marion. “Lapping.” In Peter Craven, ed. Best Australian Essays. Melbourne: Bookman P, 1999. 208–13.Halligan, Marion. The Fog Garden. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2001.Halligan, Marion. “The Cathedral of Love.” The Age 27 Nov. 1999: Saturday Extra 1.Harris, J. C. “Georgia O’Keeffe at 291”. Archives of General Psychiatry 64.2 (Feb. 2007): 135–37.Hogrefe, Jeffrey. O’Keeffe: The Life of an American Legend. New York: Bantam, 1994.Inglis, Ian. “Popular Music History on Screen: The Pop/Rock Biopic.” Popular Music History 2.1 (2007): 77–93.Jones, Kip. “A Biographic Researcher in Pursuit of an Aesthetic: The Use of Arts-Based (Re)presentations in “Performative” Dissemination of Life Stories”. Qualitative Sociology Review 2.1 (Apr. 2006): 66–85. Jones, Margaret B. Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival. New York: Riverhead Books, 2008.Lisle, Laurie. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Seaview Books, 1980.Murphy, Mary. “Limited Lives: The Problem of the Literary Biopic”. Kinema 17 (Spr. 2002): 67–74. Nelson, Camilla. “Faking It: History and Creative Writing.” TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses 11.2 (Oct. 2007). 19 Oct. 2009 < http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct07/nelson.htm >.Nowra, Louis. Ice. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2008.Owen, Jillian A. Tullis, Chris McRae, Tony E. Adams, and Alisha Vitale. “Truth Troubles.” Qualitative Inquiry 15.1 (2008): 178–200.Patai, Daphne. “Ethical Problems of Personal Narratives, or, Who Should Eat the Last Piece of Cake.” International Journal of Oral History 8 (1987): 5–27.Peters, Sarah W. Becoming O’Keeffe. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991.Pollitzer, Anita. A Woman on Paper. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.Reily, Nancy Hopkins. Georgia O’Keeffe. A Private Friendship, Part II. Santa Fe, NM: Sunstone Press, 2009.Rider, Sue. “Director’s Note.” Georgia [playscript]. Sydney: Currency Press, 2000. vii–xii.Robinson, Roxana. Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1990. Shearer, Jill. Georgia [playscript]. Sydney: Currency Press, 2000.Smith, Thomas R. “How Our Lives Become Stories: Making Selves [review]”. Biography 23.3 (2000): 534–38.Wheatley, Nadia. The Life and Myth of Charmian Clift. Sydney: Flamingo, 2001.Wolpert, Stanley. “Biography as History: A Personal Reflection”. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 40.3 (2010): 399–412. Pub. online (Oct. 2009). 19 Oct. 2009 < http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/jinh/40/3 >.Wyatt, Jonathan. “Research, Narrative and Fiction: Conference Story”. The Qualitative Report 12.2 (Jun. 2007): 318–31.

Welcome to the ‘bubbles’ issue of M/C Journal. When we first pitched the idea of ‘bubbles’ for an issue of M/C Journal it was 2019, several months before COVID-19 was identified in Wuhan, China, and the resulting pandemic that brought the term ‘bubble’ to prominence in ways we had not even imagined. Our pre-pandemic line of enquiry focussed on how bubbles manifested themselves within popular culture and society and how the media reported on these concepts. Thinking about bubbles from bubbly champagne to the ‘political bubble’ we asked researchers to think about the ephemeral nature of bubbles. And indeed some of the articles in this edition reflect this original line of enquiry. COVID-19 however brought to us a whole new meaning of bubbles. Suddenly governments were urging people to ‘stay in their bubbles’ and, in Australia, the idea of ‘travel bubbles’ between countries with similarly low rates of COVID-19 emerged. Mary-Louise McLaws described the ‘germ bubble’ as those we don’t physically distance from, our close contacts. A year ago – in March 2020 – the global community began to exist within a restricted bubble that limited our contact with the wider world. For the most part, that bubble remains 12 months later. Some of the articles for this issue focus on the ways COVID-19 has brought new bubbles to our social and political landscape. Despite the recent prominence of COVID-19, the feature article tackles another bubble that has continued to dominate headlines in Australia. Angelika Heurich and Jo Coghlan examine the ‘Canberra Bubble’ – a toxic culture of sexualised, bullying, hyper-masculinity, that seeks to silence and discredit those who speak out, operating in ways out of line with modern Australia and workplace laws. From claims of rape against the Attorney-General to a Prime Minister who failed to even read the complaint against the highest law officer in Australia, to Brittany Higgins being called a “lying cow” and Grace Tame’s forensic analysis of Morrison’s lack of conscience, Australia’s #MeToo moment threatens to bring down a government. The ‘Canberra Bubble’ may have been the Australian word of the year in 2018, argue Fincina Hopgood and Jodi Brooks, but 2020 belonged to the COVID-19 bubble. Their article takes stock on how the words ‘iso’ and ‘bubble’ came to prominence as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. It follows up with an examination on how the COVID-19 bubble is conceived across different cohorts, and in particular for those of the fourth age – the older generation. The COVID-19 pandemic brought into relief another long-term political and social problem in Australia, how Australians of are taken care of in their twilight years. Hopgood and Brooks interrogate how, despite a Royal Commission into the running of aged care homes that recommended change, the pandemic exacerbated the vulnerability of people in aged care homes. For governments to effectively manage COVID-19 bubbles, they need to rely on pre-existing relationships with the publics they represent. Xiang Gao’s article investigates the role social capital has played in the ability for different governments to manage the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It critically examines how pre-existing social capital has enabled governments to effectively establish social distancing measures and household ‘bubbles’. Examining these concepts in the Chinese and American contexts, Gao finds that the governmental responses to the pandemic were not only reliant on established social capital, but have also changed the relationship between governments and publics. With the USA, Brazil shared the dubious honour of being widely criticised for the governmental response to the pandemic. Filipe Soares and Raquel Recuero tackle the political media landscape of reporting on COVID-19 in Brazil. They interrogate the role of the Brazilian media in the promotion of disinformation around the pandemic through three media case studies, finding that the intersection between traditional mass media and social media can exacerbate erroneous reporting. Managing the pandemic did not solely focus on the need to protect certain populations. Many governments highlighted the need for economic activities to continue. For commercial sports which already existed within a ‘sporting bubble’, the COVID-19 pandemic brought another bubble to the rarefied world of professional sports. The creation of a ‘sporting bubble’ enjoyed wide support from both political and media commentators. Adele Pavlidis and David Rowe consider the social effects of the creation of the ‘sporting bubble’ had both on those who found themselves inside, and on those who were left out. While at times the bubble could feel more like a cage, transgressions by sporting personalities often went unpunished. Further, the ‘sporting bubble’ was highly gendered, with those inside the bubble being predominantly men, which served to intensified pre-existing gender inequalities within professional sports. For those on the outside of the political mainstream, the Canberra bubble can appear to be an impervious boundary to cross. Bronwyn Fredericks and Abraham Bradfield argue that The Uluru Statement of the Heart was treated by politicians as little more than a ‘thought bubble’, destined to disintegrate into nothing, despite it being a culmination of numerous voices within Australian society. Recognition of Indigenous Australians in the Constitution is a measure that enjoys wide support across the Australian community, yet this has not led to meaningful action. Fredericks and Bradfield examine the various contemporary and historical factors that have led to the slow progress on this fundamental and important issue. History has a strong bearing on how we understand social and political matters today. Within popular culture, history provides a rich seam of stories for entertainment, both factual and fictional. Fictional versions of history necessarily blur the lines between reality and fantasy. How history is mediated through fiction is the focus of Lisa J. Hackett and Jo Coghlan’s article. Based upon an international survey carried out amongst historical romance authors and readers, it asked if historical accuracy in fiction matters. It finds that there exists a ‘dance of history and fiction’ that posit that our past can be animated by fiction writers and our historians can bring to life our pasts. It is in the intersections of the ‘historical bubble’ and the ‘fiction bubble’ that we can reflect on the past in meaningful ways that inform our social understanding of the past, its people and practices. Disney heroines are some of the most recognisable romantic fiction characters, often inhabiting a world of magic and true love with charming princes and wicked stepmothers. Yet the heroines' and villains' true natures are often revealed through a physical transformation that Amanda Rutherford and Sarah Baker argue is problematic for the often young audiences who watch these films. Despite story lines that promise more progressive iterations of worthiness, a homogenous physical beauty dominates the ‘princess bubble’. For readers, much like those of historical romance novels, such representations can be hegemonic and hide the patriarchal nature of modern society. While bubbles can often represent closed-in worlds, other bubbles are synonymous with exuberance and fun. The next two articles take their inspiration from frothy champagne bubbles. The first by Anna-Mari Almila examines the history of champagne and how its iconic bubbles were both created and came to be an integral symbol of celebration. It notes how champagne makers are often in dialogue with wider popular culture elements in creating and maintaining meanings associated with the drink. Jenny Wise and Lesley McLean turn their attention to the a specific Australian bubbly brand, Treasury Wines, and how it has positioned its 19 Crimes label, which uses the images of Australian convicts on its bottles to create a unique identity. Whilst ostensibly a celebration of Australia’s convict past, the way this brand ‘celebrates’ the sometimes dark crimes of real criminals suggest a socially acceptable romanticisation of Australia’s past. We close this special edition with Greg Melleuish’s thoughtful essay on the fragility of modern society. Just as in the past when we sought permanence in the face of disease and war again we seek stability in the face of pandemics and climate change, even though we know the ‘bubble’ will burst. Humans have a history of attempting to control change. Our ‘plastic nature’ allows us to adapt to the impermanence of life while we yearn for that which is constant and unchanging. We turn to words to find permanence, claiming their meaning as universal, but even meanings are contested and hence transient. Our pragmatic search for stability, even in a period of prosperity and infinite peace, is worthy, but hanging over us is the Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ bubble in which zombies and pandemics threaten our social being. While in part a dire warning for the future, we are reminded that the bubble of modern life is to be cherished.

If thinking about home necessitates thinking about “place, space, scale, identity and power,” as Alison Blunt and Robyn Dowling (2) suggest, then thinking about home themes in popular music makes no less a conceptual demand. Song lyrics and titles most often invoke dominant readings such as intimacy, privacy, nurture, refuge, connectedness and shared belonging, all issues found within Blunt and Dowling’s analysis. The spatial imaginary to which these authors refer takes vivid shape through repertoires of songs dealing with houses and other specific sites, vast and distant homelands, communities or, less tangibly, geographical or cultural settings where particular relationships can be found, supporting Blunt and Dowling’s major claim that home is complex, multi-scalar and multi-layered. Shelley Mallett’s claim that the term home “functions as a repository for complex, inter-related and at times contradictory socio-cultural ideas about people’s relationships with one another…and with places, spaces and things” (84) is borne out heavily by popular music where, for almost every sentiment that the term home evokes, it seems an opposite sentiment is evoked elsewhere: familiarity versus alienation, acceptance versus rejection, love versus loneliness. Making use of conceptual groundwork by Blunt and Dowling and by Mallett and others, the following discussion canvasses a range of meanings that home has had for a variety of songwriters, singers and audiences over the years. Intended as merely partial and exploratory rather than exhaustive, it provides some insights into contrasts, ironies and relationships between home and gender, diaspora and loss. While it cannot cover all the themes, it gives prominence to the major recurring themes and a variety of important contexts that give rise to these home themes. Most prominent among those songs dealing with home has been a nostalgia and yearning, while issues of how women may have viewed the home within which they have often been restricted to a narrowly defined private sphere are almost entirely absent. This serves as a reminder that, while some themes can be conducive to the medium of popular music, others may be significantly less so. Songs may speak directly of experience but not necessarily of all experiences and certainly not of all experiences equally. B. Lee Cooper claims “most popular culture ventures rely upon formula-oriented settings and phrasings to attract interest, to spur mental or emotional involvement” (93). Notions of home have generally proved both formulaic and emotionally-charged. Commonly understood patterns of meaning and other hegemonic references generally operate more successfully than alternative reference points. Those notions with the strongest cultural currency can be conveyed succinctly and denote widely agreed upon meanings. Lyrics can seldom afford to be deeply analytical but generally must be concise and immediately evocative. Despite that, this discussion will point to diverse meanings carried by songs about home. Blunt and Dowling point out that “a house is not necessarily nor automatically a home” (3). The differences are strongly apparent in music, with only a few songs relating to houses compared with homes. When Malvina Reynolds wrote in 1962 of “little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” she was certainly referring to houses, not homes, thus making it easier to bypass the relationships which might have vested the inhabitants with more warmth and individuality than their houses, in this song about conformity and homogeneity. The more complex though elusive concept of home, however, is more likely to feature in love songs and to emanate from diasporal songs. Certainly these two genres are not mutually exclusive. Irish songs are particularly noteworthy for adding to the array of music written by, or representational of, those who have been forced away from home by war, poverty, strife or other circumstances. They manifest identities of displacement rather than of placement, as studied by Bronwen Walter, looking back at rather than from within their spatial imaginary. Phil Eva claims that during the 19th Century Irish émigrés sang songs of exile in Manchester’s streets. Since many in England’s industrial towns had been uprooted from their homes, the songs found rapport with street audiences and entered popular culture. For example, the song Killarney, of hazy origins but thought to date back to as early as 1850, tells of Killarney’s lakes and fells, Emerald isles and winding bays; Mountain paths and woodland dells… ...her [nature’s] home is surely there. As well as anthropomorphising nature and giving it a home, the song suggests a specifically geographic sense of home. Galway Bay, written by A. Fahy, does likewise, as do many other Irish songs of exile which link geography with family, kin and sometimes culture to evoke a sense of home. The final verse of Cliffs of Doneen gives a sense of both people and place making up home: Fare thee well to Doneen, fare thee well for a while And to all the kind people I’m leaving behind To the streams and the meadows where late I have been And the high rocky slopes round the cliffs of Doneen. Earlier Irish songs intertwine home with political issues. For example, Tho’ the Last Glimpse of Erin vows to Erin that “In exile thy bosum shall still be my home.” Such exile resulted from a preference of fleeing Ireland rather than bowing to English oppression, which then included a prohibition on Irish having moustaches or certain hairstyles. Thomas Moore is said to have set the words of the song to the air Coulin which itself referred to an Irish woman’s preference for her “Coulin” (a long-haired Irish youth) to the English (Nelson-Burns). Diasporal songs have continued, as has their political edge, as evidenced by global recognition of songs such as Bayan Ko (My Country), written by José Corazon de Jesus in 1929, out of love and concern for the Philippines and sung among Filipinos worldwide. Robin Cohen outlines a set of criteria for diaspora that includes a shared belief in the possibility of return to home, evident in songs such as the 1943 Welsh song A Welcome in the Hillside, in which a Welsh word translating roughly as a yearning to return home, hiraeth, is used: We’ll kiss away each hour of hiraeth When you come home again to Wales. However, the immensely popular I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen, not of Irish origin but written by Thomas Westendorf of Illinois in 1875, suggests that such emotions can have a resonance beyond the diaspora. Anti-colonial sentiments about home can also be expressed by long-time inhabitants, as Harry Belafonte demonstrated in Island in the Sun: This is my island in the sun Where my people have toiled since time begun. Though I may sail on many a sea, Her shores will always be home to me. War brought a deluge of sentimental songs lamenting separation from home and loved ones, just as likely to be parents and siblings as sweethearts. Radios allowed wider audiences and greater popularity for these songs. If separation had brought a longing previously, the added horrors of war presented a stronger contrast between that which the young soldiers were missing and that which they were experiencing. Both the First and Second World Wars gave rise to songs long since sung which originated in such separations, but these also had a strong sense of home as defined by the nationalism that has for over a century given the contours of expectations of soldiers. Focusing on home, these songs seldom speak of the details of war. Rather they are specific about what the singers have left behind and what they hope to return to. Songs of home did not have to be written specifically for the war effort nor for overseas troops. Irving Berlin’s 1942 White Christmas, written for a film, became extremely popular with US troops during WWII, instilling a sense of home that related to familiarities and festivities. Expressing a sense of home could be specific and relate to regions or towns, as did I’m Goin’ Back Again to Yarrawonga, or it could refer to any home, anywhere where there were sons away fighting. Indeed the American Civil War song When Johnny Comes Marching Home, written by Patrick Sarsfield Gilmour, was sung by both Northerners and Southerners, so adaptable was it, with home remarkably unspecified and undescribed. The 1914 British song Keep the Home Fires Burning by Ivor Novello and Lena Ford was among those that evoked a connection between home and the military effort and helped establish a responsibility on those at home to remain optimistic: Keep the Homes fires burning While your hearts are yearning, Though your lads are far away They dream of home, There’s a silver lining Through the dark clouds shining, Turn the dark clouds inside out, Till the boys come Home. No space exists in this song for critique of the reasons for war, nor of a role for women other than that of homemaker and moral guardian. It was women’s duty to ensure men enlisted and home was rendered a private site for emotional enlistment for a presumed public good, though ironically also a point of personal hope where the light of love burned for the enlistees’ safe return. Later songs about home and war challenged these traditional notions. Two serve as examples. One is Pink Floyd’s brief musical piece of the 1970s, Bring the Boys Back Home, whose words of protest against the American war on Viet Nam present home, again, as a site of safety but within a less conservative context. Home becomes implicated in a challenge to the prevailing foreign policy and the interests that influence it, undermining the normal public sphere/private sphere distinction. The other more complex song is Judy Small’s Mothers, Daughters, Wives, from 1982, set against a backdrop of home. Small eloquently describes the dynamics of the domestic space and how women understood their roles in relation to the First and Second World Wars and the Viet Nam War. Reinforcing that “The materialities and imaginaries of home are closely connected” (Blunt and Dowling 188), Small sings of how the gold frames held the photographs that mothers kissed each night And the doorframe held the shocked and silent strangers from the fight. Small provides a rare musical insight into the disjuncture between the men who left the domestic space and those who return to it, and we sense that women may have borne much of the brunt of those awful changes. The idea of domestic bliss is also challenged, though from the returned soldier’s point of view, in Redgum’s 1983 song I Was Only Nineteen, written by group member John Schuman. It touches on the tragedy of young men thrust into war situations and the horrific after-affects for them, which cannot be shrugged off on return to home. The nurturing of home has limits but the privacy associated with the domestic sphere has often concealed the violence and mental anguish that happens away from public view. But by this time most of the songs referring to home were dominated once more by sentimental love, often borne of travel as mobility rose. Journeys help “establish the thresholds and boundaries of home” and can give rise to “an idealized, ideological and ethnocentric view of home” (Mallett 78). Where previously songsters had sung of leaving home in exile or for escape from poverty, lyrics from the 1960s onwards often suggested that work had removed people from loved ones. It could be work on a day-by-day basis, as in A Hard Day’s Night from the 1964 film of the same name, where the Beatles illuminate differences between the public sphere of work and the private sphere to which they return: When I’m home, everything seems to be alright, When I’m home feeling you holding me tight, tight, yeah and reiterated by Paul McCartney in Every Night: And every night that day is through But tonight I just want to stay in And be with you. Lyrics such as these and McCartney’s call to be taken “...home to the Mull of Kintyre,” singled him out for his home-and-hearth messages (Dempsey). But work might involve longer absences and thus more deepfelt loneliness. Simon and Garfunkel’s exemplary Homeward Bound starkly portrays a site of “away-ness”: I’m sittin’ in the railway station, got a ticket for my destination… Mundaneness, monotony and predictability contrast with the home to which the singer’s thoughts are constantly escaping. The routine is familiar but the faces are those of strangers. Home here is, again, not simply a domicile but the warmth of those we know and love. Written at a railway station, Homeward Bound echoes sentiments almost identical to those of (Leaving on a) Jet Plane, written by John Denver at an airport in 1967. Denver also co-wrote (Take Me Home) Country Roads, where, in another example of anthropomorphism as a tool of establishing a strong link, he asks to be taken home to the place I belong West Virginia, mountain momma, Take me home, Country Roads. The theme has recurred in numerous songs since, spawning examples such as Darin and Alquist’s When I Get Home, Chris Daughtry’s Home, Michael Bublé’s Home and Will Smith’s Ain’t No Place Like Home, where, in an opening reminiscent of Homeward Bound, the singer is Sitting in a hotel room A thousand miles away from nowhere Sloped over a chair as I stare… Furniture from home, on the other hand, can be used to evoke contentment and bliss, as demonstrated by George Weiss and Bob Thiele’s song The Home Fire, in which both kin and the objects of home become charged with meaning: All of the folks that I love are there I got a date with my favourite chair Of course, in regard to earlier songs especially, while the traveller associates home with love, security and tenderness, back at home the waiting one may have had feelings more of frustration and oppression. One is desperate to get back home, but for all we know the other may be desperate to get out of home or to develop a life more meaningful than that which was then offered to women. If the lot of homemakers was invisible to national economies (Waring), it seemed equally invisible to mainstream songwriters. This reflects the tradition that “Despite home being generally considered a feminine, nurturing space created by women themselves, they often lack both authority and a space of their own within this realm” (Mallett 75). Few songs have offered the perspective of the one at home awaiting the return of the traveller. One exception is the Seekers’ 1965 A World of Our Own but, written by Tom Springfield, the words trilled by Judith Durham may have been more of a projection of the traveller’s hopes and expectations than a true reflection of the full experiences of housebound women of the day. Certainly, the song reinforces connections between home and intimacy and privacy: Close the door, light the lights. We’re stayin’ home tonight, Far away from the bustle and the bright city lights. Let them all fade away, just leave us alone And we’ll live in a world of our own. This also strongly supports Gaston Bachelard’s claim that one’s house in the sense of a home is one’s “first universe, a real cosmos” (qtd. in Blunt and Dowling 12). But privacy can also be a loneliness when home is not inhabited by loved ones, as in the lyrics of Don Gibson’s 1958 Oh, Lonesome Me, where Everybody’s going out and having fun I’m a fool for staying home and having none. Similar sentiments emerge in Debbie Boone’s You Light up My Life: So many nights I’d sit by my window Waiting for someone to sing me his song. Home in these situations can be just as alienating as the “away” depicted as so unfriendly by Homeward Bound’s strangers’ faces and the “million people” who still leave Michael Bublé feeling alone. Yet there are other songs that depict “away” as a prison made of freedom, insinuating that the lack of a home and consequently of the stable love and commitment presumably found there is a sad situation indeed. This is suggested by the lilting tune, if not by the lyrics themselves, in songs such as Wandrin’ Star from the musical Paint Your Wagon and Ron Miller’s I’ve Never Been to Me, which has both a male and female version with different words, reinforcing gendered experiences. The somewhat conservative lyrics in the female version made it a perfect send-up song in the 1994 film Priscilla: Queen of the Desert. In some songs the absentee is not a traveller but has been in jail. In Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Ole Oak Tree, an ex-inmate states “I’m comin’ home. I’ve done my time.” Home here is contingent upon the availability and forgivingness of his old girl friend. Another song juxtaposing home with prison is Tom Jones’ The Green, Green Grass of Home in which the singer dreams he is returning to his home, to his parents, girlfriend and, once again, an old oak tree. However, he awakes to find he was dreaming and is about to be executed. His body will be taken home and placed under the oak tree, suggesting some resigned sense of satisfaction that he will, after all, be going home, albeit in different circumstances. Death and home are thus sometimes linked, with home a euphemism for the former, as suggested in many spirituals, with heaven or an afterlife being considered “going home”. The reverse is the case in the haunting Bring Him Home of the musical Les Misérables. With Marius going off to the barricades and the danger involved, Jean Valjean prays for the young man’s safe return and that he might live. Home is connected here with life, safety and ongoing love. In a number of songs about home and absence there is a sense of home being a place where morality is gently enforced, presumably by women who keep men on the straight and narrow, in line with one of the women’s roles of colonial Australia, researched by Anne Summers. These songs imply that when men wander from home, their morals also go astray. Wild Rover bemoans Oh, I’ve been a wild rover for many a year, and I’ve spent all my money on whiskey and beer… There is the resolve in the chorus, however, that home will have a reforming influence. Gene Pitney’s Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa poses the dangers of distance from a wife’s influence, while displaying opposition to the sentimental yearning of so many other songs: Dearest darlin’, I have to write to say that I won’t be home anymore ‘cause something happened to me while I was drivin’ home And I’m not the same anymore Class as well as gender can be a debated issue in meanings attached to home, as evident in several songs that take a more jaundiced view of home, seeing it as a place from which to escape. The Animals’ powerful We Gotta Get Outta This Place clearly suggests a life of drudgery in a home town or region. Protectively, the lyrics insist “Girl, there’s a better life for me and you” but it has to be elsewhere. This runs against the grain of other British songs addressing poverty or a working class existence as something that comes with its own blessings, all to do with an area identified as home. These traits may be loyalty, familiarity or a refusal to judge and involve identities of placement rather than of displacement in, for instance, Gerry and the Pacemakers’ Ferry Cross the Mersey: People around every corner, they seem to smile and say “We don’t care what your name is, boy. We’ll never send you away.” This bears out Blunt and Dowling’s claim that “people’s senses of themselves are related to and produced through lived and metaphorical experiences of home” (252). It also resonates with some of the region-based identity and solidarity issues explored a short time later by Paul Willis in his study of working class youth in Britain, which help to inform how a sense of home can operate to constrict consciousness, ideas and aspirations. Identity features strongly in other songs about home. Several years after Neil Young recorded his 1970 song Southern Man about racism in the south of the USA, the group Lynyrd Skynyrd, responded with Sweet Home Alabama. While the meaning of its lyrics are still debated, there is no debate about the way in which the song has been embraced, as I recently discovered first-hand in Tennessee. A banjo-and-fiddle band performing the song during a gig virtually brought down the house as the predominantly southern audience clapped, whopped and stamped its feet. The real meanings of home were found not in the lyrics but in the audience’s response. Wally Johnson and Bob Brown’s 1975 Home Among the Gum Trees is a more straightforward ode to home, with lyrics that prescribe a set of non-commodified values. It is about simplicity and the right to embrace a lifestyle that includes companionship, leisure and an enjoyment of and appreciation of nature, all threatened seriously in the three decades since the song’s writing. The second verse in which large shopping complexes – and implicitly the consumerism they encourage – are eschewed (“I’d trade it all tomorrow for a little bush retreat where the kookaburras call”), is a challenge to notions of progress and reflects social movements of the day, The Green Bans Movement, for instance, took a broader and more socially conscientious attitude towards home and community, putting forward alternative sets of values and insisting people should have a say in the social and aesthetic construction of their neighbourhoods as well as the impacts of their labour (Mundey). Ironically, the song has gone on to become the theme song for a TV show about home gardens. With a strong yet more vague notion of home, Peter Allen’s I Still Call Australia Home, was more prone to commodification and has been adopted as a promotional song for Qantas. Nominating only the desire to travel and the love of freedom as Australian values, both politically and socially innocuous within the song’s context, this catchy and uplifting song, when not being used as an advertisement, paradoxically works for a “diaspora” of Australians who are not in exile but have mostly travelled for reasons of pleasure or professional or financial gain. Another paradox arises from the song Home on the Range, dating back to the 19th century at a time when the frontier was still a strong concept in the USA and people were simultaneously leaving homes and reminiscing about home (Mechem). Although it was written in Kansas, the lyrics – again vague and adaptable – were changed by other travellers so that versions such as Colorado Home and My Arizona Home soon abounded. In 1947 Kansas made Home on the Range its state song, despite there being very few buffalo left there, thus highlighting a disjuncture between the modern Kansas and “a home where the buffalo roam” as described in the song. These themes, paradoxes and oppositional understandings of home only scratch the surface of the wide range of claims that are made on home throughout popular music. It has been shown that home is a flexible concept, referring to homelands, regions, communities and private houses. While predominantly used to evoke positive feelings, mostly with traditional views of the relationships that lie within homes, songs also raise challenges to notions of domesticity, the rights of those inhabiting the private sphere and the demarcation between the private and public spheres. Songs about home reflect contexts and challenges of their respective eras and remind us that vigorous discussion takes place about and within homes. The challenges are changing. Where many women once felt restrictively tied to the home – and no doubt many continue to do so – many women and men are now struggling to rediscover spatial boundaries, with production and consumption increasingly impinging upon relationships that have so frequently given the term home its meaning. With evidence that we are working longer hours and that home life, in whatever form, is frequently suffering (Beder, Hochschild), the discussion should continue. In the words of Sam Cooke, Bring it on home to me! References Bacheland, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1994. Beder, Sharon. Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR. London: Zed Books, 2000. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London: Routledge, 2006. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCL Press, 1997. Cooper, B. Lee. “Good Timin’: Searching for Meaning in Clock Songs.” Popular Music and Society 30.1 (Feb. 2007): 93-106. Dempsey, J.M. “McCartney at 60: A Body of Work Celebrating Home and Hearth.” Popular Music and Society 27.1 (Feb. 2004): 27-40. Eva, Phil. “Home Sweet Home? The Culture of ‘Exile’ in Mid-Victorian Popular Song.” Popular Music 16.2 (May 1997): 131-150. Hochschild, Arlie. The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. New York: Metropolitan/Holt, 1997. Mallett, Sonia. “Understanding Home: A Critical Review of the Literature.” The Sociological Review 52.1 (2004): 62-89. Mechem, Kirke, “The Story of ‘Home on the Range’.” Reprint from the Kansas Historical Quarterly (Nov. 1949). Topeka, Kansas: Kansas State Historical Society. 28 May 2007 http://www.emporia.edu/cgps/tales/nov2003.html>. Mundey, Jack. Green Bans and Beyond. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1981. Nelson-Burns, Lesley. Folk Music of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and America. 29 May 2007 http://www.contemplator.com/ireland/thoerin.html>. Summers, Anne. Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975. Walter, Bronwen. Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place and Irish Women. London: Routledge, 2001. Waring, Marilyn. Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women Are Worth. Wellington, NZ: Allen & Unwin, 1988. Willis, Paul. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia UP, 1977. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Varney, Wendy. "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>. APA Style Varney, W. (Aug. 2007) "Homeward Bound or Housebound?: Themes of Home in Popular Music," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/16-varney.php>.

A public sculpture in Seattle’s downtown depicts a cement “hobo” sleeping on a bench. A man sleeps on the sidewalk nearby; a policeman comes by and enforcing the law, tells him to move on. The sculpted hobo, part of the city’s efforts to vitalize downtown, appears innocent and romantic. Meanwhile, the living “hobo” is removed from the street as a sign of disorder in the same attempt to create vital streets. Within the vicinity of one block, the person sleeping on the street is at once romanticized and criminalized. What links the sculpted “hobo” with nostalgia and the real person with nuisance? The streets are full of repressive mechanisms. Laws, prohibitory signs, architecture, surveillance, are but a few displays of power that serve to discipline subjects in public spaces. Disciplinary communication strategies serve as mechanisms of repression to disqualify certain types of behaviors and people, while at the same time inviting others. Davis explains this in his discussion of what he calls “sadistic street environments” where architecture of the streets is built in such a way as to facilitate the geographic expulsion of the poor (Davis 232). Some public benches are designed, for example, to prevent sitting for long periods of time. This expulsion is closely tied to visions of clean streets in which consumers are protected from contact with the unclean uncertainty of poverty, a social condition that does not fit into the imagined vitality of orderly consumption. Said wrote that the other and the knowledge about otherness are created through discourse in order to alleviate a fear of the unknown and to justify the need for domination. An identity is formed through something that one “is not,” rather that through something that one “is.” Applying this idea to space, Said described an arbitrary geographical boundary that is drawn, enabling the insiders to label the outsider as the “other” and to separate “ours” from “theirs.” The production of the geographical other takes place through what Said calls poetically endowed meaning, constructed through a limited vocabulary and images that impose and reproduce themselves as reality. In this way, Said’s conceptualization of othering can be applied to the streets. For example, the term homeless encompasses an imagined geography. Like the term “hobo” (a nomad), a person sleeping on the street is commonly referred to as “homeless.” Someone who is “homeless” has no home, and therefore not within his or her own geographical boundaries. “Homeless” cannot be linked to a specific location, deriving a negative identity, through something that is lacking – a home. This creates a dualism; in that being “homeless” is in direct opposition to being with a home, creating the “insider” identity (attached to place) in relation to the “outsider” (having no place). Carrying out one’s domestic functions (like sleeping) in public is, then, an inappropriate intrusion. Having no home, however, creates an uncomfortable ambiguity because it limits the production of knowledge that can be identified geographically (i.e. address, consumption patterns and other demographic information) about the subject. Foucault explained the way that the mechanisms of control incite a discourse about the subject and eventually attempt to discipline it through encroaching regulation. In this way, Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows Theory has been enthusiastically used in US city revitalization efforts and serves as an example of such discursively produced disciplinary strategies. The authors construct categories, “signs of disorder,” and recommend an eradication of these signs (who in some cases happen to be people). For example, in the following segment of Wilson and Kelling’s thesis (italics are mine); “unattached adults,” “teenagers” and “panhandlers” are defined as disruptive subjects in need of social control. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other’s children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers (Wilson and Kelling 32). In this narrative, outsiders invade a neighborhood, creating a frightening world for the stable families. The stranger threatens to turn the home into “an inhospitable and frightening jungle,” a terrifying, yet exotic place. Arguably, the lexical choice of “jungle” itself is racialized. The jungle is frightening because it is associated with something unfamiliar, natural and untamed by colonial powers. It is an environment in need of domination. In this discourse, a good neighborhood is set as the polar opposite of a jungle. In opposition to the jungle, a stable neighborhood is hospitable and safe—but to whom? The “unwanted intruders,” who are “confidently frown[ed]” upon by the “stable neighborhood of families” take shape as inebriates, teenagers, unattached adults and panhandlers. Hospitality and safety is not extended to them. The Broken Windows theory neatly defines the subjects and gives the disciplinary powers an easy target. Power can be straightforwardly exercised over drunks, the poor and the teenagers. The focus has been displaced from any possible systemic flaws onto individual subjects who are othered and necessitate domination. This poetically endowed meaning is perpetuated by mass media that have tapped into, dramatized and reinforced an existing collective paranoia of urban crime (Garland 158). As the American public have become increasingly reliant on media systems for information the spiral of fear and a desire to be protected from the dangerous streets are cultivated by the media. Gerbner’s study of cultivation (1998) demonstrated a relationship between increased exposure to violent television programs and an increased fear of the outdoors. Violence on television cultivates a perception of a “mean world” outside of the home. The home, then, becomes a guarded frontier and fear is embodied in the outsider. In turn, a solution for protection is readily offered through increased social control and the consumption of surveillance and security systems. At the same time, the outsider remains an exotic subject. This exoticism can be used to increase the economic capital of the disciplinary forces. As Said described in Orientalism, while the “other” needs to be disciplined, it has something to be possessed. The subject is undesirable and desired at the same time. In addition to being unfamiliar and fearsome, its representational form is both eccentric and quaint. As cities compete in global economies, to attract people requires continuous work in cultural production (Urry 193). One way that this is achieved is through visual consumption, which produces an aestheticized social life appealing to the tourist gaze. One type of this tourist gaze is what Urry calls a romantic gaze, which seeks to consume the “natural” and “authentic” object (150). The image of the sculpted hobo evokes the sentimental nostalgia of the way cities and hobos “used to be,” benevolent and innocent respectively. Such romanticized representation creates a symbolic capital necessary for the production of globally competitive cities. The discourse of preserving history, for example, allows developers to “reclaim” downtown and it is this “reclamation of history” that enhances the cultural and economic value of a neighborhood. Zukin argued that cultural claim to urban space has given developers new legitimacy to take over the management of the streets. The sculpture of a sleeping hobo helps produce a sense of place through whimsical art and a reference to an imagined idyllic past where hobos were safe and the public, compassionate. In this way, the exoticized and nostalgic representation of the “hobo” has become more real than the subject that is being depicted (Said 94). The life-sized sculpture rests on a bench as art, detached from the real subject, it becomes the “authentic hobo,” the nomad of the past, the romantic and tragic clown such as the one often depicted by Charlie Chaplin’s tramp. While such imagery is used to produce an urban aesthetic, the actual people tend to be treated with much less sympathy as they are cleaned off the streets. Benches are constructed to prevent lengthy repose and laws prohibit sitting on sidewalks as an alternative. Discussions of the living poor are commonly framed in terms of signs of disorder that need to be eradicated for the benefit of urban vitality. The idea that people inhabiting the streets need to be removed as a sign of disorder is a misguided effort in attempts to create vital streets. Nor will visual aesthetic be enough to save the streets. The spectacle of crowds and sittable spaces are some of the key factors that attract people to public spaces and make those spaces come to life (Whyte). In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs famously argued that no one single element in the urban environment can generate a vital city. The perceptions of safety come from such regulating factors as the natural surveillance of eyes on the street and the public characters as described in Duneier’s ethnography of New York’s scavengers, panhandlers and street vendors. In an intricate dance, streets bring strangers together in casual contact with one another and cultivate the knowledge that difference exists and that it does not have to create a frightening world. Being in public builds trust, while impersonal city streets turn anonymous people into dangerous strangers. Jacobs wrote, “when people say that a city, or a part of it is dangerous or is a jungle what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks” (37). “A well used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted street is apt to be unsafe” (44). A place where diverse public presence is cultivated would reduce the fear of the streets and perhaps bring compassion back from the past. References Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. New York: Verso, 1990. Duneier, Mitchell. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Garland, David. The Culture of Control. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Gerbner, George. ‘Cultivation Analysis: An Overview.’ Mass Communication and Society 1.3-4 (Summer-Fall 1998): 175-177. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge. Ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. McCarthy, Albert J. ‘Zero Tolerance in a Small Town.’ The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 67.1 (Jan. 1998): 6-11. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Urry, John. Consuming Places. New York: Routledge, 1995. Whyte, William H. City: Rediscovering the Center. New York: Anchor Books, 1988. Willson James Q. and Kelling, George L. ‘Broken Windows.’ Atlantic Monthly 249.3 (March 1982): 29-38. Zukin, Sharon. Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Gendelman, Irina. "The Romantic and Dangerous Stranger." M/C Journal 9.3 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/03-gendelman.php>. APA Style Gendelman, I. (Jul. 2006) "The Romantic and Dangerous Stranger," M/C Journal, 9(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/03-gendelman.php>.

In a media saturated world, doodles have recently received the kind of attention usually reserved for coverage of racy extra marital affairs, corrupt governance, and product malfunction. Former British Prime Minister Blair’s private doodling at a World Economic Forum meeting in 2005 raised suspicions that he, according to one keen graphologist, struggled “to maintain control in a confusing world," which infers he was attempting to cohere a scattershot, fragmentary series of events (Spiegel). However, placid-faced Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, who sat nearby, actually scrawled the doodles. In this case, perhaps the scrawls mimicked the ambience in the room: Gates might have been ‘tuning’–registering the ‘white noise’ of the participants, letting his unconscious dictate doodles as a way to cope with the dissonance trekking in with the officialspeak. The doodles may have documented and registered the space between words, acting like deposits from his gestalt.Sometimes the most intriguing doodles co-exist with printed texts. This includes common vernacular graffiti that lines public and private books and magazines. Such graffiti exposes tensions in the role of readers as well as horror vacui: a fear of unused, empty space. Yet, school children fingering fresh pages and stiff book spines for the first few times often consider their book pages as sanctioned, discreet, and inviolable. The book is an object of financial and cultural investment, or imbued both with mystique and ideologies. Yet, in the e-book era, the old-fashioned, physical page is a relic of sorts, a holdover from coarse papyrus culled from wetland sage, linking us to the First Dynasty in Egypt. Some might consider the page as a vessel for typography, a mere framing device for text. The margins may reflect a perimeter of nothingness, an invisible borderland that doodles render visible by inhabiting them. Perhaps the margins are a bare landscape, like unmarred flat sand in a black and white panchromatic photo with unique tonal signature and distinct grain. Perhaps the margins are a mute locality, a space where words have evaporated, or a yet-to-be-explored environment, or an ambient field. Then comes the doodle, an icon of vernacular art.As a modern folklorist, I have studied and explored vernacular art at length, especially forms that may challenge and fissure aesthetic, cultural, and social mores, even within my own field. For instance, I contend that Grandma Prisbrey’s “Bottle Village,” featuring millions of artfully arranged pencils, bottles, and dolls culled from dumps in Southern California, is a syncretic culturescape with underlying feminist symbolism, not merely the product of trauma and hoarding (Ensminger). Recently, I flew to Oregon to deliver a paper on Mexican-American gravesite traditions. In a quest for increased multicultural tolerance, I argued that inexpensive dimestore objects left on Catholic immigrant graves do not represent a messy landscape of trinkets but unique spiritual environments with links to customs 3,000 years old. For me, doodles represent a variation on graffiti-style art with cultural antecedents stretching back throughout history, ranging from ancient scrawls on Greek ruins to contemporary park benches (with chiseled names, dates, and symbols), public bathroom latrinalia, and spray can aerosol art, including ‘bombing’ and ‘tagging’ hailed as “Spectacular Vernaculars” by Russell Potter (1995). Noted folklorist Alan Dundes mused on the meaning of latrinalia in Here I Sit – A Study of American Latrinalia (1966), which has inspired pop culture books and web pages for the preservation and discussion of such art (see for instance, www.itsallinthehead.com/gallery1.html). Older texts such as Classic American Graffiti by Allen Walker Read (1935), originally intended for “students of linguistics, folk-lore, abnormal psychology,” reveal the field’s longstanding interest in marginal, crude, and profane graffiti.Yet, to my knowledge, a monograph on doodles has yet to be published by a folklorist, perhaps because the art form is reconsidered too idiosyncratic, too private, the difference between jots and doodles too blurry for a taxonomy and not the domain of identifiable folk groups. In addition, the doodles in texts often remain hidden until single readers encounter them. No broad public interaction is likely, unless a library text circulates freely, which may not occur after doodles are discovered. In essence, the books become tainted, infected goods. Whereas latrinalia speaks openly and irreverently, doodles feature a different scale and audience.Doodles in texts may represent a kind of speaking from the ‘margin’s margins,’ revealing the reader-cum-writer’s idiosyncratic, self-meaningful, and stylised hieroglyphics from the ambient margins of one’s consciousness set forth in the ambient margins of the page. The original page itself is an ambient territory that allows the meaning of the text to take effect. When those liminal spaces (both between and betwixt, in which the rules of page format, design, style, and typography are abandoned) are altered by the presence of doodles, the formerly blank, surplus, and soft spaces of the page offer messages coterminous with the text, often allowing readers to speak, however haphazardly and unconsciously, with and against the triggering text. The bleached whiteness can become a crowded milieu in the hands of a reader re-scripting the ambient territory. If the book is borrowed, then the margins are also an intimate negotiation with shared or public space. The cryptic residue of the doodler now resides, waiting, for the city of eyes.Throughout history, both admired artists and Presidents regularly doodled. Famed Italian Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi avoided strenuous studying by doodling in his books (Van Cleave 44). Both sides of the American political spectrum have produced plentiful inky depictions as well: roughshod Democratic President Johnson drew flags and pagodas; former Hollywood fantasy fulfiller turned politician Republican President Reagan’s specialty was western themes, recalling tropes both from his actor period and his duration acting as President; meanwhile, former law student turned current President, Barack Obama, has sketched members of Congress and the Senate for charity auctions. These doodles are rich fodder for both psychologists and cross-discipline analysts that propose theories regarding the automatic writing and self-styled miniature pictures of civic leaders. Doodles allow graphologists to navigate and determine the internal, cognitive fabric of the maker. To critics, they exist as mere trifles and offer nothing more than an iota of insight; doodles are not uncanny offerings from the recesses of memory, like bite-sized Rorschach tests, but simply sloppy scrawls of the bored.Ambient music theory may shed some light. Timothy Morton argues that Brian Eno designed to make music that evoked “space whose quality had become minimally significant” and “deconstruct the opposition … between figure and ground.” In fact, doodles may yield the same attributes as well. After a doodle is inserted into texts, the typography loses its primacy. There is a merging of the horizons. The text of the author can conflate with the text of the reader in an uneasy dance of meaning: the page becomes an interface revealing a landscape of signs and symbols with multiple intelligences–one manufactured and condoned, the other vernacular and unsanctioned. A fixed end or beginning between the two no longer exists. The ambient space allows potential energies to hover at the edge, ready to illustrate a tension zone and occupy the page. The blank spaces keep inviting responses. An emergent discourse is always in waiting, always threatening to overspill the text’s intended meaning. In fact, the doodles may carry more weight than the intended text: the hierarchy between authorship and readership may topple.Resistant reading may take shape during these bouts. The doodle is an invasion and signals the geography of disruption, even when innocuous. It is a leveling tool. As doodlers place it alongside official discourse, they move away from positions of passivity, being mere consumers, and claim their own autonomy and agency. The space becomes co-determinant as boundaries are blurred. The destiny of the original text’s meaning is deferred. The habitus of the reader becomes embodied in the scrawl, and the next reader must negotiate and navigate the cultural capital of this new author. As such, the doodle constitutes an alternative authority and economy of meaning within the text.Recent studies indicate doodling, often regarded as behavior that announces a person’s boredom and withdrawal, is actually a very special tool to prevent memory loss. Jackie Andrade, an expert from the School of Psychology at the University of Plymouth, maintains that doodling actually “offsets the effects of selective memory blockade,” which yields a surprising result (quoted in “Doodling Gets”). Doodlers exhibit 29% more memory recall than those who passively listen, frozen in an unequal bond with the speaker/lecturer. Students that doodle actually retain more information and are likely more productive due to their active listening. They adeptly absorb information while students who stare patiently or daydream falter.Furthermore, in a 2006 paper, Andrew Kear argues that “doodling is a way in which students, consciously or not, stake a claim of personal agency and challenge some the values inherent in the education system” (2). As a teacher concerned with the engagement of students, he asked for three classes to submit their doodles. Letting them submit any two-dimensional graphic or text made during a class (even if made from body fluid), he soon discovered examples of “acts of resistance” in “student-initiated effort[s] to carve out a sense of place within the educational institution” (6). Not simply an ennui-prone teenager or a proto-surrealist trying to render some automatic writing from the fringes of cognition, a student doodling may represent contested space both in terms of the page itself and the ambience of the environment. The doodle indicates tension, and according to Kear, reflects students reclaiming “their own self-recognized voice” (6).In a widely referenced 1966 article (known as the “doodle” article) intended to describe the paragraph organisational styles of different cultures, Robert Kaplan used five doodles to investigate a writer’s thought patterns, which are rooted in cultural values. Now considered rather problematic by some critics after being adopted by educators for teacher-training materials, Kaplan’s doodles-as-models suggest, “English speakers develop their ideas in a linear, hierarchal fashion and ‘Orientals’ in a non-liner, spiral fashion…” (Severino 45). In turn, when used as pedagogical tools, these graphics, intentionally or not, may lead an “ethnocentric, assimilationist stance” (45). In this case, doodles likely shape the discourse of English as Second Language instruction. Doodles also represent a unique kind of “finger trace,” not unlike prints from the tips of a person’s fingers and snowflakes. Such symbol systems might be used for “a means of lightweight authentication,” according to Christopher Varenhorst of MIT (1). Doodles, he posits, can be used as “passdoodles"–a means by which a program can “quickly identify users.” They are singular expressions that are quirky and hard to duplicate; thus, doodles could serve as substitute methods of verifying people who desire devices that can safeguard their privacy without users having to rely on an ever-increasing number of passwords. Doodles may represent one such key. For many years, psychologists and psychiatrists have used doodles as therapeutic tools in their treatment of children that have endured hardship, ailments, and assault. They may indicate conditions, explain various symptoms and pathologies, and reveal patterns that otherwise may go unnoticed. For instance, doodles may “reflect a specific physical illness and point to family stress, accidents, difficult sibling relationships, and trauma” (Lowe 307). Lowe reports that children who create a doodle featuring their own caricature on the far side of the page, distant from an image of parent figures on the same page, may be experiencing detachment, while the portrayal of a father figure with “jagged teeth” may indicate a menace. What may be difficult to investigate in a doctor’s office conversation or clinical overview may, in fact, be gleaned from “the evaluation of a child’s spontaneous doodle” (307). So, if children are suffering physically or psychologically and unable to express themselves in a fully conscious and articulate way, doodles may reveal their “self-concept” and how they feel about their bodies; therefore, such creative and descriptive inroads are important diagnostic tools (307). Austrian born researcher Erich Guttman and his cohort Walter MacLay both pioneered art therapy in England during the mid-twentieth century. They posited doodles might offer some insight into the condition of schizophrenics. Guttman was intrigued by both the paintings associated with the Surrealist movement and the pioneering, much-debated work of Sigmund Freud too. Although Guttman mostly studied professionally trained artists who suffered from delusions and other conditions, he also collected a variety of art from patients, including those undergoing mescaline therapy, which alters a person’s consciousness. In a stroke of luck, they were able to convince a newspaper editor at the Evening Standard to provide them over 9,000 doodles that were provided by readers for a contest, each coded with the person’s name, age, and occupation. This invaluable data let the academicians compare the work of those hospitalised with the larger population. Their results, released in 1938, contain several key declarations and remain significant contributions to the field. Subsequently, Francis Reitman recounted them in his own book Psychotic Art: Doodles “release the censor of the conscious mind,” allowing a person to “relax, which to creative people was indispensable to production.”No appropriate descriptive terminology could be agreed upon.“Doodles are not communications,” for the meaning is only apparent when analysed individually.Doodles are “self-meaningful.” (37) Doodles, the authors also established, could be divided into this taxonomy: “stereotypy, ornamental details, movements, figures, faces and animals” or those “depicting scenes, medley, and mixtures” (37). The authors also noted that practitioners from the Jungian school of psychology often used “spontaneously produced drawings” that were quite “doodle-like in nature” in their own discussions (37). As a modern folklorist, I venture that doodles offer rich potential for our discipline as well. At this stage, I am offering a series of dictums, especially in regards to doodles that are commonly found adjacent to text in books and magazines, notebooks and journals, that may be expanded upon and investigated further. Doodles allow the reader to repopulate the text with ideogram-like expressions that are highly personalised, even inscrutable, like ambient sounds.Doodles re-purpose the text. The text no longer is unidirectional. The text becomes a point of convergence between writer and reader. The doodling allows for such a conversation, bilateral flow, or “talking back” to the text.Doodles reveal a secret language–informal codes that hearken back to the “lively, spontaneous, and charged with feeling” works of child art or naïve art that Victor Sanua discusses as being replaced in a child’s later years by art that is “stilted, formal, and conforming” (62).Doodling animates blank margins, the dead space of the text adjacent to the script, making such places ripe for spontaneous, fertile, and exploratory markings.Doodling reveals a democratic, participatory ethos. No text is too sacred, no narrative too inviolable. Anything can be reworked by the intimate graffiti of the reader. The authority of the book is not fixed; readers negotiate and form a second intelligence imprinted over the top of the original text, blurring modes of power.Doodles reveal liminal moments. Since the reader in unmonitored, he or she can express thoughts that may be considered marginal or taboo by the next reader. The original subject of the book itself does not restrict the reader. Thus, within the margins of the page, a brief suspension of boundaries and borders, authority and power, occurs. The reader hides in anonymity, free to reroute the meaning of the book. Doodling may convey a reader’s infantalism. Every book can become a picture book. This art can be the route returning a reader to the ambience of childhood.Doodling may constitute Illuminated/Painted Texts in reverse, commemorating the significance of the object in hitherto unexpected forms and revealing the reader’s codex. William Blake adorned his own poems by illuminating the skin/page that held his living verse; common readers may do so too, in naïve, nomadic, and primitive forms. Doodling demarcates tension zones, yielding social-historical insights into eras while offering psychological glimpses and displaying aesthetic values of readers-cum-writers.Doodling reveals margins as inter-zones, replete with psychogeography. While the typography is sanctioned, legitimate, normalised, and official discourse (“chartered” and “manacled,” to hijack lines from William Blake), the margins are a vernacular depository, a terminus, allowing readers a sense of agency and autonomy. The doodled page becomes a visible reminder and signifier: all pages are potentially “contested” spaces. Whereas graffiti often allows a writer to hide anonymously in the light in a city besieged by multiple conflicting texts, doodles allow a reader-cum-writer’s imprint to live in the cocoon of a formerly fossilised text, waiting for the light. Upon being opened, the book, now a chimera, truly breathes. Further exploration and analysis should likely consider several issues. What truly constitutes and shapes the role of agent and reader? Is the reader an agent all the time, or only when offering resistant readings through doodles? How is a doodler’s agency mediated by the author or the format of texts in forms that I have to map? Lastly, if, as I have argued, the ambient space allows potential energies to hover at the edge, ready to illustrate a tension zone and occupy the page, what occurs in the age of digital or e-books? Will these platforms signal an age of acquiescence to manufactured products or signal era of vernacular responses, somehow hitched to html code and PDF file infiltration? Will bytes totally replace type soon in the future, shaping unforeseen actions by doodlers? Attached Figures Figure One presents the intimate graffiti of my grandfather, found in the 1907 edition of his McGuffey’s Eclectic Spelling Book. The depiction is simple, even crude, revealing a figure found on the adjacent page to Lesson 248, “Of Characters Used in Punctuation,” which lists the perfunctory functions of commas, semicolons, periods, and so forth. This doodle may offset the routine, rote, and rather humdrum memorisation of such grammatical tools. The smiling figure may embody and signify joy on an otherwise machine-made bare page, a space where my grandfather illustrated his desires (to lighten a mood, to ease dissatisfaction?). Historians Joe Austin and Michael Willard examine how youth have been historically left without legitimate spaces in which to live out their autonomy outside of adult surveillance. For instance, graffiti often found on walls and trains may reflect a sad reality: young people are pushed to appropriate “nomadic, temporary, abandoned, illegal, or otherwise unwatched spaces within the landscape” (14). Indeed, book graffiti, like the graffiti found on surfaces throughout cities, may offer youth a sense of appropriation, authorship, agency, and autonomy: they take the page of the book, commit their writing or illustration to the page, discover some freedom, and feel temporarily independent even while they are young and disempowered. Figure Two depicts the doodles of experimental filmmaker Jim Fetterley (Animal Charm productions) during his tenure as a student at the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 1990s. His two doodles flank the text of “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, regarded by most readers as an autobiographical poem that addresses her own suicide attempts. The story of Lazarus is grounded in the Biblical story of John Lazarus of Bethany, who was resurrected from the dead. The poem also alludes to the Holocaust (“Nazi Lampshades”), the folklore surrounding cats (“And like the cat I have nine times to die”), and impending omens of death (“eye pits “ … “sour breath”). The lower doodle seems to signify a motorised tank-like machine, replete with a furnace or engine compartment on top that bellows smoke. Such ominous images, saturated with potential cartoon-like violence, may link to the World War II references in the poem. Meanwhile, the upper doodle seems to be curiously insect-like, and Fetterley’s name can be found within the illustration, just like Plath’s poem is self-reflexive and addresses her own plight. Most viewers might find the image a bit more lighthearted than the poem, a caricature of something biomorphic and surreal, but not very lethal. Again, perhaps this is a counter-message to the weight of the poem, a way to balance the mood and tone, or it may well represent the larval-like apparition that haunts the very thoughts of Plath in the poem: the impending disease of her mind, as understood by the wary reader. References Austin, Joe, and Michael Willard. “Introduction: Angels of History, Demons of Culture.” Eds. Joe Austion and Michael Willard. Generations of Youth: Youth Cultures and History in Twentieth-Century America. New York: NYU Press, 1998. “Doodling Gets Its Due: Those Tiny Artworks May Aid Memory.” World Science 2 March 2009. 15 Jan. 2009 ‹http://www.world-science.net/othernews/090302_doodle›. Dundes, Alan. “Here I Sit – A Study of American Latrinalia.” Papers of the Kroeber Anthropological Society 34: 91-105. Ensminger, David. “All Bottle Up: Reinterpreting the Culturescape of Grandma Prisbey.” Adironack Review 9.3 (Fall 2008). ‹http://adirondackreview.homestead.com/ensminger2.html›. Kear, Andrew. “Drawings in the Margins: Doodling in Class an Act of Reclamation.” Graduate Student Conference. University of Toronto, 2006. ‹http://gradstudentconference.oise.utoronto.ca/documents/185/Drawing%20in%20the%20Margins.doc›. Lowe, Sheila R. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Handwriting Analysis. New York: Alpha Books, 1999. Morton, Timothy. “‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’ as an Ambient Poem; a Study of Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth.” Romantic Circles Praxis Series (2001). 6 Jan. 2009 ‹http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html›. Potter, Russell A. Spectacular Vernaculars: Hip Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York, 1995. Read, Allen Walker. Classic American Graffiti: Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America. Waukesha, Wisconsin: Maledicta Press, 1997. Reitman, Francis. Psychotic Art. London: Routledge, 1999. Sanua, Victor. “The World of Mystery and Wonder of the Schizophrenic Patient.” International Journal of Social Psychiatry 8 (1961): 62-65. Severino, Carol. “The ‘Doodles’ in Context: Qualifying Claims about Contrastive Rhetoric.” The Writing Center Journal 14.1 (Fall 1993): 44-62. Van Cleave, Claire. Master Drawings of the Italian Rennaissance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 2007. Varenhost, Christopher. Passdoodles: A Lightweight Authentication Method. Research Science Institute. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004.

In 1996, the iconoclastic economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a manifesto, The Good Society, that elaborated his vision for what societal excellence and goodness should amount to. Though nearly 96, Galbraith was still a rabble-rouser, and he castigated the powers that be in the United States for propping up a “democracy of the fortunate” (8). To Galbraith, those who engaged in electoral politics, win or lose on any specific issue, tended to have all the social and economic advantages, while the less well off were deliberately marginalised by ‘the system.’ He lamented that “money, voice and political activism are now extensively controlled by the affluent, very affluent, and business interests" (140), making of the political sphere an "unequal contest" (8).To make democracy American style more inclusive, Galbraith called for “a coalition of the concerned and the compassionate and those now outside the political system” (143), so that all citizens had optimal prospects for enjoying “personal liberty, basic well-being, social and ethnic equality, the opportunity for a rewarding life" (4). Have inroads been made, in the nearly 15 years since first publication of The Good Society, in making come true Galbraith’s version of a good society? If not, how might such a coalition be achieved? What would it look like? Who among Americans would constitute the concerned, compassionate outsiders that would make such a coalition authentically ‘Galbraithian’? A Coalition on the MoveWhat about MoveOn.org? A progressive public advocacy group founded in 1998, MoveOn.org, according to Lelia Green in The Internet, is “an important indicator of the potential for bringing together communities of like-minded individuals” (139). Green singles out MoveOn.org as particularly pivotal in galvanising support for Barack Obama’s presidency (139). The New York Times describes MoveOn.org as “a bottom-up organization that has inserted itself into the political process in ways large and small” (Janofsky and Lee). Indeed, it represents “the next evolutionary change in American politics, a move away from one-way tools of influence like television commercials and talk radio to interactive dialogue, offering everyday people a voice in a process that once seemed beyond their reach.” MoveOn.org has expertly utilised the Internet to mobilise its members “to sign online petitions, organize street demonstrations and donate money to run political advertisements”. Green considers MoveOn.org one of today’s standout “coalitions of interests and political agendas”, “extraordinary” in its ability to “use websites and email lists to build communities around a shared passion” (139). In 2008, its 4.2 million members were at the vortex of a “dynamic that tipped the balance in favour of a more radical agenda with the election of President Barack Obama in 2008” (139). Galbraith, for one, would certainly agree with MoveOn.org’s politics, and likely would claim that their radical agenda is a compassionate and encompassing one that effectively addresses the concerns of everyday citizens. Yet the fact is that millions of disaffected Americans are not liberals, and so are not in sync with MoveOn.org’s interests and agendas, such as its firm insistence that a ‘public option’ is the best way to bring about meaningful health care reform, and its demand that all U.S. troops be immediately withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. Tea Anyone?Another sort of coalition filled the void created by MoveOn.org. Enter the Tea Party. A movement that has been every bit as effective in its way in inspiring once-jaded ordinary citizens to coalesce around a set of interests and agendas – albeit, at least in principal if not necessarily in actual practice, of a professed libertarian strain – the Tea Party got underway in the waning days of the second presidential term of George W. Bush. It started out as a one-issue protest group voicing umbrage over the proposed economic stimulus plan, which it considered an unconstitutional subsidy. After Barack Obama became president, the Tea Party burgeoned into a much more influential movement that now professes to be a grassroots citizens’ watchdog for all unconstitutional activities (or what it deems to be such) on the part of the federal government. A New York Times article notes that many of its members are victims of the economic downturn; they “had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government” (Zernike). Its members are akin to the millions of middle class Americans who lost their livelihoods during the Great Depression of the 1930s, an unparalleled economic downturn that eventually “mobilized many middle-class people who had fallen on hard times” to join forces in order to have an effective political voice. But those during the Great Depression who were aroused to political consciousness “tended to push for more government involvement”; in contrast, the Tea Party is a coalition that “vehemently wants less”. While Galbraith depicted the Republican Party of his time as “avowedly on the side of the fortunate” (141), the majority of today’s Tea Party members align themselves with the Republican Party, yet they are by no means principally made up of "the fortunate." Erick Erickson, a prominent Tea Party spokesman and a television commentator for the CNN news channel, blogs on Redstate.com that the Tea Party “has gotten a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena...” Erickson further contends that the Tea Party has “brought together a lot of likeminded citizens who thought they were alone in the world. They realized that not only were they not alone, but there were millions of others just as concerned.” Galbraithian Coalitions?Do MoveOn.org and Tea Party constitute Galbraithian-type coalitions, each in its own right? Both have inspired millions of once-disenchanted common citizens to come together around common political concerns and become a force to be reckoned with in electoral politics. As such, each has served as an effective counterweight against the money, voice and political activism of the very affluent. While Galbraith would probably have as much disdain for the Tea Party as he would have praise for MoveOn.org, the fact is that both groups have seen to it that an increasing number of regular Americans whose concerns had been ignored in the political arena now have to be reckoned with. But this is by no means where their commonality ends. Above and beyond the fact that both are comprised of millions who had been political outsiders, each has a decided anti-establishmentarian strain, along with a professed sense of alienation from and disdain for "politics as usual" and an impassioned belief in the right to self-government (though they differ on what this right amounts to). Moreover, both consider themselves grassroots-driven, and harbor anathema for professional lobbying organisations, which both regularly criticize for their undue political influence. Even though the two groups usually differ to the nth degree when it comes to those solutions they believe would effectively remedy the most pressing public problems in the U.S., they nonetheless share the conviction that one must initially focus one’s efforts at the local level if one is eventually to have the greatest impact on political decision-making on a national scale. The two groups came of age during the Internet revolution – indeed, it would have been impossible for their like-minded members to have found one another and coalesced so quickly and in such great numbers without the Internet – and they utilise the Internet as the principal tool for spurring concerted activism at the local level among their members. One can consider their shared approach Deweyan, in that Dewey maintained that genuinely democratic community, “in its deepest and richest sense, must always remain a matter of face-to-face intercourse” (367). Yet the two groups’ legion differences prevent them from engaging in meaningful face-to-face exchanges with one another. While the prospect of cultivating linkages between Tea Party and MoveOn.org are remote for the foreseeable future, it might nonetheless be seen as a promising development that some rank and file Tea Party acolytes do at least recognise that they must not identify solely with the Republican Party, lest they discourage potential recruits from rallying around their cause. For instance, one warns fellow members on the Redstate.com blog to be wary of casting their lot with Republicans, “because it would drive away the Democrats and Independents”. He actually uses Galbraith’s coinage in describing the Tea Party: “This movement is a coalition of the concerned, not a Republican outreach program.” Indeed, contrary to popular belief, the Tea Party is not, as a whole, on the conservative fringe (though it does often seem that those members who are given the most attention by the mainstream media are the fringe element, particularly the breakaway Tea Party Express). A Gallup Poll reveals that fully 17 percent of all Americans of voting age identify themselves as affiliated with the Tea Party; and while a majority have Republican leanings, fully 45 percent of all Tea Party members claimed they were either Democrats (17 percent) or independents (28 percent). To Tea Party leader Erick Erickson, the paramount challenge today for the Tea Party is for it to transform itself into a greater umbrella coalition, since the “issues and advocacy within the tea party movement are issues that resonate with the majority of Americans.” After all, he asserts, the Tea Party’s is “a very American cause — the first amendment right to protest, petition, and speak up.” While an expansion of its coalition does not in any way make it incumbent for the Tea Party to find common cause with MoveOn.org, can the claim nonetheless be legitimately made – utilising Erickson’s own criteria – that MoveOn.org’s is equally a very American cause? Christopher Hayes points out in an essay in The Nation that most of MoveOn.org’s members, as with the Tea Party’s, are “not inclined to protest,” but their “rising unease with the direction of the country has led to a new political consciousness.” Hayes could just as well be speaking of the Tea Party when he describes MoveOn.org’s members as made up mostly of “citizens angered, upset and disappointed with their government but [who were] unsure how to channel those sentiments.” For such citizens, MoveOn.org “provides simple, discrete actions: sign this petition, donate money to run this ad, show up at this vigil.” This is convincing evidence that MoveOn.org’s is also “a very American cause”, by the very benchmarks set forth by Erickson. A ‘Higher Coalition’?But is this in any way akin to a demonstrable sign that these unlikeliest of political bedfellows might be inspired at some future point to see themselves as part of a ‘higher coalition’ — one of the unlikeminded, that celebrates difference? Might a critical mass in both movements ever deem it a boon to coalesce around the cause of democratic pluralism? As things stand, neither side embraces such pluralism. Rather, one other attribute they share pervasively is dogmatism: both are convinced that their respective political sensibilities are beyond reproach. As a consequence, over the shorter term, neither group is likely to shed its brand of dogmatism and supplant it with an openness or receptivity to new, much less opposing, points of view. So, for instance, even as the Tea Party seeks to expand its fold, it is no more inclined to change its ideology-based stances on the issues than is MoveOn.org. For the time being, each group not only is entrenched in its own collective political mindset, but each coalesces around a demonstrated antipathy towards alternative approaches to public problem-solving. Is there any remotely plausible scenario by which the members of MoveOn.org and Tea Party might eventually come not just to tolerate their differences but to extol them? One other key Galbraithian element that those comprising an ideal coalition in a democracy must possess is compassion. For members of any coalition to cultivate compassion, they must first, or concomitantly, inculcate empathy, which is typically considered either a precursor to compassion or, along with understanding, a vital component of it. Henning Melber, Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, and Reinhard Kössler maintain that “(w)hile empathy does not automatically translate into solidarity (nor into ethical behaviour), it can serve as a compass” for doing so, and can lead to a Galbraithian “coalition of the concerned and aware”(37). Such empathy is “a prerequisite for the ability to listen to one another and for permissiveness and openness towards ‘otherness’, and further, can only be born out of a sense of shared suffering” (37). To the authors, it isn’t just that “(s)uffering in its variety of forms requires empathy and solidarity by all,” but that it necessarily “transcends a politically correct ideology” (37). Millions in both the Tea Party and MoveOn.org long suffered from being a mere afterthought to the political establishment, both of them impacted by policies that they are convinced exacerbated rather than ameliorated their woes. But they have shown few if any indications of a willingness to transcend a politically correct ideology. For this to come about, it would, as Melber and Kössler maintain, require “hard, sustained, and imaginative work” (33). How might this come to pass? Greg Anderson, in The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C., points to ancient Athens as a paradigmatic example of a society that undertook the hard imaginative work needed to develop the types of mediated connections that over time created a sense of shared belonging to a democratic community. “The process of transformation” in Attica, he argues, is “best understood as a bold exercise in social engineering, an experiment designed to bring together the diverse and far-flung inhabitants of an entire region and forge them into a single, self-governing political community of like-minded individuals” (5). While those males of sufficient socioeconomic distinction who were privileged enough to be citizens in the West’s first experiment in democracy were indeed like-minded, prising a self-governing political community, they were not single-minded; rather, those in the twelve dispersed tribes throughout Attica who coalesced to form a self-governing community apparently thrived on the free exchange and consideration of a wide range of ideas. They held that greater insights emerged only when a variety of views were subjected to scrutiny in the public sphere. Paul Woodruff notes in First Democracy that each Athenian was “given a share of the ability to be citizens, and that ability is understood both as a pair of virtues and as a kind of citizen wisdom.” Governing in this way was based on the shared view that “it is a natural part of being human to know enough to help govern your community” (149). Neither Tea Party nor MoveOn.org followers at present have this shared view on any semblance of a broad scale; rather, each betrays the sensibility that each ‘knows better’. As a consequence, any efforts at expanding their respective folds clearly do not include making overtures (or even extending olive branches) to one another. Even so, as impossibly optimistic as it might seem under current circumstances, I believe eventually they might come to see themselves as part of a greater or higher coalition – one serving the overriding cause of democracy itself – over the much longer term. But for this to become a reality, each group will first have to suffer some more. One other commonality they demonstrate is the power of grassroots activism – and the decided limitations. My hunch is that just as MoveOn.org’s progressives came to feel betrayed when Obama abandoned the liberal agenda of his presidential campaign to engage in political compromise and accommodation, Tea Party activists will come to find that their own expectations for political change will be equally stymied. In the 2010 elections, the Tea Party was a kingmaker in electoral politics, giving Republicans a decisive majority in Congress in the 2010 elections. But I suspect that those candidates the Tea Party supported will eventually resort to the practice of “politics as usual,” largely departing from the Tea Party agenda, in order to accomplish anything in Washington or become irrelevant in the existing system – a system long dominated by two political parties interested above and beyond all else in perpetuating their shared stranglehold on political power, and each equally beholden to corporate America for the contributions to their coffers that enable them to sustain this. If this scenario plays out, then at least some Tea Party activists might plausibly arrive at the unsettling conclusion that their suffering in the political arena is remarkably similar to that experienced by MoveOn.org’s cadre of concerned citizens who catapulted Obama into the office in the land, only to have most of their principal concerns neglected or dismissed, lost in the seamy world of back-room political deal-making. There is another possible scenario: What if either MoveOn.org or Tea Party becomes such an overwhelming force in politics that the other is attenuated, its members relegated once again to the fringe? If this occurred, the public sphere in the United States would be missing a vital dimension that has been part of its makeup since its founding days. For as Joseph Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, points out: the achievement of the revolutionary generation was a collective enterprise that succeeded because of the diversity of personalities and ideologies present in the mix. Their interactions and juxtapositions generated a dynamic form of balance and equilibrium, not because any of them was perfect or infallible, but because their mutual imperfections and fallibilities, as well as their eccentricities and excesses, checked each other… . (17) At the United States’s beginnings, the ties that bound those who revolted against Britain were forged despite their unbridgeable chasms of ideology; their “differing postures toward the twin goals of freedom and equality” were “not resolved so much as built into the fabric of our national identity” (16). Even or especially as irreconcilable differences prompted early Americans to continue waging a battle of ideas in the political trenches, Thomas Jefferson, for one, believed they were all (or nearly all) “constitutionally and conscientiously democrats” (185). Extrapolating from this, one can posit that MoveOn.org and Tea Party, regardless of whether they choose to acknowledge it, are in tandem a modern-day manifestation of the original American coalition. If they could be inspired to see that each is an important player in furthering the democratic experiment as singularly practiced in the U.S., they just might come to care more for one another. Out of such caring, they might realise that neither has a monopoly on political wisdom, and as a result coalesce around the cause of promoting a less hostile body politic. AcknowledgementsThe author is grateful to the two blind peer reviewers for their most helpful suggestions. ReferencesAnderson, Greg. The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Dewey, John. In J. Boydston (Ed.) John Dewey, Volume 2: 1925-1927. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University, 1984. Ellis, Joseph. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York, NY: Vintage. 2002. Erickson, Erick. “Tea Party Movement 2.0: Moving beyond Protesting to Fighting in Primaries, Ballot Boxes, and Becoming More Effective Activists.” 14 April 2010. 28 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/04/14/tea-party-movement-20/>.Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Good Society: The Humane Agenda. New York: Mariner Books, 1997. Green, Lelia. The Internet: An Introduction to New Media. Oxford: Berg, 2010.Hayes, Christopher. “MoveOn.org Is Not as Radical as Conservatives Think." The Nation. 16 July 2008. 28 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.thenation.com/article/moveonorg-not-radical-conservatives-think>. Janofsky, Michael, Jennifer B. Lee. “Net Group Tries to Click Democrats to Power”. New York Times, 18 Nov 2003. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/us/net-group-tries-to-click- democrats-to-power.html?scp=1&sq=%22bottom-up%20organization%22&st=cse>. Jefferson, Thomas. In M. Peterson, ed. The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Kossler, Reinhart, and Hening Melber. “International Civil Society and the Challenge for Global Solidarity.” Development Dialogue 49 (Oct. 2007): 29-39. Malcolm, Andrew. “Myth-Busting Polls: Tea Party Members Are Average Americans, 41% Are Democrats, Independents.” Los Angeles Times, 5 April 2010 ‹http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/04/tea-party-obama.html>.MoveOn.org. n.d. 27 Sep. 2010 ‹http://moveon.org>. Tea Party. n.d. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://teaparty.freedomworks.org>.Tea Party Express. n.d. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.teapartyexpress.org>. Woodruff, Paul. First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Zernike, Kate. “With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party.” New York Times, 27 Mar. 2010. 29 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/politics/28teaparty.html?scp=1&sq=%22watched%20their%20homes%20plummet%20in%20value%22&st=cse>.

Introduction Food has always been an essential component of daily life. Today, thinking about food is a much more complicated pursuit than planning the next meal, with food studies scholars devoting their efforts to researching “anything pertaining to food and eating, from how food is grown to when and how it is eaten, to who eats it and with whom, and the nutritional quality” (Duran and MacDonald 234). This is in addition to the work undertaken by an increasingly wide variety of popular culture researchers who explore all aspects of food (Risson and Brien 3): including food advertising, food packaging, food on television, and food in popular fiction. In creating stories, from those works that quickly disappear from bookstore shelves to those that become entrenched in the literary canon, writers use food to communicate the everyday and to explore a vast range of ideas from cultural background to social standing, and also use food to provide perspectives “into the cultural and historical uniqueness of a given social group” (Piatti-Farnell 80). For example in Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens, the central character challenges the class system when: “Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table, and advancing basin and spoon in hand, to the master, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity–‘Please, sir, I want some more’” (11). Scarlett O’Hara in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936) makes a similar point, a little more dramatically, when she declares: “As God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again” (419). Food can also take us into the depths of another culture: places that many of us will only ever read about. Food is also used to provide insight into a character’s state of mind. In Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1983) an item as simple as boiled bread tells a reader so much more about Rachel Samstat than her preferred bakery items: “So we got married and I got pregnant and I gave up my New York apartment and moved to Washington. Talk about mistakes [...] there I was, trying to hold up my end in a city where you can’t even buy a decent bagel” (34). There are three ways in which writers can deal with food within their work. Firstly, food can be totally ignored. This approach is sometimes taken despite food being such a standard feature of storytelling that its absence, be it a lonely meal at home, elegant canapés at an impressively catered cocktail party, or a cheap sandwich collected from a local café, is an obvious omission. Food can also add realism to a story, with many authors putting as much effort into conjuring the smell, taste, and texture of food as they do into providing a backstory and a purpose for their characters. In recent years, a third way has emerged with some writers placing such importance upon food in fiction that the line that divides the cookbook and the novel has become distorted. This article looks at cookbooks and cookery in popular fiction with a particular focus on crime novels. Recipes: Ingredients and Preparation Food in fiction has been employed, with great success, to help characters cope with grief; giving them the reassurance that only comes through the familiarity of the kitchen and the concentration required to fulfil routine tasks: to chop and dice, to mix, to sift and roll, to bake, broil, grill, steam, and fry. Such grief can come from the breakdown of a relationship as seen in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn (1983). An autobiography under the guise of fiction, this novel is the first-person story of a cookbook author, a description that irritates the narrator as she feels her works “aren’t merely cookbooks” (95). She is, however, grateful she was not described as “a distraught, rejected, pregnant cookbook author whose husband was in love with a giantess” (95). As the collapse of the marriage is described, her favourite recipes are shared: Bacon Hash; Four Minute Eggs; Toasted Almonds; Lima Beans with Pears; Linguine Alla Cecca; Pot Roast; three types of Potatoes; Sorrel Soup; desserts including Bread Pudding, Cheesecake, Key Lime Pie and Peach Pie; and a Vinaigrette, all in an effort to reassert her personal skills and thus personal value. Grief can also result from loss of hope and the realisation that a life long dreamed of will never be realised. Like Water for Chocolate (1989), by Laura Esquivel, is the magical realist tale of Tita De La Garza who, as the youngest daughter, is forbidden to marry as she must take care of her mother, a woman who: “Unquestionably, when it came to dividing, dismantling, dismembering, desolating, detaching, dispossessing, destroying or dominating […] was a pro” (87). Tita’s life lurches from one painful, unjust episode to the next; the only emotional stability she has comes from the kitchen, and from her cooking of a series of dishes: Christmas Rolls; Chabela Wedding Cake; Quail in Rose Petal Sauce; Turkey Mole; Northern-style Chorizo; Oxtail Soup; Champandongo; Chocolate and Three Kings’s Day Bread; Cream Fritters; and Beans with Chilli Tezcucana-style. This is a series of culinary-based activities that attempts to superimpose normalcy on a life that is far from the everyday. Grief is most commonly associated with death. Undertaking the selection, preparation and presentation of meals in novels dealing with bereavement is both a functional and symbolic act: life must go on for those left behind but it must go on in a very different way. Thus, novels that use food to deal with loss are particularly important because they can “make non-cooks believe they can cook, and for frequent cooks, affirm what they already know: that cooking heals” (Baltazar online). In Angelina’s Bachelors (2011) by Brian O’Reilly, Angelina D’Angelo believes “cooking was not just about food. It was about character” (2). By the end of the first chapter the young woman’s husband is dead and she is in the kitchen looking for solace, and survival, in cookery. In The Kitchen Daughter (2011) by Jael McHenry, Ginny Selvaggio is struggling to cope with the death of her parents and the friends and relations who crowd her home after the funeral. Like Angelina, Ginny retreats to the kitchen. There are, of course, exceptions. In Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), cooking celebrates, comforts, and seduces (Calta). This story of three sisters from South Carolina is told through diary entries, narrative, letters, poetry, songs, and spells. Recipes are also found throughout the text: Turkey; Marmalade; Rice; Spinach; Crabmeat; Fish; Sweetbread; Duck; Lamb; and, Asparagus. Anthony Capella’s The Food of Love (2004), a modern retelling of the classic tale of Cyrano de Bergerac, is about the beautiful Laura, a waiter masquerading as a top chef Tommaso, and the talented Bruno who, “thick-set, heavy, and slightly awkward” (21), covers for Tommaso’s incompetency in the kitchen as he, too, falls for Laura. The novel contains recipes and contains considerable information about food: Take fusilli […] People say this pasta was designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The spiral fins carry the biggest amount of sauce relative to the surface area, you see? But it only works with a thick, heavy sauce that can cling to the grooves. Conchiglie, on the other hand, is like a shell, so it holds a thin, liquid sauce inside it perfectly (17). Recipes: Dishing Up Death Crime fiction is a genre with a long history of focusing on food; from the theft of food in the novels of the nineteenth century to the utilisation of many different types of food such as chocolate, marmalade, and sweet omelettes to administer poison (Berkeley, Christie, Sayers), the latter vehicle for arsenic receiving much attention in Harriet Vane’s trial in Dorothy L. Sayers’s Strong Poison (1930). The Judge, in summing up the case, states to the members of the jury: “Four eggs were brought to the table in their shells, and Mr Urquhart broke them one by one into a bowl, adding sugar from a sifter [...he then] cooked the omelette in a chafing dish, filled it with hot jam” (14). Prior to what Timothy Taylor has described as the “pre-foodie era” the crime fiction genre was “littered with corpses whose last breaths smelled oddly sweet, or bitter, or of almonds” (online). Of course not all murders are committed in such a subtle fashion. In Roald Dahl’s Lamb to the Slaughter (1953), Mary Maloney murders her policeman husband, clubbing him over the head with a frozen leg of lamb. The meat is roasting nicely when her husband’s colleagues arrive to investigate his death, the lamb is offered and consumed: the murder weapon now beyond the recovery of investigators. Recent years have also seen more and more crime fiction writers present a central protagonist working within the food industry, drawing connections between the skills required for food preparation and those needed to catch a murderer. Working with cooks or crooks, or both, requires planning and people skills in addition to creative thinking, dedication, reliability, stamina, and a willingness to take risks. Kent Carroll insists that “food and mysteries just go together” (Carroll in Calta), with crime fiction website Stop, You’re Killing Me! listing, at the time of writing, over 85 culinary-based crime fiction series, there is certainly sufficient evidence to support his claim. Of the numerous works available that focus on food there are many series that go beyond featuring food and beverages, to present recipes as well as the solving of crimes. These include: the Candy Holliday Murder Mysteries by B. B. Haywood; the Coffeehouse Mysteries by Cleo Coyle; the Hannah Swensen Mysteries by Joanne Fluke; the Hemlock Falls Mysteries by Claudia Bishop; the Memphis BBQ Mysteries by Riley Adams; the Piece of Cake Mysteries by Jacklyn Brady; the Tea Shop Mysteries by Laura Childs; and, the White House Chef Mysteries by Julie Hyzy. The vast majority of offerings within this female dominated sub-genre that has been labelled “Crime and Dine” (Collins online) are American, both in origin and setting. A significant contribution to this increasingly popular formula is, however, from an Australian author Kerry Greenwood. Food features within her famed Phryne Fisher Series with recipes included in A Question of Death (2007). Recipes also form part of Greenwood’s food-themed collection of short crime stories Recipes for Crime (1995), written with Jenny Pausacker. These nine stories, each one imitating the style of one of crime fiction’s greatest contributors (from Agatha Christie to Raymond Chandler), allow readers to simultaneously access mysteries and recipes. 2004 saw the first publication of Earthly Delights and the introduction of her character, Corinna Chapman. This series follows the adventures of a woman who gave up a career as an accountant to open her own bakery in Melbourne. Corinna also investigates the occasional murder. Recipes can be found at the end of each of these books with the Corinna Chapman Recipe Book (nd), filled with instructions for baking bread, muffins and tea cakes in addition to recipes for main courses such as risotto, goulash, and “Chicken with Pineapple 1971 Style”, available from the publisher’s website. Recipes: Integration and Segregation In Heartburn (1983), Rachel acknowledges that presenting a work of fiction and a collection of recipes within a single volume can present challenges, observing: “I see that I haven’t managed to work in any recipes for a while. It’s hard to work in recipes when you’re moving the plot forward” (99). How Rachel tells her story is, however, a reflection of how she undertakes her work, with her own cookbooks being, she admits, more narration than instruction: “The cookbooks I write do well. They’re very personal and chatty–they’re cookbooks in an almost incidental way. I write chapters about friends or relatives or trips or experiences, and work in the recipes peripherally” (17). Some authors integrate detailed recipes into their narratives through description and dialogue. An excellent example of this approach can be found in the Coffeehouse Mystery Series by Cleo Coyle, in the novel On What Grounds (2003). When the central protagonist is being questioned by police, Clare Cosi’s answers are interrupted by a flashback scene and instructions on how to make Greek coffee: Three ounces of water and one very heaped teaspoon of dark roast coffee per serving. (I used half Italian roast, and half Maracaibo––a lovely Venezuelan coffee, named after the country’s major port; rich in flavour, with delicate wine overtones.) / Water and finely ground beans both go into the ibrik together. The water is then brought to a boil over medium heat (37). This provides insight into Clare’s character; that, when under pressure, she focuses her mind on what she firmly believes to be true – not the information that she is doubtful of or a situation that she is struggling to understand. Yet breaking up the action within a novel in this way–particularly within crime fiction, a genre that is predominantly dependant upon generating tension and building the pacing of the plotting to the climax–is an unusual but ultimately successful style of writing. Inquiry and instruction are comfortable bedfellows; as the central protagonists within these works discover whodunit, the readers discover who committed murder as well as a little bit more about one of the world’s most popular beverages, thus highlighting how cookbooks and novels both serve to entertain and to educate. Many authors will save their recipes, serving them up at the end of a story. This can be seen in Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef Mystery novels, the cover of each volume in the series boasts that it “includes Recipes for a Complete Presidential Menu!” These menus, with detailed ingredients lists, instructions for cooking and options for serving, are segregated from the stories and appear at the end of each work. Yet other writers will deploy a hybrid approach such as the one seen in Like Water for Chocolate (1989), where the ingredients are listed at the commencement of each chapter and the preparation for the recipes form part of the narrative. This method of integration is also deployed in The Kitchen Daughter (2011), which sees most of the chapters introduced with a recipe card, those chapters then going on to deal with action in the kitchen. Using recipes as chapter breaks is a structure that has, very recently, been adopted by Australian celebrity chef, food writer, and, now fiction author, Ed Halmagyi, in his new work, which is both cookbook and novel, The Food Clock: A Year of Cooking Seasonally (2012). As people exchange recipes in reality, so too do fictional characters. The Recipe Club (2009), by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel, is the story of two friends, Lilly Stone and Valerie Rudman, which is structured as an epistolary novel. As they exchange feelings, ideas and news in their correspondence, they also exchange recipes: over eighty of them throughout the novel in e-mails and letters. In The Food of Love (2004), written messages between two of the main characters are also used to share recipes. In addition, readers are able to post their own recipes, inspired by this book and other works by Anthony Capella, on the author’s website. From Page to Plate Some readers are contributing to the burgeoning food tourism market by seeking out the meals from the pages of their favourite novels in bars, cafés, and restaurants around the world, expanding the idea of “map as menu” (Spang 79). In Shannon McKenna Schmidt’s and Joni Rendon’s guide to literary tourism, Novel Destinations (2009), there is an entire section, “Eat Your Words: Literary Places to Sip and Sup”, dedicated to beverages and food. The listings include details for John’s Grill, in San Francisco, which still has on the menu Sam Spade’s Lamb Chops, served with baked potato and sliced tomatoes: a meal enjoyed by author Dashiell Hammett and subsequently consumed by his well-known protagonist in The Maltese Falcon (193), and the Café de la Paix, in Paris, frequented by Ian Fleming’s James Bond because “the food was good enough and it amused him to watch the people” (197). Those wanting to follow in the footsteps of writers can go to Harry’s Bar, in Venice, where the likes of Marcel Proust, Sinclair Lewis, Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, and Truman Capote have all enjoyed a drink (195) or The Eagle and Child, in Oxford, which hosted the regular meetings of the Inklings––a group which included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien––in the wood-panelled Rabbit Room (203). A number of eateries have developed their own literary themes such as the Peacocks Tearooms, in Cambridgeshire, which blends their own teas. Readers who are also tea drinkers can indulge in the Sherlock Holmes (Earl Grey with Lapsang Souchong) and the Doctor Watson (Keemun and Darjeeling with Lapsang Souchong). Alternatively, readers may prefer to side with the criminal mind and indulge in the Moriarty (Black Chai with Star Anise, Pepper, Cinnamon, and Fennel) (Peacocks). The Moat Bar and Café, in Melbourne, situated in the basement of the State Library of Victoria, caters “to the whimsy and fantasy of the fiction housed above” and even runs a book exchange program (The Moat). For those readers who are unable, or unwilling, to travel the globe in search of such savoury and sweet treats there is a wide variety of locally-based literary lunches and other meals, that bring together popular authors and wonderful food, routinely organised by book sellers, literature societies, and publishing houses. There are also many cookbooks now easily obtainable that make it possible to re-create fictional food at home. One of the many examples available is The Book Lover’s Cookbook (2003) by Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Kay Jensen, a work containing over three hundred pages of: Breakfasts; Main & Side Dishes; Soups; Salads; Appetizers, Breads & Other Finger Foods; Desserts; and Cookies & Other Sweets based on the pages of children’s books, literary classics, popular fiction, plays, poetry, and proverbs. If crime fiction is your preferred genre then you can turn to Jean Evans’s The Crime Lover’s Cookbook (2007), which features short stories in between the pages of recipes. There is also Estérelle Payany’s Recipe for Murder (2010) a beautifully illustrated volume that presents detailed instructions for Pigs in a Blanket based on the Big Bad Wolf’s appearance in The Three Little Pigs (44–7), and Roast Beef with Truffled Mashed Potatoes, which acknowledges Patrick Bateman’s fondness for fine dining in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho (124–7). Conclusion Cookbooks and many popular fiction novels are reflections of each other in terms of creativity, function, and structure. In some instances the two forms are so closely entwined that a single volume will concurrently share a narrative while providing information about, and instruction, on cookery. Indeed, cooking in books is becoming so popular that the line that traditionally separated cookbooks from other types of books, such as romance or crime novels, is becoming increasingly distorted. The separation between food and fiction is further blurred by food tourism and how people strive to experience some of the foods found within fictional works at bars, cafés, and restaurants around the world or, create such experiences in their own homes using fiction-themed recipe books. Food has always been acknowledged as essential for life; books have long been acknowledged as food for thought and food for the soul. Thus food in both the real world and in the imagined world serves to nourish and sustain us in these ways. References Adams, Riley. Delicious and Suspicious. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Finger Lickin’ Dead. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Hickory Smoked Homicide. New York: Berkley, 2011. Baltazar, Lori. “A Novel About Food, Recipes Included [Book review].” Dessert Comes First. 28 Feb. 2012. 20 Aug. 2012 ‹http://dessertcomesfirst.com/archives/8644›. Berkeley, Anthony. The Poisoned Chocolates Case. London: Collins, 1929. Bishop, Claudia. Toast Mortem. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Dread on Arrival. New York: Berkley, 2012. Brady, Jacklyn. A Sheetcake Named Desire. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Cake on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: Berkley, 2012. Calta, Marialisa. “The Art of the Novel as Cookbook.” The New York Times. 17 Feb. 1993. 23 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/style/the-art-of-the-novel-as-cookbook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm›. Capella, Anthony. The Food of Love. London: Time Warner, 2004/2005. Carroll, Kent in Calta, Marialisa. “The Art of the Novel as Cookbook.” The New York Times. 17 Feb. 1993. 23 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/17/style/the-art-of-the-novel-as-cookbook.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm›. Childs, Laura. Death by Darjeeling. New York: Berkley, 2001. –– Shades of Earl Grey. New York: Berkley, 2003. –– Blood Orange Brewing. New York: Berkley, 2006/2007. –– The Teaberry Strangler. New York: Berkley, 2010/2011. Collins, Glenn. “Your Favourite Fictional Crime Moments Involving Food.” The New York Times Diner’s Journal: Notes on Eating, Drinking and Cooking. 16 Jul. 2012. 17 Jul. 2012 ‹http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/your-favorite-fictional-crime-moments-involving-food›. Coyle, Cleo. On What Grounds. New York: Berkley, 2003. –– Murder Most Frothy. New York: Berkley, 2006. –– Holiday Grind. New York: Berkley, 2009/2010. –– Roast Mortem. New York: Berkley, 2010/2011. Christie, Agatha. A Pocket Full of Rye. London: Collins, 1953. Dahl, Roald. Lamb to the Slaughter: A Roald Dahl Short Story. New York: Penguin, 1953/2012. eBook. Dickens, Charles. Oliver Twist, or, the Parish Boy’s Progress. In Collection of Ancient and Modern British Authors, Vol. CCXXIX. Paris: Baudry’s European Library, 1838/1839. Duran, Nancy, and Karen MacDonald. “Information Sources for Food Studies Research.” Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research 2.9 (2006): 233–43. Ephron, Nora. Heartburn. New York: Vintage, 1983/1996. Esquivel, Laura. Trans. Christensen, Carol, and Thomas Christensen. Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Instalments with Recipes, romances and home remedies. London: Black Swan, 1989/1993. Evans, Jeanne M. The Crime Lovers’s Cookbook. City: Happy Trails, 2007. Fluke, Joanne. Fudge Cupcake Murder. New York: Kensington, 2004. –– Key Lime Pie Murder. New York: Kensington, 2007. –– Cream Puff Murder. New York: Kensington, 2009. –– Apple Turnover Murder. New York: Kensington, 2010. Greenwood, Kerry, and Jenny Pausacker. Recipes for Crime. Carlton: McPhee Gribble, 1995. Greenwood, Kerry. The Corinna Chapman Recipe Book: Mouth-Watering Morsels to Make Your Man Melt, Recipes from Corinna Chapman, Baker and Reluctant Investigator. nd. 25 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.allenandunwin.com/_uploads/documents/minisites/Corinna_recipebook.pdf›. –– A Question of Death: An Illustrated Phryne Fisher Treasury. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2007. Halmagyi, Ed. The Food Clock: A Year of Cooking Seasonally. Sydney: Harper Collins, 2012. Haywood, B. B. Town in a Blueberry Jam. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Town in a Lobster Stew. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Town in a Wild Moose Chase. New York: Berkley, 2012. Hyzy, Julie. State of the Onion. New York: Berkley, 2008. –– Hail to the Chef. New York: Berkley, 2008. –– Eggsecutive Orders. New York: Berkley, 2010. –– Buffalo West Wing. New York: Berkley, 2011. –– Affairs of Steak. New York: Berkley, 2012. Israel, Andrea, and Nancy Garfinkel, with Melissa Clark. The Recipe Club: A Novel About Food And Friendship. New York: HarperCollins, 2009. McHenry, Jael. The Kitchen Daughter: A Novel. New York: Gallery, 2011. Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind. London: Pan, 1936/1974 O’Reilly, Brian, with Virginia O’Reilly. Angelina’s Bachelors: A Novel, with Food. New York: Gallery, 2011. Payany, Estérelle. Recipe for Murder: Frightfully Good Food Inspired by Fiction. Paris: Flammarion, 2010. Peacocks Tearooms. Peacocks Tearooms: Our Unique Selection of Teas. 23 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.peacockstearoom.co.uk/teas/page1.asp›. Piatti-Farnell, Lorna. “A Taste of Conflict: Food, History and Popular Culture In Katherine Mansfield’s Fiction.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 79–91. Risson, Toni, and Donna Lee Brien. “Editors’ Letter: That Takes the Cake: A Slice Of Australasian Food Studies Scholarship.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 3–7. Sayers, Dorothy L. Strong Poison. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930/2003. Schmidt, Shannon McKenna, and Joni Rendon. Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen’s Bath to Ernest Hemingway’s Key West. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2009. Shange, Ntozake. Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo: A Novel. New York: St Martin’s, 1982. Spang, Rebecca L. “All the World’s A Restaurant: On The Global Gastronomics Of Tourism and Travel.” In Raymond Grew (Ed). Food in Global History. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999. 79–91. Taylor, Timothy. “Food/Crime Fiction.” Timothy Taylor. 2010. 17 Jul. 2012 ‹http://www.timothytaylor.ca/10/08/20/foodcrime-fiction›. The Moat Bar and Café. The Moat Bar and Café: Welcome. nd. 23 Aug. 2012 ‹http://themoat.com.au/Welcome.html›. Wenger, Shaunda Kennedy, and Janet Kay Jensen. The Book Lover’s Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Celebrated Works of Literature, and the Passages that Feature Them. New York: Ballantine, 2003/2005.

Introduction In October of 2004, La Presse asked its Quebecois reading audience a very simple question: “What is your favourite cookbook and why?” As Marie Marquis reports in her essay “The Cookbooks Quebecers Prefer: More Than Just Recipes,” “two weeks later, 363 e-mail responses had been received” (214). From the answers, it was clear that despite the increase in television cooking shows, Internet cooking sites, and YouTube how-to videos, cookbooks were not only still being used, but that people had strong allegiances to their favourite ones. Marquis’s essay provides concrete evidence that cookbooks are not meaningless objects. Rather, her use of relevant quotations from the survey proves that they are associated with strong memories and have been used to create bonds between individuals and across generations. Moreover, these quotations reveal that individuals use cookbooks to construct personal narratives that they share with others. In her philosophical analysis of foodmaking as a thoughtful practice, Lisa Heldke helps move the discussion of cooking and, consequently of cookbooks, forward by explaining that the age-old dichotomy between theory and practice merges in food preparation (206). Foodmaking, she explains through her example of kneading bread, requires both a theoretical understanding of what makes bread rise and a practical knowledge of the skill required to achieve the desired results. Much as Susan Leonardi argues that recipes need “a recommendation, a context, a point, a reason-to-be” (340), Heldke advocates in “Recipes for Theory Making” that recipes offer us ideas that we need to either accept or refuse. These ideas include, but are not limited to, what makes a good meal, what it means to eat healthy, what it means to be Italian or vegan. Cookbooks can take many forms. As the cover art from academic documents on the nature, role, and value of cooking and cookbooks clearly demonstrates, a “cookbook” may be an ornate box filled with recipe cards (Floyd and Forster) or may be a bunch of random pieces of paper organised by dividers and held together by a piece of elastic (Tye). The Internet has created many new options for recipe collecting and sharing. Websites such as Allrecipes.com and Cooks.com are open access forums where people can easily upload, download, and bookmark favourite foods. Yet, Laura Shapiro argues in Something from the Oven that the mere presence of a cookbook in one’s home does not mean it is actually used. While “popular cookbooks tell us a great deal about the culinary climate of a given period [...] what they can’t convey is a sense of the day-to-day cookery as it [is] genuinely experienced in the kitchens of real life” (xxi). The same conclusion can be applied to recipe websites. Personalised and family cookbooks are much different and much more telling documents than either unpersonalised printed books or Internet options. Family cookbooks can also take any shape or form but I define them as compilations that have been created by a single person or a small group of individuals as she/he/they evolve over time. They can be handwritten or typed and inserted into either an existing cookbook, scrapbooked, or bound in some other way. The Internet may also help here as bookmaking sites such as Blurb.com allow people to make, and even sell, their own printed books. These can be personalised with pictures and scrapbook-like embellishments. The recipes in these personal collections are influenced by contact with other people as well as printed and online publications. Also impacting these works are individual realities such as gender, race, class, and work. Unfortunately, these documents have not been the focus of much academic attention as food scholars generally analyse the texts within them rather than their practical and actual use. In order to properly understand the value and role of personal and family cookbooks in our daily lives, we must move away from generalisations to specific case studies. Only by looking at people in relationship with them, who are actually using and compiling their own recipe collections or opting instead to turn to either printed books or their computers, can we see the importance and value of family cookbooks. In order to address this methodological problem, this essay analyses a number of cookbook-related experiences that I have witnessed and/or been a part of in my own home. By moving away from the theoretical and focusing on the practical, I aim to advance Heldke’s argument that recipe reading, like foodmaking, is a thoughtful practice with important lessons. Learning to Cook and Learning to Live: What Cookbooks Teach Us Once upon a time, a mother and her two, beautiful daughters decided to make chocolate chip cookies. They took out all the bowls and utensils and ingredients they needed. The mother then plopped the two girls down among all of the paraphernalia on the counter. First, they beat the butter using their super cool Kitchen Aid mixer. Then they beat in the sugar. Carefully, they cracked and beat in the eggs. Then they dumped in the flour. They dumped in the baking powder. They dumped in the vanilla. And they dumped in the chocolate chips. Together, they rolled the cookies, placed them on a baking sheet, pat them down with a fork, and placed them in a hot oven. The house smelled amazing! The mother and her daughters were looking forward to eating the cookies when, all of a sudden, a great big dog showed up at the door. The mother ran outside to shoo the dog home yelling, “Go home, now! Go away!” By the time she got back, the cookies had started to burn and the house stank! The mother and her two daughters took all the cookie-making stuff back out. They threw out the ruined cookies. And they restarted. They beat the butter using their super cool Kitchen Aid mixer. Then they beat in the sugar. Carefully, they cracked and beat in the eggs. Then they dumped in the flour. They dumped in the baking powder. They dumped in the vanilla. And they dumped in the chocolate chips. Together, they rolled the cookies, placed them on a baking sheet, pat them down with a fork, and placed them in a hot oven. This story that my oldest daughter and I invented together goes on to have the cookies ruined by a chatty neighbour before finally finding fruition in a batch of successfully baked cookies. This is a story that we tell together as we get her ready for bed. One person is always the narrator who lists the steps while the other makes the sound effects of the beating mixer and the dumping ingredients. Together, we act out the story by rolling the cookies, patting them, and waving our hands in front of our faces when the burnt cookies have stunk up the house. While she takes great pleasure in its narrative, I take greater pleasure in the fact that, at three years of age, she has a rudimentary understanding of how a basic recipe works. In fact, only a few months ago I observed this mixture of knowledge and skill merge when I had to leave her on the counter while I cleaned up a mess on the floor. By the time I got back to her, she had finished mixing the dry ingredients in with the wet ones. I watched her from across the kitchen as she turned off the Kitchen Aid mixer, slowly spooned the flour mixture into the bowl, and turned the machine back on. She watched the batter mix until the flour had been absorbed and then repeated the process. While I am very thankful that she did not try to add the vanilla or the chocolate chips, this experience essentially proves that one can learn through simple observation and repetition. It is true that she did not have a cookbook in front of her, that she did not know the precise measurements of the ingredients being put into the bowl, and that at her age she would not have been able to make this recipe without my help. However, this examples proves Heldke’s argument that foodmaking is a thoughtful process as it is as much about instinct as it is about following a recipe. Once she is able to read, my daughter will be able to use the instincts that she has developed in her illiterate years to help her better understand written recipes. What is also important to note about this scenario is that I did have a recipe and that I was essentially the one in charge. My culinary instincts are good. I have been baking and cooking since I was a child and it is very much a part of my life. We rarely buy cookies or cakes from the store because we make them from scratch. Yet, I am a working mother who does not spend her days in the kitchen. Thus, my instincts need prompting and guidance from written instructions. Significantly, the handwritten recipe I was using that day comes from the personal cookbook that has been evolving since I left home. In their recent works Eat My Words and Baking as Biography, Janet Theophano and Diane Tye analyse homemade, hand-crafted, and personal cookbooks to show that these texts are the means through which we can understand individuals at a given time and in a given place. Theophano, for example, analyses old cookbooks to understand the impact of social networking in identity making. By looking at the types of recipes and number of people who have written themselves into these women’s books, she shows that cookbook creation has always been a social activity that reveals personal and social identity. In a slightly different way, Tye uses her own mother’s recipes to better understand a person she can no longer talk to. Through recipes, she is able to recreate her deceased mother’s life and thus connect with her on a personal and emotional level. Although academics have traditionally ignored cookbooks as being mundane and unprofessional, the work of these recent critics illustrates the extent to which cookbooks provide an important way of understanding society and people’s places within it. While this essay cannot begin to analyse the large content of my cookbook, this one scenario echoes these recent scholarly claims that personal cookbooks are a significant addition to the academic world and must be read thoughtfully, as Heldke argues, for both the recipes’s theory and for the practical applications and stories embedded within them. In this particular example, Karena and I were making a chocolate a chip cake—a recipe that has been passed down from my Oma. It is a complicated recipe because it requires a weight scale rather than measuring cups and because instructions such as “add enough milk to make a soft dough” are far from precise. The recipe is not just a meaningless entry I found in a random book or on a random website but rather a multilayered narrative and an expression of my personal heritage. As Theophano and Tye have argued, recipes are a way to connect with family, friends, and specific groups of people either still living or long gone. Recipes are a way to create and relive memories. While I am lucky that my Oma is still very much alive, I imagine that I will someday use this recipe as a way to reconnect with her. When I serve this cake to my family members, we will surely be reminded of her. We will wonder where this recipe came from, how it is different from other chocolate chip cake recipes, and where she learned to make it. In fact, the recipe already varies considerably between homes. My Oma makes hers in a round pan, my mother in a loaf pan, and I in cupcake moulds. Each person has a different reason for her choice of presentation that is intrinsic to her reality and communicates a specific part of her identity. Thus by sharing this recipe with my daughter, I am not only ensuring that my memories are being passed on but I am also programming into her characteristics and values such as critical thinking, the worthiness of homemade food, and the importance of family time. Karena does not yet have her own cookbook but her preferences mean that some of the recipes in my collection are made more often than others. My cookbook continues to change and grow as I am currently prioritising foods I know my kids will eat. I am also shopping and surfing for children’s recipe books and websites in order to find kid-friendly meals we can make together. In her analysis of children and adolescent cookbooks published between the 1910s and 1950s, Sherrie Inness demonstrates that cookbooks have not only taught children how to cook, but also how to act. Through the titles and instructions (generally aimed at girls), the recipe choices (fluffy deserts for girls and meat dishes for boys), and the illustrations (of girls cooking and boys eating), these cookbooks have been a medium through which society has taught its youth about their future, gendered roles. Much research by critics such as Laura Shapiro, Sonia Cancian, and Inness, to name but a few, has documented this gendered division of labour in the home. However, the literature does not always reflect reality. As this next example demonstrates, men do cook and they also influence family cookbook creation. A while back, my husband spent quite a bit of time browsing through the World Wide Web to find a good recipe for a venison marinade. As an avid “barbecuer,” he has tried and tested a number of marinades and rubs over the years. Thus he knew what he was looking for in a good recipe. He found one, made it, and it was a hit! Just recently, he tried to find that recipe again. Rather than this being a simple process, after all he knew exactly which recipe he was looking for, it took quite a bit of searching before he found it. This time, he was sure to write it down to avoid having to repeat the frustrating experience. Ironically, when I went to put the written recipe into my personal cookbook, I found that he had, in fact, already copied it out. These two handwritten copies of the same recipe are but one place where my husband “speaks out” from, and claims a place within, what I had always considered “my” cookbook. His taste preferences and preferred cooking style is very different from my own—I would never have considered a venison marinade worth finding never mind copying out. By reading his and my recipes together, one can see an alternative to assumed gender roles in our kitchen. This cookbook proves a practice opposite from the conclusion that women cook to serve men which Inness and others have theorised from the cookbooks they have analysed and forces food and gender critics to reconsider stereotypical dichotomies. Another important example is a recipe that has not actually been written down and inserted into my cookbook but it is one my husband and I both take turns making. Years ago, we had found an excellent bacon-cheese dip online that we never managed to find again. Since then, we have been forced to adlib the recipe and it has, in my opinion, never been as good. Both these Internet-recipe examples illustrate the negative drawbacks to using the Internet to find, and store, recipes. Unfortunately, the Internet is not a book. It changes. Links are sometimes broken. Searches do not always yield the same results. Even with recipe-storing sites such as Allrecipes.com and Cooks.com, one must take the time to impute the information and there is no guarantee that the technology will work. While authors such as Anderson and Wagner bemoan that traditional cookbooks only give one version of most recipes, there are so many recipes online that it is sometimes overwhelming and difficult to make a choice. An amateur cook may find comfort in the illustrations and specific instruction, yet one still needs to either have an instinct for what makes a good recipe or needs to be willing to spend time trying them out. Of course the same can be said of regular cookbooks. Having printed texts in one’s home requires the patience to go through them and still requires a sense of suitability and manageability. In both cases, neither an abundance nor a lack of choice can guarantee results. It is true that both the Internet and printed cookbooks such as The Better Homes and Gardens provide numerous, step-by-step instructions and illustrations to help people learn to make food from scratch. Other encyclopedic volumes such as The Five Roses: A Guide to Good Cooking, like YouTube, videos break recipes down into simple steps and include visual tools to help a nervous cook. Yet there is a big difference between the theory and the practice. What in theory may appear simple still necessitates practice. A botched recipe can be the result of using different brands of ingredients, tools, or environmental conditions. Only practice can teach people how to make a recipe successfully. Furthermore, it is difficult to create an online cookbook that rivals the malleability of the personal cookbooks. It is true that recipe websites such as Cooks.com and Allrecipes.com do allow a person to store favourite recipes found on their websites. However, unless the submitter takes the time to personalise the content, recipes can lose their ties to their origins. Bookmaking sites such as Blurb.com are attractive options that do allow for personalisation. In her essay “Aunty Sylvie’s Sponge Foodmaking, Cookbooks and Nostalgia,” Sian Supski uses her aunt’s Blurb family cookbook to argue that the marvel of the Internet has ensured that important family food memories will be preserved; yet once printed, even these treasures risk becoming static documents. As Supski goes on to admit, she is a nervous cook and one can conclude that even this though this recipe collection is very special, it will never become personal because she will not add to it or modify the content. As the examples in Theophano's and Tye’s works demonstrate, the personal touches, the added comments, and the handwritten alterations on the actual recipes give people authority, autonomy, and independence. Hardcopies of recipes indicate through their tattered, dog-eared, and stained pages which recipes have been tried and have been considered to be worth keeping. While Internet sites frequently allow people to comment on recipes and so allow cooks to filter their options, commenting is not a requirement and the suggestions left by others do not necessarily reflect personal preferences. Although they do continue a social, recipe-networking trend that Theophano argues has always existed in relation to cookbook creation and personal foodways, once online, their anonymity and lack of personal connection strips them of their true potential. This is also true of printed cookbooks. Even those compiled by celebrity chefs such as Rachel Ray and Jamie Oliver cannot guarantee success as individuals still need to try them. These examples of recipe reading and recipe collecting advance Heldke’s argument that theory and practice blend in this activity. Recipes are not static. They change depending on who makes them, where they come from, and on the conditions under which they are executed. As critics, we need to recognise this blending of theory and practice and read recipe collections with this reality in mind. Conclusion Despite the growing number of blogs and recipe websites now available to the average cook, personal cookbooks are still a more useful and telling way to communicate information about ourselves and our foodways. As this reflection on actual experiences clearly demonstrates, personal cookbooks teach us about more than just food. They allow us to connect to the past in order to better understand who we are today in ways that the Internet and modern technology cannot. Just as cooking combines theory and practice, reading personal and family cookbooks allows critics to see how theories about foodmaking and gender play out in actual kitchens by actual people. The nuanced merging of voices within them illustrates that individuals alter over time as they come into contact with others. While printed cookbooks and online recipe sites do provide their own narrative possibilities, the stories that can be read in personal and family cookbooks prove that reading them is a thoughtful practice worthy of academic attention. References All Recipes.com Canada. 2013. 24 Apr. 2013. ‹http://allrecipes.com›. Anderson, L. V. “Cookbooks Are Headed for Extinction—and That’s OK.” Slate.com 18 Jun. 2012. 24 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/06/the_future_of_cookbooks_they_ll_go_extinct_and_that_s_ok_.html›. Blurb.ca. 2013. 27 May 2013. ‹http://blurb.ca›. Cancian, Sonia. "'Tutti a Tavola!' Feeding the Family in Two Generations of Italian Immigrant Households in Montreal." Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History. Ed. Franca Iacovetta, Valerie J. Korinek, Marlene Epp. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2012. 209–21. Cooks.com Recipe Search. 2013. 24 Apr. 2013. ‹http://www.cooks.com›. Darling, Jennifer Dorland. Ed. The Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. Des Moines: Meredith, 1996. Five Roses: A Guide to Good Cooking. North Vancouver: Whitecap, 2003. Floyd, Janet, and Laurel Forster. The Recipe Reader. Ed. Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2010. Heldke, Lisa."Foodmaking as a Thoughtful Practice." Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food. Ed Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke. Indiana UP, 1992. 203–29. ---. “Recipe for Theory Making.” Hypatia 3.2 (1988): 15–29. Inness, Sherrie. Dinner Roles: American Women and Culinary Culture. U of Iowa P, 2001. Leonardi, Susan. “Recipes for Reading: Pasta Salad, Lobster à la Riseholme, Key Lime Pie,” PMLA 104.3 (1989): 340–47. Marquis, Marie. "The Cookbooks Quebecers Prefer: More Than Just Recipes." What's to Eat? Entrées in Canadian Food History. Ed. Nathalie Cooke. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s UP, 2009. 213–27. Shapiro, Laura. Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America. New York: Viking, 2004. Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women's Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote. Palgrave MacMillan: New York, 2002. Tye, Diane. Baking As Biography. Canada: McGill-Queen UP, 2010. Wagner, Vivian. “Cookbooks of the Future: Bye, Bye, Index Cards.” E-Commerce Times. Ecommercetimes.com. 20 Nov. 2011. 16 April 2013. ‹http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/73842.html›.

IntroductionThis paper argues that the industrial contexts of re-imagining, or transforming, literary icons deploy the promotional strategies that are associated with what are usually seen as lesser, or purely commercial, genres. Promotional paratexts (Genette Paratexts; Gray; Hills) reveal transformations of content that position audiences to receive them as creative innovations, superior in many senses to their literary precursors due to the distinctive expertise of creative professionals. This interpretation leverages Matt Hills’ argument that certain kinds of “quality” screened drama are discursively framed as possessing the cultural capital associated with auterist cinema, despite their participation in the marketing logics of media franchising (Johnson). Adaptation theorist Linda Hutcheon proposes that when audiences receive literary adaptations, their pleasure inheres in a mixture of “repetition and difference”, “familiarity and novelty” (114). The difference can take many forms, but may be framed as guaranteed by the “distinction”, or—in Bourdieu’s terms—the cultural capital, of talented individuals and companies. Gerard Genette (Palimpsests) argued that “proximations” or updatings of classic literature involve acknowledging historical shifts in ideological norms as well as aesthetic techniques and tastes. When literary brands are made over using different media, there are economic lures to participation in currently fashionable technologies, as well as current political values. Linda Hutcheon also underlines the pragmatic constraints on the re-imagining of literary brands. “Expensive collaborative art forms” (87) such as films and large stage productions look for safe bets, seeking properties that have the potential to increase the audience for their franchise. Thus the marketplace influences both production and the experience of audiences. While this paper does not attempt a thoroughgoing analysis of audience reception appropriate to a fan studies approach, it borrows concepts from Matt Hills’s theorisation of marketing communication associated with screen “makeovers”. It shows that literary fiction and cinematic texts associated with celebrated authors or auteurist producer-directors share branding discourses characteristic of contemporary consumer culture. Strategies include marketing “reveals” of transformed content (Hills 319). Transformed content is presented not only as demonstrating originality and novelty; these promotional paratexts also perform displays of cultural capital on the part of production teams or of auteurist creatives (321). Case Study 1: Steven Spielberg, The Adventures of Tintin (2011) The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is itself an adaptation of a literary brand that reimagines earlier transmedia genres. According to Spielberg’s biographer, the Tintin series of bandes dessinée (comics or graphic novels) by Belgian artist Hergé (Georges Remi), has affinities with “boys’ adventure yarns” referencing and paying homage to the “silent filmmaking and the movie serials of the 1930s and ‘40s” (McBride 530). The three comics adapted by Spielberg belong to the more escapist and less “political” phase of Hergé’s career (531). As a fast-paced action movie, building to a dramatic and spectacular closure, the major plot lines of Spielberg’s film centre on Tintin’s search for clues to the secret of a model ship he buys at a street market. Teaming up with an alcoholic sea captain, Tintin solves the mystery while bullying Captain Haddock into regaining his sobriety, his family seat, and his eagerness to partner in further heroic adventures. Spielberg’s industry stature allowed him the autonomy to combine the commercial motivations of contemporary “tentpole” cinema adaptations with aspirations towards personal reputation as an auteurist director. Many of the promotional paratexts associated with the film stress the aesthetic distinction of the director’s practice alongside the blockbuster spectacle of an action film. Reinventing the Literary Brand as FranchiseComic books constitute the “mother lode of franchises” (Balio 26) in a industry that has become increasingly global and risk-adverse (see also Burke). The fan base for comic book movies is substantial and studios pre-promote their investments at events such as the four-day Comic-Con festival held annually in San Diego (Balio 26). Described as “tentpole” films, these adaptations—often of superhero genres—are considered conservative investments by the Hollywood studios because they “constitute media events; […] lend themselves to promotional tie-ins”; are “easy sells in world markets and […] have the ability to spin off sequels to create a franchise” (Balio 26). However, Spielberg chose to adapt a brand little known in the primary market (the US), thus lacking the huge fan-based to which pre-release promotional paratexts might normally be targeted. While this might seem a risky undertaking, it does reflect “changed industry realities” that seek to leverage important international markets (McBride 531). As a producer Spielberg pursued his own strategies to minimise economic risk while allowing him creative choices. This facilitated the pursuit of professional reputation alongside commercial success. The dual release of both War Horse and Tintin exemplify the director-producer’s career practice of bracketing an “entertainment” film with a “more serious work” (McBride 530). The Adventures of Tintin was promoted largely as technical tour de force and spectacle. Conversely War Horse—also adapted from a children’s text—was conceived as a heritage/nostalgia film, marked with the attention to period detail and lyric cinematography of what Matt Hills describes as “aestheticized fiction”. Nevertheless, promotional paratexts stress the discourse of auteurist transformation even in the case of the designedly more commercial Tintin film, as I discuss further below. These pre-release promotions emphasise Spielberg’s “painterly” directorial hand, as well as the professional partnership with Peter Jackson that enabled cutting edge innovation in animation. As McBride explains, the “dual release of the two films in the US was an unusual marketing move” seemingly designed to “showcase Spielberg’s artistic versatility” (McBride 530).Promotional Paratexts and Pre-Recruitment of FansAs Jonathan Gray and Jason Mittell have explained, marketing paratexts predate screen adaptations (Gray; Mittell). As part of the commercial logic of franchise development, selective release of information about a literary brand’s transformation are designed to bring fans of the “original,” or of genre communities such as fantasy or comics audiences, on board with the adaptation. Analysing Steven Moffat’s revelations about the process of adapting and creating a modern TV series from Conan Doyle’s canon (Sherlock), Matt Hills draws attention to the focus on the literary, rather than the many screen reinventions. Moffat’s focus on his childhood passion for the Holmes stories thus grounds the team’s adaptation in a period prior to any “knowledge of rival adaptations […] and any detailed awareness of canon” (326). Spielberg (unlike Jackson) denied any such childhood affective investment, claiming to have been unaware of the similarities between Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and the Tintin series until alerted by a French reviewer of Raiders (McBride 530). In discussing the paradoxical fidelity of his and Jackson’s reimagining of Tintin, Spielberg performed homage to the literary brand while emphasising the aesthetic limitations within the canon of prior adaptations:‘We want Tintin’s adventures to have the reality of a live-action film’, Spielberg explained during preproduction, ‘and yet Peter and I felt that shooting them in a traditional live-action format would simply not honor the distinctive look of the characters and world that Hergé created. Hergé’s characters have been reborn as living beings, expressing emotion and a soul that goes far beyond anything we’ve been able to create with computer-animated characters.’ (McBride 531)In these “reveals”, the discourse positions Spielberg and Jackson as both fans and auteurs, demonstrating affective investment in Hergé’s concepts and world-building while displaying the ingenuity of the partners as cinematic innovators.The Branded Reveal of Transformed ContentAccording to Hills, “quality TV drama” no less than “makeover TV,” is subject to branding practices such as the “reveal” of innovations attributed to creative professionals. Marketing paratexts discursively frame the “professional and creative distinction” of the teams that share and expand the narrative universe of the show’s screen or literary precursors (319–20). Distinction here refers to the cultural capital of the creative teams, as well as to the essential differences between what adaptation theorists refer to as the “hypotext” (source/original) and “hypertext” (adaptation) (Genette Paratexts; Hutcheon). The adaptation’s individualism is fore-grounded, as are the rights of creative teams to inherit, transform, and add richness to the textual universe of the precursor texts. Spielberg denied the “anxiety of influence” (Bloom) linking Tintin and Raiders, though he is reported to have enthusiastically acknowledged the similarities once alerted to them. Nevertheless, Spielberg first optioned Hergé’s series only two years later (1983). Paratexts “reveal” Hergé’s passing of the mantle from author to director, quoting his: “ ‘Yes, I think this guy can make this film. Of course it will not be my Tintin, but it can be a great Tintin’” (McBride 531).Promotional reveals in preproduction show both Spielberg and Jackson performing mutually admiring displays of distinction. Much of this is focused on the choice of motion capture animation, involving attachment of motion sensors to an actor’s body during performance, permitting mapping of realistic motion onto the animated figure. While Spielberg paid tribute to Jackson’s industry pre-eminence in this technical field, the discourse also underlines Spielberg’s own status as auteur. He claimed that Tintin allowed him to feel more like a painter than any prior film. Jackson also underlines the theme of direct imaginative control:The process of operating the small motion-capture virtual camera […] enabled Spielberg to return to the simplicity and fluidity of his 8mm amateur films […] [The small motion-capture camera] enabled Spielberg to put himself literally in the spaces occupied by the actors […] He could walk around with them […] and improvise movements for a film Jackson said they decided should have a handheld feel as much as possible […] All the production was from the imagination right to the computer. (McBride 532)Along with cinematic innovation, pre-release promotions thus rehearse the imaginative pre-eminence of Spielberg’s vision, alongside Jackson and his WETA company’s fantasy credentials, their reputation for meticulous detail, and their innovation in the use of performance capture in live-action features. This rehearsal of professional capital showcases the difference and superiority of The Adventures of Tintin to previous animated adaptations.Case Study 2: Andrew Motion: Silver, Return to Treasure Island (2012)At first glance, literary fiction would seem to be a far-cry from the commercial logics of tentpole cinema. The first work of pure fiction by a former Poet Laureate of Great Britain, updating a children’s classic, Silver: Return to Treasure Island signals itself as an exemplar of quality fiction. Yet the commercial logics of the publishing industry, no less than other media franchises, routinise practices such as author interviews at bookshop visits and festivals, generating paratexts that serve its promotional cycle. Motion’s choice of this classic for adaptation is a step further towards a popular readership than his poetry—or the memoirs, literary criticism, or creative non-fiction (“fabricated” or speculative biographies) (see Mars-Jones)—that constitute his earlier prose output. Treasure Island’s cultural status as boy’s adventure, its exotic setting, its dramatic characters long available in the public domain through earlier screen adaptations, make it a shrewd choice for appropriation in the niche market of literary fiction. Michael Cathcart’s introduction to his ABC Radio National interview with the author hones in on this:Treasure Island is one of those books that you feel as if you’ve read, event if you haven’t. Long John Silver, young Jim Hawkins, Blind Pew, Israel Hands […], these are people who stalk our collective unconscious, and they’re back. (Cathcart)Motion agrees with Cathcart that Treasure Island constitutes literary and common cultural heritage. In both interviews I analyse in the discussion here, Motion states that he “absorbed” the book, “almost by osmosis” as a child, yet returned to it with the mature, critical, evaluative appreciation of the young adult and budding poet (Darragh 27). Stevenson’s original is a “bloody good book”; the implication is that it would not otherwise have met the standards of a literary doyen, possessing a deep knowledge of, and affect for, the canon of English literature. Commercial Logic and Cultural UpdatingSilver is an unauthorised sequel—in Genette’s taxonomy, a “continuation”. However, in promotional interviews on the book and broadcast circuit, Motion claimed a kind of license from the practice of Stevenson, a fellow writer. Stevenson himself notes that a significant portion of the “bar silver” remained on the island, leaving room for a sequel to be generated. In Silver, Jim, the son of Stevenson’s Jim Hawkins, and Natty, daughter of Long John Silver and the “woman of colour”, take off to complete and confront the consequences of their parents’ adventures. In interviews, Motion identifies structural gaps in the precursor text that are discursively positioned to demand completion from, in effect, Stevenson’s literary heir: [Stevenson] was a person who was interested in sequels himself, indeed he wrote a sequel to Kidnapped [which is] proof he was interested in these things. (Cathcart)He does leave lots of doors and windows open at the end of Treasure Island […] perhaps most bewitchingly for me, as the Hispaniola sails away, they leave behind three maroons. So what happened to them? (Darragh)These promotional paratexts drop references to Great Expectations, Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies, Wild Sargasso Sea, the plays of Shakespeare and Tom Stoppard, the poetry of Auden and John Clare, and Stevenson’s own “self-conscious” sources: Defoe, Marryat. Discursively, they evidence “double coding” (Hills) as both homage for the canon and the literary “brand” of Stevenson’s popular original, while implicated in the commercial logic of the book industry’s marketing practices.Displays of DistinctionMotion’s interview with Sarah Darragh, for the National Association of Teachers of English, performs the role of man of letters; Motion “professes” and embodies the expertise to speak authoritatively on literature, its criticism, and its teaching. Literature in general, and Silver in particular, he claims, is not “just polemic”, that is “not how it works”, but it does has the ability to recruit readers to moral perspectives, to convey “ new ideas[s] of the self.” Silver’s distinction from Treasure Island lies in its ability to position “deep” readers to develop what is often labelled “theory of mind” (Wolf and Barzillai): “what good literature does, whether you know it or not, is to allow you to be someone else for a bit,” giving us “imaginative projection into another person’s experience” (Darragh 29). A discourse of difference and superiority is also associated with the transformed “brand.” Motion is emphatic that Silver is not a children’s book—“I wouldn’t know how to do that” (Darragh 28)—a “lesser” genre in canonical hierarchies. It is a writerly and morally purposeful fiction, “haunted” by greats of the canon and grounded in expertise in philosophical and literary heritage. In addition, he stresses the embedded seriousness of his reinvention: it is “about how to be a modern person and about greed and imperialism” (Darragh 27), as well as a deliberatively transformed artefact:The road to literary damnation is […] paved with bad sequels and prequels, and the reason that they fail […] is that they take the original on at its own game too precisely […] so I thought, casting my mind around those that work [such as] Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead […] or Jean Rhys’ wonderful novel Wide Sargasso Sea which is about the first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre […] that if I took a big step away from the original book I would solve this problem of competing with something I was likely to lose in competition with and to create something that was a sort of homage […] towards it, but that stood at a significant distance from it […]. (Cathcart) Motion thus rehearses homage and humility, while implicitly defending the transformative imagination of his “sequel” against the practice of lesser, failed, clonings.Motion’s narrative expansion of Stevenson’s fictional universe is an example of “overwriting continuity” established by his predecessor, and thus allowing him to make “meaningful claims to creative and professional distinction” while demonstrating his own “creative viewpoint” (Hills 320). The novel boldly recapitulates incidental details, settings, and dramatic embedded character-narrations from Treasure Island. Distinctively, though, its opening sequence is a paean to romantic sensibility in the tradition of Wordsworth’s The Prelude (1799–1850).The Branded Reveal of Transformed ContentSilver’s paratexts discursively construct its transformation and, by implication, improvement, from Stevenson’s original. Motion reveals the sequel’s change of zeitgeist, its ideological complexity and proximity to contemporary environmental and postcolonial values. These are represented through the superior perspective of romanticism and the scientific lens on the natural world:Treasure Island is a pre-Enlightenment story, it is pre-French Revolution, it’s the bad old world […] where people have a different ideas of democracy […] Also […] Jim is beginning to be aware of nature in a new way […] [The romantic poet, John Clare] was publishing in the 1820s but a child in the early 1800s, I rather had him in mind for Jim as somebody who was seeing the world in the same sort of way […] paying attention to the little things in nature, and feeling a sort of kinship with the natural world that we of course want to put an environmental spin on these days, but [at] the beginning of the 1800s was a new and important thing, a romantic preoccupation. (Cathcart)Motion’s allusion to Wild Sargasso Sea discursively appropriates Rhys’s feminist and postcolonial reimagination of Rochester’s creole wife, to validate his portrayal of Long John Silver’s wife, the “woman of colour.” As Christian Moraru has shown, this rewriting of race is part of a book industry trend in contemporary American adaptations of nineteenth-century texts. Interviews position readers of Silver to receive the novel in terms of increased moral complexity, sharing its awareness of the evils of slavery and violence silenced in prior adaptations.Two streams of influence [come] out of Treasure Island […] one is Pirates of the Caribbean and all that jolly jape type stuff, pirates who are essentially comic [or pantomime] characters […] And the other stream, which is the other face of Long John Silver in the original is a real menace […] What we are talking about is Somalia. Piracy is essentially a profoundly serious and repellent thing […]. (Cathcart)Motion’s transformation of Treasure Island, thus, improves on Stevenson by taking some of the menace that is “latent in the original”, yet downplayed by the genre reinvented as “jolly jape” or “gorefest.” In contrast, Silver is “a book about serious things” (Cathcart), about “greed and imperialism” and “how to be a modern person,” ideologically reconstructed as “philosophical history” by a consummate man of letters (Darragh).ConclusionWhen iconic literary brands are reimagined across media, genres and modes, creative professionals frequently need to balance various affective and commercial investments in the precursor text or property. Updatings of classic texts require interpretation and the negotiation of subtle changes in values that have occurred since the creation of the “original.” Producers in risk-averse industries such as screen and publishing media practice a certain pragmatism to ensure that fans’ nostalgia for a popular brand is not too violently scandalised, while taking care to reproduce currently popular technologies and generic conventions in the interest of maximising audience. As my analysis shows, promotional circuits associated with “quality” fiction and cinema mirror the commercial logics associated with less valorised genres. Promotional paratexts reveal transformations of content that position audiences to receive them as creative innovations, superior in many senses to their literary precursors due to the distinctive expertise of creative professionals. Paying lip-service the sophisticated reading practices of contemporary fans of both cinema and literary fiction, their discourse shows the conflicting impulses to homage, critique, originality, and recruitment of audiences.ReferencesBalio, Tino. Hollywood in the New Millennium. London: Palgrave Macmillan/British Film Institute, 2013.Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1987. Burke, Liam. The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Exploring Modern Hollywood's Leading Genre. Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 2015. Cathcart, Michael (Interviewer). Andrew Motion's Silver: Return to Treasure Island. 2013. Transcript of Radio Interview. Prod. Kate Evans. 26 Jan. 2013. 10 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/booksplus/silver/4293244#transcript›.Darragh, Sarah. "In Conversation with Andrew Motion." NATE Classroom 17 (2012): 27–30.Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 1997. ———. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York UP, 2010.Hills, Matt. "Rebranding Dr Who and Reimagining Sherlock: 'Quality' Television as 'Makeover TV Drama'." International Journal of Cultural Studies 18.3 (2015): 317–31.Johnson, Derek. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. Postmillennial Pop. New York: New York UP, 2013.Mars-Jones, Adam. "A Thin Slice of Cake." The Guardian, 16 Feb. 2003. 5 Oct. 2015 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/feb/16/andrewmotion.fiction›.McBride, Joseph. Steven Spielberg: A Biography. 3rd ed. London: Faber & Faber, 2012.Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York UP, 2015.Moraru, Christian. Rewriting: Postmodern Narrative and Cultural Critique in the Age of Cloning. Herndon, VA: State U of New York P, 2001. Motion, Andrew. Silver: Return to Treasure Island. London: Jonathan Cape, 2012.Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Paramount/Columbia Pictures, 1981.Wolf, Maryanne, and Mirit Barzillai. "The Importance of Deep Reading." Educational Leadership. March (2009): 32–36.Wordsworth, William. The Prelude, or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem. London: Edward Moxon, 1850.

Does science have a moral component? Today, as well as in the past, the perspectives of scientists diverge. Some scientists join political groups and work for them. They only care about financial benefits and waiving moral and ethical rules. Others take an alienated stance, arguing that science only has scientific objectives that must be addressed. They lack concern for ethical aspects and stand by the motto “science for the sake of science.” Others say it is important to have ethical rules in science and that we cannot preserve humankind and its movement towards the future without ethical and moral principles. Considering that the world is currently in the second decade of the 21st century, it is evident that it has been divided into two distinct axes: the first being democracy, with its significance to every human life, and the second being dictatorship and tyranny, where human life is deemed worthless in pursuit of a particular objective. Ukraine has become the first outpost of this division and an example for humankind, where moral and ethical rules serve as the foundation of its statehood, which it has been defending in the cruel war with the Moscow nuclear empire since 2014. Ukraine, through its centuries-old sacrifices and historical experience, has enlightened humanity with the authentic foundations of morality: the heroism of its defenders, the fervent patriotism of its people, spiritual principles, empathy, saving people and animals, aiding the needy, the volunteer movement, the humane treatment of prisoners of war, and adherence to international legal principles. Our main goal is to protect our personal freedom, which is vital for every scientist to be self-fulfilled. What is the distinction in morality/ethics between homo sovieticus and a doctor? The Hippocratic Oath has been a moral compass for all doctors for several millennia. Its essence has not changed. The Soviet government abolished the Hippocratic Oath in 1917 because it prevented their political objective of enslaving the population [1]. The Bolsheviks imposed a new healthcare system through a decree: they legalized abortions in 1920 and active euthanasia (by medical professionals) in 1922 [1,2]. The Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada reinstated the Hippocratic Oath in 1971. Called “The Oath of the Soviet Doctor,” it was meant to raise the doctor’s prestige and emphasize their duty before the Soviet state [3]. The decline of medical ethics in the Russian Federation also saw the abandonment of ancient traditions focused on the patient in the principles of medical practitioners’ activities and the continued functioning as a tool of the ruling government [4]. The oath of Russian physicians, with its patronizing and sexist language, completely disregards the rights of the patient and the physician’s responsibility to take preventive measures and fulfill their duties before society. The expert in medical ethics, Pellegrino, observed, “It’s hard to imagine a more devastating mutilation of the body of medical ethics.” The re-emergence of pre-existing medical behavior patterns, which were rooted in the Ukrainian environment and influenced by Greek-Catholic customs prior to the Soviet era, was observed with the declaration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Professor Bohdan Nadraha was a strong supporter of the creation of updated medical ethics [5]. As one of the initiators of the revival of the Ukrainian Medical Society in Lviv and as the head of the Court of Medical Honor from 1992 to 1996, he firmly advocated for the reinstatement of bioethical principles among physicians and their practice in accordance with the principles of Hippocrates. Professor Ihor Herych created a document called “The Hippocratic Oath of the Doctor”, and Lviv Regional Medical Administration officially accepted it in 2007 [6]. Article 81 describes the ethical behavior of a doctor, including the doctor’s attitude towards the patient, the quality of medical care, confidentiality, the doctor’s role in end-of-life care, transplantation issues, conducting clinical trials, patient’s informed consent, and responsibility of doctors before the society. During a meeting with members of the Medical Commission of the Shevchenko Scientific Society and the Ukrainian Medical Society in Lviv, His Beatitude Liubomyr Husar addressed the physicians regarding the observance of the Hippocratic Oath, “In my opinion, it is imperative to comprehend that medicine is not merely a profession, but a calling, regardless of the form of oath.” He further stated that “understanding the significance of one’s profession and performing it with the utmost diligence is essential” [7]. The doctor has a calling that obliges them to do everything possible for the patient’s benefit. His important advice on de-communization was, “Corruption is part of the Soviet legacy. In my perspective, it is imperative that the authorities, scientists, historians, and every member of society analyze the legacy of the Soviet era and the remaining negative elements and swiftly eradicate these undesirable elements” [8]. Ukrainian scientists have a lot to be proud of because they started the foundations back in the 19th century when they founded the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv in 1873 with support from philanthropists from Naddniprianshchyna. The Ukrainian intelligentsia and academics united and forged a solid foundation for the ethical values they pursued, embracing the ideals of liberty and tolerance being stuck among the two empires – the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the oppressive autocratic Russian Empire. This Society experienced significant development under the leadership of academician Mykhailo Hrushevskyi. The medical commission was established and supervised by Yevhen Ozarkevych, a prominent public figure, scientist, and physician, in 1898. As a global Ukrainian multidisciplinary academy of sciences, the medical commission has given impetus to the development of various directions of Ukrainian science, culture, and language and became the intellectual foundation of the Ukrainian state in 1918. The Shevchenko Scientific Society operated in Poland until 1939 and was destroyed by the Soviet authorities. In 1989, the Ukrainian diaspora recommenced its operations in Ukraine. The active intellectual diaspora, with its centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, has been operational for 50 years (working outside Ukraine). So, we have a story about moral scientists who lived and worked for their country and the world [9]. Doctors and scientists who were forced to emigrate continued the traditions of the Lviv Ukrainian Medical Society and the Shevchenko Scientific Society during the 46 years of communist rule in western Ukraine. They started the Ukrainian Medical Society of North America in 1950 and published their works in the world’s only medical journal, “Medical Herald” (1954). Roman Osinchuk, who graduated from Lviv University and emigrated to New York in 1947, was its Editor-in-Chief. The basis of their activities were moral and ethical principles. Pavlo Dzhul, who edited the “Medical Herald” from 1967 to 2003, said it was better to follow the rules of medical ethics and follow the Hippocratic Oath instead of making a new code of ethics. “Hippocrates, in his oath, called for the honest fulfillment of duties according to one’s abilities and knowledge... a physician should alleviate the suffering of the sick and preserve human life... should lead a pure and blameless life, be committed to their profession to the fullest, and stay far from all that is malicious, unjust, and harmful. The aforementioned adage “primum non nocere” ought to remain relevant throughout time. A doctor who adheres to these principles will be able to fulfill their duties with a clear conscience, even during times of great revolutionary breakthroughs in medicine. Therefore, there is no need to draft a new code of medical ethics, but rather to reaffirm the ideals of our forefathers” [10]. In modern times, Ukraine is again fighting for the eternal principles of morality against the essence of the Russian Federation distorted by Soviet narratives and other dictatorial regimes. The democratic world underestimated the threats of dictatorial and terrorist regimes. Aggressors use economic and informational methods to manipulate people with a false ideology. They shape their supporters into “biomass” and instill in them a hidden “dark” morality also involving their religions. This is the second year that Ukraine is experiencing war particularly painfully, and this was also demonstrated during the attack on Israel. How methodically and uniformly the dictator-terrorist regimes operate! What a treachery, deceit, and cruelty! Someone teaches well, and executors learn quickly! The world must arrive at lucid and expeditious conclusions, as this poses a serious threat to the democratic principles of humanity. Joe Biden spoke about it in his special address from the White House on October 19, 2023: “We’re facing an inflection point in history... those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future... History has taught us that when terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction... making sure Israel and Ukraine succeed is vital for America’s national security... global democracy” [11]. Everyone should reflect on these words, especially the intellectual elite. Scientists worldwide need to know which direction they are moving in by using their knowledge, abilities, and work. The everyday work and moral decisions made by scientists represent the symbolic placement of weights on various platforms of the historical scales: either for democracy or for dictatorship. They are two components of the real world today. What prevails now will be our future! This is a challenging question for scientists living in dictatorial states. They either have to leave them or refrain from supporting the development of these societies by speaking at international congresses or publishing articles about their developments in scientific journals. It is imperative that they wait for better times, refrain from supporting and sustaining the dictatorship, and refrain from contributing to its perpetuation. Living in a country that routinely commits mass genocide against other nations, commits humanitarian and ecological crimes, kills children and prisoners of war, and demolishes churches, museums, hospitals, educational institutions, and cemeteries was not a lucky break for them. Hence, scientists in democratic societies must clearly define their objectives: are they engaged in genuine scientific research with a moral component and generating a perspective for humanity, or are they focusing on the financial aspect and inviting scientists from dictatorial regimes to international conferences and publishing their articles in reputable journals in exchange for financial support? Scientists from the Russian Federation are not victims, and the world must refrain from using the term “good” Russians. They are the representatives of a terrorist state, and they must be isolated during the war to enable their minds and conscience to comprehend the significance of human life [9]. The ethical oversight of scientific endeavors, viewed as a vital necessity, is a crucial prerequisite for the advancement of research and the existence of humankind in its entirety. Every scientist should be aware of their responsibility for the fate of humanity. True science must have a moral face! The war is a test to see how well the Ukrainian people believe in morals and science. Ukrainian scientists have taken a stand to defend their state, democracy, and freedom despite the circumstances of war by establishing an intellectual front [10]. Some scientists volunteered and sacrificed their lives for the democratic future of Ukraine and humankind. More than 80 scientists died in 2022-2023. Some scientists help the Armed Forces of Ukraine with their developments [11], and others save wounded Heroes [12]. We thank the scientists of Europe, America, Canada, and Australia who have supported and continue to support Ukraine [13,14], who do not create a platform for the propaganda of Russian science, and who do not invite Russian scientists to their professional congresses and conferences. Ferenc Krausz, the Hungarian Nobel Prize laureate in physics, donated his prize money to help Ukraine, which, contrary to the official policy of the Hungarian government in the international arena, has become an example of morality. Yet many scholars advocate the principle of neutrality and the grey zone. Many scientific conferences and professional gatherings don’t mention the war in Europe, they allow scientists from the Russian Federation to speak and moderate, and they don’t commemorate peaceful researchers who perished because of the war. This is what happened at an international conference organized by the European Society for Primary Immunodeficiency in Gothenburg on April 16-18, 2022. The professional community did not honor the memory of Oksana Leontiieva, a scientist and hematologist from Kyiv who was supposed to talk at this conference about her developments in transplanting primary immunodeficiency on October 17. On October 10, 2022, seven days before the scheduled speech, she was killed by a Russian bomb while en route to work. At that time, Russian scientists were actively delivering their speeches at the conference. Haven’t scientists around the world had enough of the horrible things happening in Europe, like Russian bombings of hospitals, schools, libraries, theaters, homes, cafés, and funerals? Aren’t they equated to the high crimes of war, genocide, and terrorism? Several independent organizations cited in the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights report for May 2022 established this. The report also concludes that “states have a legal obligation to prevent genocide beyond their borders when they become aware of a serious risk of genocide”. The threshold established by this report has been reached, and states are no longer allowed to deny it. For the past two years, there have been discussions about whether Western publications should refuse to publish scientific papers from Russian institutions. Only the Journal of Molecular Structure has issued a clear statement based on the humanitarian crisis arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ceasing the acceptance of manuscripts from scientists working in institutions of the Russian Federation [15]. Several journals declined to endorse a boycott for the sake of “universal science” (The British Medical Journal) [16] or to prevent “dividing the global research community and inhibiting the exchange of scientific knowledge” (Nature) [17]. Science has also decided not to boycott Russian submissions [18]. The “Journal of Hematopathology” has emerged as a prominent publication among Springer Nature’s journals, expressing its condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while retaining a proactive approach towards evaluating manuscripts from Russian authors [19]. The war in Ukraine is condemned in several publications [20-21]. This is an example of outrage without real action. Russians are not even denied electronic access to scientific publications. Did these publications accept manuscripts from the Nazi regime during World War II or the Soviet regime during the Cold War era? When asked if American universities should have boycotted German/Nazi universities during World War II, they answered, “...when the Nazis criminalized higher education, they ceased to be universities” [22]. The united comprehensive approach of the civilized world, scientists in the first place, was able to defeat fascism and collapse the Soviet Union. Scientists all over the world are now deeply concerned about the Russian Federation’s actions in Ukraine. You learn nothing from history! Scientists from the Russian Federation supported the war with Ukraine during its early days, and many of them continue supporting it. The Russian Federation has criminalized its own research institutes and universities through its stringent regulations that suppress free speech and, consequently, academic freedom. Research institutions operate for the war machine in three shifts. Russian scientists are essential supporters of government policy. For example, about one million Russian scientists left the country in protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those who stayed don’t have enough important lab supplies from the West because of sanctions or reduced national funding for science [23]. But now is not the time for them to create the conditions for the development of science. Supporting them is a threat of the third world war! The manuscripts of Russian scientists with Homo sovieticus origins deserve to be boycotted by Western scientific publications until the war ends, with the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory, the reparations for the killed population, registered justice and convicted war crimes, restoration of the destroyed infrastructure; mitigating the environmental catastrophe in the Ukrainian territory due to widespread mining, dam explosion, etc. During wartime, international sanctions in the realm of science should be imposed, much like those for economic, sporting, and cultural spheres. For humankind to have perspective, isolation of the aggressor must function in the scientific field. Scientists should make a conscious decision regarding the purpose for which they live, work, think, and create. Think before the nuclear monster destroys the planet!!!

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me,” you are quoting Shakespeare.Bernard LevinPsoriatic arthritis, in its acute or “generalised” stage, is unbearably painful. Exacerbating the crippling of the joints, the entire surface of the skin is covered with lesions only moderately salved by anti-inflammatory ointment, the application of which is as painful as the ailment it seeks to relieve: NURSE MILLS: I’ll be as gentle as I can.Marlow’s face again fills the screen, intense concentration, comical strain, and a whispered urgency in the voice over—MARLOW: (Voice over) Think of something boring—For Christ’s sake think of something very very boring—Speech a speech by Ted Heath a sentence long sentence from Bernard Levin a quiz by Christopher Booker a—oh think think—! Really boring! A Welsh male-voice choir—Everything in Punch—Oh! Oh! — (Potter 17-18)Marlow’s collation of boring things as a frantic liturgy is an attempt to distract himself from a tumescence that is both unwanted and out of place. Although bed-ridden and in constant pain, he is still sensitive to erogenous stimulation, even when it is incidental. The act of recollection, of garnering lists of things that bore him, distracts him from his immediate situation as he struggles with the mental anguish of the prospect of a humiliating orgasm. Literary lists do many things. They provide richness of detail, assemble and corroborate the materiality of the world of which they are a part and provide insight into the psyche and motivation of the collator. The sheer desperation of Dennis Potter’s Marlow attests to the arbitrariness of the list, the simple requirement that discrete and unrelated items can be assembled in linear order, without any obligation for topical concatenation. In its interrogative form, the list can serve a more urgent and distressing purpose than distraction:GOLDBERG: What do you use for pyjamas?STANLEY: Nothing.GOLDBERG: You verminate the sheet of your birth.MCCANN: What about the Albigensenist heresy?GOLDBERG: Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?MCCANN: What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?(Pinter 51)The interrogative non sequitur is an established feature of the art of intimidation. It is designed to exert maximum stress in the subject through the use of obscure asides and the endowing of trivial detail with profundity. Harold Pinter’s use of it in The Birthday Party reveals how central it was to his “theatre of menace.” The other tactic, which also draws on the logic of the inventory to be both sequential and discontinuous, is to break the subject’s will through a machine-like barrage of rhetorical questions that leave no time for answers.Pinter learned from Samuel Beckett the pitiless, unforgiving logic of trivial detail pushed to extremes. Think of Molloy’s dilemma of the sucking stones. In order for all sixteen stones that he carries with him to be sucked at least once to assuage his hunger, a reliable system has to be hit upon:Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, which I replaced with a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my greatcoat, which I replaced with the stone that was in my mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it. Thus there were still four stones in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same stones. And when the desire to suck took hold of me again, I drew again on the right pocket of my greatcoat, certain of not taking the same stone as the last time. And while I sucked it I rearranged the other stones in the way I have just described. And so on. (Beckett, Molloy 69)And so on for six pages. Exhaustive permutation within a finite lexical set is common in Beckett. In the novel Watt the eponymous central character is charged with serving his unseen master’s dinner as well as tidying up afterwards. A simple and bucolic enough task it would seem. But Beckett’s characters are not satisfied with conjecture, the simple assumption that someone must be responsible for Mr. Knott’s dining arrangements. Like Molloy’s solution to the sucking stone problem, all possible scenarios must be considered to explain the conundrum of how and why Watt never saw Knott at mealtime. Twelve possibilities are offered, among them that1. Mr. Knott was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that he was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that such an arrangement existed, and was content.2. Mr. Knott was not responsible for the arrangement, but knew who was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that such an arrangement existed, and was content.(Beckett, Watt 86)This stringent adherence to detail, absurd and exasperating as it is, is the work of fiction, the persistence of a viable, believable thing called Watt who exists as long as his thought is made manifest on a page. All writers face this pernicious prospect of having to confront and satisfy “fiction’s gargantuan appetite for fact, for detail, for documentation” (Kenner 70). A writer’s writer (Philip Marlow) Dennis Potter’s singing detective struggles with the acute consciousness that words eventually will fail him. His struggle to overcome verbal entropy is a spectre that haunts the entire literary imagination, for when the words stop the world stops.Beckett made this struggle the very stuff of his work, declaring famously that all he wanted to do as a writer was to leave “a stain upon the silence” (quoted in Bair 681). His characters deteriorate from recognisable people (Hamm in Endgame, Winnie in Happy Days) to mere ciphers of speech acts (the bodiless head Listener in That Time, Mouth in Not I). During this process they provide us with the vocabulary of entropy, a horror most eloquently expressed at the end of The Unnamable: I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. (Beckett, Molloy 418)The importance Beckett accorded to pauses in his writing, from breaks in dialogue to punctuation, stresses the pacing of utterance that is in sync with the rhythm of human breath. This is acutely underlined in Jack MacGowran’s extraordinary gramophone recording of the above passage from The Unnamable. There is exhaustion in his voice, but it is inflected by an urgent push for the next words to forestall the last gasp. And what might appear to be parsimony is in fact the very commerce of writing itself. It is an economy of necessity, when any words will suffice to sustain presence in the face of imminent silence.Hugh Kenner has written eloquently on the relationship between writing and entropy, drawing on field and number theory to demonstrate how the business of fiction is forever in the process of generating variation within a finite set. The “stoic comedian,” as he figures the writer facing the blank page, self-consciously practices their art in the full cognisance that they select “elements from a closed set, and then (arrange) them inside a closed field” (Kenner 94). The nouveau roman (a genre conceived and practiced in Beckett’s lean shadow) is remembered in literary history as a rather austere, po-faced formalism that foregrounded things at the expense of human psychology or social interaction. But it is emblematic of Kenner’s portrait of stoicism as an attitude to writing that confronts the nature of fiction itself, on its own terms, as a practice “which is endlessly arranging things” (13):The bulge of the bank also begins to take effect starting from the fifth row: this row, as a matter of fact, also possesses only twenty-one trees, whereas it should have twenty-two for a true trapezoid and twenty-three for a rectangle (uneven row). (Robbe-Grillet 21)As a matter of fact. The nouveau roman made a fine if myopic art of isolating detail for detail’s sake. However, it shares with both Beckett’s minimalism and Joyce’s maximalism the obligation of fiction to fill its world with stuff (“maximalism” is a term coined by Michel Delville and Andrew Norris in relation to the musical scores of Frank Zappa that opposes the minimalism of John Cage’s work). Kenner asks, in The Stoic Comedians, where do the “thousands on thousands of things come from, that clutter Ulysses?” His answer is simple, from “a convention” and this prosaic response takes us to the heart of the matter with respect to the impact on writing of Isaac Newton’s unforgiving Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the law’s strictest physical sense of the dissipation of heat, of the loss of energy within any closed system that moves, the stipulation of the Second Law predicts that words will, of necessity, stop in any form governed by convention (be it of horror, comedy, tragedy, the Bildungsroman, etc.). Building upon and at the same time refining the early work on motion and mass theorised by Aristotle, Kepler, and Galileo, inter alia, Newton refined both the laws and language of classical mechanics. It was from Wiener’s literary reading of Newton that Kenner segued from the loss of energy within any closed system (entropy) to the running silent out of words within fiction.In the wake of Norbert Wiener’s cybernetic turn in thinking in the 1940s, which was highly influenced by Newton’s Second Law, fiction would never again be considered in the same way (metafiction was a term coined in part to recognise this shift; the nouveau roman another). Far from delivering a reassured and reassuring present-ness, an integrated and ongoing cosmos, fiction is an isometric exercise in the struggle against entropy, of a world in imminent danger of running out of energy, of not-being:“His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat…” Four nouns, and the book’s world is heavier by four things. One, the hat, “Plasto’s high grade,” will remain in play to the end. The hand we shall continue to take for granted: it is Bloom’s; it goes with his body, which we are not to stop imagining. The peg and the overcoat will fade. “On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off.” Four more things. (Kenner 87)This passage from The Stoic Comedians is a tour de force of the conjuror’s art, slowing down the subliminal process of the illusion for us to see the fragility of fiction’s precarious grip on the verge of silence, heroically “filling four hundred empty pages with combinations of twenty-six different letters” (xiii). Kenner situates Joyce in a comic tradition, preceded by Gustave Flaubert and followed by Beckett, of exhaustive fictive possibility. The stoic, he tells us, “is one who considers, with neither panic nor indifference, that the field of possibilities available to him is large perhaps, or small perhaps, but closed” (he is prompt in reminding us that among novelists, gamblers and ethical theorists, the stoic is also a proponent of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) (xiii). If Joyce is the comedian of the inventory, then it is Flaubert, comedian of the Enlightenment, who is his immediate ancestor. Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) is an unfinished novel written in the shadow of the Encyclopaedia, an apparatus of the literate mind that sought complete knowledge. But like the Encyclopaedia particularly and the Enlightenment more generally, it is fragmentation that determines its approach to and categorisation of detail as information about the world. Bouvard and Pécuchet ends, appropriately, in a frayed list of details, pronouncements and ephemera.In the face of an unassailable impasse, all that is left Flaubert is the list. For more than thirty years he constructed the Dictionary of Received Ideas in the shadow of the truncated Bouvard and Pécuchet. And in doing so he created for the nineteenth century mind “a handbook for novelists” (Kenner 19), a breakdown of all we know “into little pieces so arranged that they can be found one at a time” (3): ACADEMY, FRENCH: Run it down but try to belong to it if you can.GREEK: Whatever one cannot understand is Greek.KORAN: Book about Mohammed, which is all about women.MACHIAVELLIAN: Word only to be spoken with a shudder.PHILOSOPHY: Always snigger at it.WAGNER: Snigger when you hear his name and joke about the music of the future. (Flaubert, Dictionary 293-330)This is a sample of the exhaustion that issues from the tireless pursuit of categorisation, classification, and the mania for ordered information. The Dictionary manifests the Enlightenment’s insatiable hunger for received ideas, an unwieldy background noise of popular opinion, general knowledge, expertise, and hearsay. In both Bouvard and Pécuchet and the Dictionary, exhaustion was the foundation of a comic art as it was for both Joyce and Beckett after him, for the simple reason that it includes everything and neglects nothing. It is comedy born of overwhelming competence, a sublime impertinence, though not of manners or social etiquette, but rather, with a nod to Oscar Wilde, the impertinence of being definitive (a droll epithet that, not surprisingly, was the title of Kenner’s 1982 Times Literary Supplement review of Richard Ellmann’s revised and augmented biography of Joyce).The inventory, then, is the underlining physio-semiotics of fictional mechanics, an elegiac resistance to the thread of fiction fraying into nothingness. The motif of thermodynamics is no mere literary conceit here. Consider the opening sentence in Borges:Of the many problems which exercised the reckless discernment of Lönnrot, none was so strange—so rigorously strange, shall we say—as the periodic series of bloody events which culminated at the villa of Triste-le-Roy, amid the ceaseless aroma of the eucalypti. (Borges 76)The subordinate clause, as a means of adjectival and adverbial augmentation, implies a potentially infinite sentence through the sheer force of grammatical convention, a machine-like resistance to running out of puff:Under the notable influence of Chesterton (contriver and embellisher of elegant mysteries) and the palace counsellor Leibniz (inventor of the pre-established harmony), in my idle afternoons I have imagined this story plot which I shall perhaps write someday and which already justifies me somehow. (72)In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” a single adjective charmed with emphasis will do to imply an unseen network:The visible work left by this novelist is easily and briefly enumerated. (Borges 36)The annotation of this network is the inexorable issue of the inflection: “I have said that Menard’s work can be easily enumerated. Having examined with care his personal files, I find that they contain the following items.” (37) This is a sample selection from nineteen entries:a) A Symbolist sonnet which appeared twice (with variants) in the review La conque (issues of March and October 1899).o) A transposition into alexandrines of Paul Valéry’s Le cimitière marin (N.R.F., January 1928).p) An invective against Paul Valéry, in the Papers for the Suppression of Reality of Jacques Reboul. (37-38)Lists, when we encounter them in Jorge Luis Borges, are always contextual, supplying necessary detail to expand upon character and situation. And they are always intertextual, anchoring this specific fictional world to others (imaginary, real, fabulatory or yet to come). The collation and annotation of the literary works of an imagined author (Pierre Menard) of an invented author (Edmond Teste) of an actual author (Paul Valéry) creates a recursive, yet generative, feedback loop of reference and literary progeny. As long as one of these authors continues to write, or write of the work of at least one of the others, a persistent fictional present tense is ensured.Consider Hillel Schwartz’s use of the list in his Making Noise (2011). It not only lists what can and is inevitably heard, in this instance the European 1700s, but what it, or local aural colour, is heard over:Earthy: criers of artichokes, asparagus, baskets, beans, beer, bells, biscuits, brooms, buttermilk, candles, six-pence-a-pound fair cherries, chickens, clothesline, cockles, combs, coal, crabs, cucumbers, death lists, door mats, eels, fresh eggs, firewood, flowers, garlic, hake, herring, ink, ivy, jokebooks, lace, lanterns, lemons, lettuce, mackeral, matches […]. (Schwartz 143)The extended list and the catalogue, when encountered as formalist set pieces in fiction or, as in Schwartz’s case, non-fiction, are the expansive equivalent of le mot juste, the self-conscious, painstaking selection of the right word, the specific detail. Of Ulysses, Kenner observes that it was perfectly natural that it “should have attracted the attention of a group of scholars who wanted practice in compiling a word-index to some extensive piece of prose (Miles Hanley, Word Index to Ulysses, 1937). More than any other work of fiction, it suggests by its texture, often by the very look of its pages, that it has been painstakingly assembled out of single words…” (31-32). In a book already crammed with detail, with persistent reference to itself, to other texts, other media, such formalist set pieces as the following from the oneiric “Circe” episode self-consciously perform for our scrutiny fiction’s insatiable hunger for more words, for invention, the Latin root of which also gives us the word inventory:The van of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor Dublin, the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the Presbyterian moderator, the heads of the Baptist, Anabaptist, Methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society of friends. (Joyce, Ulysses 602-604)Such examples demonstrate how Joycean inventories break from narrative as architectonic, stand-alone assemblages of information. They are Rabelaisian irruptions, like Philip Marlow’s lesions, that erupt in swollen bas-relief. The exaggerated, at times hysterical, quality of such lists, perform the hallucinatory work of displacement and condensation (the Homeric parallel here is the transformation of Odysseus’s men into swine by the witch Circe). Freudian, not to mention Stindberg-ian dream-work brings together and juxtaposes images and details that only make sense as non-sense (realistic but not real), such as the extraordinary explosive gathering of civic, commercial, political, chivalric representatives of Dublin in this foreshortened excerpt of Bloom’s regal campaign for his “new Bloomusalem” (606).The text’s formidable echolalia, whereby motifs recur and recapitulate into leitmotifs, ensures that the act of reading Ulysses is always cross-referential, suggesting the persistence of a conjured world that is always already still coming into being through reading. And it is of course this forestalling of Newton’s Second Law that Joyce brazenly conducts, in both the textual and physical sense, in Finnegans Wake. The Wake is an impossible book in that it infinitely sustains the circulation of words within a closed system, creating a weird feedback loop of cyclical return. It is a text that can run indefinitely through the force of its own momentum without coming to a conclusion. In a text in which the author’s alter ego is described in terms of the technology of inscription (Shem the Penman) and his craft as being a “punsil shapner,” (Joyce, Finnegans 98) Norbert Wiener’s descriptive example of feedback as the forestalling of entropy in the conscious act of picking up a pencil is apt: One we have determined this, our motion proceeds in such a way that we may say roughly that the amount by which the pencil is not yet picked up is decreased at each stage. (Wiener 7) The Wake overcomes the book’s, and indeed writing’s, struggle with entropy through the constant return of energy into its closed system as a cycle of endless return. Its generative algorithm can be represented thus: “… a long the riverrun …” (628-3). The Wake’s sense of unending confounds and contradicts, in advance, Frank Kermode’s averring to Newton’s Second Law in his insistence that the progression of all narrative fiction is defined in terms of the “sense of an ending,” the expectation of a conclusion, whereby the termination of words makes “possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with the middle” (Kermode 17). It is the realisation of the novel imagined by Silas Flannery, the fictitious author in Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller, an incipit that “maintains for its whole duration the potentiality of the beginning” (Calvino 140). Finnegans Wake is unique in terms of the history of the novel (if that is indeed what it is) in that it is never read, but (as Joseph Frank observed of Joyce generally) “can only be re-read” (Frank 19). With Wiener’s allegory of feedback no doubt in mind, Jacques Derrida’s cybernetic account of the act of reading Joyce comes, like a form of echolalia, on the heels of Calvino’s incipit, his perpetual sustaining of the beginning: you stay on the edge of reading Joyce—for me this has been going on for twenty-five or thirty years—and the endless plunge throws you back onto the river-bank, on the brink of another possible immersion, ad infinitum … In any case, I have the feeling that I haven’t yet begun to read Joyce, and this “not having begun to read” is sometimes the most singular and active relationship I have with his work. (Derrida 148) Derrida wonders if this process of ongoing immersion in the text is typical of all works of literature and not just the Wake. The question is rhetorical and resonates into silence. And it is silence, ultimately, that hovers as a mute herald of the end when words will simply run out.Post(script)It is in the nature of all writing that it is read in the absence of its author. Perhaps the most typical form of writing, then, is the suicide note. In an extraordinary essay, “Goodbye, Cruel Words,” Mark Dery wonders why it has been “so neglected as a literary genre” and promptly sets about reviewing its decisive characteristics. Curiously, the list features amongst its many forms: I’m done with lifeI’m no goodI’m dead. (Dery 262)And references to lists of types of suicide notes are among Dery’s own notes to the essay. With its implicit generic capacity to intransitively add more detail, the list becomes in the light of the terminal letter a condition of writing itself. The irony of this is not lost on Dery as he ponders the impotent stoicism of the scribbler setting about the mordant task of writing for the last time. Writing at the last gasp, as Dery portrays it, is a form of dogged, radical will. But his concluding remarks are reflective of his melancholy attitude to this most desperate act of writing at degree zero: “The awful truth (unthinkable to a writer) is that eloquent suicide notes are rarer than rare because suicide is the moment when language fails—fails to hoist us out of the pit, fails even to express the unbearable weight” (264) of someone on the precipice of the very last word they will ever think, let alone write. Ihab Hassan (1967) and George Steiner (1967), it would seem, were latecomers as proselytisers of the language of silence. But there is a queer, uncanny optimism at work at the terminal moment of writing when, contra Dery, words prevail on the verge of “endless, silent night.” (264) Perhaps when Newton’s Second Law no longer has carriage over mortal life, words take on a weird half-life of their own. Writing, after Socrates, does indeed circulate indiscriminately among its readers. There is a dark irony associated with last words. When life ceases, words continue to have the final say as long as they are read, and in so doing they sustain an unlikely, and in their own way, stoical sense of unending.ReferencesBair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape, 1978.Beckett, Samuel. Molloy Malone Dies. The Unnamable. London: John Calder, 1973.---. Watt. London: John Calder, 1976.Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. Selected Stories & Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1964.Calvino, Italo. If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. Trans. William Weaver, London: Picador, 1981.Delville, Michael, and Andrew Norris. “Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Secret History of Maximalism.” Ed. Louis Armand. Contemporary Poetics: Redefining the Boundaries of Contemporary Poetics, in Theory & Practice, for the Twenty-First Century. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2007. 126-49.Derrida, Jacques. “Two Words for Joyce.” Post-Structuralist Joyce. Essays from the French. Ed. Derek Attridge and Daniel Ferrer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. 145-59.Dery, Mark. I Must Not think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012.Frank, Joseph, “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” Sewanee Review, 53, 1945: 221-40, 433-56, 643-53.Flaubert, Gustave. Bouvard and Pécuchet. Trans. A. J. KrailSheimer. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.Flaubert, Gustave. Dictionary of Received Ideas. Trans. A. J. KrailSheimer. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.Hassan, Ihab. The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett. New York: Knopf, 1967.Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.---. Ulysses. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.Kenner, Hugh. The Stoic Comedians. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974.Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Narrative Fiction. New York: Oxford U P, 1966.‪Levin, Bernard. Enthusiasms. London: Jonathan Cape, 1983.MacGowran, Jack. MacGowran Speaking Beckett. Claddagh Records, 1966.Pinter, Harold. The Birthday Party. London: Methuen, 1968.Potter, Dennis. The Singing Detective. London, Faber and Faber, 1987.Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Jealousy. Trans. Richard Howard. London: John Calder, 1965.Schwartz, Hillel. Making Noise. From Babel to the Big Bang and Beyond. New York: Zone Books, 2011.Steiner, George. Language and Silence: New York: Atheneum, 1967.Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics, Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965.

Ever since I tripped over Tiddles while I was carrying a pile of discs into the studio, I’ve known it was possible to get a laugh out of gramophone records!Max Bygraves In 1978 the music critic Lester Bangs published a typically pugnacious essay with the fighting title, “The Ten Most Ridiculous Albums of the Seventies.” Before deliciously launching into his execution of Uri Geller’s self-titled album or Rick Dees’ The Original Disco Duck, Bangs asserts that because that decade was history’s silliest, it stands to reason “that ridiculous records should become the norm instead of anomalies,” that abominations should be the best of our time (Bangs, 1978). This absurd pretzel logic sounds uncannily like Jacques Derrida’s definition of the “post” condition, since for it to arrive it begins by not arriving (Derrida 1987, 29). Lester is thinking like a poststructuralist. The oddness of the most singularly odd album out in Bangs’ greatest misses of the seventies had nothing to do with how ridiculous it was, but the fact that it even existed at all. (Bangs 1978) The album was entitled The Best of Marcel Marceao. Produced by Michael Viner the album contained four tracks, with two identical on both sides: “Silence,” which is nineteen minutes long and “Applause,” one minute. To underline how extraordinary this gramophone record is, John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing (1959) is cacophonous by comparison. While Bangs agrees with popular opinion that The Best of Marcel Marceao the “ultimate concept album,” he concluded that this is “one of those rare records that never dates” (Bangs, 1978). This tacet album is a good way to start thinking about the Classical Gas project, and the ironic semiotics at work in it (Tofts & Gye 2011). It too is about records that are silent and that never date. First, the album’s cover art, featuring a theatrically posed Marceau, implies the invitation to speak in the absence of speech; or, in our terms, it is asking to be re-written. Secondly, the French mime’s surname is spelled incorrectly, with an “o” rather than “u” as the final letter. As well as the caprice of an actual album by Marcel Marceau, the implicit presence and absence of the letters o and u is appropriately in excess of expectations, weird and unexpected like an early title in the Classical Gas catalogue, Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. (classical-gas.com) Like a zootrope animation, it is impossible not to see the o and u flickering at one at the same time on the cover. In this duplicity it performs the conventional and logical permutation of English grammar. Silence invites difference, variation within a finite lexical set and the opportunity to choose individual items from it. Here is album cover art that speaks of presence and absence, of that which is anticipated and unexpected: a gramophone recoding without sound. In this the Marceau cover is one of Roland Barthes’ mythologies, something larger than life, structured like a language and structured out of language (Barthes 1982). This ambiguity is the perfidious grammar that underwrites Classical Gas. Images, we learned from structuralism, are codified, or rather, are code. Visual remix is a rhetorical gesture of recoding that interferes with the semiotic DNA of an image. The juxtaposition of text and image is interchangeable and requires our imagination of what we are looking at and what it might sound like. This persistent interplay of metaphor and metonymy has enabled us to take more than forty easy listening albums and republish them as mild-mannered recordings from the maverick history of ideas, from Marxism and psychoanalysis, to reception theory, poststructuralism and the writings of critical auteurs. Foucault à gogo, for instance, takes a 1965 James Last dance album and recodes it as the second volume of The History of Sexuality. In saying this, we are mindful of the ambivalence of the very possibility of this connection, to how and when the eureka moment of remix recognition occurs, if at all. Mix and remix are, after Jean Baudrillard, both precession and procession of simulacra (Baudrillard, 1983). The nature of remix is that it is always already elusive and anachronistic. Not everyone can be guaranteed to see the shadow of one text in dialogue with another, like a hi-fi palimpsest. Or another way of saying this, such an epiphany of déjà vu, of having seen this before, may happen after the fact of encounter. This anachrony is central to remix practices, from the films of Quentin Tarrantino and the “séance fictions” of Soda_Jerk, to obscure Flintstones/Goodfellas mashups on YouTube. It is also implicit in critical understandings of an improbable familiarity with the superabundance of cultural archives, the dizzying excess of an infinite record library straight out of Jorge Luis Borges’ ever-expanding imagination. Drifting through the stacks of such a repository over an entire lifetime any title found, for librarian and reader alike, is either original and remix, sometime. Metalanguages that seek to counter this ambivalence are forms of bad faith, like film spoilers Brodie’s Notes. Accordingly, this essay sets out to explain some of the generic conventions of Classical Gas, as a remix project in which an image’s semiotic DNA is rewired and recontextualised. While a fake, it is also completely real (Faith in fakes, as it happens, may well be a forthcoming Umberto Eco title in the series). While these album covers are hyperreal, realistic in excess of being real, the project does take some inspiration from an actual, rather than imaginary archive of album covers. In 2005, Jewish artist Dani Gal happened upon a 1968 LP that documented the events surrounding the Six Day War in Israel in 1967. To his surprise, he found a considerable number of similar LPs to do with significant twentieth century historical events, speeches and political debates. In the artist’s own words, the LPs collected in his Historical Record Archive (2005-ongoing) are in fact silent, since it is only their covers that are exhibited in installations of this work, signifying a potential sound that visitors must try to audition. As Gal has observed, the interactive contract of the work is derived from the audience’s instinct to “try to imagine the sounds” even though they cannot listen to them (Gal 2011, 182). Classical Gas deliberately plays with this potential yearning that Gal astutely instils in his viewer and aspiring auditor. While they can never be listened to, they can entice, after Gilles Deleuze, a “virtual co-existence” of imaginary sound that manifests itself as a contract between viewer and LP (Deleuze 1991, 63). The writer Jeffrey Sconce condensed this embrace of the virtual as something plausibly real when he pithily observed of the Classical Gas project that it is “the thrift-bin in my fantasy world. I want to play S/Z at 78 rpm” (Sconce 2011). In terms of Sconce’s spectral media interests the LPs are haunted by the trace of potential “other” sounds that have taken possession of and appropriated the covers for another use (Sconce 2000).Mimetic While most albums are elusive and metaphoric (such as Freud’s Totem and Taboo, or Luce Irigaray’s Ethics of Sexual Difference), some titles do make a concession to a tantalizing, mimetic literalness (such as Das Institut fur Sozialforschung). They display a trace of the haunting subject in terms of a tantalizing echo of fact or suggestion of verifiable biography. The motivation here is the recognition of a potential similarity, since most Classical Gas titles work by contrast. As with Roland Barthes’ analysis of the erotics of the fashion system, so with Gilles Deleuze’s Coldness and Cruelty: it is “where the garment gapes” that the tease begins. (Barthes 1994, 9) Or, in this instance, where the cigarette smokes. (classical-gas.com) A casual Max Bygraves, paused in mid-thought, looks askance while lighting up. Despite the temptation to read even more into this, a smoking related illness did not contribute to Bygraves’ death in 2012. However, dying of Alzheimer’s disease, his dementia is suggestive of the album’s intrinsic capacity to be a palimpsest of the co-presence of different memories, of confused identities, obscure realities that are virtual and real. Beginning with the album cover itself, it has to become an LP (Deleuze 1991, 63). First, it is a cardboard, planar sleeve measuring 310mm squared, that can be imprinted with a myriad of different images. Secondly, it is conventionally identified in terms of a title, such as Organ Highlights or Classics Up to Date. Thirdly it is inscribed by genre, which may be song, drama, spoken word, or novelty albums of industrial or instrumental sounds, such as Memories of Steam and Accelerated Accordians. A case in point is John Woodhouse And His Magic Accordion from 1969. (classical-gas.com) All aspects of its generic attributes as benign and wholesome accordion tunes are warped and re-interpreted in Classical Gas. Springtime for Kittler appeared not long after the death of its eponymous philosopher in 2011. Directed by Richard D. James, also known as Aphex Twin, it is a homage album to Friedrich Kittler by the PostProducers, a fictitious remix collective inspired by Mel Brooks whose personnel include Mark Amerika and Darren Tofts. The single from this album, yet to be released, is a paean to Kittler’s last words, “Alle Apparate auschalten.” Foucault à gogo (vol. 2), the first album remixed for this series, is also typical of this archaeological approach to the found object. (classical-gas.com) The erasure and replacement of pre-existing text in a similar font re-writes an iconic image of wooing that is indicative of romantic album covers of this period. This album is reflective of the overall project in that the actual James Last album (1968) preceded the publication of the Foucault text (1976) that haunts it. This is suggestive of how coding and recoding are in the eye of the beholder and the specific time in which the remixed album is encountered. It doesn’t take James Last, Michel Foucault or Theodor Holm Nelson to tell you that there is no such thing as a collective memory with linear recall. As the record producer Milt Gabler observes in the liner notes to this album, “whatever the title with this artist, the tune remains the same, that distinct and unique Foucault à gogo.” “This artist” in this instance is Last or Foucault, as well as Last and Foucault. Similarly Milt Gabler is an actual author of liner notes (though not on the James Last album) whose words from another album, another context and another time, are appropriated and deftly re-written with Last’s Hammond à gogo volume 2 and The History of Sexuality in mind as a palimpsest (this approach to sampling liner notes and re-writing them as if they speak for the new album is a trope at work in all the titles in the series). And after all is said and done with the real or remixed title, both artists, after Umberto Eco, will have spoken once more of love (Eco 1985, 68). Ambivalence Foucault à gogo is suggestive of the semiotic rewiring that underwrites Classical Gas as a whole. What is at stake in this is something that poststructuralism learned from its predecessor. Taking the tenuous conventionality of Ferdinand de Saussure’s signifier and signified as a starting point, Lacan, Derrida and others embraced the freedom of this arbitrariness as the convention or social contract that brings together a thing and a word that denotes it. This insight of liberation, or what Hélène Cixous and others, after Jacques Lacan, called jouissance (Lacan 1992), meant that texts were bristling with ambiguity and ambivalence, free play, promiscuity and, with a nod to Mikhail Bakhtin, carnival (Bakhtin 1984). A picture of a pipe was, after Foucault after Magritte, not a pipe (Foucault 1983). This po-faced sophistry is expressed in René Magritte’s “Treachery of Images” of 1948, which screamed out that the word pipe could mean anything. Foucault’s reprise of Magritte in “This is Not a Pipe” also speaks of Classical Gas’ embrace of the elasticity of sign and signifier, his “plastic elements” an inadvertent suggestion of vinyl (Foucault 1983, 53). (classical-gas.com) This uncanny association of structuralism and remixed vinyl LPs is intimated in Ferdinand de Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale. Its original cover art is straight out of a structuralist text-book, with its paired icons and words of love, rain, honey, rose, etc. But this text as performed by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians in New York in 1956 is no less plausible than Saussure’s lectures in Geneva in 1906. Cultural memory and cultural amnesia are one and the same thing. Out of all of the Classical Gas catalogue, this album is arguably the most suggestive of what Jeffrey Sconce would call “haunting” (Sconce, 2000), an ambivalent mixing of the “memory and desire” that T.S. Eliot wrote of in the allusive pages of The Waste Land (Eliot 1975, 27). Here we encounter the memory of a bookish study of signs from the early twentieth century and the desire for its vinyl equivalent on World Record Club in the 1960s. Memory and desire, either or, or both. This ambivalence was deftly articulated by Roland Barthes in his last book, Camera Lucida, as a kind of spectral haunting, a vision or act of double seeing in the perception of the photographic image. This flickering of perception is never static, predictable or repeatable. It is a way of seeing contingent upon who is doing the looking and when. Barthes famously conceptualised this interplay in perception of an between the conventions that culture has mandated, its studium, and the unexpected, idiosyncratic double vision that is unique to the observer, its punctum (Barthes 1982, 26-27). Accordingly, the Cours de linguistique générale is a record by Saussure as well as the posthumous publication in Paris and Lausanne of notes from his lectures in 1916. (Barthes 1982, 51) With the caption “Idiot children in an institution, New Jersey, 1924,” American photographer Lewis Hine’s anthropological study declares that this is a clinical image of pathological notions of monstrosity and aberration at the time. Barthes though, writing in a post-1968 Paris, only sees an outrageous Danton collar and a banal finger bandage (Barthes 1982, 51). With the radical, protestant cries of the fallout of the Paris riots in mind, as well as a nod to music writer Greil Marcus (1989), it is tempting to see Hine’s image as the warped cover of a Dead Kennedys album, perhaps Plastic Surgery Disasters. In terms of the Classical Gas approach to recoding, though, this would be far too predictable; for a start there is neither a pipe, a tan cardigan nor a chenille scarf to be seen. A more heart-warming, suitable title might be Ray Conniff’s 1965 Christmas Album: Here We Come A-Caroling. Irony (secretprehistory.net) Like our Secret Gestural Prehistory of Mobile Devices project (Tofts & Gye), Classical Gas approaches the idea of recoding and remixing with a relentless irony. The kind of records we collect and the covers which we use for this project are what you would expect to find in the hutch of an old gramophone player, rather than “what’s hot” in iTunes. The process of recoding the album covers seeks to realign expectations of what is being looked at, such that it becomes difficult to see it in any other way. In this an album’s recoded signification implies the recognition of the already seen, of album covers like this, that signal something other than what we are seeing; colours, fonts etc., belonging to a historical period, to its genres and its demographic. One of the more bucolic and duplicitous forms of rhetoric, irony wants it both ways, to be totally lounge and theoretically too-cool-for school, as in Rencontre Terrestre by Hélène Cixous and Frédéric-Yves Jeannet. (classical-gas.com) This image persuades through the subtle alteration of typography that it belongs to a style, a period and a vibe that would seem to be at odds with the title and content of the album, but as a totality of image and text is entirely plausible. The same is true of Roland Barthes’ S/Z. The radical semiologist invites us into his comfortable sitting room for a cup of coffee. A traditional Times font reinforces the image of Barthes as an avuncular, Sunday afternoon story-teller or crooner, more Alistair Cooke/Perry Como than French Marxist. (classical-gas.com) In some instances, like Histoire de Tel Quel, there is no text at all on the cover and the image has to do its signifying work iconographically. (classical-gas.com) Here a sixties collage of French-ness on the original Victor Sylvester album from 1963 precedes and anticipates the re-written album it has been waiting for. That said, the original title In France is rather bland compared to Histoire de Tel Quel. A chic blond, the Eiffel Tower and intellectual obscurity vamp synaesthetically, conjuring the smell of Gauloises, espresso and agitated discussions of Communism on the Boulevard St. Germain. With Marcel Marceao with an “o” in mind, this example of a cover without text ironically demonstrates how Classical Gas, like The Secret Gestural Prehistory of Mobile Devices, is ostensibly a writing project. Just as the images are taken hostage from other contexts, text from the liner notes is sampled from other records and re-written in an act of ghost-writing to complete the remixed album. Without the liner notes, Classical Gas would make a capable Photoshop project, but lacks any force as critical remix. The redesigned and re-titled covers certainly re-code the album, transform it into something else; something else that obviously or obliquely reflects the theme, ideas or content of the title, whether it’s Louis Althusser’s Philosophy as a Revolutionary Weapon or Luce Irigaray’s An Ethics of Sexual Difference. If you don’t hear the ruggedness of Leslie Fiedler’s essays in No! In Thunder then the writing hasn’t worked. The liner notes are the albums’ conscience, the rubric that speaks the tunes, the words and elusive ideas that are implied but can never be heard. The Histoire de Tel Quel notes illustrate this suggestiveness: You may well think as is. Philippe Forest doesn’t, not in this Éditions du Seuil classic. The titles included on this recording have been chosen with a dual purpose: for those who wish to think and those who wish to listen. What Forest captures in this album is distinctive, fresh and daring. For what country has said it like it is, has produced more robustesse than France? Here is some of that country’s most famous talent swinging from silk stockings, the can-can, to amour, presented with the full spectrum of stereo sound. (classical-gas.com) The writing accurately imitates the inflection and rhythm of liner notes of the period, so on the one hand it sounds plausibly like a toe-tapping dance album. On the other, and at the same time, it gestures knowingly to the written texts upon which it is based, invoking its rigours as a philosophical text. The dithering suggestiveness of both – is it music or text – is like a scrambled moving image always coming into focus, never quite resolving into one or the other. But either is plausible. The Tel Quel theorists were interested in popular culture like the can-can, they were fascinated with the topic of love and if instead of books they produced albums, their thinking would be auditioned in full stereo sound. With irony in mind, then, it’s hardly surprising to know that the implicit title of the project, that is neither seen nor heard but always imminent, is Classical Gasbags. (classical-gas.com) Liner notes elaborate and complete an implicit narrative in the title and image, making something compellingly realistic that is a composite of reality and fabulation. Consider Adrian Martin’s Surrealism (A Quite Special Frivolity): France is the undeniable capital of today’s contemporary sound. For Adrian Martin, this is home ground. His French soul glows and expands in the lovely Mediterranean warmth of this old favourite, released for the first time on Project 3 Total Sound Stereo. But don’t be deceived by the tonal and melodic caprices that carry you along in flutter-free sound. As Martin hits his groove, there will be revolution by night. Watch out for new Adrian Martin releases soon, including La nuit expérimentale and, his first title in English in many years, One more Bullet in the Head (produced by Bucky Pizzarelli). (classical-gas.com) Referring to Martin’s famous essay of the same name, these notes allusively skirt around his actual biography (he regularly spends time in France), his professional writing on surrealism (“revolution by night” was the sub-title of a catalogue for the Surrealism exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1993 to which he contributed an essay) (Martin 1993), as well as “One more bullet in the head,” the rejected title of an essay that was published in World Art magazine in New York in the mid-1990s. While the cover evokes the cool vibe of nouvelle vague Paris, it is actually from a 1968 album, Roma Oggi by the American guitarist Tony Mottola (a real person who actually sounds like a fictional character from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in America, a film on which Martin has written a book for the British Film Institute). Plausibility, in terms of Martin’s Surrealism album, has to be as compellingly real as the sincerity of Sandy Scott’s Here’s Sandy. And it should be no surprise to see the cover art of Scott’s album return as Georges Bataille’s Erotism. Gramophone The history of the gramophone represents the technological desire to write sound. In this the gramophone record is a ligature of sound and text, a form of phonographic writing. With this history in mind it’s hardly surprising that theorists such as Derrida and Kittler included the gramophone under the conceptual framework of a general grammatology (Derrida 1992, 253 & Kittler 1997, 28). (classical-gas.com) Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology is the avatar of Classical Gas in its re-writing of a previous writing. Re-inscribing the picaresque Pal Joey soundtrack as a foundation text of post-structuralism is appropriate in terms of the gramme or literate principle of Western metaphysics as well as the echolalia of remix. As Derrida observes in Of Grammatology, history and knowledge “have always been determined (and not only etymologically or philosophically) as detours for the purpose of the reappropriation of presence” (Derrida 1976, 10). A gas way to finish, you might say. But in retrospect the ur-text that drives the poetics of Classical Gas is not Of Grammatology but the errant Marcel Marceau album described previously. Far from being an oddity, an aberration or a “novelty” album, it is a classic gramophone recording, the quintessential writing of an absent speech, offbeat and untimely. References Bahktin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Hélène Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. Bangs, Lester. “The Ten Most Ridiculous Albums of the Seventies”. Phonograph Record Magazine, March, 1978. Reproduced at http://rateyourmusic.com/list/dacapo/the_ten_most_ridiculous_records_of_the_seventies__by_lester_bangs. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. London: Flamingo, 1982. ---. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. London: Granada, 1982. ---. The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. Richard Miller. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. New York: Semiotext[e], 1983. Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Zone Books, 2000. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976. ---. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987. ---. “Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce,” in Acts of Literature. Ed. Derek Attridge. New York: Routledge, 1992. Eco, Umberto. Reflections on The Name of the Rose. Trans. William Weaver. London: Secker & Warburg, 1985. Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Poems. London: Faber & Faber, 1975. Foucault, Michel. This Is Not a Pipe. Trans. James Harkness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. ---. The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality Volume 2. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1985. Gal, Dani. Interview with Jens Hoffmann, Istanbul Biennale Companion. Istanbul Foundation for Culture and the Arts, 2011. Kittler, Friedrich. “Gramophone, Film, Typewriter,” in Literature, Media, Information Systems. Ed. John Johnston. Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1997. Lacan, Jacques. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959–1960): The Seminar of Jacques Lacan. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. London: Secker & Warburg, 1989. Martin, Adrian. “The Artificial Night: Surrealism and Cinema,” in Surrealism: Revolution by Night. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 1993. Sconce, Jeffrey. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. ---. Online communication with authors, June 2011. Tofts, Darren and Lisa Gye. The Secret Gestural Prehistory of Mobile Devices. 2010-ongoing. http://www.secretprehistory.net/. ---. Classical Gas. 2011-ongoing. http://www.classical-gas.com/.

The release of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and his subsequent training of thousands of Climate Presenters marks a critical transition point in communication around climate change. An analysis of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation and of the guidelines we were taught as Presenters in The Climate Project, show they reflect the marketing principles that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) report Weathercocks and Signposts (Crompton) argues cannot achieve the systemic and transformational changes required to address global warming. This paper will consider the ultimate effectiveness of social marketing approaches to Climate change communication and the Al Gore Climate Project in the light of the WWF critique. Both the film and the various slideshow presentations of An Inconvenient Truth conclude with a series of suggestions about how to “how to start” changing “the way you live.” The audience is urged to: Reduce your own emissions Switch to green power Offset the rest Spread the word The focus on changing individual consumption in An Inconvenient Truth is also reflected in the climate campaign page Get Involved on the website of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)—the Australian partner in Al Gore’s The Climate Project (TCP). Al Gore’s Climate Project, with over 3,000 Climate Presenters worldwide, could be seen as a giant experimental test of the merits of marketing approaches to social change as compared to the recommendations in the WWF critique authored by Crompton. In Orion magazine, Derrick Jensen has described this emphasis on “personal consumption” instead of “organized political resistance” as “a campaign of systematic misdirection.” Jensen points out that “even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent.” The latest scientific reports show we are on the edge of a tipping point into catastrophic climate change—runaway warming which would render the planet uninhabitable for most life forms, including humans (Hansen et al 13). To reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change to a still worrying 13% we need significant action between now and 2012, and carbon dioxide levels will need to be stabilised at between 350 and 375 parts per million by 2050 (Elzen and Meinshausen 17). Because Americans and Australians are taking far more than our share of the global atmospheric commons, we need to reduce our emissions to less than 90% below 1990 levels by 2050 as our share of the global emission reduction targets (Elzen and Meinshausen 24; Garnaut 283). In other words, if one takes the science seriously there is a huge shortfall between the reductions which can be achieved by individual changes to consumption and the scale of reductions that are required to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change to a half-way tolerable level. The actions being promoted as solutions are nowhere near “inconvenient” enough to solve the problem. Like Crompton and Jensen I was inclined to take the gap between goal and means as overwhelming evidence for the inadequacy of marketing approaches emphasising changes to individual consumption choices. Like them I was concerned that the emphasis on consumption in marketing approaches may even reinforce the consumerism and materialism that drives the growth in emissions. Whilst being generally critical of marketing approaches, Crompton says he accepts the importance marketers place on tailoring the message to fit the motivations of the target audience (25). However, while Crompton describes Rose and Dade’s “Values Modes analysis” as “a sophisticated technique for audience segmentation” (21), he rejects the campaign strategies designed around the target audiences they identify (23). Market segmentation provides communications practitioners with the “extensive knowledge of whom you are trying to reach and what moves them” which is one of the “three must haves” of a successful communication campaign (Fenton 3). Rose and Dade’s segmentation analysis categorises people based on the motivational hierarchy in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. They identify three population groupings—the Settlers, driven by security; the Prospectors, esteem driven; and the Pioneers, who are motivated by intrinsic values (1). As with Maslow’s hierarchy these “Values Modes” are developmentally dynamic. The satisfaction of more basic needs, like physical safety and economic security, support a developmental pathway to the next level. Just as the satisfaction of the need for social acceptance and status free the individual to become motivated by self-actualisation, universal and compassionate ethics, and transcendence. Because individuals move in and out of Values Modes, depending on the degree to which economic, social and political conditions facilitate the satisfaction of their needs, the percentage of the population in each group varies across time and location (Rose and Dade 1). In 2007 the UK population was 20% Settlers, 40% Prospectors, and 40% Pioneers (Rose and Dade 1), but the distribution in other countries would need to be determined empirically. Rose et al provide a strategic rationale for a marketing based climate campaign targeted at changing the behaviours of Prospectors, rather than appealing to Pioneers. While the Pioneers are 40% of the population, they don’t like being “marketed at,” they seek out information for themselves and make up their own minds, and “will often have already considered your ideas and decided what to do” (6). They are also well catered for by environmental groups’ existing ethical and issues based campaigns (3). Prospectors, on the other hand, are the 40% of the population which are the “least reached” by existing ethical or issues oriented environmental campaigning; are the most enthusiastic (or “voracious”) consumers, so their choices will sway business; and they tend to be swinging voters, so if their opinions change it will sway politicians (4). Rose et al (13) found that in order to appeal to Prospectors a climate change communications campaign should: Refer to local, visible, negative changes involving loss or damage [In the UK] show the significance of UK emissions and those of normal people (i.e. like them) Use interest in homes and gardens Deploy the nag factor of their children Create offers which are above all easy, cost-effective, instant and painless Prospectors don’t like, and will be put off by campaigns that (Rose et al 13): Talk about the implications: too remote and they are not very bothered Use messengers (voices) which lack authority or could be challenged Criticise behaviours (e.g. wrong type of car, ‘wasting’ energy in your home) Ask them to give things up Ask them to be the first to change (amongst their peers) Invoke critical judgement by others Crompton recommends an environmental campaign that attempts to persuade Prospectors that they are wrong in thinking material consumption and “ostentatious displays of wealth” contribute to their happiness. Prospectors see precisely these sorts of comments by Concerned Ethicals as a judgemental criticism of their love of things, and a denial of their need for the acceptance and approval of others. Maslow’s developmental model, as well as the Value Modes research, would suggest that Crompton’s proposal is the exact opposite of what is required to move Prospectors into the Pioneer value mode. It is by accepting the values people have, and allowing them to meet the needs that drive them, that they can move on to more intrinsically motivated action. Crompton would appear to fall into the common “NGO or public sector campaign […] trap” of devising a campaign based on what will appeal to the 10% of the population that are Concerned Ethicals, but in the process “particularly annoy or intimidate” the strategically significant 40% of the population that are Prospectors (Rose et al 8). Crompton ignores the evidence from marketing campaign research that campaigns can’t directly change people’s basic motivations, while they can change people’s behaviours if they target their existing motivations. Contrary to Crompton’s claim that promoting green consumption will reinforce consumerism and materialism (16), Rose and Dade base their campaign strategy on the results of research into cognitive dissonance, which show that if you can get someone to act a certain way, they will alter their beliefs and preferences, as well as their self concept, to fit with their actions. Crompton confuses a tactic in a larger game, with the end goal of the game. “The trick is to get them to do the behaviour, not to develop the opinion” (Rose, “VBCOP” 2). Prospectors are persuaded to adopt a behaviour if they see it as “in,” and as what everyone else like them is doing. They are more easily persuaded to buy a product than adopt some other sort of behavioural change. The next part of an environmental marketing strategy like this is to label, praise and reward the behaviour (Futerra 11). Rose suggests that Prospectors can be engaged politically if governments are called on to recognise and reward the behaviour “say by giving them a tax break or paying them for their rooftop energy contribution” (“VBCOP” 3). Once governments have given such rewards, both Settlers and Propectors will fight to keep them, where they are normally disinclined to fight political battles. Once Prospectors identify themselves as, for example, in favour of renewable energy, politicians can be persuaded they need to act to get and keep votes, and business can be persuaded to change in order to continue to attract buyers for their products. In order to achieve the scale of emission reductions required individuals need to change their consumption patterns; politicians need to change the regulatory and planning context in which both individual and corporate decisions are made; and the economic system needs to be transformed so it internalises environmental costs and operates within environmental limits. Social marketing analyses have identified changing Prospectors buying habits as the wedge, or leverage point that can lead to such a cascading set of social, political and economic changes. Just as changing Prospector product choices can be exploited as a key leverage point, Al Gore identified getting United States commitment to emission reduction as a key leverage point towards achieving global commitments to binding reduction targets. Because the United States had the highest national greenhouse emissions, and was one of the two industrialised countries who had failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol, changing behaviour and belief in the United States was strategically critical to achieving global action on emissions reduction. Al Gore initially attempted to get the United States to sign the Kyoto Protocol and commit to emission reduction by working directly at the political level, without building the popular support for action that would encourage other politicians to support his proposals. In the movie, Al Gore talks about the defeat of his initial efforts to get the United States to sign the Kyoto Protocol, and of his recognition of the need to gain wider public support before political action would be taken. He talks about the unsuitability of the mass news media as a vehicle for achieving social and political change on climate emissions. The priority given to conflict as a news value means journalists focus on the personalities involved in disputes about climate change rather than provide an analysis of the issue. When climate experts explain the consensus position of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they are “balanced” with opposing statements from the handful of (commonly fossil fuel industry funded) climate deniers. Because climate emissions are part of a complex process of slow change occurring over long time lines they do not fit easily into standard news values like timeliness, novelty and proximity (Harrison). When Al Gore realised he wouldn’t be able to gain the wider public support he needed through the mass news media he began a quest to spread his message “meeting by meeting,” “person by person.” Al Gore turned his slide show into a movie in order to deliver the message to more people than he could reach face to face, and then trained Presenters to reach even more people. When the movie won an Oscar for Best Documentary it turned Al Gore into something of a celebrity. Al Gore’s celebrity status rubs off on Climate Presenters through their association with him, giving them access to community and business groups across the world. When a celebrity recommends or displays a behaviour, Prospectors are more likely to see it as the in thing and thus more willing to do the recommended action. The movie created an opportunity for Al Gore to be a more persuasive messenger than he had been as a politician. Al Gore began The Climate Project to increase the impact of the movie and spread the message further than he could take it by himself. The multiplication of modes of communicating the message fits with Fenton Communications’ “Rule of Three.” In Now Hear This they say the target audience “should read about us in the paper, see us on TV, hear about us from a neighbour and a friend […] have their kid mention us […] and so on” (17). The Presenter training emphasises the “direct communication, especially face to face” recommended by Rose (“To do” 174). During the Presenter training Al Gore warned of the danger of being too negative as it risked moving people “from denial to despair without stopping to act,” and of the need to present the story in such a way as to create hope. This is backed up by the communications marketing literature, which warns that “negative messages may actually induce despair and actually [sic] paralysis while the positive focus can inspire” (Boykoff 172). While it employs dramatic visual images and animations, the movie tends to downplay the potential severity of the consequences of runaway global warming, and presents these in a way that gives the impression of a contracted time frame for the consequences of warming in order to activate motivation based on near term implications. The movie responds to Prospectors’ disinterest in distant implication of climate change by emphasising near-term threats, such as the rising monetary cost of damages, as well as threats to life and property from disease, drought, fire, flood, storm, and rising sea levels. After training an initial round of American Presenters, Al Gore identified training Australian Presenters as the next strategic priority. While Australia’s collective emissions are small, our per capita emissions are higher than those of Americans, and as the only other industrialised nation that had not signed, it was believed our becoming a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol would increase the pressure on the United States to sign. The ACF provided Australian Presenters with additional slides containing vivid images of Australian impacts, and Presenters were encouraged to find their own examples to illustrate impacts relevant to specific local audiences. The importance of identifying local impacts to persuade and move their audiences is impressed upon Presenters during the training. Regular slide updates reinforce this priority. While authors like Crompton and Jensen note the emphasis on changes in consumption as suggested solutions to climate change, other elements of the presentation are just as important in appealing to Prospectors. Prospectors want to belong and gain status by doing whatever is highly regarded by others. The presentation has numerous slides emphasising who else has made commitments to Kyoto and emission reduction. The American presentation includes lists of other countries, and towns and states in the United States that had signed up to Kyoto. The Australian presentation includes graphics emphasising the overwhelming number of Australians who support action. Prospectors don’t like being asked to give things up, and the presentation insists on the high cost of failing to act, compared to the small cost of acting now. Doing something to stop climate change is presented as easy and achievable. Contrary to Crompton’s claim that promoting green consumption would not build the widespread awareness and support for the more far-reaching government action that is required to achieve systemic change (9), the results of recent opinion research show that upwards of 80% of Americans support effective and wide-ranging action to reduce emissions and develop new renewable energy technologies (Climate Checklist). Whereas it would not have been surprising if the financial crisis had dimmed the degree of enthusiasm for action to reduce greenhouse emissions, the high support for action on climate change in their polling continues to encourage the Australian government to use it as a wedge issue against the opposition. Without high levels of public support, there would be little or no chance that politicians would be willing to vote for measures that will reduce emissions. That the push for change in individual consumption choices was only ever one tactic in a wider campaign is also demonstrated by the other projects instigated by Al Gore and his team. Projects like RepoWEr America and WE can solve the climate crisis leverage the interest developed by the Climate Project to increase public pressure on politicians to support regulatory change. The RepoWEr America and WE can solve the climate crisis sites target individuals as citizens and make it easy for them to participate in the political process. Forms help them sign petitions, write letters and meet with their elected officials, write for newspapers and call in to talkback radio, and organise local community meetings or events. Al Gore’s own web site adds a link to the Live Earth company to add to these arsenals. Live Earth “creates innovative, engaging events and media that challenge global leaders, local communities and every individual to actively participate in solving our planet's urgent environmental crises.” These sites provide the infrastructure to make it easy for individuals to move into action in the political domain. But they do it in ways that will appeal to Prospectors. They involve fun, their actions are celebrated, prizes are offered, the number of people involved is emphasised so they feel part of the “happening” thing. RepoWEr America and WE can solve the climate crisis help Prospectors to engage in political action in order to achieve regulatory change. Finally, or first, Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management Company, operating since 2004, is oriented towards systemic transformation in the economic system, so that economic drivers are aligned with sustainability imperatives. Al Gore and his partner David Blood reject Gross Domestic Product—the current measure of economic growth, and a major driver of unsustainable economic activity—as “dangerously imprecise in its ability to account for natural and human resources” and challenge business to accept the “need to internalize externalities” in order to create a sustainable economy. In their Thematic Research Highlights, Al Gore’s Generation company critiques the “Hedonic Treadmill”—which puts “material gains ahead of personal happiness” (32), and challenges “governments, companies, and individuals [...] to broaden their scope of responsibility to match their sphere of influence” (13). While the Climate Project would appear to ignore the inadequacy of individual consumption change as a means of emission reduction, the information and analysis targeted at business by Generation demonstrates this has not been ignored in the overall strategy to achieve systemic change. Al Gore suggests that material consumption should no longer be the measure of economic welfare, an argument he backs with an analysis showing business that long term wealth creation depends on accepting environmental and social sustainability as priorities. While An Inconvenient Truth promotes consumption change as the (inadequate) solution to Global Warming, this is just one strategically chosen tactic in a much larger and coordinated campaign to achieve systemic change through regulatory change and transformation of the economic system. References Australian Conservation Foundation. “Get Involved.” 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.acfonline.org >. Path: Campaigns; Climate Project; Get Involved. Al Gore. AlGore.com. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.algore.com/ >. An Inconvenient Truth. Dir. Davis Guggenheim. Paramount Classics and Participant Productions, 2006. Boykoff, Maxwell T. “Book Review on: Creating a Climate for Change: Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change. Eds. Susanne C. Moser and Lisa Dilling.” International Journal of Sustainability Communication 3 (2008): 171-175. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.ccp-online.org/docs/artikel/03/3_11_IJSC_Book_Review_Boykoff.pdf >. Climate Checklist: Recent Opinion Research Findings and Messaging Tips. 2007 Sightline Institute. 27 Aug. 2009. < http://www.sightline.org/research/sust_toolkit/communications-strategy/flashcard2-climate-research-compendium/ >. Crompton, Tom. Weathercocks and Signposts. World Wildlife Fund. April 2008. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/weathercocks_report2.pdf >. Den Elzen, Michel, and Malte Meinshausen. “Meeting the EU 2°C Climate Target: Global and Regional Emission Implications”. Report 728001031/2005. 18 May 2005. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/728001031.pdf >. Fenton Communications. Now Hear This: The 9 Laws of Successful Advocacy Communications. Fenton Communications. 2009. 24 Aug. 2009. < http://www.fenton.com/FENTON_IndustryGuide_NowHearThis.pdf >. Futerra Sustainability Communications. New Rules: New Game. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.futerra.co.uk/downloads/NewRules:NewGame.pdf >. Garnaut, Ross. “Targets and Trajectories.” The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report. 2008. 277–298. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.garnautreview.org.au/pdf/Garnaut_Chapter12.pdf >. Generation Investment Management. Thematic Research Highlights. May 2007. 28 Aug. 2009 < http://www.generationim.com/media/pdf-generation-thematic-research-v13.pdf >. Generation Investment Management LLP 2004-09. < http://www.generationim.com/ >. Gore, Al and David Blood. “We Need Sustainable Capitalism: Nature Does Not Do Bailouts.” Generation Investment Management LLP. 5 Nov. 2008. 28 Aug. 2009 < http://www.generationim.com/sustainability/advocacy/sustainable-capitalism.html >. Hansen, James, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, David Beerling, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Mark Pagani, Maureen Raymo, Dana L. Royer and James C. Zachos. “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2 (2008): 217-231. 24 Aug. 2009 < http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf >. Harrison, Karey. “Ontological Commitments and Bias in Environmental Reporting.” Environment and Society Conference. Sunshine Coast, Australia, 1999. Jackson, Tim. Prosperity without Growth? The Transition to a Sustainable Economy. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Sustainable Development Commission. 30 March 2009. 5 Oct. 2009 < http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/prosperity_without_growth_report.pdf >. Jensen, Derrick. “Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does not Equal Political Change?” Orion July/Aug. 2009. 5 Aug. 2009 < http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/ >. Live Earth. Live Earth 2009. 28 Aug. 2009 < http://liveearth.org/en >. RepoWEr America. The Alliance for Climate Protection. 2009. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.repoweramerica.org >. Rose, Chris, and Pat Dade. Using Values Modes. campaignstrategy.org 2007 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/articles/usingvaluemodes.pdf >. Rose, Chris, Les Higgins and Pat Dadeii. “Who Gives a Stuff about Climate Change and Who's Taking Action—Part of the Nationally Representative British Values Survey.” 2008. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/whogivesastuff.pdf >. Rose, Chris, Pat Dade, and John Scott. Research into Motivating Prospectors, Settlers and Pioneers to Change Behaviours That Affect Climate Emissions. campaignstrategy.org 2007. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/articles/behaviourchange_climate.pdf >. Rose, Chris. “To Do and Not to Do.” How to Win Campaigns: 100 Steps to Success. London: Earthscan Publications, 2005. Rose, Chris. “VBCOP—A Unifying Campaign Strategy Model”. Campaignstrategy.org March 2009. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.campaignstrategy.org/articles/VBCOP_unifying_strategy_model.pdf >. The Climate Project. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.theclimateproject.org/ >. Turner, Graham. “A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with 30 Years of Reality.” Socio-Economics and the Environment in Discussion. CSIRO Working Paper Series. Canberra: CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems. June 2008. 5 Oct. 2009 < http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf >. WE Can Solve the Climate Crisis. 2008-09. The Alliance for Climate Protection. 27 Aug. 2009 < http://www.wecansolveit.org >.

It’s a cool autumn morning and I am grateful for the sun as it warms the wet concrete. I have been told we will be spending some time outside later, so I am hopeful it will remain sunny. When everyone arrives, we go directly to the principal’s office. Once inside, someone points at the PA system. People pull out their cameras and take a quick photo—we were told the PA system in each school can be different so information about the broadcasting mechanism could be helpful in an emergency. I decide to take a photo as well. Figure 1: PA system inside the principal's office (Photo by Michelle Stewart) The principal joins us and we begin the task of moving through the school: a principal, two plain clothes police officers, two uniformed police officers, two police volunteers and an anthropologist researcher. Our goal is to document the entire school for a police program called School Action For Emergencies (SAFE) that seeks to create emergency plans for each school on a national Canadian police database. It is a massive undertaking to collect the data necessary to create the interactive maps of each school. We were told that potential hiding spaces were one focus alongside the general layout of the school; the other focus is thinking about potential response routes and staging for emergency responders. We snap photos based on our morning training. Broom closets and cubbyholes are now potential hiding spots that must be documented with a photo and narrated with a strategy. Misplaced items present their own challenges. A large gym mattress stored under the stairs. The principal comments that the mattress needs to be returned to the gym; a volunteer crouches down and takes a picture in the event that it remains permanently and creates a potential hiding spot. Figure 2: Documenting gym mat in hallway/potential hiding spot (Photo by Michelle Stewart) We emerge from the school, take a photo of the door, and enter the schoolyard. We move along the fence line: some individuals take notes about the physical characteristics of the property, others jot down the height of the retaining wall, still others take photos of the neighboring properties. Everyone is taking notes, taking photos, or comparing notes and photos. Soon we will be back at the police station for the larger project of harmonizing all the data into a massive mapping database. Locating the State in Its Objects Focusing on a Canadian police program called School Action for Emergency (SAFE), this article discusses the material labour practices required to create a virtual object—an augmented map. This mapping program provides a venue through which to consider the ways augmented objects come into the world. In this article, I discuss the labour practices necessary to create this map and then illustrate how labour practices are erased as part of this production and consumption of an augmented technology meant to facilitate an effective emergency response. In so doing, I will also discuss the production of authority and expertise through deployment of these police aids. As someone concerned with the ways in which the state instantiates itself into the lives of its subjects, I look at the particular enrollment practices of citizen and state agents as part of statecraft (Stewart). From Weber we are told about the role of police as they relate to state power, “state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it” (Weber, 34 my emphasis). I would argue that part of this monopoly involves cultivating citizen consent; that the subordination of citizens is equally important to police power as is the state’s permission to act. One way citizen consent is cultivated is through the performance of expertise such that subjects agree to give police power because police appear to be experts. Seen this way, police aids can be critical in cultivating this type of consent through the appearance of police as experts when they appear all knowing; what is often forgotten are the workers and aids that support that appearance (think here of dispatchers and databases). Becoming SAFE The SAFE project is an initiative of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the national police force in Canada. The goal of the program is to “certify” every school in the country, meaning each school will have documentation of the school that has been uploaded into the SAFE computer program. As illustrated in the introduction, this is a time-consuming process requiring not only photos and other data be collected but also all of this data and material be uploaded into the RCMP’s centralized computer program. The desired effect is that each school will have a SAFE program so police and dispatchers can access this massive collection of the data in the event of an emergency. During my time conducting research with the RCMP, I attended training sessions with John, a young corporal in the national police force. One of John’s duties was to coordinate the certification of the SAFE program that included training sessions. The program was initiated in 2007, and within one year, the province we were working in began the process of certifying approximately 850 of its 1700 schools; it had completed over 170 schools and identified 180 local SAFE coordinators. In that first year alone over 23,000 photos had been uploaded and 2,800 school layouts were available. In short, SAFE was a data heavy, labour-intensive process and one of John’s jobs was to visit police stations to get them started certifying local schools. Certification requires that at least one police officer be involved in the documentation of the school (photos and notes). After all the data is collected it must be articulated into the computer program through prompts that allow for photos and narratives to be uploaded. In the session described in the introduction, John worked with a group of local police and police auxiliaries (volunteers). The session started with a short Power Point presentation that included information about recent school tragedies, an audio clip from Columbine that detailed the final moments of a victim as she hid from killers, and then a practical, hands-on engagement with the computer software. Prior to leaving for on-site data collection, John had the trainees open the computer program to become familiar with the screens and prompts. He highlighted the program was user-friendly, and that any mistake made could be corrected. He focused on instilling interest before leaving for the school to collect data. During this on-site visit, as I trailed behind the participants, I was fascinated by one particularly diligent volunteer. He bent, climbed, and stretched to take photos and then made careful notations. Back at the police station he was just as committed to detail when he was paired up with his partner in front of the computer. They poured over their combined notes and photos; making routes and then correcting them; demanding different types of maps to compare their handwritten notes to the apparent errors in the computer map; demanding a street map for one further clarification of the proposed route. His commitment to the process, I started to think, was quite substantial. Because of his commitment, he had to engage in quite a bit of labour. But it was in this process of refining his data that I started to see the erasure of labour. I want to take some time now to discuss the process of erasure by turning attention to feminist and labour theory emerging from science and technology studies as means to articulate what was, and was not, taking place during the data entry. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa highlights the role of care as it relates to labour. In so doing, she joins a literature that draws attention to the ways in which labour is erased through specific social and material practices (see for example works in Gibson-Graham, Resnick and Wolf). More specifically, Puig de la Bellacasa investigates care in labour as it effects what she calls “knowledge politics” (85). In her work, Puig de la Bellaca discusses Suchman’s research on software design programs that produce virtual “office assistants” to assist the user. Suchman’s work reveals the ways in which this type of “assistant” must be visible enough to assist the user but not visible enough to require recognition. In so doing, Suchman illustrates how these programs replicate the office (and domestic servant) dynamics. Seen this way, labour becomes undervalued (think for example interns, assistants, etc.) and labour that is critical to many offices (and homes). Suchman’s work in this area is helpful when thinking about the role of augmented objects such as the augmented police map because in many ways it is a type of office assistant for police officers, handing over virtual notes and information about a location that police would otherwise not necessarily know thereby replicating the office dynamic of the boss that appears all knowing because, in part, s/he has a team that supports every aspect of their work. This devalued work (the lower paid intern or assistant) facilitates the authority—and ultimately the higher wage of the boss—who appears to earn this status. Let me layer this analysis of the “office assistant” with the similar phenomena in scientific knowledge production. Steven Shapin, a sociologist of science, discusses Robert Boyle’s 17th century laboratory and the various technicians in the background that assisted in experiments but remained ignored. Shapin argues contemporary scientific practice has changed little in this regard as technicians remain unaccounted for in the scientific record. He points out “science could not be made if this technician’s work were not done, but it is thought that anyone can do it” (Shapin, 557). Without these workers and their labour, scientific knowledge would not be possible, and yet they are ignored and their labour contribution erased (for example not included in formal discussion about the research, or more recently not included as authors in articles). Of course many technicians are/were paid, but nevertheless their role in the experiment erased. One figure emerged as the expert, the scientist, whose work appeared to be solely configured and created. Programs such as the SAFE project illustrate ways in which the police officer can emerge as an authority figure; but the authority rests on labour practices that move around in the background and go unacknowledged. Much like the lab, there are many ignored figures that produce the necessary objects of police work. In the case of the SAFE program, the ideal is that a police officer will respond to a call for service and with the click of a computer screen will be immersed in this augmented map. One click reveals data about the PA system, another click offers a full layout of the school, instructions about the design of the exits, notes about potential hiding spots inside, the list goes on. Each click is a product of labourer(s) that compiled the data. But these individuals, much like Boyle’s laboratory technicians, fade into the background and are erased as the police officer emerges as an authority. The map, an augmented object, may be credited with the data it holds, but the data collectors are long forgotten as the police officer stands alone as the subject of authority because of the smooth effects of the augmented map. Smooth Effects In an era of big data and data-intensive experiences, augmented objects are increasingly present in our daily lives—with expanded tolerance and appetite. When engaging an augmented object, there is a built-in expectation that the object will "work;" meaning it will run smoothly and effectively. Take Google Maps as an example: one expects the program will run on different scales, offer the capacity to map directions, and perhaps most importantly to be accurate. When these augmented objects run smoothly they appear to be a self-contained and organized object in and of themselves. This paper intervenes on these assumptions to illustrate that this “smooth effect” can serve to erase the labour necessary to produce the effect. Thinking here of the commodity fetish, one can recall Karl Marx’s intervention that illustrated how objects, commodities, permeate our social worlds in such ways that we can see the object—that we only see the object. This concept, commodity fetishism, argues that we erase the labour and social relations involved in the production of the objects, that we forget all that was required to create the object, and we don’t see all that was destroyed in its making. An example is to think of a cup of coffee. As you sip and consume it, do you think of the commodity chain? Do you think of the worker, the working conditions necessary to plant, harvest, roast and distribute the beans; do you think about the production of the bag the beans were transported in; do you think of the warehouse or coffeehouse from which the bag of beans came from? You more likely think about how it tastes—as an object in and of itself, how it is, rather than how it came into being in the world. Similarly, I want to think about this augmented map and how attention turns to it, not how it came into the world. Thinking about labour as it relates to computer programs and computer worlds, social scientists have investigated the necessary work of computer programmers and other labourers (see for example Kelty). Tiziana Terranova discusses the immaterial and affective labour that makes online communities thrive as individuals lend their labour (often unpaid) to create an online “world” that appears to organically come together—she argues these online communities are a product of free labour. Although the police are not working for “free” the volunteers are and the valorization of labour, if erased, still results in the similar outcome. Terranova is concerned about online communities that don’t simply come into being, but rather are the product of free labour. In the case of the SAFE program, labour practices are rendered invisible when augmented objects appear to be running smoothly —when in fact this appearance of smoothness necessarily requires labour and the commodity being exchanged is the claim to authority. Figure 3: Cross referencing hardcopy map (Photo by Michelle Stewart) Figure 4: Using a hand-drawn map to assist data entry (Photo by Michelle Stewart) Moving in a different direction, but still thinking about labour, I want to turn to the work of Chris Kortright. In his work about agricultural scientists, Kortright carefully details the physical practices associated with growing an experimental crop of sorghum. From the counting and washing of the seeds, to the planting and harvesting of the seeds, he delivers rich ethnographic stories from experimental fields and labs. He closes with the story of one researcher as she enters all the data into the computer to generate one powerpoint. He explains her frustration: “You can’t see all the time we spent. The nights we slept here. All the seeds and plants. The flooding and time at the greenhouse. All the people and the labour.” I nodded, these things had disappeared. In the table, only numbers existed. (Kortright, 20) Kortright argues for the need to recognize the social relations carved out in the field that are erased through the process of producing scientific knowledge—the young researcher ultimately knowing her labour did have a place on the slide.In much the same way, the police and volunteers engaged in a practice of removing themselves from the map. There was not enough space for long sentences explaining the debate about the best route to take; longer sentences were replace with short-phrased instructions. Conjuring the image of the police officer looking for fast, quick information, quick data was what they would deliver. The focus of the program was to place emergency icons (police cars, ambulance, fire engines and helicopters) onto the map, outline response routes, and offer photos as the evidence. Their role as individuals and their labour and creativity (itself a form of labour) was erased as the desired outcome was ease and access to data—a smooth effect. I was often told that many of the police cars don’t yet have a computer inside but in an idealized future world, police cars would be equipped with a computer console. In this world, officers could receive the call for service, access the program and start to move through layers of data rapidly while receiving the details of the call. This officer would arrive informed, and prepared to effectively respond to the emergency. Thinking back to labour required to create the SAFE map for each school (photographing, mapping, writing instructions, comparing details, etc.) and then the processes of hiding that labour (limited photos and short instructions) so that the program would appear to run smoothly and be user-friendly, the SAFE program, as an object, serves to abstract and erase labour. Indeed, the desired result was a smooth running program that operated much like Suchman’s office assistant who should be just visible enough to provide the needed help but otherwise remain invisible; similar in many ways to Shapin/Boyle’s scientific technician who is critical to knowledge production and yet remains formally unrecognized. Conclusion This article investigated a map as an entry point to understand the ways in which labour can be erased in augmented objects and, concurrently, how authority figures or experts instead emerge. My goal was to discuss the labour necessary to make one augmented map while also describing the process by which the labour necessary for the map was concurrently erased. Central to this article are the ways in which labour is erased as one clicks between these layers of data and, in the process, thinks the smoothly operating computer program is a measure of the strength of program itself, and not the labour required therein. By focusing on this augmented object, I am pointing out the collective labour needed to co-produce the map but how that map then helps to produce the police officer as authority figure. My intention is to look at the map as an unexpected entry point through which to understand how consent and authority is cultivated. Accordingly, I am concerned with the labour that is erased as this police figure emerges and authority is cultivated on the ground. I focus on the labour that necessarily to produce the police officer as expert because when that labour is erased we are left only with the authority figure that appears to be self-evident—not co-constructed. To understand state practices, as practices and not magical phenomena, we must look for the ways in which the state comes into being through particular practices, such as policing and to identify the necessary labour involvedReferencesGibson-Graham, J.K., Stephen Resnick, and Richard Wolff, eds. Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Kelty, Chris. Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Kortright, Chris. “On Labour and Creative Transformations in the Experimental Fields of the Philippines.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 7.4 (2013). Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Econony Vol. 1. New York: Penguin Books, 2004. Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. “Matters of Care in Technoscience: Assembling Neglected Things.” Social Studies of Science 41.1 (2011): 85-106. Shapin, Stephen. “The Invisible Technician.” Scientific American 77 (1989): 554-563. Stewart, Michelle. “The Space between the Steps: Reckoning in an Era of Reconciliation.” Contemporary Justice Review 14.1 (2011): 43-63. Suchman, Lucy. Human-Machine Reconfigurations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Terranova, Tiziana. “Free Labour: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy.” Social Text 63 (2000): 33-58. Weber, Max. The Vocation Lectures: "Science as a Vocation", "Politics as a Vocation." Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2004.

Graffiti remains a particularly resilient aspect of the contemporary urban landscape and as a pillar of Hip-Hop culture enjoys an enduring popularity as a subject of academic inquiry.1 As the practice of graffiti is so historically broad it is within the context of Hip-Hop culture that I will limit my observations. In this tradition, graffiti is often rationalised as either a rebellious attempt at territorial reclamation by an alienated subculture or reduced to a practice of elaborate attention seeking. This type of account is offered in titles such as Nelson George's Hip-Hop America (George 1998, 14-15) and David Toop's Rap Attack series (Toop 2000, 11-14). Whilst I am in accord with their respective analyses of graffiti's role as a territorial practice, these discussions concentrate on graffiti's social significance and neglect the immanent logistical processes that precede artistic practice. A Deleuze-Guattarian approach would emphasise the process over the final product, as they believe, '[w]riting has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 4-5).2 This undermines the self-contained approach to graffiti as artistic signification and offers a more encompassing approach to investigating the graffiti writers' desire to physically connect with the architecture of the city. It was William Upski Wimsatt's 'underground bestseller' Bomb the Suburbs that inspired my Deleuze-Guattarian perspective on the processes behind graffiti. After reading the testimonies of the author and his peers about the niceties of underground graffiti writing, I was struck by the profound affective relations to technology they described. Many discussions of graffiti, academic or otherwise, relegate the artists' exploration of the urban environment and its technologies to be of secondary importance to the production of the artwork itself. Wimsatt's affectionate account of a city discovered via graffiti writing appeared to have resonance with the Deleuze-Guattarian concept of 'becoming'. For Deleuze (both alone and in conjunction with Felix Guattari), the concept of 'becoming' was a complex redefinition, or perhaps destruction, of the traditional dichotomy between 'subject' and 'object'. Baring in mind that this concept was developed across the breadth of his work, here I offer a concise, and perhaps more readily accessible definition of 'becoming' from Claire Colebrook's Gilles Deleuze: 'The human becomes more than itself - by becoming-hybrid with what is not itself. This creates 'lines of flight'; from life itself we imagine all the becomings of life, using the human power of imagination to overcome the human' (Colebrook 2001, 129). Using 'becoming' as a conceptual approach provides a rather more productive consideration of the graffiti writers' endeavours rather than simply reducing their status to simple archetypes such as 'criminal', 'rebel' or even 'visual artist'. In this way we could look at their ongoing and active engagement with the city's architecture as an ongoing 'becoming' with urban technologies. This is manifest in the graffiti writers' willingness to break the law and even risk physical danger in order to find new ways of moving about the city. Bomb the Suburbs outlines the trials and tribulations of Chicago based, 'old school' graffiti artist Wimsatt who writes about his first-hand observations on the decaying urban environment within major US cities. Bomb the Suburbs is both a handbook of Hip-Hop culture, as well as an astute piece of social analysis. Wimsatt's approach is self-consciously provocative, and shining through all the revolutionary rhetoric is essentially a love affair with the city and its technologies. 'As a writer, there is nothing I love better, nowhere in the city I love more, than the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority). Whether it's climbing on the tracks, playing in the tunnels, or just chillin' in between cars, I think of the CTA as my personal jungle gym. The fact is, we graffiti writers have a very close relationship with the train lines. Yet it is our goal to fuck them up' (Wimsatt 1994, 143). Such an extraordinary physical relationship with the city's technology obviously surpasses the general public's more mundane interactions. The amount of dedication required by the graffiti writers to scale buildings, trains and bridges, obviously goes beyond a mere desire of exposure for their art. Hence I regard the writers as having perhaps the strongest affective bond with the city of any resident, as their pioneering of unorthodox navigational feats requires a level of commitment that far exceeds the rest of the population. Thus the artistry justifies the means of the exploratory process and the graffiti merely serves as a premise to interact with the city's architecture. Wimsatt's enthusiastic account of the CTA infers the desire to realise new interactions that surpass the rather more average ambition of getting on and off at the right stops. An inordinate amount of attention to potential vehicles of exposure, such as the city's rail system becomes a requirement of any self-respecting graffiti writer. Hence they acquire an intricate knowledge of the logistical processes that keep the city's transportation system ticking over. Detailed knowledge of platforms, schedules, right up to employee shift changes are necessary and each of these aspects in turn open out into a variety of assemblages that offer insight into the inner workings of the city. Unfortunately for these urban explorers, their unorthodox interactions with the city architecture are invariably considered 'illegal', and reminiscent of the Foucauldian assertion, the transgression of law only adds to affective investment. This transgression of 'the law', also offers potential for new becomings, and the graffiti writers, in turn, acquire a 'virtual' nature as 'becoming-criminal' or 'becoming-hero', even perhaps perpetuating the struggle for an alternative 'becoming-law'. Hence the dour reflection at the end of Wimsatt's quote which highlights his exasperation over the underlying political tensions that conspire toward his beloved rail system's destruction. It is perhaps the barriers, both physical and legal that are placed between the writers and their beloved lines, which fosters the type of emotional displacement that incites such revenge. To prove that the law can't contain their desire, the writers ironically destroy the city's property so that the technology will forever bear the mark of their challenge. Wimsatt doesn't advocate this destruction, but rather he is trying to implore other writers to see the error of their ways, 'If we love trains, then bombing the CTA is biting the hand that feeds us' (Wimsatt 1994, 143). His idealistic alternative is to 'bomb the suburbs' (for the uninitiated the bombing they refer to is of the acrylic as opposed to the explosive kind) to symbolically deflect attention from the rail yards and into the homes of the indifferent. 'Bomb The Suburbs means let's celebrate the city. Let's celebrate the ghetto and the few people who aren't running away from it. Let's stop fucking up the city. Let's stop fucking up the ghetto. Let's start defending it and making it work for us' (11). Emphasising the division between the urban and suburban way of life, Wimsatt beckons graffiti writers to 'bomb the suburbs' in what I perceive, as an unorthodox means of inclusion. This call to violate suburban property is purely a scare tactic, an avenue that Wimsatt admits he is not keen to explore (143). This contempt for the suburbs is directed at what is perceived as its residents' collective escape from an inclusive dialogue. The graffiti artists are frustrated over the suburban residents' economic control of their inner city space and they have no accessible political vehicle to voice this complaint. In the minds of the graffiti writers, the suburban population is ungrateful, as the technology such as the CTA is taken for granted, or not even used at all. Wimsatt hates the insular culture of the car owning commuters that symbolise the suburban condition. They are deemed to pollute the city and will subsequently be the first to retreat from any adversity as their collective goal has been to acquire the means to take an out of sight, out of mind approach to urban life. Thus, Wimsatt blames the suburban population for the continuing malaise suffered by inner city residents. Their collective exodus to the suburbs has negatively impacted on city funding and continues to erode the quality of life of its inhabitants. Wimsatt's admonition of the suburban condition begins in the introduction on the front cover of the book stating, 'The suburbs is more than just an unfortunate geographical location, it is an unfortunate state-of-mind. It's the American state-of-mind, founded on fear, conformity, shallowness of character, and dullness of imagination.' Yet Wimsatt would have difficulty convincing his posse of writers to 'bomb the suburbs' for a solely political purpose as the attributes of the city that make it so accessible conversely makes the suburbs logistically difficult to conquer. By his own admission the pleasure of graffiti writing lies in the thrill of exploring the city's architecture as this process in its entirety forms an affective assemblage. For Deleuze and Guattari these 'affects are becomings' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 256), perhaps simply understood as the affective intensities that influence our movement through the world, and this is how the graffiti writers integrate themselves into the matrix of the city assemblage. Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari offer that art consists of blocs of affects and percepts and that its role is to draw attention to these processes (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 163-199), '[a]ffects are sensible experiences in their singularity, liberated from organising systems of representation' (Colebrook 2001, 22). Thus graffiti operates on a purely affective level and the works of its anonymous authors, whose collective texts are often indecipherable, appear to have little cultural relevance to the general public. This is demonstrative of a Deleuze-Guattarian reading where graffiti's significance as 'writing' is actually negligible. The pragmatic significance of graffiti in terms of territorial marking is its role as a refrain, providing infinite transference of signification. The refrains create relations of corresponding affective assemblages and in this way the graffiti is able to generate a range of audience positions. Whilst it may indicate signify a hostile environment for some, it similarly provides information to others or is perhaps merely treated with indifference. To this extent the recollections of Wimsatt and his peers recall Deleuzean empiricism and its 'commitment to experience,' as '[o]ne way of thinking empiricism is to see all life as a flow and connection of interacting bodies, or 'desiring machines'. These connections form regularities, which can then be organised through 'social machines' (Colebrook 2001, 89). Graffiti consciously draws attention to its procedure thus creating corresponding affective assemblages, and the ensuing relations inform audience opinions. Many would contend that graffiti is inherently destructive and would necessarily disagree with my claim that it derives from a love of the city. Dissenting opinion is invariably based on relative aesthetic merits and as a result will always be inconclusive. The only thing that can be tangibly measured is the ownership of capital and in this context graffiti will always remain the visual sign of a losing battle. Graffiti is the evidence of its writers' respective status as 'ghosts in the machine'. Presented in terms of information theory, we could view graffiti as feedback, either signal or noise depending on how you are positioned. As a permanent fixture of the urban environment it is indicative of a city that is all but running smoothly. The nature of this underlying antagonism is elaborated in Houston A Baker jr's Black Studies, Rap and the Academy where graffiti is 'perceived as the ethnic pollution of public space' by the 'other' (Baker 1993, 43). Baker then proceeds to the heart of the matter, questioning the values inherent in the regulation of public space, 'the contest was urbanely proprietorial: Who owns the public spaces? What constitutes information and what constitutes noise? Just what is visually and audibly pure and what precisely is noise pollution or graffiti?'. He contends that community opinion over such aesthetic maintenance of the public space will continue to be dominated by corporate capital. 'Urban public spaces of the late twentieth century are spaces of audiovisual contest. It's something like this: My billboards and neon and handbills and high-decibel-level television advertising are purely for the public good. Your boom boxes and graffiti are evil pollutants. Erase them, shut them down! (43)' Graffiti writers are fully aware that any attempt for consensus over aesthetics is futile as the urban subcultures have little political clout. Their ongoing battle is a vain attempt at seeking alternate ways to access this public space and will continue to sustain casualties both architectural and human. Thus the visibility of graffiti on a train line provides an affective assemblage that is as intrinsic to the network as the tracks themselves. As public property3 the railway is installed to serve the collective population and graffiti writers, it can be argued, just seek to use it in an unorthodox manner. Their work is undoubtedly just as creative and perhaps less objectionable than most billboard ads. Advertising on the other hand, represents the collusion of private property ownership that informs public opinion. This view perpetuates the 'reasonable' assumption that advertisements are an acceptable use of the public space based on the 'logic' that they are spatially contained and regulated by capital. Alienated from that sphere of capital ownership, graffiti impinges on this private stranglehold of public aesthetics. In this capacity graffiti artists invite a momentary existential awakening, drawing attention to our internalised self-regulation. It is such conditioning that in turn may provoke us to mouth an obligatory 'tut tut'. Yet, running into this visual 'other' requires self-reflection, caught up in our daily routine we are oblivious to our physical surroundings and only realise what we are missing when it has been tampered with. The writers' unorthodox interaction with city architecture questions our fetishizing of blank walls, and our instilled lack of practical interaction with our surrounds. Nevertheless, the reality is that graffiti signifies to a large percentage of the population a sense of danger, a side effect that Wimsatt is indeed aware and is trying to discourage. Bomb the Suburbs is concerned with mapping out relations within the city's delicate ecosystem and how the mere act of graffiti affects a feedback loop that ends up in the pockets of the corporates: 'Every time we fat cap an outside, or even scratch-bomb a window, we've got guys with last names like Ford, Toyota, and Isuzu with us all the way, cheering us on - we're helping them fuck up public transportation for free' (Wimsatt 1994, 142). So the more graffiti, the fewer people ride the subway and will instead continue to buy cars and perpetuate the urban/suburban divide. Wimsatt and his peers are embittered that those who actually own most of the city care so little about it that they leave for the suburbs every night, to retreat from the 'urban noise' epitomised by graffiti culture to one of secluded suburban silence. Hence Wimsatt's enthusiasm for a communal project of graffiti led urban renewal believing it will liven up neglected and plain forgotten parts of the city (104). He goes out of his way to visit the more ravaged and neglected cities in the US, dreaming of how graffiti could help promote reinvestment, both emotional and financial, back into the heart of the city. Wimsatt also realises this can only be achieved with the grass roots support of the graffiti writing community themselves. 'I'm not even going to talk about the train yards. Yes, they're easy, but you're not allowed to bomb them as a personal favor to me. Cleveland is struggling not to become another Detroit and scare all its capital off to the suburbs. If you're going to do graffiti in Cleveland, do it to help Cleveland back up, not to kick it while it's down' (43). Yet his vision of urban renewal is one that scorns permission for legal designs (113) as the impetus for this project must derive organically from the graffiti writers' collective process of observation via urban exploration. For them, legal design defeats the purpose of this empirical process, and for this reason the artists believe there is no challenge in doing 'pieces' in the easy spots as a necessary part of the process requires the 'becoming' with the urban environment. The graffiti writers' lifestyle is itself an experimental project intended as a direct challenge on the 'conventional' epitomised by suburban existence. The graffiti markings operate as Deleuze-Guattarian 'lines of flight' that indicate that there are alternate ways of moving about the city, replete with a set of refrains to indicate the existence of a suitably alternative culture. We are aware that the smooth running of the urban capitalist machine requires the striations that demarcate no-go areas and territories forbidden to pubic access. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, that in order to run smoothly, you have to striate, and there is a lot of wasted space created in the process. The graffiti writers merely seek to claw back these neglected territories. Notes 1. The following list is provided as a guide, and is by no means considered exhaustive, of some of the key texts employed in my research: Castleman, Craig. Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York. New York: MIT Press, 1984; Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigoff. Spraycan Art. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1987; Baker, Houston A. Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Black Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993; Wimsatt, William 'Upski'. Bomb the Suburbs. New York: Soft Skull Press, 1994; George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. London: Penguin, 1998; Poschardt, Ulf. DJ Culture. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Quartet Books, 1998; Light, Alan. The Vibe History of Hip Hop. Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999; Ogg, Alex, and David Upshal. The Hip-Hop Years: A History of Rap. London: Channel 4 Books, 1999; Toop, David. Rap Attack # 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent's Tail, 2000; Gonzales, Michael A. 'Hip-Hop Nation: From Rockin' the House to Planet Rock' in Crossroads. Seattle, Marquand Books, 2000. 2. Note: The relation of this quote to the practice of graffiti writing was previously outlined in Richard Higgins article 'Machines, Big and Little' available at http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/sl... My discovery of this essay occurred during my research and whilst my own analysis takes a different approach I am obviously compelled to acknowledge my familiarity with this excellent piece of work. 3. Although this situation is rapidly changing as railway's status as public property is being slowly compromised as its running is increasingly handled by the private sector. References Baker, Houston A. jr. (1993) Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Black Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Castleman, Craig. (1984) Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York. New York: MIT Press. Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigoff. (1987) Spraycan Art. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson. Colebrook, Claire. (2001) Gilles Deleuze. London: Routledge. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1994) What Is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill. New York: Columbia University Press. George, Nelson. (1998) Hip Hop America. London: Penguin. Gonzales, Michael A. (2000) 'Hip-Hop Nation: From Rockin' the House to Planet Rock.' Crossroads. Seattle: Marquand Books. Light, Alan. (1999) The Vibe History of Hip Hop. Three Rivers Press, New York. Ogg, Alex, and David Upshal. (1999) The Hip-Hop Years: A History of Rap. London: Channel 4 Books. Poschardt, Ulf. (1998) DJ Culture. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Quartet Books. Toop, David. (2000) Rap Attack # 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent's Tail. Wimsatt, William. (1994) 'Upski'. Bomb the Suburbs. New York: Soft Skull Press. Links http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/slavic/papers/rhizome.html. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Scannell, John. "Becoming-City" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php>. Chicago Style Scannell, John, "Becoming-City" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Bennett, Simon A.. (2002) A City Divided. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/divided.php> ([your date of access]).