Artykuły w czasopismach na temat „Tatar Historical fiction”

The article presents an attempt to conduct a systematical study of the typology of female images in the works of Naki Isanbet, the Tatar scholar-encyclopedist, folklorist, critic, and classic of Tatar literature (1899–1992). Published and unpublished sources were used as the research material. Fiction, journalistic, and scientific texts of N. Isanbet have been analysed using the method of semantic analysis, historical and cultural, comparative methods. The author proves that the ideal of a woman of the Enlightenment epoch, i.e. the “mother of the nation”, dominates in the legacy of the scholar who was the classic of the Tatar literature as well. The images of a devoted spouse, a wise mother, a “mother of the nation” can be encountered in his works. The writer defends the ideas of equality of women and men, women’s active participation in public life, etc. in his works of fiction written in various genres throughout the twentieth century. The poetics of female images depends on the requirements of the genre. When developing the images, the writer relies on the traditions of the Tatar folklore and oriental poetry. In his creative legacy, the encyclopedic scholar immortalised dozens of names of the female contemporaries who made a significant contribution to the history of the Tatar people – teachers, actresses, writers, translators, public figures, etc.

The paper discusses the development of ethnic fiction in the modern Russian literature, focusing on Shamil Idiatullin's 2020 novel “Poslednee vremja”. We show that the tendency towards switching from ethnic to regionalist agenda can be observed in the works by both Russian authors, such as Denis Osokin and Alexei Ivanov, and authors having a non-Russian ethnic identity, such as the Tatar novelists Guzel Yakhina and Shamil Idiatullin. We adopt an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together techniques from literary studies (analysis of the genre and the literary situation as well as the historical and cultural context) and linguistics (an etymological analysis of proper names, in the first place). Our commentary on various linguistic, historical and cultural aspects puts Idiatullin»s novel into the discourse of the contemporary ethnic fiction as a text that expresses the positions of both the Conquerors and the Conquered. The analysis of personal names and other words of non-Russian origin that are used in the Russian text allows to identify the fictional ethnic groups with the actual peoples of the Volga-Kama region and places the novel within a present-day context. One of the key themes of “Poslednee vremja” is language loss, and some scenes, such as the self-immolation of the pagan priest Arβuj-Kuγə̑za, make a clear reference to the contemporary history of the region. The novel»s title can be translated as both “End times” and “These times”; thus, it includes simultaneously an apocalyptic allusion and a hint to the events of the recent past.

In this article, Paulina Wójcikowska-Wantuch analyzes the presence of postcolonial discourse in A Volga Tale, a novel by Guzel Yakhina, a Russian author of Tatar origin, whose fiction is concerned with themes of history and identity. Yakhina focuses on the tragic events of the Soviet period shown from the perspective of a single person and her fictions represent the post-memory trend in literature. She stresses the cultural and linguistic distinctness of the German minority, which ultimately fell victim to Stalin’s imperialistic policy. Yakhina exposes the destructive mechanisms of the imperial power, but refrains from unambiguous assessments of historical reality. She focuses on the problem of responsibility for one’s neighbors, emphasizing the importance of the characters’ individual choices. In the light of the ethical issues raised in the novel, the problem of national identity is of secondary importance. In connection with the above, A Volga Tale and also other novels by Yakhina elude any unambiguous assignment to postcolonial literature.

В статье рассматриваются проблемы сохранения сибирскими татарами родного языка на современном этапе исторического развития. В кратком обзоре представлены этапы изучения сибирскотатарского языка от начала XIX до начала XXI в. На основе общеизвестных источников и литературы показано, что этноним татары, которым называются разные по происхождению этнические общности Поволжья, Приуралья и Западной Сибири, является псевдоэтнонимом. Он был введён в качестве самоназвания поволжских тюрок казанским мусульманским просветителем Ш. Марджани, а в советское время стал точкой опоры для создания нового литературного языка и включения его в образовательные программы всех «татарских» школ Советского союза. При этом не учитывалось, что сибирские татары являются самостоятельным этносом, со своими уникальными языком и культурой. Основным выводом статьи является утверждение, что сегодня сибирские татары поставлены перед непростым выбором – сохранить или потерять родной язык. Сохранения языка на уровне семьи явно недостаточно. Поэтому необходимо его преподавание в школах, пропаганда в средствах массовой информации, выпуск художественной литературы на нём. Первые методические наработки в виде граматики, фонетики, графики, словарей, а также литературные произведения уже имеются. Можно вводить изучение сибирскотатарскоко языка факультативно в национальных школах и на специальных курсах при городских Центрах сибирскотатарской культуры. В настоящее время работа по сохранению сибирскотатарского языка и культуры проводится только энтузиастами. Поддержки на уровне администрации она не получает. Опираясь на старые, проверенные временем программы и методические разработки по татарскому языку и литературе, руководители органов управления образованием не видят необходимости для перехода на изучение сибирскотатарского языка и развивающейся сибирскотатарской литературы. На наш взгляд, дальнейшее игнорирование существующей проблемы повлечёт за собой усиление маргинализации сибирских татар Тюменской области и постепенной утрате ими самоидентификации. The article deals with the problems of preservation of their native language by the Siberian Tatars at the present stage of historical development. The brief overview presents the stages of studying the Siberian Tatar language from the beginning of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century. Based on commonly known sources and literature, it is shown that the ethnonym Tatars, which refers to ethnic communities of different origins in the Volga region, the Urals and Western Siberia, is a pseudo-ethnonym. It was introduced as the self-name of the Volga Turks by the Kazan Muslim educator Sh. Mardzhani, and in Soviet times it became a fulcrum for the creation of a new literary language and its inclusion in the educational programs of all “Tatar” schools of the Soviet Union. At the same time, it was not taken into account that Siberian Tatars are an independent ethnic group, with their own unique language and culture. The main conclusion of the article is that today Siberian Tatars face a difficult choice – to keep or to lose their native language. Preserving the language at the family level is clearly not enough. Therefore, it is necessary to teach it in schools, propagate it in the media, and publish fiction in it. The first methodological developments in the form of grammar, phonetics, graphics, dictionaries, as well as literary works are already available. It is possible to introduce the study of the Siberian Tatar language as an option in national schools and in special courses at the city Centers of Siberian Tatar culture. At present, the work to preserve the Siberian Tatar language and culture is carried out only by enthusiasts. It does not receive support at the administration level. Relying on the old, time-tested programs and methodological developments in the Tatar language and literature, the heads of education authorities do not see the need for studying the Siberian Tatar language and developing Siberian Tatar literature. In our opinion, further ignoring of the existing problem will entail increased marginalization of the Siberian Tatars of the Tyumen region and their gradual loss of self-identification.

The article analyzes the functioning specifics of literary and artistic anthroponyms in the novel "Blue Waters" by V. Rutkivskyi and in the story "The Adventures of the Thrice Glorious Robber Pinti" by O. Gavrosh. It has been found that the proper name of the character in fiction text can is one of the aspects of the realization of the author’s position in the work, which makes it possible to depict historical events through the prism of the lives of the main characters, to comprehend the general in the specific, to highlight actual personal meanings. The historical novel highlights the representation of three cultural worlds: the Lithuanian-Ruthenian, the Tatar, and the borderlands between these worlds. The names of historical figures are used to introduce the reader to the temporal context of the work. Anthroponyms denoting wanderers illustrate the tradition of creating nicknames for Zaporozhian Cossacks. The appellative designating a title, social status or a military rank is important among the literary anthroponymicon of the Tatars. The main children’s anthropocenters of the novel have an affectionate form of names, it indicates the age of these characters and the author’s favorable attitude towards them. The author ot the article has studied that historical biographical story about the adventures of the robber Pinti is characterized by folklore stylization, it also has influence on the selection of literary anthroponyms. Nominations for designation of opryshky reflect the transition from one state (rural life) to another (robbery life) and indicate the characterological traits of a person. The proper names of lords and other status officials are emotional and evaluative literary anthroponyms. The context helps to recognize the ironic coloring of the anthroponym. The form of the name can indicate the national origin of the character. It has been observed that there are quite a few zoonyms in the works, in particular, those animals have nicknames which are directly related to the main characters of the works and carry some semantic load for the development of the action. The article determines that the main function of literary anthroponyms in the analyzed historical texts for children and youth is the creation of an appropriate temporal, spatial, cultural and social context, in addition, they can express an evaluative connotation depending on the author’s intention.

One of the most important indicators of the adaptation of Turkic borrowing in English is their allocation in different dictionaries of English (explanatory, etymological, phraselogical), as well as their use in different works of fiction. Linguistic contacts manifest themselves in the interaction of linguistic, cultural and historical factors and represent an essential process in intercultural communication. Turkic lexical elements, actively used in various languages as a language mechanism, require special attention. A comparison of different languages shows that borrowing is a universal fact of language, the linguistic essence of which allows to determine the absolute or relative chronology of their entry into the system of different languages. Turkisms closely related to the lexico-semantic system of the recipient language expands the body of language units of English and other languages, indicating the paths of penetration and the degree of adaptation. This takes into account the patterns of lexical and phonetic potential of the language. Turkic borrowing includes not only Turkic words, but also lexical elements of Arabic and Mongolian, Persian, Tatar, Uzbek, Kazakh origin, which have penetrated English through many Turkic languages and have been reflected in English lexicographic sources. Turkism thus refers to words included in English from Turkic languages or through Turkic languages regardless of the source of the mutual relationship, i.e. words having a Turkic stage in their history.

This article is devoted to the process of formation and activities carried out by literary organizations that existed in the 20s of the XX century. The purpose of the study is to consider the trends of formation and some aspects of the activities carried out by literary and creative organizations in the 20s of the XX century in the territory of the Tatar ASSR. This period is characterized by creation of many literary organizations, as well as uniting writers and theater workers in associations, which becomes a prerequisite for the formation of a single literary organization. Materials and methods. The methodological foundation for examining the subject of research is made by the principles of historicism and historical reconstruction, as well as the descriptive-narrative method. Based on the results of analysis of archival documents and published sources, the article reflects: the history of creation and some aspects of the activities carried out by literary organizations of the TASSR in the context of socio-cultural policy in the 20s of the XX century. The research materials made it possible to supplement the existing source base and can be used when writing scientific papers and preserving the historical and cultural heritage of the region. Study results. The article presents information about the activities of some literary organizations of the 20s of the XX century. The analysis of their activities showed that literary organizations were very active in their desire to reinforce proletarian culture. Conclusions. The association of writers and artists is considered as a necessary trend in the conditions of a new ideological paradigm evolvement, as the foundation of their professional, cultural, political identification in the new historical realities. Writers’ organizations of the 20s of the XX century contributed to preservation of literary heritage and gave impetus to the development of fiction in the Soviet period. In the early 30s of the XX century, a movement aimed at creating a unified literary organization was set out and intensified.

The formation of the Soviet image of the past in the context of the doctrine of «our great ancestors» was extended not only to historiography, fiction and journalism. A special place was occupied by cinema. The Bolsheviks were very early realized the tremendous role of cinema as a means of influencing mass culture. With the help of cinema, the party leadership sought to form a «true» view of reality, thereby educating people in the spirit of «communism and internationalism». Founded in the early 30’s oftheXX century. the genre of historical cinema, became the basis of all Soviet cinema. Rejecting the leading role of the «masses» in the tapes, bolsheviks turn to the biography of outstanding and «progressive» historical personalities, first of all, rulers and generals. Throughout the period of existence of Soviet cinema, the historical biographies of Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, Michael Kutuzov, Alexander Suvorov and others were filmed. The most important document of the memory of Danylo Romanovich in the era of Soviet patriotism was the film of Ukrainian director Yaroslav Lupiya – «Danylo – Prince Galician». The Film was created in 1987 at the Odessa Film Studio named after O. Dovzhenko. Before us is a work that was supposed to create a stable image of Prince Danylo Halytsky in the consciousness of Ukrainian society. The image is dictated «from above». The ecranisation of Danylo Romanovych requires a detailed study of not only the history of the film, but also the reception of the ruler in the Soviet image. This will allow us to trace and analyze the struggle for the appropriation and stylization of the image in detail, as well as contradictory directions in forming the concept of the «Soviet patriot» of Danylo Halytsky. The figure of King Danylo as well as the political history of the Galician-Volyn was state remained unknown to a wide cinema. In the official historical discourse of the USSR, the image of Danylo Romanovych was used very carefully and only where «party» leadership needed it. Despite the growing interest in the history of Kievan Rus in the cinema, Danylo’s film adaptation resembled his «popularity» in the scientific literature of that time. Certain changes occurred only during the Perestroika period. The directorate of the Odessa film studio named after O.Dovzhenko was interested in the history of the medieval past of Ukraine. Here the Ukrainian director Yaroslav Lupi created his picture «Danylo – Prince Galitsky». The film is considered to be the banner of publicity. The tape appeals to the heroic Ukrainian past of the times of Kyivan Rus and Galicia-Volyn state, which became the shield of Europe against the Mongol-Tatar invasion. On the posters devoted to the premiere of the film, it was indicated that the tape glorifi the famous Ukrainian prince Danylo Halytsky. However, we have doubts about the screen image of the key hero of the Western Ukrainian myth. What was the real stylization of the image of the Old Russian ruler in the eponymous painting that had so long been in the «shadow» of the Soviet historical culture? Keywords: thesoviet image, soviet historical culture, wide cinema, ecranisation of King Danylo Romanovych, historical discourse

In the literature on the issue, the ethnikon Dagestan is traditionally used, which is interpreted as an ethnonym identified with the highlanders of Dagestan. However, the languages of the latter were called Dagestanian only beginning with the second half of the twentieth century. This calls into question the historical subjectivity of the Kumyks who were traditionally called “Dagestan Tatars” as far back as in the 19th century. That is what they are called, along with the Dagestan highlanders-Lezgins, in the “Notes from the House of the Dead” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Kumyks, under the name of “Tatars”, are also mentioned later - in Leo Tolstoy’s story “The Prisoner of the Caucasus”. A very significant fact is not only the images of the Kumyks in Russian fiction of the time under consideration, but also their historical prototypes’ fame, established by K. Aliyev. These works of fiction include A. Pushkin’s sketches and the plan of the “Romance on the Caucasian Waters” (1831), published in 1881, whose plot was connected with Shah-Vali, the son of Shamkhal of Tarkovsky Mehdi II. Crimea-shamkhal Ummalat-bek Buynaksky, an associate of the first Imam Gazi-Muhammad, was the prototype of the protagonist in A. BestuzhevMarlinsky’s story “Ammalat-Bek”. Bela is also considered to be a Kumychka who, together with her brother Azamat, belongs to the central images of M. Lermontov’s story of the same name. K. Aliyev found the Kumyk prototypes of some participants in the battle, to which M. Lermontov dedicated his poem “Valerik” (1842). We also draw attention to the Kumyk prototype of Colonel Khasanov, one of the characters in Leo Tolstoy’s story “The Raid. A Volunteer’s Story”.

The forgotten work and life of Paulin Święcicki (1841–1876), a writer from Kiev region and active in Galicia, represents a rare, authentic example of Polish‑Ukrainian cultural border. His debut work entitled 'Przed laty. Powieść ukraińska' (1865), despite being an artistic failure, is an interesting link between the heritage of the Romantic 'Ukrainian School' and the historical vision of Polish Borderlands in With fire and sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz. The creation of the 17th‑century reality of Ukrainian grasslands (noble, rural and Cossack existence), battle scenes (fights against the Tatars), romantic‑melodramatic plot – these are all adapted to a unique Ukrainian (not Polish‑centred) perspective. Święcicki’s ‘ukrainism’ is a portrait of Cossack heroism, a picture of enslaving the Ukrainian nation, and a picturesque description of local stories. The eclectic character of the work, which is nostalgically contemplative and in romantic style, as well as journalistically engaged, has an impact on its incoherence, but also makes it original against the background of the Sarmatian‑borderland fiction of those days.

The article deals with I. A. Bunin’s perception of the personality and works by A. K. Tolstoy. The key components of this reception are the system of philosophy of history views formulated by A. K. Tolstoy and his concept of historical memory. The belonging of the 19 th century poet to the large Tolstoy family was mythologized by Bunin and became a reason for understanding and determining the young writer’s own position in relation to each of the three writers: L. N. Tolstoy, A. K. Tolstoy and Bunin’s contemporary A. N. Tolstoy. The paper draws upon fictional and nonfictional documents by I. A. Bunin and A. K. Tolstoy. Bunin’s reception of the personality and artistic heritage by A. K. Tolstoy was determined by the history of his origin. The Tolstoy family attracted Bunin’s attention because it was an illustration of his own concept of the literary gift as a “family affair”. Leo Tolstoy enjoyed an undisputed genius and generally recognized family reputation. Aleksey N. Tolstoy’s biography, on the contrary, was ambiguous – the fact that inspired Bunin’s scandalous hints in his essay “The Third Tolstoy”. Aleksey K. Tolstoy’s biographical path of was also surrounded by similar rumors – but Bunin in his article “Inonia and Kitezh” prefers to keep silent on them. In the 1900s, A. K. Tolstoy appeared to Bunin as a rival poet, and in the eyes of Bunin’s contemporaries as the one of his main literary predecessors. Bunin’s poem “Kurgan” was a kind of poetic response to A. K. Tolstoy’s ballad “Kurgan” dedicated to the problem of historical oblivion. These works-doublets could serve as an illustration of one of the types of literary “revision” introduced by H. Bloom. Bunin developed the plot of A. K. Tolstoy’s “Kurgan” in the elegiac genre and demonstrated the value of the past in the present. Since 1918, Bunin’s perception of Tolstoy’s legacy has changed. A. K. Tolstoy’s views of the Russian history are publicly emphasized in the “Cursed Days”, “Mission of the Russian Emigration” and “Inonia and Kitezh”. According to A. K. Tolstoy, the historical catastrophe for Russia was programmed by “Tatar yoke”, which distorted the European character of the national culture and personality and later drove the nation to the particularly Asian, as Tolstoy thought, phenomenon of Ivan the Terrible. Borrowing some modern ideas from the natural sciences, Bunin transferred a number of A. K. Tolstoy’s observations into an anthropological sphere and pointed out specific signs of the “Mongolian” traces in Bolsheviks’ Russia.

The article deals with the representation of the concept “wealth” in the Tatar and Anglo-American linguoculture, analyses the difference in the definition system and etymology of the words. The essence of the fiction concepts and its place in the linguistic picture in the world is described. Componential and content analysis of the concept held on the basis of the fiction literature allows revealing diverse and common features between two cultures and worldviews of the “wealth” as a part of the linguistic picture of the world. The result of the research is reflected in the conclusion that the Tatar and Anglo-American cultures equally frequently use the concept to describe material resources, profusion of objects and phenomena, money and other economically exchangeable property. Although the great difference in the presence of the “spiritual wealth” concept in the Tatar linguistic and its absence in the Anglo-American one is noted and disclosed. Existing differences are subsequently explained throughout the historical background of the Tatar, British and American

ABSTRACT History and literature are two of the many ways to describe the reality. These two ways have a difference extremely. History must be tightly based on fact, while literature is fictional and imagina- tive. However, between these two extreme points there is a slice. Its means that in history there is in certain limits an element of imagination and in literature there is an element of fact although just a name. Therefore, the reality of history can be used as a raw material of literature. In turn, therefore literature can critically be used as a source of history. In Tatar Sunda there are a number of literary works, especially in the form of lyrics Tembang Sunda, which the material is taken from historical facts. The name most widely used materials of lyrics are Pajajaran and Siliwangi. These two names refer to the golden age of the Sundanese throughout its history. Keywords: Pajajaran, Siliwangi, rumpaka, Tembang Sunda, history. Â

The writers pay increased attention to the philosophical and historiographical interpretation of events and phenomena, the moral and human essence of historical persons, which absorbs their upbringing, social roles, and innate mental dominants. The article establishes that the main types of plot creation of historical novels are chronicled, events in which unfold in a temporal sequence, and concentric (“single action”), where events develop in a causal relationship. The conceptual storyline of the novel by M. Morozenko “Ivan Sirko, the Great Sorcerer” is the confrontation of the young main character and the pompous instigator of the youthful detachment Taras Chornoplit. The situation, which is repeated in chivalrous novels, is elegantly modeled. The character of the opponents is checked for stability: the enraged Taras Chornoplit threw Ivan Polovets, who is smaller, on the grass, but the last one did not lose his head and fought back. The fight between them will be one of the plot engines. In the real moments of the greatest tension of the conflict, Sirko’s legendary supernatural abilities are woven, because he learned from the characters to see the innermost as well. The confrontation continued. The struggle between good and evil is organically woven into the outline of the plot of the story “Ivan Sirko, the Glorious Koshovoy”: the military fame of the fellow countryman strangled Chornoplit, and he slandered him. Further plot situations are saturated with fantasy: confusing feet, Chornoplit approached the Sich gates, but it was as if someone had moved them. In the morning he woke up far from the gates and was suddenly captured by the Tatars. The culmination of the clash was Sirko's response to treason against his native land. If Taras carries unworthy fame from here and disgraces his native Merefyanka, then death will be the punishment. The second time Sirko pushed Chornoplit as if he were something nasty and ugly. According to the results of the study, it was found that episodes of the confrontation between Sirko and Chornoplit constitute an event chain of verification of the moral qualities of the characters. It shows that for the writer, the preservation and development of the best achievements of the past, the proactive search for connections with folklore science fiction is especially relevant and important. Different orders have compositional components of the novels of dilogy: descriptions, landscapes, portraits, monologues, dialogues, polylogues. They are enriched by the reproduction of the human perception of the world seen and experienced by the characters in stories, the connections between them and events, the fixation of individual communicative situations. Magical landscapes are consonant with the moods of the citizen of Merefyanka; their souls turn to ancient sources. The majestic landscape of Khortytsia personifies the Cossack defense and glory. Khortytsia represents in the story not only a landscape type, but also a component of historical memory in the process of creating a nation. Emotionally respectful attitude to the cradle of the Cossacks forms a personal consciousness. Sirko's verbal and artistic portraits describe a temperamental personality at different age. In postmodern narratives, M. Morozenko, instead of full reproductions of the personality of the main character, draws attention only to the leading features in various life situations. The novelism of the stories allowed the writer to achieve the desired laconicism in affirming historical memory, human good and justice, the need to talk with the young reader about the most important thing – friendship and child cruelty, truth and injustice, love and hatred, about the attitude to parents and the active character of the little hero, about Cossack feats. Keywords: opening, culmination, event chain, retrospection.

This article explores the role of authenticity in televisual teaching and learning based on a case study of Who Do You Think You Are?, a documentary series in which celebrities go on a journey to retrace their family tree. Originally broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation, this series has been adapted in eighteen countries, including Australia. The Australian version is produced locally and has been airing on the public channel Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) since 2008. According to its producers, Who Do You Think You Are? teaches history and promotes multiculturalism:We like making a broad range of programs about history and telling our own Australian stories and particularly the multicultural basis of our history […] A lot of people know the broad Australian stroke, English, British history but they don’t really know as much about the migratory history […] It’s a way of saying this is our country now, this is where it came from, here’s some stories, which you might not be aware of, and what’s happened to people along the way. (Producer 1) In this article, I examine Who Do You Think You Are? as an educational text and I investigate its pedagogy. Starting with the assumption that it aims to teach, my intention is to explain how it teaches. In particular, I want to demonstrate that authenticity is a key feature of its pedagogy. Applied to the televisual text, the term “authentic” refers to the quality of being true or based on facts. In this sense, authenticity implies actuality, accuracy and reliability. Applied to media personae, “authentic” must be understood in its more modern sense of “genuine”. From this perspective, to be “authentic” requires displaying “one’s inner truths” (McCarthy 242). Based on my textual analysis and reception study, I show that these two forms of authenticity play a crucial role in the pedagogy of Who Do You Think You Are? Signifying Authenticity One of the pedagogical techniques of Who Do You Think You Are? is to persuade viewers that it authentically represents actual events by using some of the codes and conventions of the documentary. According to Michael Renov, the persuasive modality is intrinsic to all documentary forms and it is linked to their truth claim: “the documentary ‘truth claim’ (which says, at the very least: ‘Believe me, I’m of the world’) is the baseline for persuasion for all of nonfiction, from propaganda to rock doc” (30). Who Do You Think You Are? signifies actuality by using some of the codes and conventions of the observational documentary. As Bill Nichols explains, observational documentaries give the impression that they spontaneously and faithfully record actual events as they happen. Nichols compares this mode of documentary to Italian Neorealism: “we look in on life as it is lived. Social actors engage with one another, ignoring the filmmakers” (111). In Who Do You Think You Are? the celebrities and other social actors often engage with one another without acknowledging the camera’s presence. In those observational scenes, various textual features signify actuality: natural sounds, natural light or shaky hand-held camera, for example, are often used to connote the unprepared recording of reality. This is usually reinforced by the congruence between the duration of the scene and the diegetic time (the duration of the action that is represented). Furthermore, Who Do You Think You Are? emphasises authenticity by showing famous Australians as ordinary people in ordinary settings or doing mundane activities. As one of the SBS programmers pointed out during our interview: “It shows personalities or stars that you can never get to as real people and it makes you realise that those people, actually, they’re the same as you and I!” (SBS programmer). Celebrities are “real” in the sense that they exist in the profilmic world; but in this context showing celebrities “as real people” means showing them as ordinary individuals whom the audience can relate to and identify with. Instead of representing “stars” through their usual manufactured public personae, the program offers glimpses into their real lives and authentic selves, thus giving “backstage access to the famous” (Marwick and boyd 144). In this regard, the series aligns with other media texts, including “celebreality” programs and social networking sites like Twitter, whose appeal lies in the construction of more authentic and intimate presentations of celebrities (Marwick and boyd; Ellcessor; Thomas). This rhetoric of authenticity is enhanced by the celebrity’s genealogical journey, which is depicted both as a quest for historical knowledge and for self-knowledge. Indeed, as its title suggests, the program links ancestry to personal identity. In every episode, the genealogical investigation reveals similarities between the celebrity and their ancestors, thus uncovering personality traits that seem to have been transmitted from generation to generation. Thus, the series does more than simply showing celebrities as ordinary people “stripped of PR artifice and management” (Marwick and boyd 149): by unveiling those transgenerational traits, it discloses innermost aspects of the celebrities’ authentic selves—a backstage beyond the backstage. Who Do You Think You Are? communicates authenticity in these different ways in order to invite viewers’ trust. As Louise Spence and Vinicius Navarro observe, this is characteristic of most documentaries: Whereas fiction films may allude to actual events, documentaries usually claim that those events did take place in such and such a way, and that the images and sounds on the screen are accurate and reliable […] Most documentaries—if not all of them—have something to say about the world and, in one way or another, they want to be trusted by their audience. (Spence and Navarro 13) Similarly, Nichols writes that as documentary viewers, “we uphold our belief in the authenticity of the historical world represented on screen […] we assume that documentary sounds and images have the authenticity of evidence” (36). This is supported by Thomas Austin’s reception study of documentary films in the United Kingdom, which shows that most viewers expect documentaries to give them “access to the real.” According to Austin, these generic expectations about authenticity contribute to the pedagogic authority of documentaries. Therefore, the implied audience (Barker and Austin) of Who Do You Think You Are? must trust that it authentically represents actual events and individuals and they must perceive it as an accurate and reliable source of knowledge about the historical world in order to “attain a meaningful encounter” (48) with it. The implied audience in no way predicts actual audiences’ responses (which I will examine in the remainder of this article) but it is an important aspect of the program’s pedagogy: for the text to be read as a “history lesson” (Nichols 39) viewers must be persuaded by the program’s rhetoric of authenticity. Perceiving Authenticity My reception study confirms that in order to learn, viewers must be persuaded by this rhetoric of authenticity, which promises “information and knowledge, insight and awareness” (Nichols 40). This is illustrated by the responses of five viewers who participated in a screening and focus group discussion. Arya, Marnie, Junior, Lec and Krista all say that they have learnt from Who Do You Think You Are? either at home or from the episode that was screened before our discussion. They all agree that the program teaches about history, multiculturalism and other aspects that were not predicted by the producers (such as human nature, relationships and social issues). More importantly, these viewers learn from the program because they trust that it authentically represents actual events and because they perceive the personae as “natural”, “relaxed” and “being themselves” and their emotions as “genuine”: Krista: It felt genuine to me.Lec: Me also […]Marnie: I felt like he seemed more natural, even with the interpreter there, talking with his aunty. He seemed more himself, he was more emotional […]Arya: I don’t think that they’re acting. To go outside of this session, I mean, I’ve seen the show before and I think it is really genuine. As Austin notes, what matters from the viewers’ perspective is not “the critically scrutinised indexical guarantee of documentary, but rather a less well defined and nebulous sense of qualities such as the 'humanity', 'honesty', 'sincerity'.” This does not mean that viewers naively believe that the text gives a transparent, unmediated access to the truth (Austin). Trust (or in Austin’s words “willing abandonment”) can be combined with scepticism (Buckingham; Ang; Liebes and Katz). Marnie, for example, oscillates between these two modalities of response: Marnie: If something seems quite artificial, it stands out, you start thinking about well, why did they do that? But while they’re just sitting down, having a conversation, there’s not anything really that you have to think about. Obviously all those transition shots, sitting on the rock, opening a letter in the square, they also have, you know, the violins playing and everything. Everything builds to feel a bit more contrived, whereas when they’re having the conversation, I wasn’t aware of the music. Maybe I was listening to what they were saying more. But I think you sort of engage a bit more in listening to what they’re saying when they’re having a conversation. Whereas the filling, you’re not really thinking about his emotions so much as…why is he wearing that shirt? Interestingly, the scenes that Marnie perceives as authentic and that she engages with are the “conversations” scenes, which use the codes and conventions of the observational documentary. The scenes that she views with scepticism are the more dramatised sequences, which do not use the codes and conventions of the observational documentary. Marnie is the only viewer in my focus groups who clearly oscillates between trust and scepticism. She is also the most ambivalent about what she has learnt and about the quality of the knowledge that she gains from Who Do You Think You Are? Authenticity and Emotional Responses Because they believe that the personae and emotions in the program are genuine, these viewers are emotionally engaged. As the producers explain, learning from Who Do You Think You Are? is not a purely cognitive process but is fundamentally an emotional and empathetic experience: There are lots of programs on television where you can learn about history. I think what’s so powerful about this show is because it has a very strong emotional arc […] You can learn a lot of dates, and you can pass a test, just on knowing the year that the Blue Mountains were first crossed or the Magna Carta was signed. But what Who Do You Think You Are? does is that it takes you on a journey where you get to really feel the experiences of those people who were fighting the battle or climbing the mast. (Producer 2) The producers invite viewer empathy in two ways: they design the program so that viewers are encouraged to share the emotions of people who lived in the past; and they design it so that viewers are encouraged to share the emotions of the celebrities who participate in the program. This is illustrated by the participants’ responses to one scene in which the actor Don Hany sees an old photograph of his pregnant mother: Lec: I was touched! I was like “aw!”Ms Goldblum: I didn’t buy it.Krista: You didn’t feel like that, Lec?Lec: Not at all! Like, yeah, I got a bit touched.Junior: Yeah. And those looked like genuine tears, they weren’t crocodile tears.Ms Goldblum: I didn’t think so. There was a [sniffing], pause, pose, camera moment.Junior: I had a little moment…Krista: Aw!Interviewer: You had a moment?Junior: Yeah, there was a little moment there.Ms Goldblum: Got a little teary?Junior: When he’s looking at the photos, yeah. Because I think everyone’s done that, gone back and looked through old photos, you know what that feeling is. As this discussion suggests, authenticity is a crucial aspect of the program’s pedagogy, not only because the viewers must trust it in order to learn from it, but also because it facilitates empathy and emotional engagement. Distrust and Cynicism In contrast, the viewers who do not learn from Who Do You Think You Are? perceive the program as contrived and the celebrity’s emotions as inauthentic: Wolfgang: I don’t think they taught me much that I didn’t already know in regards to history.Naomi: Yeah, me neither […] I kind of look at these shows and think it’s a bit contrived […]Wolfgang: I hate all that. They’re constructing a show purely for money, that’s all bullshit. That annoys me […]Ms Goldblum: But for me the show is just about, I don’t know, they try to find something to be sentimental and it’s not. Like, they try to force it […] I didn’t buy it […] Because they are aware of the constructed nature of the program and because they perceive it as contrived, these viewers do not engage emotionally with the content: Naomi: When I see someone on this show looking at photos, I find it really difficult to stop thinking he’s got a camera on his face.Wolfgang: Yeah.Naomi: He’s looking at photos, and that’s a beautiful moment, but there’s a camera right there, looking at him, and I can’t help but think that when I see those things […] There are other people in the room that we don’t see and there’s a camera that’s pointing at him […] This intellectual distance is sometimes expressed through mockery and laughter (Buckingham). Because they distrust the program and make fun of it, Wolfgang and Ms Goldblum (who were not in the same focus group) are both described as “cynics”: Ms Goldblum: He gets all teary and I think oh he’s an actor he’s just putting that shit on, trying to make it look interesting. Whereas if it were just a normal person, I’d find it more believable. But I think the whole premise of the show is they take famous people, like actors and all those people in the spotlight, I think because they put on good shows. I would be more interested in someone who wasn’t famous. I’d find it more genuine.Junior: You are such a cynic! […]Wolfgang: And look, maybe I’m a big cynic about this, and that’s why I haven’t watched it. But it’s this emotionally padded, scripted, prompted kind of thing, which makes it more palatable for people to watch. Unlike most participants, who identify the program as “educational” and “documentary”, Wolfgang classifies it as pure entertainment. His cynicism and scepticism can be linked to his generic labelling of the program as “reality TV”: Wolfgang: I don’t watch commercial TV, I can’t stand it. And it’s for that reason. It’s all contrived. It’s all based on selling something as opposed to looking into this guy’s family and history and perhaps learning something from it. Like, it’s entertainment, it’s not educational […] It’s a reality TV sort of thing, I just got no interest in it really. As Annette Hill shows in her reception study of the reality game program Big Brother, most viewers are cynical about the authenticity of reality television. Despite the generic label of “reality”, most interpret reality programs as inauthentic. Indeed, as John Corner points out, reality television is characterised by display and performance, even though it adopts some of the codes and conventions of the documentary. Hill’s research also reveals that viewers often look for moments of authenticity within the unreal context of reality television: “the ‘game’ is to find the ‘truth’ in the spectacle/performance environment” (337). Interestingly, this describes Naomi and Wolfgang’s attitude towards Who Do You Think You Are?: Naomi: The conversation with his mum seemed a bit more relaxed, maybe. Or a bit more...I don’t know, I kind of look at these shows and think it’s a bit contrived. Whereas that seemed a bit more natural […]Wolfgang: Often he’s just sitting there and I suppose those are filling shots. But I found that when he was chatting to his aunty and seeing the photos that he hadn’t seen before, when he was a child, he was tearing up […] That’s probably the one time I didn’t notice, like, didn’t think about the cameras because I found it quite powerful, when he was tearing up, that was a kind of an emotional moment. According to Austin, viewers’ discourses about authenticity in relation to documentaries and reality television serve as markers of cultural distinction: Often underpinning expressions of the appeal of 'the real', the use of a discourse of authenticity frequently revealed taste markers and a set of cultural distinctions deployed by these cinemagoers, notably between the veracity and 'honesty' of Etre et Avoir [a French documentary] and the contrasting 'fakery' and 'inauthenticity' of reality television. Describing documentaries as authentic and educational and reality television as fake entertainment can be a way for some (middle-class) viewers to assert their socio-cultural status. By performing as the sceptical and cynical viewer and criticising lower cultural forms, research participants distinguish themselves from the imagined mass of unsophisticated and uneducated (working class?) viewers (Buckingham; Austin). Conclusion Some scholars suggest that viewers learn when they compare what they watch on television to their own experiences or when they identify with television characters or personae (Noble and Noble; Tulloch and Lupton; Tulloch and Moran; Buckingham and Bragg). My study contributes to this field of inquiry by showing that viewers learn when they perceive televisual content as authentic and as a reliable source of knowledge. More importantly, the results reveal how some televisual texts signify authenticity to invite trust and learning. This study raises questions about the role of trust and authenticity in televisual learning and it would be fruitful to pursue further research to determine whether these findings apply to genres that are not factual. Examining the production, textual features and reception of fictional programs to understand how they convey authenticity and how this sense of truthfulness influences viewers’ learning would be useful to draw more general conclusions about televisual pedagogy, and perhaps more broadly about the role of trust and authenticity in education. References Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Methuen, 1985. Austin, Thomas. "Seeing, Feeling, Knowing: A Case Study of Audience Perspectives on Screen Documentary." Participations 2.1 (2005). 20 Nov. 2014 ‹http://www.participations.org/volume%202/issue%201/2_01_austin.htm›. Barker, Martin, and Thomas Austin. From Antz to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis. London: Pluto Press, 2000. Big Brother. Exec. Prod. John de Mol. Channel 4. 2000. Buckingham, David. Children Talking Television: The Making of Television Literacy. London: The Falmer Press, 1993. Buckingham, David, and Sara Bragg. Young People, Media and Personal Relationships. London: The Independent Television Commission, 2003. Corner, John. "Performing the Real: Documentary Diversions." Television & New Media 3.3 (2002): 255—69. "Don Hany." Who Do You Think You Are? Series 5, Episode 3. SBS. 16 Apr. 2013. Ellcessor, Elizabeth. "Tweeting @feliciaday: Online Social Media, Convergence, and Subcultural Stardom." Cinema Journal 51.2 (2012): 46-66. Hill, Annette. "Big Brother: The Real Audience." Television & New Media 3.3 (2002): 323-40. Liebes, Tamar, and Elihu Katz. The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of Dallas. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990. Marwick, Alice, and danah boyd. "To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 17.2 (2011): 139-58. McCarthy, E. Doyle. “Emotional Performances as Dramas of Authenticity.” Authenticity in Culture, Self, and Society. Eds. Phillip Vannini & J. Patrick Williams. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2009. 241-55. Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Second Edition. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001. Noble, Grant, and Elizabeth Noble. "A Study of Teenagers' Uses and Gratifications of the Happy Days Shows." Media Information Australia 11 (1979): 17-24. Producer 1. Personal Interview. 29 Sept. 2013. Producer 2. Personal Interview. 10 Oct. 2013. Renov, Michael. Theorizing Documentary. New York: Routledge, 1993. SBS Programmer. Personal Interview. 22 Nov. 2013. Spence, Louise, and Vinicius Navarro. Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2011. Thomas, Sarah. "Celebrity in the ‘Twitterverse’: History, Authenticity and the Multiplicity of Stardom Situating the ‘Newness’ of Twitter." Celebrity Studies 5.3 (2014): 242-55. Tulloch, John, and Deborah Lupton. Television, Aids and Risk: A Cultural Studies Approach to Health Communication. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997. Tulloch, John, and Albert Moran. A Country Practice: "Quality Soap". Sydney: Currency Press, 1986. Who Do You Think You Are? Exec. Prod. Alex Graham. BBC. 2004. Who Do You Think You Are? Exec. Prod. Celia Tait. SBS. 2008.

The Netflix/BBC eight-part limited true crime series The Serpent (2021) provides a commentary on the impact of the tourist industry in South-East Asia in the 1970s. The series portrays the story of French serial killer Charles Sobhraj (played by Tahar Rahim)—a psychopathic international con artist of Vietnamese-Indian descent—who regularly targeted Western travellers, especially the long-term wanderers of the legendary “Hippie Trail” (or the “Overland”), running between eastern Europe and Asia. The series, which was filmed on location in Thailand—in Bangkok and the Thai town of Hua Hin—is set in a range of travel destinations along the route of the Hippie Trail, as the narrative follows the many crimes of Sobhraj. Cities such as Kathmandu, Goa, Varanasi, Hong Kong, and Kabul are featured on the show. The series is loosely based upon Australian writers Richard Neville and Julie Clarke’s true crime biography The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj (1979). Another true crime text by Thomas Thompson called Serpentine: Charles Sobhraj’s Reign of Terror from Europe to South Asia (also published in 1979) is a second reference. The show portrays the disappearance and murders of many young victims at the hands of Sobhraj. Certainly, Sobhraj is represented as a monstrous figure, but what about the business of tourism itself? Arguably, in its reflective examination of twentieth-century travel, the series also poses the hedonism of tourism as monstrous. Here, attention is drawn to Western privilege and a neo-orientalist gaze that presented Asia as an exotic playground for its visitors. The television series focuses on Sobhraj, his French-Canadian girlfriend Marie-Andrée Leclerc (played by Jenna Coleman), and the glamourous life they lead in Bangkok. The fashionable couple’s operation presents Sobhraj as a legitimate gem dealer: outwardly, they seem to embody the epitome of fun and glamour, as well as the cross-cultural sophistication of the international jet set. In reality, they drug and then steal from tourists who believe their story. Sobhraj uses stolen passports and cash to travel internationally and acquire more gems. Then, with an accomplice called Ajay Chowdhury (played by Amesh Adireweera), Sobhraj murders his victims if he thinks they could expose his fraud. Often depicted as humourless and seething with anger, the Sobhraj of the series often wears dark aviator sunglasses, a detail that enhances the sense of his impenetrability. One of the first crimes featured in The Serpent is the double-murder of an innocent Dutch couple. The murders lead to an investigation by Dutch diplomat Herman Knippenberg (played by Billy Howle), wanting to provide closure for the families of the victims. Knippenberg enlists neighbours to go undercover at Sobhraj’s home to collect evidence. This exposes Sobhraj’s crimes, so he flees the country with Marie-Andrée and Ajay. While they were apprehended, Sobhraj would be later given pardon from a prison in India: he would only received a life sentence for murder when he is arrested in Nepal in 2003. His ability to evade punishment—and inability to admit to and atone for his crimes—become features of his monstrosity in the television series. Clearly, Sobhraj is represented as the “serpent” of this drama, a metaphor regularly reinforced both textually and visually across the length of the series. As an example, the opening credit sequence for the series coalesces shots of vintage film in Asia—including hitchhiking backpackers, VW Kombi vans, swimming pools, religious tourist sites, corrupt Asian police forces—against an animated map of central and South-East Asia and the Hippie Trail. The map is encased by the giant, slithering tail of some monstrous, reptilian creature. Situating the geographic context of the narrative, the serpentine monster appears to be rising out of continental Asia itself, figuratively stalking and then entrapping the tourists and travellers who move along its route. So, what of the other readings about the monstrosity of the tourism industry that appears on the show? The Hippie Trail was arguably a site—a serpentine cross-continental thoroughfare—of Western excess. The Hippie Trail emerged as the result of the ease of travel across continental Europe and Asia. It was an extension of a countercultural movement that first emerged in the United States in the mid 1960s. Agnieszka Sobocinska has suggested that the travellers of the Hippie Trail were motivated by “widespread dissatisfaction with the perceived conservatism of Western society and its conventions”, and that it was characterised by “youth, rebellion, self-expression and the performance of personal freedom” (par. 8). The Trail appealed to a particular subcultural group who wanted to differentiate themselves from other travellers. Culturally, the Hippie Trail has become a historical site of enduring fascination, written about in popular histories and Western travel narratives, such as A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu (Tomory 1998), Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India (MacLean 2007), The Hippie Trail: A History (Gemie and Ireland 2017), and The Hippie Trail: After Europe, Turn Left (Kreamer 2019). Despite these positive memoirs, the route also has a reputation for being destructive and even neo-imperialist: it irrevocably altered the politics of these Asian regions, especially as crowds of Western visitors would party at its cities along the way. In The Serpent, while the crimes take place on its route, on face value the Hippie Trail still appears to be romanticised and nostalgically re-imagined, especially as it represents a stark difference from our contemporary world with its heavily-policed international borders. Indeed, the travellers seem even freer from the perspective of 2021, given the show’s production phase and release in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when international travel was halted for many. As Kylie Northover has written in a review for the series in the Sydney Morning Herald, the production design of the programme and the on-location shoot in Thailand is affectionately evocative and nostalgic. Northover suggests that it “successfully evokes a very specific era of travel—the Vietnam War has just ended, the Summer of Love is over and contact with family back home was usually only through the post restante” (13). On the show, there is certainly critique of the tourist industry. For example, one scene demonstrates the “dark side” of the Hippie Trail dream. Firstly, we see a psychedelic-coloured bus of travellers driving through Nepal. The outside of the bus is covered with its planned destinations: “Istanbul. Teheran. Kabul. Delhi”. The Western travellers are young and dressed in peasant clothing and smoking marijuana. Looking over at the Himalayas, one hippie calls the mountains a “Shangri-La”, the fictional utopia of an Eastern mountain paradise. Then, the screen contracts to show old footage of Kathmandu— using the small-screen dimensions of a Super-8 film—which highlights a “hashish centre” with young children working at the front. The child labour is ignored. As the foreign hippie travellers—American and English—move through Kathmandu, they seem self-absorbed and anti-social. Rather than meeting and learning from locals, they just gather at parties with other hippies. By night-time, the series depicts drugged up travellers on heroin or other opiates, disconnected from place and culture as they stare around aimlessly. The negative representation of hippies has been observed in some of the critical reviews about The Serpent. For example, writing about the series for The Guardian, Dorian Lynskey cites Joan Didion’s famous “serpentine” interpretation of the hippie culture in the United States, applying this to the search for meaning on the Hippie Trail: the subculture of expats and travellers in south-east Asia feels rather like Joan Didion’s 60s California, crisscrossed by lost young people trying to find themselves anew in religion, drugs, or simply unfamiliar places. In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Didion writes of those who “drifted from city to torn city, sloughing off both the past and the future as snakes shed their skins”. (Lynskey) We could apply cultural theories about tourism to a critique of the industry in the series too. Many cultural researchers have critiqued tourists and the tourism industry, as well as the powers that tourists can wield over destination cultures. In Time and Commodity Culture, John Frow has suggested that the logic of tourism is “that of a relentless extension of commodity relations, and the consequent inequalities of power, between centre and periphery, First and Third World, developed and undeveloped regions, metropolis and countryside”, as well as one that has developed from the colonial era (151). Similarly, Derek Gregory’s sensitive analyses of cultural geographies of postcolonial space showed that Nineteenth-century Orientalism is a continuing process within globalised mass tourism (114). The problem of Orientalism as a Western travel ideology is made prominent in The Serpent through Sobhraj’s denouncement of Western tourists, even though there is much irony at play here, as the series itself arguably is presenting its own retro version of Orientalism to Western audiences. Even the choice of Netflix to produce this true crime story—with its two murderers of Asian descent—is arguably a way of reinforcing negative representations about Asian identity. Then, Western characters take on the role of hero and/or central protagonist, especially the character of Knippenberg. One could ask: where is the Netflix show that depicts a positive story about a central character of Vietnamese-Indian descent? Edward Said famously defined Orientalism as “a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (1). It became a way for Western cultures to interpret and understand the East, and for reducing and homogenising it into a more simplistic package. Orientalism explored discourses that grew to encompass India and the Far East in tandem with the expansion of Western imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It examined a dualistic ideology: a way of looking that divided the globe into two limited types without any room for nuance and diversity. Inclusive and exclusive, Orientalism assumed and promoted an “us and them” binary, privileging a Western gaze as the normative cultural position, while the East was relegated to the ambiguous role of “other”. Orientalism is a field in which stereotypes of the East and West have power: as Said suggests, “the West is the actor, the Orient is a passive reactor… . The West is the spectator, the judge and jury, of every facet of Oriental behaviour” (109). Interestingly, despite the primacy in which Sobhraj is posited as the show’s central monster, he is also the character in the series most critical of the neo-colonial oppression caused by this counter-cultural tourism, which indicates ambiguity and complexity in the representation of monstrosity. Sobhraj appears to have read Said. As he looks scornfully at a stoner hippie woman who has befriended Ajay, he seems to perceive the hippies as drop-outs and drifters, but he also connects them more thoroughly as perpetrators of neo-imperialist processes. Indicating his contempt for the sightseers of the Hippie Trail as they seek enlightenment on their travels, he interrogates his companion Ajay: why do you think these white children deny the comfort and wealth of the life they were given to come to a place like this? Worship the same gods. Wear the same rags. Live in the same filth. Each experience is only then taken home to wear like a piece of fake tribal jewellery. They travel only to acquire. It’s another form of imperialism. And she has just colonised you! Sobhraj’s speech is political but it is also menacing, and he quickly sets upon Ajay and physically punishes him for his tryst with the hippie woman. Yet, ultimately, the main Western tourists of the Hippie Trail are presented positively in The Serpent, especially as many of them are depcited as naïve innocents within the story—hopeful, idealistic and excited to travel—and simply in the wrong place, at the wrong time. In this way, the series still draws upon the conventions of the true crime genre, which is to differentiate clearly between good/evil and right/wrong, and to create an emotional connection to the victims as symbols of virtue. As the crimes and deaths accumulate within the series, Sobhraj’s opinions are deceptive, designed to manipulate those around him (such as Ajay) rather than being drawn from genuine feelings of political angst about the neo-imperialist project of Western tourism. The uncertainty around Sobhraj’s motivation for his crimes remains one of the fascinating aspects of the series. It problematises the way that the monstrosity of this character is constructed within the narrative of the show. The character of Sobhraj frequently engages with these essentialising issues about Orientalism, but he appears to do so with the aim to remove the privilege that comes from a Western gaze. In the series, Sobhraj’s motivations for targeting Western travellers are often insinuated as being due to personal reasons, such as revenge for his treatment as a child in Europe, where he says he was disparaged for being of Asian heritage. For example, as he speaks to one of his drugged French-speaking victims, Sobhraj suggests that when he moved from Vietnam to France as a child, he was subject to violence and poor treatment from others: “a half-caste boy from Saigon. You can imagine how I was bullied”. In this instance, the suffering French man placed in Sobhraj’s power has been promoted as fitting into one of these “us and them” binaries, but in this set-up, there is also a reversal of power relations and Sobhraj has set himself as both the “actor” and the “spectator”. Here, he has reversed the “Orientalist” gaze onto a passive Western man, homogenising a “Western body”, and hence radically destabilising the construct of Orientalism as an ideological force. This is also deeply troubling: it goes on to sustain a problematic and essentialising binary that, no matter which way it faces, aims to denigrate and stereotype a cultural group. In this way, the character of Sobhraj demonstrates that while he is angry at the way that Orientalist ideologies have victimised him in the past, he will continue to perpetrate its basic ideological assumptions as a way of administering justice and seeking personal retribution. Ultimately, perhaps one of the more powerful readings of The Serpent is that it is difficult to move away from the ideological constructs of travel. We could also suggest that same thing for the tourists. In her real-life analysis of the Hippie Trail, Agnieszka Sobocinska has suggested that while it was presented and understood as something profoundly different from older travel tours and expeditions, it could not help but be bound up in the same ideological colonial and imperial impulses that constituted earlier forms of travel: Orientalist images and imperial behaviours were augmented to suit a new generation that liked to think of itself as radically breaking from the past. Ironically, this facilitated the view that ‘alternative’ travel was a statement in anti-colonial politics, even as it perpetuated some of the inequalities inherent to imperialism. This plays out in The Serpent. We see that this supposedly radically different new group – with a relaxed and open-minded identity—is bound within the same old ideological constructs. Part of the problem of the Hippie Trail traveller was a failure to recognise the fundamentally imperialist origins of their understanding of travel. This is the same kind of concern mapped out by Turner and Ash in their analysis of neo-imperial forms of travel called The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery (1976), written and published in the same era as the events of The Serpent. Presciently gauging the effect that mass tourism would have on developing nations, Turner and Ash used the metaphor of “hordes” of tourists taking over various poorer destinations to intend a complete reversal of the stereotype of a horde of barbaric and non-Western hosts. By inferring that tourists are the “hordes” reverses Orientalist conceptions of de-personalised non-Western cultures, and shows the problem that over-tourism and unsustainable visitation can pose to host locations, especially with the acceleration of mass travel in the late Twentieth century. Certainly, the concept of a touristic “horde” is one of the monstrous ideas in travel, and can signify the worst aspects contained within mass tourism. To conclude, it is useful to return to the consideration of what is presented as monstrous in The Serpent. Here, there is the obvious monster in the sinister, impassive figure of serial killer Charles Sobhraj. Julie Clarke, in a new epilogue for The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj (2020), posits that Sobhraj’s actions are monstrous and unchangeable, demonstrating the need to understand impermeable cases of human evil as a part of human society: one of the lessons of this cautionary tale should be an awareness that such ‘inhuman humans’ do live amongst us. Many don’t end up in jail, but rather reach the highest level in the corporate and political spheres. (Neville and Clarke, 2020) Then, there is the exploitational spectre of mass tourism from the Hippie Trail that has had the ability to “invade” and ruin the authenticity and/or sustainability of a particular place or location as it is overrun by the “golden hordes”. Finally, we might consider the Orientalist, imperialist and globalised ideologies of mass tourism as one of the insidious and serpentine forces that entrap the central characters in this television series. This leads to a failure to understand what is really going on as the tourists are deluded by visions of an exotic paradise. References Frow, John. Time and Commodity Culture: Essays on Culture Theory and Postmodernity. Oxford UP, 1997. Gemie, Sharif, and Brian Ireland. The Hippie Trail: A History. Manchester UP, 2017. Gregory, Derek. “Scripting Egypt: Orientalism and the Cultures of Travel.” In Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing. Eds. Duncan James and Derek Gregor. Routledge, 1999. 114-150 . Kreamer, Robert. The Hippie Trail: After Europe, Turn Left. Fonthill Media, 2019. Lynskey, Dorian. “The Serpent: A Slow-Burn TV Success That’s More than a Killer Thriller.” The Guardian, 30 Jan. 2021. 1 Oct. 2021 <https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/29/the-serpent-more-than-a-killer-thriller-bbc-iplayer>. MacLean, Rory. Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India. Penguin, 2006. Neville, Richard, and Julie Clarke. The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj. Jonathan Cape, 1979. ———. On the Trail of the Serpent: The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj. Revised ed. Vintage, 2020. Northover, Kylie. “The Ice-Cold Conman of the ‘Hippie Trail’.” Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Mar. 2021: 13. Price, Roberta. “Magic Bus: On the Hippie Trail from Istanbul to India.” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 2.2 (2009): 273-276. Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Penguin, 1995. Sobocinska, Agnieszka. “Following the ‘Hippie Sahibs’: Colonial Cultures of Travel and the Hippie Trail.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 15.2 (2014). DOI: 10.1353/cch.2014.0024. Thompson, Thomas. Serpentine: Charles Sobhraj’s Reign of Terror from Europe to South Asia. Doubleday, 1979. Tomory, David, ed. A Season in Heaven: True Tales from the Road to Kathmandu. Lonely Planet, 1998. Turner, Louis, and John Ash. The Golden Hordes: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery. St Martin’s Press, 1976.