Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Stepbrother”

Moving from the Philippines to the United States at a young age to live with a father, with whom you have had limited contact, and meeting a stepmom and stepbrother for the first time provides unique challenges. Socializing and “fitting in” with peers is especially difficult and overwhelming. The youth author highlights how overcoming these obstacles is facilitated through hard work and the support of personal relationships.

Henry II of Castile, also known as Henry of Trastámara, from the Latin “Tras Tamaris” (or beyond the Tambre River), King of Castile and León (1366–1367, 1369–1379) was the first king of the Trastámara Dynasty. In summary, it was a minor branch of the house of Burgundy (or an “Iberian extension” of it), with presence in the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Naples. Most notably, it began playing an essential role in the kingdom of Castile, but after the Compromise of Caspe, its power extended decisively to the kingdom of Aragon (1412). Henry II was the illegitimate son of Alfonso XI and his lover Leonor de Guzmán. He waged a civil war against his stepbrother, Peter I, legitimate heir to the throne, as the son of Alfonso XI and Maria of Portugal, Queen of Castile. Henry’s determination to be recognized as king led him to employ the arts in a campaign to discredit his stepbrother and tarnish his image, portraying himself as a defender of the faith with the right to rule. He built the Royal Chapel (1371) in the main church of Córdoba (today’s Mosque/Cathedral) for the burial of his father and grandfather, Ferdinand IV, in order to underscore his connection to the royal line, and refurbished the Puerta del Perdón (Gate of Forgiveness) in 1377, the main entrance to the church, for use as a dramatic stage for public events.

This study is meant to describe the psychosocial and physical risks of the orphans in Capiz, Philippines, taking into account their situations/ experiences before coming to the orphanage, their coping mechanisms, and their aspirations. This is descriptive qualitative research anchoring from Stake’s model in conducting a case study. This study covered four (4) female orphans as case participants from the orphanage, whose ages range from 8 to 18, with different narratives and life stories. In this study, it emerged that their stepmother, stepfather, and stepbrother emotionally, physically, and sexually abused them as the majority of the themes they experienced. The cited abuse is considered one of the primary reasons that brought the children to the orphanage. The children’s coping mechanisms in the orphanage are positively affected by the people who saved and brought them into it. The activities in the orphanage, such as attending mass and praying, helped them strengthen their faith in God, eventually lightening their burden; other than leaving their negative experiences, the orphans’ aspirations in the orphanage are to finish their education and help others, especially their siblings.

<p>La novela El primogénito de Alburquerque, de R. López Soler, puede considerarse como una de las obras más importantes de la narrativa histórica del Romanticismo. En el presente estudio se analizan las<br />fuentes históricas relacionadas con Pedro I el Cruel y su hermanastro Enrique de Trastámara, desde la<br />Crónica de López de Ayala hasta los romances referidos a dichos personajes. Hechos históricos que se entrecruzan con las aventuras y desventuras de Martín Gil, el primogénito de Alburquerque, un héroe<br />literario cuyos hechos se engarzan con las rivalidades entre estos dos personajes históricos.</p><p><br /><br />The novel El primogénito de Alburquerque, by R. López Soler, can be considered one of the most importantworks of the historical narrative of Romanticism. In the present study we analyze the historical sourcesrelated to Pedro I the Cruel and his stepbrother Enrique de Trastámara, from the Crónica of Lopez de Ayala to the romances that refer to these characters. Historical events that intersect with the adventures and misadventures of Martín Gil, the firstborn of Alburquerque, a literary hero whose events are intertwined with the rivalries between these two historical characters.<br /><br /></p>

The importance of Islamic Law of inheritance, also known as “’Ilm al Far?‘id”, can be measured by the a??d?th in which the Prophet, (PBUH) commanded to learn it along with the Holy Qur’?n, as he described it “half of the knowledge”. One of the types of heirs mentioned in the Holy Qur’an is “Kal?lah”, and this word has been mentioned twice in the Holy Qur’?n. What is the meaning of kal?lah, who are they and what are the rules of their inheritance, etc., such questions have become the subject of debate in modern times, and various opinions have appeared in this regard. Among these views is the opinion of Javed Ahmed Al-Ghamdi, who presented his opinion by decorating it with some specific comments from Taf?sir that he calls “the primary sources of Tafs?r.” This article analyzes the opinion of Javed Ahmed Al-Ghamdi and its impact on the assets of inheritance. The result of this discussion was that the meaning of “kal?lah” is nothing but stepsister and stepbrother, and also the opinion of Al-Ghamdi was stated as an abandoned word in primary sources of Tafs?r. By accepting this view, the distribution of shares would not be possible according to the Qur’?nic command.

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are being extensively used to produce cattle offspring. However, as shown by Siqueira et al. (2017 J. Dairy Sci. 100, 5899-5908; https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2016-12539), phenotypical and performance differences between cows derived from distinct ART can be found at different stages of development. Thus, in an attempt to mimic the natural environment, reproductive fluids (oviductal (SOF) and uterine fluids) were added as supplementation to embryo culture media. Our hypothesis was that this improved culture media would produce calves more similar to the ones produced by AI. Invitro-produced (IVP) beef embryos were produced using SOF media supplemented with reproductive fluids (RF) or standard protocol (BSA), vitrified and later warmed and transferred to synchronized dairy recipients. Simultaneously, other dairy recipients were inseminated (AI) with the same bull used to produce IVP embryos. A total of 19 calves are included in this study (RF n=5, BSA n=7, AI n=7). Calves that did not reach 45 days of life were excluded from these data. All animals received the same feeding and housing conditions. Calves were examined at Days 0, 3, 7, 15, 30, and 45 of life. Each examination included weight, height at withers, thorax circumference, heart and respiratory rates, body temperature, and a blood sample from the jugular vein to perform a general haematological analysis (Siemens ADVIA 120) and glucose levels. A non-parametric test (Mann-Whitney U) was used to compare paired samples, with significance assumed when P&lt;0.05. Since day is a factor that influences growth, it was assumed as a fixed factor, and data were analysed per day. In terms of growth development, AI calves were significantly taller than BSA calves in all days, and in general taller than RF calves, with the exception of Days 3 and 7. Thorax circumference was significantly smaller for BSA versus AI calves only on Days 15 and 45. Respiratory rate was higher for RF calves at birth and for BSA calves at Day 3 when both were compared with AI calves, but we found no difference between them. Heart rate was higher for RF calves on Day 7 compared with BSA and AI, and higher again on Day 15 compared with AI. Regarding haematological parameters, significant differences were found on Day 0, with platelet counts being lower for BSA calves. On Day 7, mean corpuscular volume from AI calves was lower than either BSA or RF calves, and on Day 15, eosinophils were lower for RF calves compared with AI. At Day 30, white blood cells and lymphocyte concentration were lower for BSA than for AI calves. Glucose levels were higher for RF calves than for AI calves on Day 45. Overall, all haematology and clinical values seem to match the values of healthy calves (Brun-Hansen et al. 2006 Vet. Clin. Pathol. 35, 182-187; https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-165X.2006.tb00111.x), and the differences found were not clinically relevant. In conclusion, at the moment and from the analysed criteria of development during the first 45 days of life, there seems to exist no difference between calves born by IVP with RF as supplement to culture media and their invitro or invivo controls.

Half of the textual witnesses of the Sephardic text group of Targum Samuel are of Christian origin, two manuscripts and two editions. This leads to two questions: How did a typically Jewish text like the Targum end up in the accepted corpus of Christian Biblical Studies in sixteenth century Spain? And how did it function?

“This was not America.” Michael Charles Steinlauf in conversation with Elżbieta Janicka (Warsaw – New York – Warsaw, 2014–2015)Born in Paris in 1947, Michael Charles Steinlauf talks about his childhood in New York City, in the south of Brooklyn (Brighton Beach), in a milieu of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. His later experiences were largely associated with American counterculture, the New Left, an anti-war and antiracist student movement of the 1960s (Students for a Democratic Society, SDS) as well as the anticapitalist underground of the 1970s (“Sunfighter”, “No Separate Peace”). In the 1980s, having undertaken Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, Steinlauf arrived in Poland, where he became part of the democratic opposition circles centred around the Jewish Flying University (Żydowski Uniwersytet Latający, ŻUL). In the independent Third Republic of Poland, he contributed to the creation of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.Michael C. Steinlauf’s research interests focus on the work of Mark Arnshteyn (Andrzej Marek) and of Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, Yiddish theatre as well as Polish narratives of the Holocaust. The latter were the subject of his monograph Bondage to the dead: Poland and the memory of the Holocaust (1997, Polish edition 2001 as Pamięć nieprzyswojona. Polska pamięć Zagłady). An important topic of the conversation is the dispute concerning the categories used to describe the Holocaust, including the conceptualisation of Polish majority experience of the Holocaust as a collective trauma. Controversies also arise in connection with the contemporary phenomena popularly conceptualised as the “revival of Jewish culture in Poland” and “Polish–Jewish dialogue.” Another subject of the conversation is Michał Sztajnlauf (1940–1942), Michael C. Steinlauf’s stepbrother. The fate of the brothers was introduced into the canon of Polish culture by Hanna Krall’s short story Dybuk (1995, English edition 2005 as The Dybbuk) and its eponymous stage adaptation by Krzysztof Warlikowski (2003). Looking beyond artistic convention, the interlocutors try to learn more about Michał himself. This is the first time the readers have an opportunity to see his photographs from the Warsaw Ghetto.The conversation is illustrated with numerous archival materials from periods before and after World War Two as well as from German-occupied Poland. „To nie była Ameryka”. Z Michaelem Charlesem Steinlaufem rozmawia Elżbieta Janicka (Warszawa – Nowy Jork – Warszawa, 2014–2015)Urodzony w 1947 roku w Paryżu, Michael Charles Steinlauf opowiada o dzieciństwie spędzonym w Nowym Jorku, na południowym Brooklynie (Brighton Beach), w środowisku ocalałych z Zagłady polskich Żydów. Istotna część jego późniejszych doświadczeń związana była z amerykańską kontrkulturą, Nową Lewicą, studenckim ruchem antywojennym i antyrasistowskim lat sześćdziesiątych (Students for a Democratic Society, SDS) oraz podziemiem antykapitalistycznym lat siedemdziesiątych („Sunfighter”, „No Separate Peace”). W latach osiemdziesiątych, w związku z podjęciem studiów judaistycznych na Brandeis University, Steinlauf przyjechał do Polski, gdzie stał się częścią środowiska opozycji demokratycznej, skupionego wokół Żydowskiego Uniwersytetu Latającego (ŻUL). W III RP miał swój udział w tworzeniu Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich w Warszawie.Zainteresowania badawcze Michaela C. Steinlaufa ogniskują się wokół twórczości Marka Arnsztejna (Andrzeja Marka), Jicchoka Lejbusza Pereca, teatru jidysz oraz polskich narracji o Zagładzie, którym poświęcił monografię Pamięć nieprzyswojona. Polska pamięć Zagłady (2001, pierwodruk angielski 1997 jako Bondage to the dead: Poland and the memory of the Holocaust). Ważną część rozmowy stanowi spór dotyczący kategorii opisu Zagłady, w tym koncepcji polskiego doświadczenia Zagłady jako traumy zbiorowej. Kontrowersja nie omija zjawisk współczesnych, konceptualizowanych potocznie jako „odrodzenie kultury żydowskiej w Polsce” oraz „dialog polsko-żydowski”.Bohaterem rozmowy jest także Michał Sztajnlauf (1940–1942), przyrodni brat Michaela C. Steinlaufa. Historia braci weszła do kanonu kultury polskiej za sprawą opowiadania Hanny Krall Dybuk (1995) oraz teatralnej inscenizacji Krzysztofa Warlikowskiego pod tym samym tytułem (2003). Abstrahując od konwencji przekazu artystycznego, rozmówcy próbują dowiedzieć się czegoś więcej o samym Michale. Czytelniczki i czytelnicy po raz pierwszy mają możność zobaczyć jego fotografie pochodzące z getta warszawskiego.Rozmowa jest bogato ilustrowana niepublikowanymi dotąd archiwaliami sprzed drugiej wojny światowej i z okresu powojennego, a także z czasów okupacji hitlerowskiej w Polsce.

The orthodox liturgy was finally established during the 8th and 9th centuries. The two stepbrothers and eminent Byzantine poets St. Cosmas of Maiuma and St. John of Damascus greatly contributed to its development. They composed the majority of the irmi and troparia that are still performed during the liturgy today. During their lives, however, worshippers were facing certain difficulties in understanding the meaning of church odes. This is also true today when orthodox liturgy occasionally becomes an obstacle on the path to God for the worshippers. Greater efforts are also required in order to understand the liturgy and this is not always easy. One of the reasons for this is an incorrect translation of many odes into Russian and Slavonic. Comments from 12th century Byzantine writers and poets can help us clarify their meaning. Gregory of Corinth and his 23 commentaries on the liturgical canons are particularly noteworthy. In the current article, a philological analysis is conducted of two complex, “obscure” and unclear passages from the Canon of Pentecost. At the same time, Metropolitan Gregory’s exegeses of these extracts, which can help us better understand the meaning not only of these passages but also of the whole celebration, are cited.

Incest in ancient GreeceThe article is devoted to incest in ancient Greece. In the introduction the author deals with terminological questions, explaining the reasons behind a lack of a general term for incest in the Greek language and how this phenomenon was reflected in Greek literature. Next, he analyses the sources testifying to the existence of a legal ban on incest between direct relatives. He stresses that in Athens it derived from unwritten common law ágraphos nómos and was probably never raised to the status of statutory law. In addition, the author analyses sources concerning the legal restrictions placed on sexual intercourse between collateral relatives. The ban on incest applied to siblings, also stepbrothers and stepsisters, who had, depending on the model adopted in a given polis, the same mother Athens or the same father Sparta. The author also examines the question of sexual relations between relatives by affinity, concluding that the Greeks regarded them as adultery. In the last part of his study he explores the sanctions associated with the violation of the incest ban.Blutschande im alten GriechenlandDer Aufsatz ist der Blutschande im alten Griechenland gewidmet. Am Anfang beschäftigt sich der Verfasser mit terminologischen Fragen, er erklärt, warum es in der griechischen Sprache keinen allgemeinen Terminus für die Bezeichnung der Blutschande gibt, sowie mit der Widerspiegelung dieser Erscheinung in der griechischen Literatur. Im weiteren Teil des Textes analysiert er die Quellen, die das rechtliche Verbot der Blutschande zwischen Verwandten in gerader Linie bezeugen. Er betont, das es in Athen dem Gewohnheitsrecht entstammte ágraphos nómos und wahrscheinlich nie in den Rang eines angewandten Rechtes erhoben wurde. Analysiert werden auch Quellen betreffend die Einschränkungen des Geschlechtsverkehrs zwischen Verwandten in seitlicher Linie. Das Verbot der Blutschande betraf die leiblichen als auch die angeborenen Geschwister, die, nach dem in der gegebenen polis geltenden Modell, eine gemeinsame Mutter Athen bzw. einen gemeinsamen Vater Sparta hatten. Der Verfasser bezieht sich auch auf die Qualifikation der sexuellen Beziehungen zwischen Verschwägerten und stellt fest, dass die Griechen diese wie Ehebruch behandelten. Im letzten Teil seines Studiums zeigt der Verfasser die möglichen Sanktionen wegen der Verletzung des Verbotes der Blutschande.

This paper attempts a reconstruction of Aeschylus’ satyr-play Heralds. As the myth of Erginus’ heralds and their mutilation by Heracles is shown to be unconvincing on many grounds, it explores the possibility that the satyrs turned up or out as ‘heralds’, i.e. ‘sacrifice attendants’, in the Eleusinian preliminary sacrifice, sought by Heracles (polluted by the slaughter of the Centaurs) before his descent to Hades. To complete this conjectural picture, the potential topicality of such a plot is emphasised in relation to the genos of Ceryces and of Callias (II), who in the 480s was able to avoid ostracism. Moreover, a tragic trilogy is conjecturally set out as revolving around Ixion’s marriage, crime, purification, sacrilege, and around his son Pirithous (stepbrother to the Centaurs) joining the Calydonian boar hunt and thus having to do with Meleager (a figure linked, in many ways, to Heracles). As to topicality, it is suggested that the trilogy would thus cast a negative light on Thessaly. Finally, Aristophanes’ Clouds may contain allusions to this (hypothetical) tetralogy, and the so-called Dike-fragment may belong to Heralds.

Durante los primeros años de su reinado Aššurbanipal tuvo que hacer frente a diversas coaliciones, entre las que sobresalió la abanderada por su hermanastro Šamašumuk?n y a la vez rey de Babilonia. En esta inscripción se da cuenta de la destrucción de Babilonia y de la muerte de Šamašumuk?n. Con tintes dramáticos y pinceladas de trágico patetismo se nos describe la destrucción de los enemigos de Aššurbanipal. El texto que presentamos corresponde a las columnas III y IV del prisma A de Assurbanipal, a partir de A III 70-135 (= en nuestro texto 1-66) y A IV 41-109 (= en nuestro texto 67-135).Palabras clave: Assurbanipal, Šamašumuk?n, Babilonia. Abstract:During the first years of his reign, Assurbanipal had to face diverse coalitions, and specially the one promoted by his stepbrother Samasumukin, at that time king of Babylon. This inscription recounts the destruction of Babylon and Samasumukin's death. With dramatic dyes and brushstrokes of tragic pathos the destruction of Assurbanipal´s enemies is described. The text we offer in this paper corresponds to the columns IIIrd and IVth of the A prism of Assurbanipal, from the III rd 70-135 (= in our text 1-66) and to the IVth 41-109 (= in our text 67-135).Keywords: Assurbanipal, Šamašumuk?n, Babylon.

Sexual satisfaction is a natural need and Islam has set up the concept of Nikah to legally address this need. As Islam is a complete way of life, it has also provided guidelines that enable us to live a pure and purposeful life. On contrary, what was prevalent in the pre-Islamic Arabia in terms of sexual relationship was far and beyond marriage. It contained elements of those things which Islam has made lawful and also elements of those practices which Islam demolished. Their definition and practices related to nikah were also quite diverse and often included matters unacceptable in a just society.This article presents an overview of various forms of nikah from those times including marriage with Muharramat (those relatives who are not valid to marry under Islamic law such as stepbrother, stepmother, and stepfather), Nikah e Mut'aa (marriage for a fixed time, may be hour, day or month), Nikah e Shigar (someone to marry his sister with other in exchange for his sister to be married with him without giving them dower), Nikah e Istibz'ag (someone to send his wife to a well known person of a town, city and tribe to have sex with him and to give birth to a child from him), Nikah e raht (to have sex with more than one person and to give birth to a child from them), Nikah e Raya't (those women who had flags on their homes as a symbol of obscenity), and Nikah e Khadan (to have sex with someone secretly). All these methods were legal and valid in the society of Jahilliyyah as it lacked the real essence of marriage and the purity it brings to the companionship and relationship between the partners.

Gold, Jennifer. On the Spectrum. Second Story Press, 2017 This story is about Clara, a teenage girl who lives in a dysfunctional family. Her divorced parents live in the US and France with their new partners. Clara’s mother is an ageing ballerina, who has an eating disorder that has led to osteoporosis. She has raised Clara to have an unhealthy obsession with food and food restrictions. There is a particularly pathetic description of Clara feeling too guilty to secretly keep even one of her Halloween candies, which her mother has trained her to throw down the garbage chute, after she has gone door-to-door in her costume. Clara moves to Paris, France for the summer to be with her father, stepmother and ten-year-old stepbrother, Alistair, who is on the autism/Asperger’s spectrum. Gold paints a picture of a child who is “neurotypically different,” exhibiting lack of interpersonal skills, taking things literally, having no verbal filter and being easily overwhelmed by noise, smells, small spaces, heights and crowds. Finally, to round out the summer cast, there is Michael, a black ethnic Angolan baker, who becomes Clara’s boyfriend. Usually being “on the spectrum” refers to autism/Asperger’s, but Gold is trying to point out that eating disorders also exist on a sort of spectrum. She uses Alistair’s bluntness as a socially acceptable method of commenting on facets of eating disorders. She arranges to have the most uncomfortable comments and pointed questions come from Alistair’s mouth. While the depiction of autism/Asperger’s is accurate and even Clara’s seemingly intuitive knowledge of how to manage Alistair is believable, Michael’s “helping” Clara with her eating disorder is less so. Through the arc of the story, Clara comes to acknowledge that she has an eating disorder. However, that this should result simply from the encouragement, and sometimes annoyance and disappointment of a new boyfriend is unrealistic. Were it that simple, eating disorders would have been cured long ago. However, this novel does give readers an opportunity to explore two mental disorders in a sympathetic way. Recommended for public libraries and junior high and high school libraries. Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Sandy Campbell Sandy is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of Alberta, who has written hundreds of book reviews across many disciplines. Sandy thinks that sharing books with children is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give.

Introduction The Disney brand has become synonymous with magic through its numerous depictions of spells, curses, prophecies, and pixie dust. Thus, it is ironic that in 2023, the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Studio’s founding (“Disney History”), the final film released during Walt Disney’s life, The Sword in the Stone (celebrating its 60th anniversary) remains stuck in obscurity (Aronstein 129) despite being steeped in magic and wizardry. The Sword in the Stone is regarded as “one of the most obscure [films] in the Disney animated canon” (Booker 38). Although it performed moderately well during its debut in 1963, its 1983 re-release and home video sales failed to renew public interest. To date, The Sword in the Stone has no games, comic series, or even Disneyland merchandise (Aronstein 129). The film is hardly a technical marvel; its sketchy animation style and blue-slate backgrounds create a dingy, unfinished look (Beck 272), while its simplistic storyline and anachronistic humour have been criticised for being ill-matched with its Arthurian subject matter (Gossedge 115). Despite these flaws, The Sword in the Stone offers the studio’s most fully rendered representation of Disney magic as benevolent forces sourced in learning and discipline that enable good-hearted protagonists to prepare for future leadership roles. By approaching the film as a didactic text separate from its Arthurian origins, I will demonstrate how The Sword in the Stone defines magic, not by nebulous spells or hexes, but by its facilitation of societal advancement and transformative powers via the educated mind. Young Arthur’s Humble Beginnings Based loosely on T.H. White’s 1938 novel of the same name (Valle 224), The Sword in the Stone takes place in medieval Europe, with most of its action occurring in a rotting castle and surrounding wolf-infested forests. In this threatening world, magic takes many forms, from powerful acts of “sorcery” to comical displays of “Latin business”. The first allusion to magic occurs during the film’s opening song, which establishes its setting (“when England was young”) and primary conflict (“the good king had died, and no one could decide who was rightful heir”). Without a ruler, England will be destroyed by civil war unless miraculous forces intervene on its behalf. This ‘miracle’ is the eponymous sword in the stone that the rightful ruler of England will free. The sword is destined for King Arthur, but as he is only an orphaned child living in obscurity at the film’s beginning, no one manages to retrieve the sword in his stead, and so the ‘miracle’ seemingly fails. The film’s off-screen narrator describes this leaderless period as “a dark age … where the strong preyed upon the weak”. As a force that trumps brute strength, magic is prized by those who can wield it, particularly the wizard Merlin. Magic is regarded with suspicion by the majority who cannot practice it (Valle 234), though they still recognise its legitimacy. Even Arthur’s practical stepfather, Sir Ector, begs Merlin not to practice any “black magic” on his family after Merlin creates an indoor “wizard blizzard” to prove his seriousness in tutoring Arthur. Merlin is a far cry from the mysterious soothsayer of Arthurian legend. He has been Disneyfied into a caricature of the famed wizard, appearing more like an eccentric academic than an all-seeing mystic (Beck 272). Susan Aronstein describes him as “the reification of Disney’s post-World War II rebranding of itself as a leader in education in the wake of a postwar shift in American child rearing” (130)—a playful pedagogue who makes learning fun for Arthur and audiences. After meeting Arthur in the woods near his home, Merlin becomes determined to rectify the boy’s educational deficiencies. It is not yet clear whether Merlin knows who Arthur is or will become; Merlin merely repeats to his owl companion, Archimedes, that the boy needs an education—specifically, a modern education. In addition to presenting Arthur with evidence of his travels to the future, such as helicopter models, Merlin rattles off a litany of subjects common to twentieth-century American curricula (English, science, mathematics) but hardly the sort of fare pages of Arthur’s status would study in fifth-century England. Because Arthur’s royal lineage is unknown to him, he aspires to be a squire for his soon-to-be-knighted stepbrother and so must learn the rules of jousting and horsemanship when not otherwise preoccupied with page duties. These include scrubbing pots and pans, cleaning floors, and fetching anything his stepfather requests. While Arthur is not resistant to Merlin’s attempts to teach him, he struggles to balance Merlin’s demands on his time with Sir Ector’s (Pinsky 85). Young Arthur’s gangly stature conveys how stretched the boy is between his indentured servitude to Ector and Merlin’s insistence upon his liberation through education. Arthur is constantly in motion, scurrying from one task to the next to please all parties involved and often failing to do so. Each time Merlin’s instruction causes the boy to miss Sir Ector’s call, Arthur is punished with additional duties (Holcomb et al.). Merlin’s Instructive Magic Merlin uses magic to bridge the gap between Arthur’s responsibilities to his present and his future. The word “magic” is spoken fifteen times in the film, six by Merlin himself. The wizard first utters the word after packing his entire house (furniture and all) into a carpet bag. Arthur is impressed, but Merlin warns him that magic is no panacea: “don’t you get any foolish ideas that magic will solve all your problems”. Even Merlin struggles to convince Sir Ector to let him tutor Arthur and to prevent predatory animals from killing the boy during their adventures together. Magic has limits. It cannot penetrate the minds of humans nor quell the instincts of wild animals. Its impact seems restricted to the physical world. Merlin primarily uses magic for physical transformation; his lessons centre on changing Arthur into different animals to enable the future king to experience life from others’ perspectives. Merlin turns Arthur into a fish, a squirrel, and a bird, with each animal’s situation representing increasingly complex problems that Arthur must overcome. Each lesson also corresponds with one or more levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: (1) safety and survival, (2) love and belonging, and (3) self-esteem and self-actualisation (Lester 15). As a perch swimming around the castle moat, Arthur learns to use his intellect to evade a toothy pike that nearly eats him alive. As a squirrel, Arthur observes the heartbreak of unrequited love, foreshadowing his complicated love triangle with Guinevere and Lancelot (Grellner 125). In avian form, Arthur experiences a much-needed boost in his self-worth after Sir Ector strips him of his squire-in-training status. In flight, Arthur seems most in his element. After struggling with the logistics of swimming as a fish and navigating trees as a squirrel, Arthur soars over the countryside, even showing off his acrobatics to Archimedes flying alongside him. Although Arthur relishes these experiences, he does not seem to grasp their broader implications. He describes his first magical lesson as “so much fun” (despite having nearly died) and pauses only momentarily at the end of his second lesson to reflect on the emotional damage he causes a heartbroken female squirrel who falls madly in love with him. Still, Arthur faces mortal danger with each lesson, so one could argue that by transforming the young boy into different animals, Merlin is honing Arthur’s problem-solving skills (Holcomb et al.). Madam Mim’s Destructive Magic When Arthur is turned into a bird, his third lesson takes an unexpected turn. After narrowly escaping a hawk, Arthur flies into the forest and falls down the chimney of a rival magician named Mad Madam Mim. After introducing herself, Mim insists to Arthur that she has far more magic “in one little finger” than Merlin possesses in his entire repertoire. She displays her powers by killing plants, changing sizes, and making herself monstrous or lovely according to her whims. Mim’s demonstrations suggest a breezy familiarity with magic that Merlin lacks. Whereas Merlin sometimes forgets the “Latin business” needed to invoke spells, Mim effortlessly transitions from one transformation to another without any spell use. The source of her power soon becomes apparent. “Black sorcery is my dish of tea”, she croons to Arthur. Compared to Merlin’s Latin-based magic, Mim’s “black sorcery” is easier to master and well-suited to her undisciplined lifestyle. Mim’s cottage is filthy and in disrepair, yet she is playing solitaire (and cheating) when Arthur stumbles into her fireplace. This anachronism (since playing cards would not be introduced to Europeans until the fourteenth century; DeBold) characterises, through visual shorthand, Mim’s idle hands as the Devil’s workshop; she also possesses a modern dartboard that she throws Arthur against. Unlike Merlin’s domicile, Mim’s cottage contains no books, scientific instruments, or other props of study, indicating that there is no deeper understanding behind her magic. As Latin is the root language of science and law, it seems fitting that Latin is not part of Mim’s repertoire. She simply points a finger at an unfortunate subject, and it bends to her will—or dies. Efficient though Mim’s magic may be, its power is fleeting. Mim briefly changes herself into a beautiful young woman. But she concedes that her magic is “only skin deep” and turns herself back into “an ugly old creep”. Evidently, her magic’s potency does not last long, nor is it capable of improving her situation, as she continues living in her broken-down cottage as a bored, friendless hermit. Her black magic may be easy to master but cannot impart meaningful change. And so, while Merlin can use his magic to improve Arthur’s life, Mim’s magic can only serve the status quo described at the film’s beginning: the strong preying upon the weak. Although Mim lives outside the feudal social hierarchy, she uses her magic to terrorise any unfortunate creatures who wander into her clutches, including Arthur. When Arthur (still in bird form) states that he prefers the benevolence and usefulness of Merlin’s magic, an infuriated Mim transforms herself into a hungry cat and chases Arthur around the cottage until Merlin arrives to save the boy. Merlin then challenges Mim to a wizard’s duel, during which he and Mim attack each other in animal forms ranging from foxes and caterpillars to tigers, goats, and elephants. Each time Mim transforms, she does so seamlessly, requiring no momentary pause to recall a spell, unlike Merlin, who stumbles across the Latin phrases necessary to change himself into something faster or bigger. But after Merlin transforms into a walrus and squashes a clucking chicken Mim, the momentum shifts in his favour. Her magic becomes tinged with rage that causes her to make mistakes, including biting herself as a snake and ramming herself into a tree in rhinoceros form. Merlin’s disciplined playing style is nearly errorless. Although he becomes frightened when Mim transforms into a fire-breathing dragon, Merlin continues to play sensibly and courageously. His final winning move is to transform himself into a measle-like germ that incapacitates Mim with violent sneezing and cold flashes (Perciaccante and Coralli 1171). Arthur is astonished by the brilliant manoeuvring of his mentor, who manages to win the duel fairly “by dint of his knowledge and study” (Pinsky 86). After stating the lesson’s summative point for Merlin—“knowledge and wisdom is the real power”—Arthur vows to redouble his efforts to complete his education. Education: The Film’s Real Magic The lesson for viewers is simple enough: an education has a magical impact on one’s life. Put more succinctly, education is magic. Merlin defeats Mim because of his greater knowledge and cleverer use of spells. Arthur will overcome his low social status and ascend to the throne by becoming literate and sharpening his intellect. But as with Merlin’s acquisition of magical knowledge through intense study, Arthur’s royal ascension must be earned. He must learn the literal ABCs of language acquisition to gain others’ shared knowledge, as illustrated by a scene in which Archimedes painstakingly teaches Arthur how to write the alphabet in preparation for reading an enormous stack of books. Merlin cannot magically impart such knowledge to the future king; Arthur must learn it through sustained effort. He also must learn to make informed decisions rather than respond to panic or anger as Mim does during her duel with Merlin. Herein lies the distinction between Mim’s and Merlin’s magic: transformative impact. Mim’s black magic has locked her into her chosen fate. By using her powers to amuse herself or cause others harm, Mim perpetuates her outcast status as the stereotypical witch to be feared (Valle 234). While her cottage contains anachronistic elements such as playing cards (suggesting that she, like Merlin, has time-travelled), it contains no evidence of the modern advances that Merlin shares with Arthur, like aeroplane models, nor anything that might improve their feudal society. Merlin’s magic, by contrast, facilitates immediate changes to Arthur’s world and offers the promise of technological advancements in the centuries to come. To reduce the boy’s workload, for instance, Merlin magically conjures up a factory-style assembly line of brushes, tubs, and mops to wash dishes and scrub kitchen floors. Merlin also shares his knowledge of humankind’s future achievements with Arthur to advance his education, providing him with models, maps, globes, and hundreds of books. To become a proper king, Arthur must learn how to use such information to others’ advantage, not just his own. As Caroline Buts and Jose Luis Buendia Sierra observe of magic’s paradox, “using the wand without knowing properly the rules may sometimes lead to catastrophic situations” (509). This point is reaffirmed in the film’s final sequence, which takes place in London on New Year’s Day at a jousting tournament, the winner of which will be crowned king of England. Arthur, now a squire to his recently knighted stepbrother, forgets to bring his stepbrother’s sword to the tournament grounds. He attempts to replace the missing weapon with the sword in the stone when he spots the aging relic in a nearby churchyard. As Arthur pulls out the sword, angelic choral music swells, signalling that the rightful ruler of England has fulfilled the prophecy. After some scepticism from the assembled masses, Sir Ector and the other knights and spectators bow to the befuddled twelve-year-old. The film’s final scene shows a panic-stricken Arthur conceding that he does not know how to rule England and crying out for Merlin. When the wizard blows in from his most recent trip to the twentieth century, he confirms that he has known all along who Arthur is and assures the boy that he will become a great king. Arthur seems ready to put in the work, recognising that his knowledge and wisdom will improve the lives of England’s inhabitants. Conclusion Magic is thus portrayed as an intervening force that either facilitates or stymies societal progress. Good magic ensures that intelligent, educated individuals such as Arthur become great leaders, while those who would attain positions of power through brute force are thwarted from doing so. At the film’s conclusion, Arthur has not been fully transformed into a great leader because his education is far from finished; he has only learned enough to realise that he knows too little to rule effectively. Yet, from the Socratic perspective, such self-awareness is the germination for attaining true wisdom (Tarrant 263). Arthur also already knows that he will not be able to learn how to rule well through trickery or shortcuts, even with a powerful magician by his side. But the film’s closing scene reiterates this point with Merlin promising Arthur that he will succeed. “Why, they might even make a motion picture about you!” he exclaims in a clever fourth-wall joke (Gellner 120). The Sword in the Stone’s mere existence proves that Arthur will acquire the knowledge and wisdom necessary to become a truly great monarch. The fledgling pupil will live long and rule well, not because of pixie dust or magic spells, but because of his willingness to learn and to be transformed by his education into a wise and fair ruler. References Aronstein, Susan. “‘Higitus Figitus!’ Of Merlin and Disney Magic.” It’s the Disney Version! Popular Cinema and Literary Classics. Eds. Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 129-139. Beck, Jerry. The Animated Movie Guide. Chicago: A Capella, 2005. Booker, M. Keith. Disney, Pixar, and the Hidden Messages of Children's Films. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Buts, Caroline, and Jose Luis Buendia Sierra. “The Sword in the Stone.” European State Aid Law Quarterly 16.4 (2017): 509-511. 10 June 2023 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26694185>. DeBold, Elizabeth. “Fortune’s Fools: Early Tarot Cards.” The Collation: Folger Shakespeare Library 2 Feb. 2021. 5 June 2023 <https://www.folger.edu/blogs/collation/fortunes-fools-early-tarot-cards/>. “Disney History.” D23, 2023. <https://d23.com/disney-history/>. Gossedge, Rob. “The Sword in the Stone: American Translatio and Disney’s Antimedievalism.” The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past. Eds. Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein. Palgrave Macmillan: 2012. 115–131. Grellner, Alice. “Two Films That Sparkle: The Sword in the Stone and Camelot.” Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays. Rev. ed. Ed. Kevin J. Harty. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 118-126. Holcomb, Jeanne, Kenzie Latham, and Daniel Fernandez-Baca. “Who Cares for the Kids? Caregiving and Parenting in Disney Films.” Journal of Family Issues 36.14 (2015): 1957–81. DOI: 10.1177/0192513X13511250. Lester, David. “Measuring Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” Psychological Reports: Mental & Physical Health 113.1 (2013): 15-17. 20 May 2023 <https://doi.org/10.2466/02.20.PR0.113x16z1>. Perciaccante, Antonio, and Alessia Coralli. “The Virus Defeating Madam Mim.” American Journal of Infection Control 45.10 (2017): 1171. 1 June 2023 <http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajic.2017.07.017>. Pinsky, Mark I. The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004. The Sword in the Stone. Dir. Wolfgang Reitherman. Perf. Karl Swenson and Rickie Sorensen. Buena Vista, 1963. Tarrant, Harold. “Socratic Method and Socratic Truth.” A Companion to Socrates. Eds. Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. 254-272. Valle, Maria Luiza Cyrino. "The New Matter of Britain: T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone." Estudos Germânicos 5.1 (1984): 224-265.

Being a celebrity sure ain’t what it used to be. Or, perhaps more accurately, the process of maintaining a stable star persona isn’t what it used to be. With the rise of new media technologies—including digital photography and video production, gossip blogging, social networking sites, and streaming video—there has been a rapid proliferation of voices which serve to articulate stars’ personae. This panoply of sanctioned and unsanctioned discourses has brought the coherence and stability of the star’s image into crisis, with an evermore-heightened loop forming recursively between celebrity gossip and scandals, on the one hand, and, on the other, new media-enabled speculation and commentary about these scandals and gossip-pieces. Of course, while no subject has a single meaning, Hollywood has historically expended great energy and resources to perpetuate the myth that the star’s image is univocal. In the present moment, however, studios’s traditional methods for discursive control have faltered, such that celebrities have found it necessary to take matters into their own hands, using new media technologies, particularly Twitter, in an attempt to stabilise that most vital currency of their trade, their professional/public persona. In order to fully appreciate the significance of this new mode of publicity management, and its larger implications for contemporary subjectivity writ large, we must first come to understand the history of Hollywood’s approach to celebrity publicity and image management.A Brief History of Hollywood PublicityThe origins of this effort are nearly as old as Hollywood itself, for, as Richard DeCordova explains, the celebrity scandals of the 1920s threatened to disrupt the economic vitality of the incipient industry such that strict, centralised image control appeared as a necessary imperative to maintain a consistently reliable product. The Fatty Arbuckle murder trial was scandalous not only for its subject matter (a murder suffused with illicit and shadowy sexual innuendo) but also because the event revealed that stars, despite their mediated larger-than-life images, were not only as human as the rest of us, but that, in fact, they were capable of profoundly inhuman acts. The scandal, then, was not so much Arbuckle’s crime, but the negative pall it cast over the Hollywood mythos of glamour and grace. The studios quickly organised an industry-wide regulatory agency (the MPPDA) to counter potentially damaging rhetoric and ward off government intervention. Censorship codes and morality clauses were combined with well-funded publicity departments in an effort that successfully shifted the locus of the star’s extra-filmic discursive construction from private acts—which could betray their screen image—to information which served to extend and enhance the star’s pre-existing persona. In this way, the sanctioned celebrity knowledge sphere became co-extensive with that of commercial culture itself; the star became meaningful only by knowing how she spent her leisure time and the type of make-up she used. The star’s identity was not found via unsanctioned intrusion, but through studio-sanctioned disclosure, made available in the form of gossip columns, newsreels, and fan magazines. This period of relative stability for the star's star image was ultimately quite brief, however, as the collapse of the studio system in the late 1940s and the introduction of television brought about a radical, but gradual, reordering of the star's signifying potential. The studios no longer had the resources or incentive to tightly police star images—the classic age of stardom was over. During this period of change, an influx of alternative voices and publications filled the discursive void left by the demise of the studios’s regimented publicity efforts, with many of these new outlets reengaging older methods of intrusion to generate a regular rhythm of vendible information about the stars.The first to exploit and capitalize on star image instability was Robert Harrison, whose Confidential Magazine became the leading gossip publication of the 1950s. Unlike its fan magazine rivals, which persisted in portraying the stars as morally upright and wholesome, Confidential pledged on the cover of each issue to “tell the facts and name the names,” revealing what had been theretofore “confidential.” In essence, through intrusion, Confidential reasserted scandal as the true core of the star, simultaneously instituting incursion and surveillance as the most direct avenue to the “kernel” of the celebrity subject, obtaining stories through associations with call girls, out-of-work starlettes, and private eyes. As extra-textual discourses proliferated and fragmented, the contexts in which the public encountered the star changed as well. Theatre attendance dropped dramatically, and as the studios sold their film libraries to television, the stars, formerly available only on the big screen and in glamour shots, were now intercut with commercials, broadcast on grainy sets in the domestic space. The integrity—or at least the illusion of integrity—of the star image was forever compromised. As the parameters of renown continued to expand, film stars, formally distinguished from all other performers, migrated to television. The landscape of stardom was re-contoured into the “celebrity sphere,” a space that includes television hosts, musicians, royals, and charismatic politicians. The revamped celebrity “game” was complex, but still playabout: with a powerful agent, a talented publicist, and a check on drinking, drug use, and extra-marital affairs, a star and his or her management team could negotiate a coherent image. Confidential was gone, The National Inquirer was muzzled by libel laws, and People and E.T.—both sheltered within larger media companies—towed the publicists’s line. There were few widely circulated outlets through which unauthorised voices could gain traction. Old-School Stars and New Media Technologies: The Case of Tom CruiseYet with the relentless arrival of various news media technologies beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the present, maintaining tight celebrity image control began to require the services of a phalanx of publicists and handlers. Here, the example of Tom Cruise is instructive: for nearly twenty years, Cruise’s publicity was managed by Pat Kingsley, who exercised exacting control over the star’s image. With the help of seemingly diverse yet essentially similar starring roles, Cruise solidified his image as the cocky, charismatic boy-next-door.The unified Cruise image was made possible by shutting down competing discourses through the relentless, comprehensive efforts of his management company; Kingsley's staff fine-tuned Cruise’s acts of disclosure while simultaneously eliminating the potential for unplanned intrusions, neutralising any potential scandal at its source. Kingsley and her aides performed for Cruise all the functions of a studio publicity department from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Most importantly, Cruise was kept silent on the topic of his controversial religion, Scientology, lest it incite domestic and international backlash. In interviews and off-the-cuff soundbites, Cruise was ostensibly disclosing his true self, and that self remained the dominant reading of what, and who, Cruise “was.” Yet in 2004, Cruise fired Kingsley, replaced her with his own sister (and fellow Scientologist), who had no prior experience in public relations. In essence, he exchanged a handler who understood how to shape star disclosure for one who did not. The events that followed have been widely rehearsed: Cruise avidly pursued Katie Holmes; Cruise jumped for joy on Oprah’s couch; Cruise denounced psychology during a heated debate with Matt Lauer on The Today Show. His attempt at disclosing this new, un-publicist-mediated self became scandalous in and of itself. Cruise’s dismissal of Kingsley, his unpopular (but not necessarily unwelcome) disclosures, and his own massively unchecked ego all played crucial roles in the fall of the Cruise image. While these stumbles might have caused some minor career turmoil in the past, the hyper-echoic, spastically recombinatory logic of the technoculture brought the speed and stakes of these missteps to a new level; one of the hallmarks of the postmodern condition has been not merely an increasing textual self-reflexivity, but a qualitative new leap forward in inter-textual reflexivity, as well (Lyotard; Baudrillard). Indeed, the swift dismantling of Cruise’s long-established image is directly linked to the immediacy and speed of the Internet, digital photography, and the gossip blog, as the reflexivity of new media rendered the safe division between disclosure and intrusion untenable. His couchjumping was turned into a dance remix and circulated on YouTube; Mission Impossible 3 boycotts were organised through a number of different Web forums; gossip bloggers speculated that Cruise had impregnated Holmes using the frozen sperm of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. In the past, Cruise simply filed defamation suits against print publications that would deign to sully his image. Yet the sheer number of sites and voices reproducing this new set of rumors made such a strategy untenable. Ultimately, intrusions into Cruise’s personal life, including the leak of videos intended solely for Scientology recruitment use, had far more traction than any sanctioned Cruise soundbite. Cruise’s image emerged as a hollowed husk of its former self; the sheer amount of material circulating rendered all attempts at P.R., including a Vanity Fair cover story and “reveal” of daughter Suri, ridiculous. His image was fragmented and re-collected into an altered, almost uncanny new iteration. Following the lackluster performance of Mission Impossible 3 and public condemnation by Paramount head Sumner Redstone, Cruise seemed almost pitiable. The New Logic of Celebrity Image ManagementCruise’s travails are expressive of a deeper development which has occurred over the course of the last decade, as the massively proliferating new forms of celebrity discourse (e.g., paparazzi photos, mug shots, cell phone video have further decentered any shiny, polished version of a star. With older forms of media increasingly reorganising themselves according to the aesthetics and logic of new media forms (e.g., CNN featuring regular segments in which it focuses its network cameras upon a computer screen displaying the CNN website), we are only more prone to appreciate “low media” forms of star discourse—reports from fans on discussion boards, photos taken on cell phones—as valid components of the celebrity image. People and E.T. still attract millions, but they are rapidly ceding control of the celebrity industry to their ugly, offensive stepbrothers: TMZ, Us Weekly, and dozens of gossip blogs. Importantly, a publicist may be able to induce a blogger to cover their client, but they cannot convince him to drop a story: if TMZ doesn’t post it, then Perez Hilton certainly will. With TMZ unabashedly offering pay-outs to informants—including those in law enforcement and health care, despite recently passed legislation—a star is never safe. If he or she misbehaves, someone, professional or amateur, will provide coverage. Scandal becomes normalised, and, in so doing, can no longer really function as scandal as such; in an age of around-the-clock news cycles and celebrity-fixated journalism, the only truly scandalising event would be the complete absence of any scandalous reports. Or, as aesthetic theorist Jacques Ranciere puts it; “The complaint is then no longer that images conceal secrets which are no longer such to anyone, but, on the contrary, that they no longer hide anything” (22).These seemingly paradoxical involutions of post-modern celebrity epistemologies are at the core of the current crisis of celebrity, and, subsequently, of celebrities’s attempts to “take back their own paparazzi.” As one might expect, contemporary celebrities have attempted to counter these new logics and strategies of intrusion through a heightened commitment to disclosure, principally through the social networking capabilities of Twitter. Yet, as we will see, not only have the epistemological reorderings of postmodernist technoculture affected the logic of scandal/intrusion, but so too have they radically altered the workings of intrusion’s dialectical counterpart, disclosure.In the 1930s, when written letters were still the primary medium for intimate communication, stars would send lengthy “hand-written” letters to members of their fan club. Of course, such letters were generally not written by the stars themselves, but handwriting—and a star’s signature—signified authenticity. This ritualised process conferred an “aura” of authenticity upon the object of exchange precisely because of its static, recurring nature—exchange of fan mail was conventionally understood to be the primary medium for personal encounters with a celebrity. Within the overall political economy of the studio system, the medium of the hand-written letter functioned to unleash the productive power of authenticity, offering an illusion of communion which, in fact, served to underscore the gulf between the celebrity’s extraordinary nature and the ordinary lives of those who wrote to them. Yet the criterion and conventions through which celebrity personae were maintained were subject to change over time, as new communications technologies, new modes of Hollywood's industrial organization, and the changing realities of commercial media structures all combined to create a constantly moving ground upon which the celebrity tried to affix. The celebrity’s changing conditions are not unique to them alone; rather, they are a highly visible bellwether of changes which are more fundamentally occurring at all levels of culture and subjectivity. Indeed, more than seventy years ago, Walter Benjamin observed that when hand-made expressions of individuality were superseded by mechanical methods of production, aesthetic criteria (among other things) also underwent change, rendering notions of authenticity increasingly indeterminate.Such is the case that in today’s world, hand-written letters seem more contrived or disingenuous than Danny DeVito’s inaugural post to his Twitter account: “I just joined Twitter! I don't really get this site or how it works. My nuts are on fire.” The performative gesture in DeVito’s tweet is eminently clear, just as the semantic value is patently false: clearly DeVito understands “this site,” as he has successfully used it to extend his irreverent funny-little-man persona to the new medium. While the truth claims of his Tweet may be false, its functional purpose—both effacing and reifying the extraordinary/ordinary distinction of celebrity and maintaining DeVito’s celebrity personality as one with which people might identify—is nevertheless seemingly intact, and thus mirrors the instrumental value of celebrity disclosure as performed in older media forms. Twitter and Contemporary TechnocultureFor these reasons and more, considered within the larger context of contemporary popular culture, celebrity tweeting has been equated with the assertion of the authentic celebrity voice; celebrity tweets are regularly cited in newspaper articles and blogs as “official” statements from the celebrity him/herself. With so many mediated voices attempting to “speak” the meaning of the star, the Twitter account emerges as the privileged channel to the star him/herself. Yet the seemingly easy discursive associations of Twitter and authenticity are in fact ideological acts par excellence, as fixations on the indexical truth-value of Twitter are not merely missing the point, but actively distracting from the real issues surrounding the unsteady discursive construction of contemporary celebrity and the “celebretification” of contemporary subjectivity writ large. In other words, while it is taken as axiomatic that the “message” of celebrity Twittering is, as Henry Jenkins suggests, “Here I Am,” this outward epistemological certainty veils the deeply unstable nature of celebrity—and by extension, subjectivity itself—in our networked society.If we understand the relationship between publicity and technoculture to work as Zizek-inspired cultural theorist Jodi Dean suggests, then technologies “believe for us, accessing information even if we cannot” (40), such that technology itself is enlisted to serve the function of ideology, the process by which a culture naturalises itself and attempts to render the notion of totality coherent. For Dean, the psycho-ideological reality of contemporary culture is predicated upon the notion of an ever-elusive “secret,” which promises to reveal us all as part of a unitary public. The reality—that there is no such cohesive collective body—is obscured in the secret’s mystifying function which renders as “a contingent gap what is really the fact of the fundamental split, antagonism, and rupture of politics” (40). Under the ascendancy of the technoculture—Dean's term for the technologically mediated landscape of contemporary communicative capitalism—subjectivity becomes interpellated along an axis blind to the secret of this fundamental rupture. The two interwoven poles of this axis are not unlike structuralist film critics' dialectically intertwined accounts of the scopophilia and scopophobia of viewing relations, simply enlarged from the limited realm of the gaze to encompass the entire range of subjectivity. As such, the conspiratorial mindset is that mode of desire, of lack, which attempts to attain the “secret,” while the celebrity subject is that element of excess without which desire is unthinkable. As one might expect, the paparazzi and gossip sites’s strategies of intrusion have historically operated primarily through the conspiratorial mindset, with endless conjecture about what is “really happening” behind the scenes. Under the intrusive/conspiratorial paradigm, the authentic celebrity subject is always just out of reach—a chance sighting only serves to reinscribe the need for the next encounter where, it is believed, all will become known. Under such conditions, the conspiratorial mindset of the paparazzi is put into overdrive: because the star can never be “fully” known, there can never be enough information about a star, therefore, more information is always needed. Against this relentless intrusion, the celebrity—whose discursive stability, given the constant imperative for newness in commercial culture, is always in danger—risks a semiotic liquidation that will totally displace his celebrity status as such. Disclosure, e.g. Tweeting, emerges as a possible corrective to the endlessly associative logic of the paparazzi’s conspiratorial indset. In other words, through Twitter, the celebrity seeks to arrest meaning—fixing it in place around their own seemingly coherent narrativisation. The publicist’s new task, then, is to convincingly counter such unsanctioned, intrusive, surveillance-based discourse. Stars continue to give interviews, of course, and many regularly pose as “authors” of their own homepages and blogs. Yet as posited above, Twitter has emerged as the most salient means of generating “authentic” celebrity disclosure, simultaneously countering the efforts of the papparazzi, fan mags, and gossip blogs to complicate or rewrite the meaning of the star. The star uses the account—verified, by Twitter, as the “real” star—both as a means to disclose their true interior state of being and to counter erastz narratives circulating about them. Twitter’s appeal for both celebrities and their followers comes from the ostensible spontaneity of the tweets, as the seemingly unrehearsed quality of the communiqués lends the form an immediacy and casualness unmatched by blogs or official websites; the semantic informality typically employed in the medium obscures their larger professional significance for celebrity tweeters. While Twitter’s air of extemporary intimacy is also offered by other social networking platforms, such as MySpace or Facebook, the latter’s opportunities for public feedback (via wall-posts and the like) works counter to the tight image control offered by Twitter’s broadcast-esque model. Additionally, because of the uncertain nature of the tweet release cycle—has Ashton Kutcher sent a new tweet yet?—the voyeuristic nature of the tweet disclosure (with its real-time nature offering a level of synchronic intimacy that letters never could have matched), and the semantically displaced nature of the medium, it is a form of disclosure perfectly attuned to the conspiratorial mindset of the technoculture. As mentioned above, however, the conspiratorial mindset is an unstable subjectivity, insofar as it only exists through a constant oscillation with its twin, the celebrity subjectivity. While we can understand that, for the celebrities, Twitter functions by allowing them a mode for disclosive/celebrity subjectivisation, we have not yet seen how the celebrity itself is rendered conspiratorial through Twitter. Similarly, only the conspiratorial mode of the follower’s subjectivity has thus far been enumerated; the moment of the follower's celebrtification has so far gone unmentioned. Since we have seen that the celebrity function of Twitter is not really about discourse per se, we should instead understand that the ideological value of Twitter comes from the act of tweeting itself, of finding pleasure in being engaged in a techno-social system in which one's participation is recognised. Recognition and participation should be qualified, though, as it is not the fully active type of participation one might expect in say, the electoral politics of a representative democracy. Instead, it is a participation in a sort of epistemological viewing relations, or, as Jodi Dean describes it, “that we understand ourselves as known is what makes us think there is that there is a public that knows us” (122). The fans’ recognition by the celebrity—the way in which they understood themselves as known by the star was once the receipt of a hand-signed letter (and a latent expectation that the celebrity had read the fan’s initial letter); such an exchange conferred to the fan a momentary sense of participation in the celebrity's extraordinary aura. Under Twitter, however, such an exchange does not occur, as that feeling of one-to-one interaction is absent; simply by looking elsewhere on the screen, one can confirm that a celebrity's tweet was received by two million other individuals. The closest a fan can come to that older modality of recognition is by sending a message to the celebrity that the celebrity then “re-tweets” to his broader following. Beyond the obvious levels of technological estrangement involved in such recognition is the fact that the identity of the re-tweeted fan will not be known by the celebrity’s other two million followers. That sense of sharing in the celebrity’s extraordinary aura is altered by an awareness that the very act of recognition largely entails performing one’s relative anonymity in front of the other wholly anonymous followers. As the associative, conspiratorial mindset of the star endlessly searches for fodder through which to maintain its image, fans allow what was previously a personal moment of recognition to be transformed into a public one. That is, the conditions through which one realises one’s personal subjectivity are, in fact, themselves becoming remade according to the logic of celebrity, in which priority is given to the simple fact of visibility over that of the actual object made visible. Against such an opaque cultural transformation, the recent rise of reactionary libertarianism and anti-collectivist sentiment is hardly surprising. ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 1994.Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968. Dean, Jodi. Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003. DeCordova, Richard. Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Jenkins, Henry. “The Message of Twitter: ‘Here It Is’ and ‘Here I Am.’” Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 23 Aug. 2009. 15 Sep. 2009 < http://henryjenkins.org/2009/08/the_message_of_twitter.html >.Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1984.Ranciere, Jacques. The Future of the Image. New York: Verso, 2007.