Journal articles: 'United States. American Forces Radio and Television Service' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

Radio broadcasting has played an important role as a medium of information, news and entertainment for Australian military personnel in wartime and conflict situations. However, while many nations have comprehensive units tasked to the full-time provision of broadcasting services, such as the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) in the United States and the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) in the United Kingdom, Australia has relied on more ad hoc measures. As contingencies have required, the Australian military has introduced radio broadcasting elements into its table of organisation, the most comprehensive having been the Australian Army Amenities Service (AAAS) during World War II. Now, in a new technological era, perhaps specialised radio for troops will fade completely from the agenda.

Abstract:

Introduction Television has become more and more restricted within the past few years. Rating systems and "family programming" have taken over the broadcast networks, relegating violent programming, often some of the most cutting edge work in television, to pay channels. There are very few people willing to stand up and say that viewers -- even young children -- should be able to watch whatever they want, and that viewing acts of violence can actually result in more mature, balanced adults. Jib Fowles is one of those people. His book, The Case For Television Violence, explores the long history of violent content in popular culture, and how its modern incarnation, television, fulfils the same function as epic tragedy and "penny dreadfuls" did -- the diverting of aggressive feelings into the cathartic action of watching. Fowles points out the flaws in studies linking TV violence to actual violence (why, for example, has there been a sharp decline in violent crime in the U.S. during the 1990s when, by all accounts, television violence has increased?), as well as citing overlooked studies that show no correlation between viewing and performing acts of violence. The book also demonstrates how efforts to censor TV violence are not only ineffective, but can lead to the opposite result: an increase in exposure to violent viewing as audiences forsake traditional broadcast programming for private programming through pay TV and videocassettes. The revised excerpt below describes one of the more heated topics of debate -- the V-Chip. Television Violence and You Although the antiviolence fervor crested in the US in the first half of the 1990s, it also continued into the second half. As Sissela Bok comments: "during the 1990s, much larger efforts by citizen advocacy groups, churches, professional organizations, public officials, and media groups have been launched to address the problems posed by media violence" (146). It continues as always. On the one side, the reformist position finds articulation time and again; on the other side, the public's incessant desire for violent entertainment is reluctantly (because there is no prestige or cachet to be had in it) serviced by television companies as they compete against each other for profits. We can contrast these two forces in the following way: the first, the antitelevision violence campaign, is highly focussed in its presentation, calling for the curtailment of violent content, but this concerted effort has underpinnings that are vague and various; the second force is highly diffused on the surface (the public nowhere speaks pointedly in favor of violent content), but its underpinnings are highly concentrated and functional, pertinent to the management of disapproved emotions. To date, neither force has triumphed decisively. The antiviolence advocates can be gratified by the righteousness of their cause and sense of moral superiority, but violent content continues as a mainstay of the medium's offerings and in viewers' attention. Over the longer term, equilibrium has been the result. If the equilibrium were upset, however, unplanned consequences would result. The attack on television violence is not simply unwarranted; it carries the threat of unfortunate dangers should it succeed. In the US, television violence is a successful site for the siphoning off of unwanted emotions. The French critic Michel Mourlet explains: "violence is a major theme in aesthetics. Violence is decompression: Arising out of a tension between the individual and the world, it explodes as the tension reaches its pitch, like an abscess burning. It has to be gone through before there can be any repose" (233). The loss or even diminishment of television violence would suggest that surplus psychic energy would have to find other outlets. What these outlets would be is open to question, but the possibility exists that some of them might be retrogressive, involving violence in more outright and vicious forms. It is in the nation's best interest not to curtail the symbolic displays that come in the form of television violence. Policy The official curbing of television violence is not an idle or empty threat. It has happened recently in Canada. In 1993, the Canadian Radio- Television and Telecommunications Commission, the equivalent of the Australian Broadcasting Authority or of the American FCC, banned any "gratuitous" violence, which was defined as violence not playing "an integral role in developing the plot, character, or theme of the material as a whole" (Scully 12). Violence of any sort cannot be broadcast before 9 p.m. Totally forbidden are any programs promoting violence against women, minorities, or animals. Detailed codes regulate violence in children's shows. In addition, the Canadian invention of the V-chip is to be implemented, which would permit parents to block out programming that exceeds preset levels for violence, sexuality, or strong language (DePalma). In the United States, the two houses of Congress have held 28 hearings since 1954 on the topic of television violence (Cooper), but none has led to the passage of regulatory legislation until the Telecommunications Act of 1996. According to the Act, "studies have shown that children exposed to violent video programming at a young age have a higher tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children not so exposed, and that children exposed to violent video programming are prone to assume that acts of violence are acceptable behavior" (Section 551). It then requires that newly manufactured television sets must "be equipped with a feature designed to enable viewers to block display of all programs with a common rating" (Telecommunications Act of 1996, section 551). The V-chip, the only available "feature" to meet the requirements, will therefore be imported from Canada to the United States. Utilising a rating system reluctantly and haltingly developed by the television industry, parents on behalf of their children would be able to black out offensive content. Censorship had passed down to the family level. Although the V-chip represents the first legislated regulation of television violence in the US, that country experienced an earlier episode of violence censorship whose outcome may be telling for the fate of the chip. This occurred in the aftermath of the 1972 Report to the Surgeon General on Television and Social Behavior, which, in highly equivocal language, appeared to give some credence to the notion that violent content can activate violent behavior in some younger viewers. Pressure from influential congressmen and from the FCC and its chairman, Richard Wiley, led the broadcasting industry in 1975 to institute what came to be known as the Family Viewing Hour. Formulated as an amendment to the Television Code of the National Association of Broadcasters, the stipulation decreed that before 9:00 p.m. "entertainment programming inappropriate for viewing by a general family audience should not be broadcast" (Cowan 113). The definition of "inappropriate programming" was left to the individual networks, but as the 1975-1976 television season drew near, it became clear to a production company in Los Angeles that the definitions would be strict. The producers of M*A*S*H (which aired at 8:30 p.m.) learned from the CBS censor assigned to them that three of their proposed programs -- dealing with venereal disease, impotence, and adultery -- would not be allowed (Cowan 125). The series Rhoda could not discuss birth control (131) and the series Phyllis would have to cancel a show on virginity (136). Television writers and producers began to rebel, and in late 1975 their Writers Guild brought a lawsuit against the FCC and the networks with regard to the creative impositions of the Family Viewing Hour. Actor Carroll O'Connor (as quoted in Cowan 179) complained, "Congress has no right whatsoever to interfere in the content of the medium", and writer Larry Gelbert voiced dismay (as quoted in Cowan 177): "situation comedies have become the theater of ideas, and those ideas have been very, very restricted". The judge who heard the case in April and May of 1976 took until November to issue his decision, but when it emerged it was polished and clear: the Family Viewing Hour was the result of "backroom bludgeoning" by the FCC and was to be rescinded. According to the judge, "the existence of threats, and the attempted securing of commitments coupled with the promise to publicize noncompliance ... constituted per se violations of the First Amendment" (Corn-Revere 201). The fate of the Family Viewing Hour may have been a sort of premoniton: The American Civil Liberties Union is currently bringing a similar case against proponents of the V-chip -- a case that may produce similar results. Whether or not the V-chip will withstand judicial scrutiny, there are several problematic aspects to the device and any possible successors. Its usage would appear to impinge on the providers of violent content, on the viewers of it, and indeed on the fundamental legal structure of the United States. To confront the first of these three problems, significant use of the V- chip by parents would measurably reduce the audience size for certain programmes containing symbolic violence. Little else could have greater impact on the American television system as it is currently constituted. A decrease in audience numbers quickly translates into a decrease in advertising revenues in an advertising system such as that of the United States. Advertisers may additionally shy away from a shunned programme because of its loss of popularity or because its lowered ratings have clearly stamped it as violent. The decline in revenues would make the programme less valuable in the eyes of network executives and perhaps a candidate for cancellation. The Hollywood production company would quickly take notice and begin tailoring its broadcast content to the new standards. Blander or at least different fare would be certain to result. Broadcast networks may begin losing viewers to bolder content on less fastidious cable networks and in particular to the channels that are not supported and influenced by advertising. Thus, we might anticipate a shift away from the more traditional and responsible channels towards the less so and away from advertising-supported channels to subscriber-supported channels. This shift would not transpire according to the traditional governing mechanism of television -- audience preferences. Those to whom the censored content had been destined would have played no role in its neglect. Neglect would have transpired because of the artificial intercession of controls. The second area to be affected by the V-chip, should its implementation prove successful, is viewership, in particular younger viewers. Currently, young viewers have great license in most households to select the content they want to watch; this license would be greatly reduced by the V-chip, which can block out entire genres. Screening for certain levels of violence, the parent would eliminate most cartoons and all action- adventure shows, whether the child desires some of these or not. A New York Times reporter, interviewing a Canadian mother who had been an early tester of a V-chip prototype, heard the mother's 12-year-old son protesting in the background, "we're not getting the V-chip back!" The mother explained to the reporter, "the kids didn't like the fact that they were not in control any longer" (as quoted in DePalma C14) -- with good reason. Children are losing the right to pick the content of which they are in psychological need. The V-chip represents another weapon in the generational war -- a device that allows parents to eradicate the compensational content of which children have learned to make enjoyable use. The consequences of all this for the child and the family would be unpleasant. The chances that the V-chip will increase intergenerational friction are high. Not only will normal levels of tension and animosity be denied their outlet via television fiction but also so will the new superheated levels. It is not a pleasant prospect. Third, the V-chip constitutes a strong challenge to traditional American First Amendment rights of free speech and a free press. Stoutly defended by post-World War II Supreme Courts, First Amendment rights can be voided "only in order to promote a compelling state interest, and then only if the government adopts the least restrictive means to further that interest" (Ballard 211). The few restrictions allowed concern such matters as obscenity, libel, national security, and the sometimes conflicting right to a fair trial. According to legal scholar Ian Ballard, there is no "compelling state interest" involved in the matter of television violence because "the social science evidence used to justify the regulation of televised violence is subject to such strong methodological criticism that the evidence is insufficient to support massive regulatory assault on the television entertainment industry" (185). Even if the goal of restricting television violence were acceptable, the V-chip is hardly "the least restrictive means" because it introduces a "chilling effect" on programme producers and broadcasters that "clearly infringes on fundamental First Amendment rights" (216). Moreover, states Ballard, "fear of a slippery slope is not unfounded" (216). If television violence can be censored, supposedly because it poses a threat to social order, then what topics might be next? It would not be long before challenging themes such a feminism or multiculturalism were deemed unfit for the same reason. Taking all these matters into consideration, the best federal policy regarding television violence would be to have no policy -- to leave the extent of violent depictions completely up to the dictates of viewer preferences, as expertly interpreted by the television industry. In this, I am in agreement with Ian Ballard, who finds that the best approach "is for the government to do nothing at all about television violence" (218). Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jib Fowles. "Television Violence and You." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/television.php>. Chicago style: Jib Fowles, "Television Violence and You," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/television.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jib Fowles. (2000) Television Violence and You. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/television.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

My thesis is that new media, starting with analog broadcast and going through digital convergence, blur the line between work time and free time. The technology that we are adopting has transformed free time into potential and actual labour time. At the dawn of the modern age, work shifted from tasked time to measured time. Previously, tasked time intermingled work and leisure according to the vagaries of nature. All this was banished when industrial capitalism instituted the work clock (Mumford 12-8). But now, many have noticed how post-industrial capitalism features a new intermingling captured in such expressions as "24/7" and "multi-tasking." Yet, we are only beginning to understand that media are driving a return to the pre-modern where the hour and the space are both ambiguous, available for either work or leisure. This may be the unfortunate side effect of the much vaunted "interactivity." Do you remember the old American TV show Dobie Gillis (1959-63) which featured the character Maynard G. Krebs? He always shuddered at the mention of the four-letter word "work." Now, American television shows makes it a point that everyone works (even if just barely). Seinfeld was a bold exception in featuring the work-free Kramer; a deliberate homage to the 1940s team of Abbott and Costello. Today, as welfare is turned into workfare, The New York Times scolds even the idle rich to adopt the work ethic (Yazigi). The Forms of Broadcast and Digital Media Are Driving the Merger of Work and Leisure More than the Content It is not just the content of television and other media that is undermining the leisured life; it is the social structure within which we use the media. Broadcast advertisem*nts were the first mode/media combinations that began to recolonise free time for the new consumer economy. There had been a previous buildup in the volume and the ubiquity of advertising particularly in billboards and print. However, the attention of the reader to the printed commercial message could not be controlled and measured. Radio was the first to appropriate and measure its audience's time for the purposes of advertising. Nineteenth century media had promoted a middle class lifestyle based on spending money on home to create a refuge from work. Twentieth century broadcasting was now planting commercial messages within that refuge in the sacred moments of repose. Subsequent to broadcast, home video and cable facilitated flexible work by offering entertainment on a 24 hour basis. Finally, the computer, which juxtaposes image/sound/text within a single machine, offers the user the same proto-interactive blend of entertainment and commercial messages that broadcasting pioneered. It also fulfills the earlier promise of interactive TV by allowing us to work and to shop, in all parts of the day and night. We need to theorise this movement. The theory of media as work needs an institutional perspective. Therefore, I begin with Dallas Smythe's blindspot argument, which gave scholarly gravitas to the structural relationship of work and media (263-299). Horkheimer and Adorno had already noticed that capitalism was extending work into free time (137). Dallas Smythe went on to dissect the precise means by which late capitalism was extending work. Smythe restates the Marxist definition of capitalist labour as that human activity which creates exchange value. Then he considered the advertising industry, which currently approaches200 billion in the USA and realised that a great deal of exchange value has been created. The audience is one element of the labour that creates this exchange value. The appropriation of people's time creates advertising value. The time we spend listening to commercials on radio or viewing them on TV can be measured and is the unit of production for the value of advertising. Our viewing time ipso facto has been changed into work time. We may not experience it subjectively as work time although pundits such as Marie Winn and Jerry Mander suggest that TV viewing contributes to the same physical stresses as actual work. Nonetheless, Smythe sees commercial broadcasting as expanding the realm of capitalism into time that was otherwise set aside for private uses. Smythe's essay created a certain degree of excitement among political economists of media. Sut Jhally used Smythe to explain aspects of US broadcast history such as the innovations of William Paley in creating the CBS network (Jhally 70-9). In 1927, as Paley contemplated winning market share from his rival NBC, he realised that selling audience time was far more profitable than selling programs. Therefore, he paid affiliated stations to air his network's programs while NBC was still charging them for the privilege. It was more lucrative to Paley to turn around and sell the stations' guaranteed time to advertisers, than to collect direct payments for supplying programs. NBC switched to his business model within a year. Smythe/Jhally's model explains the superiority of Paley's model and is a historical proof of Smythe's thesis. Nonetheless, many economists and media theorists have responded with a "so what?" to Smythe's thesis that watching TV as work. Everyone knows that the basis of network television is the sale of "eyeballs" to the advertisers. However, Smythe's thesis remains suggestive. Perhaps he arrived at it after working at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission from 1943 to 1948 (Smythe 2). He was part of a team that made one last futile attempt to force radio to embrace public interest programming. This effort failed because the tide of consumerism was too strong. Radio and television were the leading edge of recapturing the home for work, setting the stage for the Internet and a postmodern replication of the cottage industries of pre and proto-industrial worlds. The consequences have been immense. The Depression and the crisis of over-production Cultural studies recognises that social values have shifted from production to consumption (Lash and Urry). The shift has a crystallising moment in the Great Depression of 1929 through 1940. One proposal at the time was to reduce individual work hours in order to create more jobs (see Hunnicut). This proposal of "share the work" was not adopted. From the point of view of the producer, sharing the work would make little difference to productivity. However, from the retailer's perspective each individual worker would accumulate less money to buy products. Overall sales would stagnate or decline. Prominent American economists at the time argued that sharing the work would mean sharing the unemployment. They warned the US government this was a fundamental threat to an economy based on consumption. Only a fully employed laborer could have enough money to buy down the national inventory. In 1932, N. A. Weston told the American Economic Association that: " ...[the labourers'] function in society as a consumer is of equal importance as the part he plays as a producer." (Weston 11). If the defeat of the share the work movement is the negative manifestation of consumerism, then the invasion by broadcast of our leisure time is its positive materialisation. We can trace this understanding by looking at Herbert Hoover. When he was the Secretary of Commerce in 1924 he warned station executives that: "I have never believed that it was possible to advertise through broadcasting without ruining the [radio] industry" (Radio's Big Issue). He had not recognised that broadcast advertising would be qualitatively more powerful for the economy than print advertising. By 1929, Hoover, now President Hoover, approved an economics committee recommendation in the traumatic year of 1929 that leisure time be made "consumable " (Committee on Recent Economic Changes xvi). His administration supported the growth of commercial radio because broadcasting was a new efficient answer to the economists' question of how to motivate consumption. Not so coincidentally network radio became a profitable industry during the great Depression. The economic power that pre-war radio hinted at flourished in the proliferation of post-war television. Advertisers switched their dollars from magazines to TV, causing the demise of such general interest magazines as Life, The Saturday Evening Postet al. Western Europe quickly followed the American broadcasting model. Great Britain was the first, allowing television to advertise the consumer revolution in 1955. Japan and many others started to permit advertising on television. During the era of television, the nature of work changed from manufacturing to servicing (Preston 148-9). Two working parents also became the norm as a greater percentage of the population took salaried employment, mostly women (International Labour Office). Many of the service jobs are to monitor the new global division of labour that allows industrialised nations to consume while emerging nations produce. (Chapter seven of Preston is the most current discussion of the shift of jobs within information economies and between industrialised and emerging nations.) Flexible Time/ Flexible Media Film and television has responded by depicting these shifts. The Mary Tyler Moore Show debuted in September of 1970 (see http://www.transparencynow.com/mary.htm). In this show nurturing and emotional attachments were centered in the work place, not in an actual biological family. It started a trend that continues to this day. However, media representations of the changing nature of work are merely symptomatic of the relationship between media and work. Broadcast advertising has a more causal relationship. As people worked more to buy more, they found that they wanted time-saving media. It is in this time period that the Internet started (1968), that the video cassette recorder was introduced (1975) and that the cable industry grew. Each of these ultimately enhanced the flexibility of work time. The VCR allowed time shifting programs. This is the media answer to the work concept of flexible time. The tired worker can now see her/his favourite TV show according to his/her own flex schedule (Wasser 2001). Cable programming, with its repeats and staggered starting times, also accommodates the new 24/7 work day. These machines, offering greater choice of programming and scheduling, are the first prototypes of interactivity. The Internet goes further in expanding flexible time by adding actual shopping to the vicarious enjoyment of consumerist products on television. The Internet user continues to perform the labour of watching advertising and, in addition, now has the opportunity to do actual work tasks at any time of the day or night. The computer enters the home as an all-purpose machine. Its purchase is motivated by several simultaneous factors. The rhetoric often stresses the recreational and work aspects of the computer in the same breath (Reed 173, Friedrich 16-7). Games drove the early computer programmers to find more "user-friendly" interfaces in order to entice young consumers. Entertainment continues to be the main driving force behind visual and audio improvements. This has been true ever since the introduction of the Apple II, Radio Shack's TRS 80 and Atari 400 personal computers in the 1977-1978 time frame (see http://www.atari-history.com/computers/8bits/400.html). The current ubiquity of colour monitors, and the standard package of speakers with PC computers are strong indications that entertainment and leisure pursuits continue to drive the marketing of computers. However, once the computer is in place in the study or bedroom, its uses fully integrates the user with world of work in both the sense of consuming and creating value. This is a specific instance of what Philip Graham calls the analytical convergence of production, consumption and circulation in hypercapitalism. The streaming video and audio not only captures the action of the game, they lend sensual appeal to the banner advertising and the power point downloads from work. In one regard, the advent of Internet advertising is a regression to the pre-broadcast era. The passive web site ad runs the same risk of being ignored as does print advertising. The measure of a successful web ad is interactivity that most often necessitates a click through on the part of the viewer. Ads often show up on separate windows that necessitate a click from the viewer if only to close down the program. In the words of Bolter and Grusin, click-through advertising is a hypermediation of television. In other words, it makes apparent the transparent relationship television forged between work and leisure. We do not sit passively through Internet advertising, we click to either eliminate them or to go on and buy the advertised products. Just as broadcasting facilitated consumable leisure, new media combines consumable leisure with flexible portable work. The new media landscape has had consequences, although the price of consumable leisure took awhile to become visible. The average work week declined from 1945 to 1982. After that point in the US, it has been edging up, continuously (United States Bureau of Labor Statistics). There is some question whether the computer has improved productivity (Kim), there is little question that the computer is colonising leisure time for multi-tasking. In a population that goes online from home almost twice as much as those who go online from work, almost half use their online time for work based activities other than email. Undoubtedly, email activity would account for even more work time (Horrigan). On the other side of the blur between work and leisure, the Pew Institute estimates that fifty percent use work Internet time for personal pleasure ("Wired Workers"). Media theory has to reengage the problem that Horkheimer/Adorno/Smythe raised. The contemporary problem of leisure is not so much the lack of leisure, but its fractured, non-contemplative, unfulfilling nature. A media critique will demonstrate the contribution of the TV and the Internet to this erosion of free time. References Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. Committee on Recent Economic Changes. Recent Economic Changes. Vol. 1. New York: no publisher listed, 1929. Friedrich, Otto. "The Computer Moves In." Time 3 Jan. 1983: 14-24. Graham, Philip. Hypercapitalism: A Political Economy of Informational Idealism. In press for New Media and Society2.2 (2000). Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. New York: Continuum Publishing, 1944/1987. Horrigan, John B. "New Internet Users: What They Do Online, What They Don't and Implications for the 'Net's Future." Pew Internet and American Life Project. 25 Sep. 2000. 24 Oct. 2001 <http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=22>. Hunnicutt, Benjamin Kline. Work without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1988. International Labour Office. Economically Active Populations: Estimates and Projections 1950-2025. Geneva: ILO, 1995. Jhally, Sut. The Codes of Advertising. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. Kim, Jane. "Computers and the Digital Economy." Digital Economy 1999. 8 June 1999. October 24, 2001 <http://www.digitaleconomy.gov/powerpoint/triplett/index.htm>. Lash, Scott, and John Urry. Economies of Signs and Space. London: Sage Publications, 1994. Mander, Jerry. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. New York: Morrow Press, 1978. Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1934. Preston, Paschal. Reshaping Communication: Technology, Information and Social Change. London: Sage, 2001. "Radio's Big Issue Who Is to Pay the Artist?" The New York Times 18 May 1924: Section 8, 3. Reed, Lori. "Domesticating the Personal Computer." Critical Studies in Media Communication17 (2000): 159-85. Smythe, Dallas. Counterclockwise: Perspectives on Communication. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unpublished Data from the Current Population Survey. 2001. Wasser, Frederick A. Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR. Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 2001. Weston, N.A., T.N. Carver, J.P. Frey, E.H. Johnson, T.R. Snavely and F.D. Tyson. "Shorter Working Time and Unemployment." American Economic Review Supplement 22.1 (March 1932): 8-15. <http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28193203%2922%3C8%3ASWTAU%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3>. Winn, Marie. The Plug-in Drug. New York: Viking Press, 1977. "Wired Workers: Who They Are, What They're Doing Online." Pew Internet Life Report 3 Sep. 2000. 24 Oct. 2000 <http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=20>. Yazigi, Monique P. "Shocking Visits to the Real World." The New York Times 21 Feb. 1990. Page unknown. Links http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=20 http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=22 http://www.atari-history.com/computers/8bits/400.html http://www.transparencynow.com/mary.htm http://www.digitaleconomy.gov/powerpoint/triplett/index.htm http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282%28193203%2922%3C8%3ASWTAU%3 E2.0.CO%3B2-3 Citation reference for this article MLA Style Wasser, Frederick. "Media Is Driving Work" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4.5 (2001). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Wasser.xml >. Chicago Style Wasser, Frederick, "Media Is Driving Work" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4, no. 5 (2001), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Wasser.xml > ([your date of access]). APA Style Wasser, Frederick. (2001) Media Is Driving Work. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 4(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0111/Wasser.xml > ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

On the morning of Thursday, 4 May 2006, the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held an open hearing entitled “Terrorist Use of the Internet.” The Intelligence committee meeting was scheduled to take place in Room 1302 of the Longworth Office Building, a Depression-era structure with a neoclassical façade. Because of a dysfunctional elevator, some of the congressional representatives were late to the meeting. During the testimony about the newest political applications for cutting-edge digital technology, the microphones periodically malfunctioned, and witnesses complained of “technical problems” several times. By the end of the day it seemed that what was to be remembered about the hearing was the shocking revelation that terrorists were using videogames to recruit young jihadists. The Associated Press wrote a short, restrained article about the hearing that only mentioned “computer games and recruitment videos” in passing. Eager to have their version of the news item picked up, Reuters made videogames the focus of their coverage with a headline that announced, “Islamists Using US Videogames in Youth Appeal.” Like a game of telephone, as the Reuters videogame story was quickly re-run by several Internet news services, each iteration of the title seemed less true to the exact language of the original. One Internet news service changed the headline to “Islamic militants recruit using U.S. video games.” Fox News re-titled the story again to emphasise that this alert about technological manipulation was coming from recognised specialists in the anti-terrorism surveillance field: “Experts: Islamic Militants Customizing Violent Video Games.” As the story circulated, the body of the article remained largely unchanged, in which the Reuters reporter described the digital materials from Islamic extremists that were shown at the congressional hearing. During the segment that apparently most captured the attention of the wire service reporters, eerie music played as an English-speaking narrator condemned the “infidel” and declared that he had “put a jihad” on them, as aerial shots moved over 3D computer-generated images of flaming oil facilities and mosques covered with geometric designs. Suddenly, this menacing voice-over was interrupted by an explosion, as a virtual rocket was launched into a simulated military helicopter. The Reuters reporter shared this dystopian vision from cyberspace with Western audiences by quoting directly from the chilling commentary and describing a dissonant montage of images and remixed sound. “I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters,” a narrator’s voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults. Then came a recording of President George W. Bush’s September 16, 2001, statement: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” It was edited to repeat the word “crusade,” which Muslims often define as an attack on Islam by Christianity. According to the news reports, the key piece of evidence before Congress seemed to be a film by “SonicJihad” of recorded videogame play, which – according to the experts – was widely distributed online. Much of the clip takes place from the point of view of a first-person shooter, seen as if through the eyes of an armed insurgent, but the viewer also periodically sees third-person action in which the player appears as a running figure wearing a red-and-white checked keffiyeh, who dashes toward the screen with a rocket launcher balanced on his shoulder. Significantly, another of the player’s hand-held weapons is a detonator that triggers remote blasts. As jaunty music plays, helicopters, tanks, and armoured vehicles burst into smoke and flame. Finally, at the triumphant ending of the video, a green and white flag bearing a crescent is hoisted aloft into the sky to signify victory by Islamic forces. To explain the existence of this digital alternative history in which jihadists could be conquerors, the Reuters story described the deviousness of the country’s terrorist opponents, who were now apparently modifying popular videogames through their wizardry and inserting anti-American, pro-insurgency content into U.S.-made consumer technology. One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular “Battlefield 2” from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as “mods,” to video games. “Millions of people create mods on games around the world,” he said. “We have absolutely no control over them. It’s like drawing a mustache on a picture.” Although the Electronic Arts executive dismissed the activities of modders as a “mustache on a picture” that could only be considered little more than childish vandalism of their off-the-shelf corporate product, others saw a more serious form of criminality at work. Testifying experts and the legislators listening on the committee used the video to call for greater Internet surveillance efforts and electronic counter-measures. Within twenty-four hours of the sensationalistic news breaking, however, a group of Battlefield 2 fans was crowing about the idiocy of reporters. The game play footage wasn’t from a high-tech modification of the software by Islamic extremists; it had been posted on a Planet Battlefield forum the previous December of 2005 by a game fan who had cut together regular game play with a Bush remix and a parody snippet of the soundtrack from the 2004 hit comedy film Team America. The voice describing the Black Hawk helicopters was the voice of Trey Parker of South Park cartoon fame, and – much to Parker’s amusem*nt – even the mention of “goats screaming” did not clue spectators in to the fact of a comic source. Ironically, the moment in the movie from which the sound clip is excerpted is one about intelligence gathering. As an agent of Team America, a fictional elite U.S. commando squad, the hero of the film’s all-puppet cast, Gary Johnston, is impersonating a jihadist radical inside a hostile Egyptian tavern that is modelled on the cantina scene from Star Wars. Additional laughs come from the fact that agent Johnston is accepted by the menacing terrorist cell as “Hakmed,” despite the fact that he utters a series of improbable clichés made up of incoherent stereotypes about life in the Middle East while dressed up in a disguise made up of shoe polish and a turban from a bathroom towel. The man behind the “SonicJihad” pseudonym turned out to be a twenty-five-year-old hospital administrator named Samir, and what reporters and representatives saw was nothing more exotic than game play from an add-on expansion pack of Battlefield 2, which – like other versions of the game – allows first-person shooter play from the position of the opponent as a standard feature. While SonicJihad initially joined his fellow gamers in ridiculing the mainstream media, he also expressed astonishment and outrage about a larger politics of reception. In one interview he argued that the media illiteracy of Reuters potentially enabled a whole series of category errors, in which harmless gamers could be demonised as terrorists. It wasn’t intended for the purpose what it was portrayed to be by the media. So no I don’t regret making a funny video . . . why should I? The only thing I regret is thinking that news from Reuters was objective and always right. The least they could do is some online research before publishing this. If they label me al-Qaeda just for making this silly video, that makes you think, what is this al-Qaeda? And is everything al-Qaeda? Although Sonic Jihad dismissed his own work as “silly” or “funny,” he expected considerably more from a credible news agency like Reuters: “objective” reporting, “online research,” and fact-checking before “publishing.” Within the week, almost all of the salient details in the Reuters story were revealed to be incorrect. SonicJihad’s film was not made by terrorists or for terrorists: it was not created by “Islamic militants” for “Muslim youths.” The videogame it depicted had not been modified by a “tech-savvy militant” with advanced programming skills. Of course, what is most extraordinary about this story isn’t just that Reuters merely got its facts wrong; it is that a self-identified “parody” video was shown to the august House Intelligence Committee by a team of well-paid “experts” from the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a major contractor with the federal government, as key evidence of terrorist recruitment techniques and abuse of digital networks. Moreover, this story of media illiteracy unfolded in the context of a fundamental Constitutional debate about domestic surveillance via communications technology and the further regulation of digital content by lawmakers. Furthermore, the transcripts of the actual hearing showed that much more than simple gullibility or technological ignorance was in play. Based on their exchanges in the public record, elected representatives and government experts appear to be keenly aware that the digital discourses of an emerging information culture might be challenging their authority and that of the longstanding institutions of knowledge and power with which they are affiliated. These hearings can be seen as representative of a larger historical moment in which emphatic declarations about prohibiting specific practices in digital culture have come to occupy a prominent place at the podium, news desk, or official Web portal. This environment of cultural reaction can be used to explain why policy makers’ reaction to terrorists’ use of networked communication and digital media actually tells us more about our own American ideologies about technology and rhetoric in a contemporary information environment. When the experts come forward at the Sonic Jihad hearing to “walk us through the media and some of the products,” they present digital artefacts of an information economy that mirrors many of the features of our own consumption of objects of electronic discourse, which seem dangerously easy to copy and distribute and thus also create confusion about their intended meanings, audiences, and purposes. From this one hearing we can see how the reception of many new digital genres plays out in the public sphere of legislative discourse. Web pages, videogames, and Weblogs are mentioned specifically in the transcript. The main architecture of the witnesses’ presentation to the committee is organised according to the rhetorical conventions of a PowerPoint presentation. Moreover, the arguments made by expert witnesses about the relationship of orality to literacy or of public to private communications in new media are highly relevant to how we might understand other important digital genres, such as electronic mail or text messaging. The hearing also invites consideration of privacy, intellectual property, and digital “rights,” because moral values about freedom and ownership are alluded to by many of the elected representatives present, albeit often through the looking glass of user behaviours imagined as radically Other. For example, terrorists are described as “modders” and “hackers” who subvert those who properly create, own, legitimate, and regulate intellectual property. To explain embarrassing leaks of infinitely replicable digital files, witness Ron Roughead says, “We’re not even sure that they don’t even hack into the kinds of spaces that hold photographs in order to get pictures that our forces have taken.” Another witness, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and International Affairs, Peter Rodman claims that “any video game that comes out, as soon as the code is released, they will modify it and change the game for their needs.” Thus, the implication of these witnesses’ testimony is that the release of code into the public domain can contribute to political subversion, much as covert intrusion into computer networks by stealthy hackers can. However, the witnesses from the Pentagon and from the government contractor SAIC often present a contradictory image of the supposed terrorists in the hearing transcripts. Sometimes the enemy is depicted as an organisation of technological masterminds, capable of manipulating the computer code of unwitting Americans and snatching their rightful intellectual property away; sometimes those from the opposing forces are depicted as pre-modern and even sub-literate political innocents. In contrast, the congressional representatives seem to focus on similarities when comparing the work of “terrorists” to the everyday digital practices of their constituents and even of themselves. According to the transcripts of this open hearing, legislators on both sides of the aisle express anxiety about domestic patterns of Internet reception. Even the legislators’ own Web pages are potentially disruptive electronic artefacts, particularly when the demands of digital labour interfere with their duties as lawmakers. Although the subject of the hearing is ostensibly terrorist Websites, Representative Anna Eshoo (D-California) bemoans the difficulty of maintaining her own official congressional site. As she observes, “So we are – as members, I think we’re very sensitive about what’s on our Website, and if I retained what I had on my Website three years ago, I’d be out of business. So we know that they have to be renewed. They go up, they go down, they’re rebuilt, they’re – you know, the message is targeted to the future.” In their questions, lawmakers identify Weblogs (blogs) as a particular area of concern as a destabilising alternative to authoritative print sources of information from established institutions. Representative Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) compares the polluting power of insurgent bloggers to that of influential online muckrakers from the American political Right. Hastings complains of “garbage on our regular mainstream news that comes from blog sites.” Representative Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico) attempts to project a media-savvy persona by bringing up the “phenomenon of blogging” in conjunction with her questions about jihadist Websites in which she notes how Internet traffic can be magnified by cooperative ventures among groups of ideologically like-minded content-providers: “These Websites, and particularly the most active ones, are they cross-linked? And do they have kind of hot links to your other favorite sites on them?” At one point Representative Wilson asks witness Rodman if he knows “of your 100 hottest sites where the Webmasters are educated? What nationality they are? Where they’re getting their money from?” In her questions, Wilson implicitly acknowledges that Web work reflects influences from pedagogical communities, economic networks of the exchange of capital, and even potentially the specific ideologies of nation-states. It is perhaps indicative of the government contractors’ anachronistic worldview that the witness is unable to answer Wilson’s question. He explains that his agency focuses on the physical location of the server or ISP rather than the social backgrounds of the individuals who might be manufacturing objectionable digital texts. The premise behind the contractors’ working method – surveilling the technical apparatus not the social network – may be related to other beliefs expressed by government witnesses, such as the supposition that jihadist Websites are collectively produced and spontaneously emerge from the indigenous, traditional, tribal culture, instead of assuming that Iraqi insurgents have analogous beliefs, practices, and technological awareness to those in first-world countries. The residual subtexts in the witnesses’ conjectures about competing cultures of orality and literacy may tell us something about a reactionary rhetoric around videogames and digital culture more generally. According to the experts before Congress, the Middle Eastern audience for these videogames and Websites is limited by its membership in a pre-literate society that is only capable of abortive cultural production without access to knowledge that is archived in printed codices. Sometimes the witnesses before Congress seem to be unintentionally channelling the ideas of the late literacy theorist Walter Ong about the “secondary orality” associated with talky electronic media such as television, radio, audio recording, or telephone communication. Later followers of Ong extend this concept of secondary orality to hypertext, hypermedia, e-mail, and blogs, because they similarly share features of both speech and written discourse. Although Ong’s disciples celebrate this vibrant reconnection to a mythic, communal past of what Kathleen Welch calls “electric rhetoric,” the defence industry consultants express their profound state of alarm at the potentially dangerous and subversive character of this hybrid form of communication. The concept of an “oral tradition” is first introduced by the expert witnesses in the context of modern marketing and product distribution: “The Internet is used for a variety of things – command and control,” one witness states. “One of the things that’s missed frequently is how and – how effective the adversary is at using the Internet to distribute product. They’re using that distribution network as a modern form of oral tradition, if you will.” Thus, although the Internet can be deployed for hierarchical “command and control” activities, it also functions as a highly efficient peer-to-peer distributed network for disseminating the commodity of information. Throughout the hearings, the witnesses imply that unregulated lateral communication among social actors who are not authorised to speak for nation-states or to produce legitimated expert discourses is potentially destabilising to political order. Witness Eric Michael describes the “oral tradition” and the conventions of communal life in the Middle East to emphasise the primacy of speech in the collective discursive practices of this alien population: “I’d like to point your attention to the media types and the fact that the oral tradition is listed as most important. The other media listed support that. And the significance of the oral tradition is more than just – it’s the medium by which, once it comes off the Internet, it is transferred.” The experts go on to claim that this “oral tradition” can contaminate other media because it functions as “rumor,” the traditional bane of the stately discourse of military leaders since the classical era. The oral tradition now also has an aspect of rumor. A[n] event takes place. There is an explosion in a city. Rumor is that the United States Air Force dropped a bomb and is doing indiscriminate killing. This ends up being discussed on the street. It ends up showing up in a Friday sermon in a mosque or in another religious institution. It then gets recycled into written materials. Media picks up the story and broadcasts it, at which point it’s now a fact. In this particular case that we were telling you about, it showed up on a network television, and their propaganda continues to go back to this false initial report on network television and continue to reiterate that it’s a fact, even though the United States government has proven that it was not a fact, even though the network has since recanted the broadcast. In this example, many-to-many discussion on the “street” is formalised into a one-to many “sermon” and then further stylised using technology in a one-to-many broadcast on “network television” in which “propaganda” that is “false” can no longer be disputed. This “oral tradition” is like digital media, because elements of discourse can be infinitely copied or “recycled,” and it is designed to “reiterate” content. In this hearing, the word “rhetoric” is associated with destructive counter-cultural forces by the witnesses who reiterate cultural truisms dating back to Plato and the Gorgias. For example, witness Eric Michael initially presents “rhetoric” as the use of culturally specific and hence untranslatable figures of speech, but he quickly moves to an outright castigation of the entire communicative mode. “Rhetoric,” he tells us, is designed to “distort the truth,” because it is a “selective” assembly or a “distortion.” Rhetoric is also at odds with reason, because it appeals to “emotion” and a romanticised Weltanschauung oriented around discourses of “struggle.” The film by SonicJihad is chosen as the final clip by the witnesses before Congress, because it allegedly combines many different types of emotional appeal, and thus it conveniently ties together all of the themes that the witnesses present to the legislators about unreliable oral or rhetorical sources in the Middle East: And there you see how all these products are linked together. And you can see where the games are set to psychologically condition you to go kill coalition forces. You can see how they use humor. You can see how the entire campaign is carefully crafted to first evoke an emotion and then to evoke a response and to direct that response in the direction that they want. Jihadist digital products, especially videogames, are effective means of manipulation, the witnesses argue, because they employ multiple channels of persuasion and carefully sequenced and integrated subliminal messages. To understand the larger cultural conversation of the hearing, it is important to keep in mind that the related argument that “games” can “psychologically condition” players to be predisposed to violence is one that was important in other congressional hearings of the period, as well one that played a role in bills and resolutions that were passed by the full body of the legislative branch. In the witness’s testimony an appeal to anti-game sympathies at home is combined with a critique of a closed anti-democratic system abroad in which the circuits of rhetorical production and their composite metonymic chains are described as those that command specific, unvarying, robotic responses. This sharp criticism of the artful use of a presentation style that is “crafted” is ironic, given that the witnesses’ “compilation” of jihadist digital material is staged in the form of a carefully structured PowerPoint presentation, one that is paced to a well-rehearsed rhythm of “slide, please” or “next slide” in the transcript. The transcript also reveals that the members of the House Intelligence Committee were not the original audience for the witnesses’ PowerPoint presentation. Rather, when it was first created by SAIC, this “expert” presentation was designed for training purposes for the troops on the ground, who would be facing the challenges of deployment in hostile terrain. According to the witnesses, having the slide show showcased before Congress was something of an afterthought. Nonetheless, Congressman Tiahrt (R-KN) is so impressed with the rhetorical mastery of the consultants that he tries to appropriate it. As Tiarht puts it, “I’d like to get a copy of that slide sometime.” From the hearing we also learn that the terrorists’ Websites are threatening precisely because they manifest a polymorphously perverse geometry of expansion. For example, one SAIC witness before the House Committee compares the replication and elaboration of digital material online to a “spiderweb.” Like Representative Eshoo’s site, he also notes that the terrorists’ sites go “up” and “down,” but the consultant is left to speculate about whether or not there is any “central coordination” to serve as an organising principle and to explain the persistence and consistency of messages despite the apparent lack of a single authorial ethos to offer a stable, humanised, point of reference. In the hearing, the oft-cited solution to the problem created by the hybridity and iterability of digital rhetoric appears to be “public diplomacy.” Both consultants and lawmakers seem to agree that the damaging messages of the insurgents must be countered with U.S. sanctioned information, and thus the phrase “public diplomacy” appears in the hearing seven times. However, witness Roughhead complains that the protean “oral tradition” and what Henry Jenkins has called the “transmedia” character of digital culture, which often crosses several platforms of traditional print, projection, or broadcast media, stymies their best rhetorical efforts: “I think the point that we’ve tried to make in the briefing is that wherever there’s Internet availability at all, they can then download these – these programs and put them onto compact discs, DVDs, or post them into posters, and provide them to a greater range of people in the oral tradition that they’ve grown up in. And so they only need a few Internet sites in order to distribute and disseminate the message.” Of course, to maintain their share of the government market, the Science Applications International Corporation also employs practices of publicity and promotion through the Internet and digital media. They use HTML Web pages for these purposes, as well as PowerPoint presentations and online video. The rhetoric of the Website of SAIC emphasises their motto “From Science to Solutions.” After a short Flash film about how SAIC scientists and engineers solve “complex technical problems,” the visitor is taken to the home page of the firm that re-emphasises their central message about expertise. The maps, uniforms, and specialised tools and equipment that are depicted in these opening Web pages reinforce an ethos of professional specialisation that is able to respond to multiple threats posed by the “global war on terror.” By 26 June 2006, the incident finally was being described as a “Pentagon Snafu” by ABC News. From the opening of reporter Jake Tapper’s investigative Webcast, established government institutions were put on the spot: “So, how much does the Pentagon know about videogames? Well, when it came to a recent appearance before Congress, apparently not enough.” Indeed, the very language about “experts” that was highlighted in the earlier coverage is repeated by Tapper in mockery, with the significant exception of “independent expert” Ian Bogost of the Georgia Institute of Technology. If the Pentagon and SAIC deride the legitimacy of rhetoric as a cultural practice, Bogost occupies himself with its defence. In his recent book Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames, Bogost draws upon the authority of the “2,500 year history of rhetoric” to argue that videogames represent a significant development in that cultural narrative. Given that Bogost and his Watercooler Games Weblog co-editor Gonzalo Frasca were actively involved in the detective work that exposed the depth of professional incompetence involved in the government’s line-up of witnesses, it is appropriate that Bogost is given the final words in the ABC exposé. As Bogost says, “We should be deeply bothered by this. We should really be questioning the kind of advice that Congress is getting.” Bogost may be right that Congress received terrible counsel on that day, but a close reading of the transcript reveals that elected officials were much more than passive listeners: in fact they were lively participants in a cultural conversation about regulating digital media. After looking at the actual language of these exchanges, it seems that the persuasiveness of the misinformation from the Pentagon and SAIC had as much to do with lawmakers’ preconceived anxieties about practices of computer-mediated communication close to home as it did with the contradictory stereotypes that were presented to them about Internet practices abroad. In other words, lawmakers found themselves looking into a fun house mirror that distorted what should have been familiar artefacts of American popular culture because it was precisely what they wanted to see. References ABC News. “Terrorist Videogame?” Nightline Online. 21 June 2006. 22 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2105341>. Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: Videogames and Procedural Rhetoric. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Game Politics. “Was Congress Misled by ‘Terrorist’ Game Video? We Talk to Gamer Who Created the Footage.” 11 May 2006. http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/285129.html#cutid1>. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. julieb. “David Morgan Is a Horrible Writer and Should Be Fired.” Online posting. 5 May 2006. Dvorak Uncensored Cage Match Forums. http://cagematch.dvorak.org/index.php/topic,130.0.html>. Mahmood. “Terrorists Don’t Recruit with Battlefield 2.” GGL Global Gaming. 16 May 2006 http://www.ggl.com/news.php?NewsId=3090>. Morgan, David. “Islamists Using U.S. Video Games in Youth Appeal.” Reuters online news service. 4 May 2006 http://today.reuters.com/news/ArticleNews.aspx?type=topNews &storyID=2006-05-04T215543Z_01_N04305973_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY- VIDEOGAMES.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc= NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2>. Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London/New York: Methuen, 1982. Parker, Trey. Online posting. 7 May 2006. 9 May 2006 http://www.treyparker.com>. Plato. “Gorgias.” Plato: Collected Dialogues. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1961. Shrader, Katherine. “Pentagon Surfing Thousands of Jihad Sites.” Associated Press 4 May 2006. SonicJihad. “SonicJihad: A Day in the Life of a Resistance Fighter.” Online posting. 26 Dec. 2005. Planet Battlefield Forums. 9 May 2006 http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/topic.asp?fid=13670&tid=1806909&p=1>. Tapper, Jake, and Audery Taylor. “Terrorist Video Game or Pentagon Snafu?” ABC News Nightline 21 June 2006. 30 June 2006 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Technology/story?id=2105128&page=1>. U.S. Congressional Record. Panel I of the Hearing of the House Select Intelligence Committee, Subject: “Terrorist Use of the Internet for Communications.” Federal News Service. 4 May 2006. Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and the New Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Losh, Elizabeth. "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>. APA Style Losh, E. (Oct. 2007) "Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/08-losh.php>.

Abstract:

Introduction Presidents “define who Americans are—often by declaring who they aren’t”, and “by their very utterances […] have shaped our sense of who we are as Americans” (Stuckey, front cover). This advocacy of some groups and policies to the exclusion of others has been facilitated in the United States’ political culture by the country music industry. Indeed, President Richard Nixon said of country music that it “radiates a love of this nation—a patriotism,” adding that it “makes America a better country” (Bufwack and Oermann 328). Country music’s ardent support of American military conflict, including Vietnam, has led to its long-term support of Republican candidates. There has been a general lack of scholarly interest, however, in how country music has promoted Republican definitions of what it means to be an American. Accordingly, we have two primary objectives. First, we will demonstrate that Republicans, aided by country music, have used the theme of defence of “country,” especially post-9/11, to attempt to intimidate detractors. Secondly, Republicans have questioned the love of “country,” or “patriotism,” of their electoral opponents just as country musicians have attempted to silence their own critics. This research is timely in that little has been done to merge Presidential advocacy and country music; furthermore, with the election of a new President mere days away, it is important to highlight the tendencies toward intolerance that both conservatism and country music have historically shared. Defence of ‘Country’ After the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush addressed the nation before a Joint Session of Congress on 20 September 2001. During this speech, the president threatened the international community and raised the spectre of fear in Americans both while drawing distinctions between the United States and its enemies. This message was reflected and reinforced by several patriotic anthems composed by country artists, thus enhancing its effect. In his remarks before Congress, Bush challenged the international community: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists;” thus “advocating some groups to the exclusion of others” on the international stage (20 September 2001). With these words, the President expanded the definition of the United States’ enemies to include not only those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, but also anyone who refused to support him. Republican Senator John McCain’s hawkishness regarding the attacks mirrored the President’s. “There is a system out there or network, and that network is going to have to be attacked,” McCain said the next morning on ABC (American Broadcasting Company) News. Within a month he made clear his priority: “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. Later he yelled to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!” (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/17/america/mccain.php). Bush’s address also encouraged Americans at home to “be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat” (20 September 2001). The subtle “us vs. them” tension here is between citizens and those who would threaten them. Bush added that “freedom and fear” had always “been at war” and “God is not neutral between them” (20 September 2001) suggesting a dualism between God and Satan with God clearly supporting the cause of the United States. Craig Allen Smith’s research refers to this as Bush’s “angel/devil jeremiad.” The President’s emphasis on fear, specifically the fear that the American way of life was being assailed, translated into public policy including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. This strategic nomenclature strengthened the power of the federal government and has been used by Republicans to suggest that if a candidate or citizen is not a terrorist then what does he/she have to fear from the government? The impact of Bush’s rhetoric of fear has of late been evaluated by scholars who have termed it “melodrama” in international affairs (Anker; Sampert and Treiberg). To disseminate his message for Americans to support his defence of “country,” Bush needed look no further than country music. David Firestein, a State Department diplomat and published authority on country music, asserted that the Bush team “recognised the power of country music as a political communication device” (86). The administration’s appeal to country music is linked to what Firestein called the “honky-tonk gap” which delineates red states and blue states. In an analysis of census data, Radio-Locator’s comprehensive listing by state of country music radio stations, and the official 2004 election results, he concluded that If you were to overlay a map of the current country music fan base onto the iconic red-and-blue map of the United States, you would find that its contours coincide virtually identically with those of the red state region. (84) And country musicians were indeed powerful in communicating the Republican message after 9/11. Several country musicians tapped into Bush’s defence of country rhetoric with a spate of songs including Alan Jackson’s Where Were You? (When the World Stopped Turning), Toby Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (the Angry American), and Darryl Worley’s Have You Forgotten? to name a few. Note how well the music parallels Bush’s attempt to define Americans. For instance, one of the lines from Keith’s Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue (the Angry American) speaks of those who have given their lives so that other Americans may rest peacefully. This sentiment is reiterated by the theme of Worley’s Have You Forgotten? in which he talks of spending time with soldiers who have no doubts about why they are at war. Both songs implicitly indict the listener for betraying United States soldiers if his/her support for the Iraqi war wanes or, put in Bush terms, the listener would become a supporter of “terrorism.” Country music’s appeal to middle-America’s red state conservatism has made the genre a natural vehicle for supporting the defence of country. Indeed, country songs have been written about every war in United States history; most expressing support for the conflict and the troops as opposed to protesting the United States’ action: “Since the Civil War and Reconstruction, ‘Dixie’ has always been the bellwether of patriotic fervour in time of war and even as the situation in Vietnam reached its lowest point and support for the war began to fade, the South and its distinctive music remained solidly supportive” (Andresen 105). Historically, country music has a long tradition of attempting to “define who Americans were by defining who they weren’t” (Stuckey). As Bufwack and Oermann note within country music “images of a reactionary South were not hard to find.” They add “Dixie fertilized ‘three r’s’ – the right, racism, and religion” (328). Country musicians supported the United States’ failed intervention in Vietnam with such songs as It’s for God and Country and You Mom (That’s Why I’m Fighting In Vietnam), and even justified the American massacre of noncombatants at My Lai in the Battle Hymn of Lt. Calley (328). Thus, a right-wing response to the current military involvement in Iraq was not unexpected from the industry and the honky-tonk state listeners. During the current election, Republican presidential nominee McCain has also received a boost from the country music genre as John Rich, of Big and Rich, wrote Raising McCain, a musical tribute to McCain’s military service used as his campaign theme song. The song, debuted at a campaign rally on 1 August 2008, in Florida, mentions McCain’s ‘Prisoner of War’ status to keep the focus on the war and challenge those who would question it. Scholars have researched the demographics of the country music listener as they have evaluated the massification theory: the notion that the availability of a widespread media culture would break down social and cultural barriers and result in a “hom*ogenised” society as opposed to the results of government-controlled media in non-democratic countries (Peterson and DiMaggio). They have determined that the massification theory has only been partially demonstrated in that regional and class barriers have eroded to some extent but country music listeners are still predominately white and older (Peterson and DiMaggio 504). These individuals do tend to be more conservative within the United States’ political culture, and militarism has a long history within both country music and conservatism. If the bad news of the massification theory is that a mass media market may not perpetuate a hom*ogenous society, there is good news. The more onerous fears that the government will work in tandem with the media to control the people in a democracy seem not to have been borne out over time. Although President Bush’s fear tactics were met with obsequious silence initially, resistance to the unquestioning support of the war has steadily grown. In 2003, a worldwide rally opposed the invasion of Iraq because it was a sovereign state and because the Bush doctrine lacked United Nations’ support. Further opposition in the United States included rallies and concerts as well as the powerful display in major cities across the nation of pairs of combat boots representing fallen soldiers (Olson). Bush’s popularity has dropped precipitously, with his disapproval ratings higher than any President in history at 71% (Steinhauser). While the current economic woes have certainly been a factor, the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain can also be viewed as a referendum on the Bush war. The American resistance to the Bush rhetoric and the Iraq war is all the more significant in light of research indicating that citizens incorrectly believe that the opposition to the Vietnam War was typified by protests against the troops rather than the war itself (Beamish). This false notion has empowered the Republicans and country musicians to challenge the patriotism of anyone who would subsequently oppose the military involvement of the United States, and it is to this topic of patriotism that we now turn. Patriotism Patriotism can be an effective way for presidential candidates to connect with voters (Sullivan et al). It has been a particularly salient issue since the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ironically, George W. Bush, a man whose limited military service had been the subject of debate in 2000, was able to employ the persistent patriotic themes of country music to his electoral advantage. In fact, Firestein argued that country music radio had a greater effect on the 2004 election than any ads run by issue groups because it “inculcated and reinforced conservative values in the red state electorate, helped frame the issues of the day on terms favourable to the conservative position on those issues, and primed red state voters to respond positively to President Bush’s basic campaign message of family, country, and God” (Firestein 83). Bush even employed Only in America, a patriotic anthem performed by Brooks and Dunn, as a campaign theme song, because the war and patriotism played such a prominent role in the election. That the Bush re-election campaign successfully cast doubt on the patriotism of three-time Purple Heart winner, Democratic Senator John Kerry, during the campaign is evidence of Firestein’s assertion. The criticism was based on a book: Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (O’Neill and Corsi). The book was followed by advertisem*nts funded by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth which included unsubstantiated claims that Kerry lied or exaggerated his combat role in Vietnam in order to obtain two of his Purple Hearts and his Bronze Star; the testimony of Kerry’s crewmen and Navy records notwithstanding, these ads were effective in smearing Kerry’s service record and providing the President with an electoral advantage. As far as country music was concerned, the 2004 election played out against the backdrop of the battle between the patriotic Toby Keith and the anti-American Dixie Chicks. The Dixie Chicks were berated after lead singer Natalie Maines’s anti-Bush comments during a concert in London. The trio’s song about an American soldier killed in action, Travelin’ Soldier, quickly fell from the top spot of the country music charts. Moreover, while male singers such as Keith, Darryl Worley, and Alan Jackson received accolades for their post 9/11 artistic efforts, the Dixie Chicks endured a vitriolic reaction from country music fans as their CDs were burned, country radio refused to play their music, their names were added to an internet list of traitors, their concerts were protested by Bush supporters, and their lives were even threatened (http://www.poppolitics.com/archives/2003/04/Bandwagon). Speaking from experience at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Kerry addressed the issue of patriotism stating: This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: you don’t decide who loves this country; you don’t decide who is a patriot; you don’t decide whose service counts and whose doesn’t. […] After all, patriotism is not love of power or some cheap trick to win votes; patriotism is love of country. (http://www.clipsandcomment.com/2008/08/27/full-text-john-kerry-speech-democratic-national-convention/) Kerry broached the issue because of the constant attacks on the patriotism of Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama. At the most basic level, many of the attacks questioned whether Obama was even an American. Internet rumours persisted that Obama was a Muslim who was not even an American citizen. The attacks intensified when the Obamas’ pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, came under fire for comments made during a sermon in which he stated “God damn America.” As a result, Obama was forced to distance himself from his pastor and his church. Obama was also criticised for not wearing a United States flag lapel pin. When Michelle Obama stated for the “first time [she was] proud of her country” for its willingness to embrace change in February of 2008, Cindy McCain responded that she “had always been proud of her country” with the implication being, of course, a lack of patriotism on the part of Michelle Obama. Even the 13 July 2008 cover of the liberal New Yorker portrayed the couple as flag-burning Muslim terrorists. During the 2008 election campaign, McCain has attempted to appeal to patriotism in a number of ways. First, McCain’s POW experience in Vietnam has been front and centre as he touts his experience in foreign policy. Second, the slogan of the campaign is “Country First” implying that the Obama campaign does not put the United States first. Third, McCain’s running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, insisted in a speech on 4 October 2008, that Barack Obama has been “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Her reference was to Obama’s acquaintance, Bill Ayers, who was involved in a series of Vietnam era bombings; the implication, however, was that Obama has terrorist ties and is unpatriotic. Palin stood behind her comments even though several major news organisations had concluded that the relationship was not significant as Ayers’ terrorist activities occurred when Obama was eight-years-old. This recent example is illustrative of Republican attempts to question the patriotism of Democrats for their electoral advantage. Country music has again sided with the Republicans particularly with Raising McCain. However, the Democrats may have realised the potential of the genre as Obama chose Only in America as the song played after his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. He has also attempted to reach rural voters by starting his post-convention campaign in Bristol, Virginia, a small, conservative town. Conclusion Thus, in the wake of 9/11, Republicans seized the opportunity to control the culture through fear and patriotic fervour. They were facilitated in this endeavor by the country music industry with songs that that would questions the motives, defence of “country,” and patriotism, of anyone who would question the Bush administration. This alliance between country music and the right is an historically strong one, and we recommend more research on this vital topic. While this election may indeed be a referendum on the war, it has been influenced by an economic downturn as well. Ultimately, Democrats will have to convince rural voters that they share their values; they don’t have the same edge as Republicans without the reliance of country music. However, the dynamic of country music has changed to somewhat reflect the war fatigue since the 2004 campaign. The Angry American, Toby Keith, has admitted that he is actually a Democrat, and country music listeners have grown tired of the “barrage of pro-troop sentiment,” especially since the summer of 2005 (Willman 115). As Joe Galante, the chief of the RCA family of labels in Nashville, stated, “It’s the relatability. Kerry never really spent time listening to some of those people” (Willman 201). Bill Clinton, a Southern governor, certainly had relatability, carrying the normally red states and overcoming the honky-tonk gap, and Obama has seen the benefit of country music by playing it as the grand finale of the Democratic Convention. Nevertheless, we recommend more research on the “melodrama” theory of the Presidency as the dynamics of the relationship between the Presidency and the country music genre are currently evolving. References Andreson, Lee. Battle Notes: Music of the Vietnam War. 2nd ed. Superior, WI: Savage Press, 2003. Anker, Elisabeth. “Villains, Victims and Heroes: Melodrama, Media and September 11th.” Journal of Communication. 55.1 (2005): 22-37. Baker, Peter and David Brown. “Bush Tries to Tone Down High-Pitched Debate on Iraq.” Monday, 21November 2005, Page A04. washingtonpost.com Beamish, Thomas D., Harvey Molotch, and Richard Flacks. “Who Supports the Troops? Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Making of Collective Memory.” Social Problems. 42.3 (1995): 344-60. Brooks and Dunn. Only in America. Arista Records, 2003. Bufwack, Mary A. and Robert K. Oermann. Finding Her Voice The Saga of Women in Country Music. New York: Crown Publishers, 1993. Dixie Chicks. “Travelin Soldier.” Home. Columbia. 27 August 2002. Firestein, David J. “The Honky-Tonk Gap.” Vital Speeches of the Day. 72.3 (2006): 83-88. Jackson, Alan. Where Were You? (When the World Stopped Turning) Very Best of Alan Jackson. Nashville: Arista, 2004. Keith, Toby. Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American). Nashville: Dreamworks. November 9, 2004. Olson, Scott. “Chicago remembers war dead with 500 pairs of empty boots.” 22 January 2004. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-01-22-chicago-boots_x.htm O’Neill, John E. and Jerome L. Corsi. “Unfit for Command Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.” Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2004. Peterson, Richard A. and Peter Di Maggio. “From Region to Class, the Changing Locus of Country Music. A Test of the Massification Hypothesis.” Social Forces. 53.3 (1975): 497-506. Rich, John. Raising McCain. Production information unavailable. Sampert, Shannon, and Natasja Treiberg. “The Reification of the ?American Soldier?: Popular Culture, American Foreign Policy, and Country Music.” Paper presented at the International Studies Association 48th Annual Convention, Chicago, Illinois, United States, 28 February 2007. Smith, Craig Allen. “President Bush’s Enthymeme of Evil: The Amalgamation of 9/11, Iraq, and Moral Values.” American Behavioral Scientist. 49 (2005): 32-47. Steinhauser, Paul. “Poll: More disapprove of Bush that any other president.” Politics Cnn.politics.com. 1 May 2008. Stuckey, Mary E. Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity. Lawrence: UP of Kansas, 2004. Sullivan, John L., Amy Fried, Mary G. Dietz. 1992. “Patriotism, Politics, and the Presidential Election of 1988.” American Journal of Political Science. 36.1 (1992): 200-234. Willman, Chris. Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music. New York: The New Press, 2005. Worley, Darryl. Have You Forgotten? Nashville: Dreamworks, 2003.

Abstract:

Introduction Over the past thirty years media activism has expanded dramatically. Like never before, individuals and groups have access to personal computers, publishing software, fax, telecommunications, the Internet, community radio and television that enable them to participate in forms of cultural production previously reserved for an intellectual and political élite. Independently produced media among those who feel excluded from, even oppressed by, the dominant social order provides a means of raising awareness among oppressed or marginalised communities while at the same time challenging the meanings conveyed by social institutions like the mass media and the state. The use of media for the purposes of activism has occurred, by in large, in the context of new social movements. The AIDS movement in North America has provided an organisational and ideological infrastructure through which those infected have become involved in media production. This paper focusses on the development of media projects by AIDS activists for the purposes of sharing information about the treatment and management of HIV infection. Specifically I am interested in how the changing the needs of people with HIV/AIDS -- the intended audience -- as perceived by activists have shaped the evolution of treatment information projects. Community-Based Media Media projects designed as a forum for people with HIV/AIDS have been guided by the need to be and remain community-based. What constitutes community-based media has been taken up, in several different ways, in the literature on media activism. Downing, for instance, has examined the experiences of those involved in "self managed" media projects. In this analysis he illustrates how control over production is crucial to media projects that focus on challenging or resisting forms of political oppression. External influence or control only threatens to subvert collective efforts directed at achieving self representation. Smith looks at this issue in a different way, arguing that it is important to make the distinction between print media for women and feminist print media. According to Smith, the former tend to reflect the dominant gender order, contributing to the social forces that oppress and marginalise women, in part, because they do not focus on addressing or advancing the needs and concerns of women. Feminist media, in contrast, tends to be informed by a political analysis of gender: they are created and produced by and for women; they provide a forum for the voices of women who have been silenced through oppression or marginalisation; and they challenge and seek to transform patriarchal social relations. Trend takes this point further in his critique of media projects that have been informed by Leftist politics. The problem, he argues, has been that the media created or influenced by Leftist politics have been dominated by an intellectual élite that have ignored or chastised the voices and opinions of those who are oppressed or marginalised by the dominant social order. As an alternative, Trend looks to recent efforts among gay and lesbian media activists who have turned to new media technologies and their own experiences as the basis for subverting and challenging hom*ophobia and hetrosexism. For each of these scholars, community-based media follow what might be called a peer model of communication: a specific group using media to speak for themselves and in doing so achieving some degree of self representation. A key issue raised in this work is how those involved in media projects understand the role that their audience plays in establishing and sustaining this community-based status. Treatment Information Projects as Community-Based Media Activism Political organizing around the treatment of HIV infection (what has been called AIDS treatment activism) has been a central component of the community-based response to HIV/AIDS (Ariss). Treatment activism among groups like ACT UP and AIDS ACTION NOW! have focussed on influencing those power structures (government and pharmaceutical companies) in control of the development and approval of medications (Carter; Carter & Watney). Treatment activism also refers to the creation of advocacy, support, and education programs for people living with HIV/AIDS. The development of forums which enable people with HIV/AIDS to share information about treatments and health care generally has been an important aspect of treatment activism in North America. A significant part of this type of treatment activism has been the production and dissemination of information about treatments and health management. Indeed, the importance of "staying informed" has always been high on the list of survival strategies for people with HIV/AIDS. Early in the epidemic, in the 1980s, the problem that people with HIV/AIDS faced was a lack of information about new and potentially beneficial treatments. In response, people with HIV/AIDS formed social networks, often in close proximity to AIDS organizations, in order to share strategies to promote their health and manage their infection. Eventually, such forums were expanded and became, or were integrated into, print media projects. In the United States, the most notable and enduring example is AIDS Treatment News. In Canada similar publications like The Positive Side and the Treatment Information Flash were started by people with HIV/AIDS with the support of grassroots, but increasingly government funded, AIDS service organizations. During this period media products like The Positive Side and Treatment Information Flash were produced by politically involved HIV- positive gay men who sought to provide information to all people with HIV/AIDS but also realised that their primary audience was gay men who were HIV infected or affected. With developments in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, the main issue for people with HIV/AIDS became gaining access to information rather than a lack of information. Pressure from the organised HIV/AIDS community eventually led to the development of and greater support (from government and private foundations) for treatment information organisations. In the United States, groups like Project Inform (PI) were established which focussed exclusively on interpreting medical information and making it available to people with HIV/AIDS. In Canada, a similar organisation was started, the Community AIDS Treatment Information Exchange (CATIE), initially a subcommittee of AIDS ACTION NOW! and then as an autonomous organisation. Treatment-specific organisations meant that existing media projects were given more resources and a broader scope in meeting the information needs of people with HIV/AIDS. Media projects that began earlier in the epidemic were faced with the challenge of adapting to changes in the AIDS epidemic and to the treatment of HIV/AIDS. Efforts were made, for instance, in treatment information projects in Canada with varying levels of success to include the voices of a more diverse range of people with HIV/AIDS. Also, a greater emphasis was placed on providing material that would be accessible to people with varying educational, cultural, and social backgrounds. In the case of The Positive Side and the Treatment Information Flash despite efforts effectively reaching a more diverse audience of people with HIV/AIDS, while remaining relevant to gay men with HIV/AIDS, was an ongoing challenge that called into question the effectiveness and relevancy of such media as a forum for all people with HIV/AIDS. In more recent years, with the rise of new medications and the use of combination therapy or treatment co*cktails, as well as the rise in use and legitimacy of complementary therapies, the health care information needs of people with HIV/AIDS have grown exponentially. To meet the changes needs of people with HIV/AIDS, organisations like PI and CATIE have turned away from print media and instead embraced the phone, fax, and the Internet as an alternative means of disseminating treatment information. Also, the availability of information in currently less of a problems as it was in the 1980s and early 1990s (although accessibility continues to be a serious problem). Instead, people with HIV/AIDS were becoming overwhelmed by an overabundance of information. Treatment information projects had to go beyond simply making information available and understandable; people with HIV/AIDS needed to learn how to make sense of the wealth of information available in order to make informed decisions about their health. Print media projects like The Positive Side and the Treatment Information Flash were eventually incorporated into broader electronic media based projects that were more oriented toward provided a broad amount of treatment information to a diverse audience of people with HIV/AIDS. Early print media projects were unable to extend beyond their grassroots in the gay HIV-positive community. In this sense in the pursuit of becoming general media they no longer were "community-based" and as a result could no longer sustain themselves. Conclusion What community-based meant for those involved in projects like The Positive Side and the Treatment Information Flash revolved around ensuring that the media actively engaged an audience of people with HIV/AIDS and that the material in the publication was grounded in the experiences of people with HIV/AIDS." This understanding of community-based had two components. First, it was an attempt to remain accountable to the needs and concerns of those HIV-infected and affected. And, second, it was an effort to privilege and foster the opinions, views, and expertise of those living with HIV/AIDS. Achieving this required a political analysis that identified the dominant social order as working against, or simply ignoring, the best interests of those HIV-infected and affected. In response, people with HIV/AIDS needed to take control of the production and representation of information about managing HIV infection. As a result, becoming and remaining "community-based" was for a period of time an ongoing process that was negotiated between the audience and those involved in the media projects. This negotiation was seen as essential to providing an alternative forum for health care information that looked critically and pragmatically at dominant discourses about managing HIV infection. However, in recent years, the realisation that it is not possible to address people with HIV/AIDS as a unified, politically aware audience has called into question the viability of treatment information projects. As a result, early treatment publications have been replaced by large government funded treatment information organisations that provide general information through a variety of media which are intended for a diverse range of people with HIV/AIDS. The result is a greater gap between producer and consumer and a shift away from a consideration of the audience as an essential, potentially political entity in the production of AIDS treatment information. References Ariss, R. Against Death: The Practice of Living with AIDS. Australia: Gordon & Breach Publishers, 1996. Carter, G. ACT UP, the AIDS War and Activism. New Jersey: Open Magazine, 1992. Carter, E., and S. Watney. Taking Liberties: AIDS and Cultural Politics. London: Serpent's Tail, 1989. Downing, J. Radical Media. Boston: South End Press, 1984. Kahn, A. AIDS: The Winter War. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993. Smith, M. "Feminist Media and Cultural Politics." Women in Mass Communication. Ed. P. Creedon. London: Sage, 1993. Trend, D. "Rethinking Media Activism: Why the Left Is Losing the Cultural War." Socialist Review, 2 (1993): 5-33. Citation reference for this article MLA style: James Gillett. "The Audience in Media Activism: AIDS Treatment Information Projects." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/activism.php>. Chicago style: James Gillett, "The Audience in Media Activism: AIDS Treatment Information Projects," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/activism.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: James Gillett. (2000) The Audience in Media Activism: AIDS Treatment Information Projects. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/activism.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Introduction Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this sentiment, arguing that, "despite widespread speculation about the impact of documentaries, the topic has received relatively little systematic attention" ("Evolving"). And earlier this year, the introduction to a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on documentary film stated, "documentary film, despite its growing influence and many impacts, has mostly been overlooked by social scientists studying the media and communication" (Nisbet and Aufderheide 451). Film has been studied extensively as entertainment, as narrative, and as cultural event, but the study of film as an agent of social change is still in its infancy. This paper introduces a systematic approach to measuring the social impact of documentary film aiming to: (1) discuss the context of documentary film and its potential impact; and (2) argue for a social science approach, discussing key issues about conducting such research. Changes in Documentary Practice Documentary film has been used as a tool for promoting social change throughout its history. John Grierson, who coined the term "documentary" in 1926, believed it could be used to influence the ideas and actions of people in ways once reserved for church and school. He presented his thoughts on this emerging genre in his 1932 essay, First Principles of Documentary, saying, "We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form" (97). Richard Barsam further specified the definition of documentary, distinguishing it from non-fiction film, such that all documentaries are non-fiction films but not all non-fiction films are documentaries. He distinguishes documentary from other forms of non-fiction film (i.e. travel films, educational films, newsreels) by its purpose; it is a film with an opinion and a specific message that aims to persuade or influence the audience. And Bill Nichols writes that the definition of documentary may even expand beyond the film itself, defining it as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" (12). Documentary film has undergone many significant changes since its inception, from the heavily staged romanticism movement of the 1920s to the propagandist tradition of governments using film to persuade individuals to support national agendas to the introduction of cinéma vérité in the 1960s and historical documentary in the 1980s (cf. Barnouw). However, the recent upsurge in popularity of documentary media, combined with technological advances of internet and computers have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for film to serve as both art and agent for social change. One such opportunity is in the creation of film-based social action campaigns. Over the past decade, filmmakers have taken a more active role in promoting social change by coordinating film releases with action campaigns. Companies such as Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc., etc.) now create "specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films" (Participant Media). In addition, a new sector of "social media" consultants are now offering services, including "consultation, strategic planning for alternative distribution, website and social media development, and complete campaign management services to filmmakers to ensure the content of nonfiction media truly meets the intention for change" (Working Films). The emergence of new forms of media and technology are changing our conceptions of both documentary film and social action. Technologies such as podcasts, video blogs, internet radio, social media and network applications, and collaborative web editing "both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of 'documentary' as a practice and as an idea" (Ellsworth). In the past decade, we have seen new forms of documentary creation, distribution, marketing, and engagement. Likewise, film campaigns are utilizing a broad array of strategies to engage audience members, including "action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels" that often turn into "ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows" (Participant Media). This move towards multi-media documentary film is becoming not only commonplace, but expected as a part of filmmaking. NYU film professor and documentary film pioneer George Stoney recently noted, "50 percent of the documentary filmmaker's job is making the movie, and 50 percent is figuring out what its impact can be and how it can move audiences to action" (qtd. in Nisbet, "Gasland"). In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, coined the term "transmedia storytelling", which he later defined as "a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" ("Transmedia"). When applied to documentary film, it is the elements of the "issue" raised by the film that get dispersed across these channels, coordinating, not just an entertainment experience, but a social action campaign. Dimensions of Evaluation It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films want look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. Although we "feel" like films make a difference to the individuals who also see them in the broader cultures in which they are embedded, measurement and empirical analysis of this impact are vitally important for both providing feedback to filmmakers and funders as well as informing future efforts attempting to leverage film for social change. This type of systematic assessment, or program evaluation, is often discussed in terms of two primary goals—formative (or process) and summative (or impact) evaluation (cf. Muraskin; Trochim and Donnelly). Formative evaluation studies program materials and activities to strengthen a program, and summative evaluation examines program outcomes. In terms of documentary film, these two goals can be described as follows: Formative Evaluation: Informing the Process As programs (broadly defined as an intentional set of activities with the aim of having some specific impact), the people who interact with them, and the cultures they are situated in are constantly changing, program development and evaluation is an ongoing learning cycle. Film campaigns, which are an intentional set of activities with the aim of impacting individual viewers and broader cultures, fit squarely within this purview. Without formulating hypotheses about the relationships between program activities and goals and then collecting and analyzing data during implementation to test them, it is difficult to learn ways to improve programs (or continue doing what works best in the most efficient manner). Attention to this process enables those involved to learn more about, not only what works, but how and why it works and even gain insights about how program outcomes may be affected by changes to resource availability, potential audiences, or infrastructure. Filmmakers are constantly learning and honing their craft and realizing the impact of their practice can help the artistic process. Often faced with tight budgets and timelines, they are forced to confront tradeoffs all the time, in the writing, production and post-production process. Understanding where they are having impact can improve their decision-making, which can help both the individual project and the overall field. Summative Evaluation: Quantifying Impacts Evaluation is used in many different fields to determine whether programs are achieving their intended goals and objectives. It became popular in the 1960s as a way of understanding the impact of the Great Society programs and has continued to grow since that time (Madaus and Stufflebeam). A recent White House memo stated that "rigorous, independent program evaluations can be a key resource in determining whether government programs are achieving their intended outcomes as well as possible and at the lowest possible cost" and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched an initiative to increase the practice of "impact evaluations, or evaluations aimed at determining the causal effects of programs" (Orszag 1). Documentary films, like government programs, generally target a national audience, aim to serve a social purpose, and often do not provide a return on their investment. Participant Media, the most visible and arguably most successful documentary production company in the film industry, made recent headlines for its difficulty in making a profit during its seven-year history (Cieply). Owner and founder Jeff Skoll reported investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company and CEO James Berk added that the company sometimes measures success, not by profit, but by "whether Mr. Skoll could have exerted more impact simply by spending his money philanthropically" (Cieply). Because of this, documentary projects often rely on grant funding, and are starting to approach funders beyond traditional arts and media sources. "Filmmakers are finding new fiscal and non-fiscal partners, in constituencies that would not traditionally be considered—or consider themselves—media funders or partners" (BRITDOC 6). And funders increasingly expect tangible data about their return on investment. Says Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford Foundation, which recently launched the Just Films Initiative: In these times of global economic uncertainty, with increasing demand for limited philanthropic dollars, assessing our effectiveness is more important than ever. Today, staying on the frontlines of social change means gauging, with thoughtfulness and rigor, the immediate and distant outcomes of our funding. Establishing the need for evaluation is not enough—attention to methodology is also critical. Valid research methodology is a critical component of understanding around the role entertainment can play in impacting social and environmental issues. The following issues are vital to measuring impact. Defining the Project Though this may seem like an obvious step, it is essential to determine the nature of the project so one can create research questions and hypotheses based on a complete understanding of the "treatment". One organization that provides a great example of the integration of documentary film imbedded into a larger campaign or movement is Invisible Children. Founded in 2005, Invisible Children is both a media-based organization as well as an economic development NGO with the goal of raising awareness and meeting the needs of child soldiers and other youth suffering as a result of the ongoing war in northern Uganda. Although Invisible Children began as a documentary film, it has grown into a large non-profit organization with an operating budget of over $8 million and a staff of over a hundred employees and interns throughout the year as well as volunteers in all 50 states and several countries. Invisible Children programming includes films, events, fundraising campaigns, contests, social media platforms, blogs, videos, two national "tours" per year, merchandise, and even a 650-person three-day youth summit in August 2011 called The Fourth Estate. Individually, each of these components might lead to specific outcomes; collectively, they might lead to others. In order to properly assess impacts of the film "project", it is important to take all of these components into consideration and think about who they may impact and how. This informs the research questions, hypotheses, and methods used in evaluation. Film campaigns may even include partnerships with existing social movements and non-profit organizations targeting social change. The American University Center for Social Media concluded in a case study of three issue-based documentary film campaigns: Digital technologies do not replace, but are closely entwined with, longstanding on-the-ground activities of stakeholders and citizens working for social change. Projects like these forge new tools, pipelines, and circuits of circulation in a multiplatform media environment. They help to create sustainable network infrastructures for participatory public media that extend from local communities to transnational circuits and from grassroots communities to policy makers. (Abrash) Expanding the Focus of Impact beyond the Individual A recent focus has shifted the dialogue on film impact. Whiteman ("Theaters") argues that traditional metrics of film "success" tend to focus on studio economic indicators that are far more relevant to large budget films. Current efforts focused on box office receipts and audience size, the author claims, are really measures of successful film marketing or promotion, missing the mark when it comes to understanding social impact. He instead stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive model. His "coalition model" broadens the range and types of impact of film beyond traditional metrics to include the entire filmmaking process, from production to distribution. Whiteman (“Theaters”) argues that a narrow focus on the size of the audience for a film, its box office receipts, and viewers' attitudes does not incorporate the potential reach of a documentary film. Impacts within the coalition model include both individual and policy levels. Individual impacts (with an emphasis on activist groups) include educating members, mobilizing for action, and raising group status; policy includes altering both agenda for and the substance of policy deliberations. The Fledgling Fund (Barrett and Leddy) expanded on this concept and identified five distinct impacts of documentary film campaigns. These potential impacts expand from individual viewers to groups, movements, and eventually to what they call the "ultimate goal" of social change. Each is introduced briefly below. Quality Film. The film itself can be presented as a quality film or media project, creating enjoyment or evoking emotion in the part of audiences. "By this we mean a film that has a compelling narrative that draws viewers in and can engage them in the issue and illustrate complex problems in ways that statistics cannot" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Awareness. Film can increase public awareness by bringing light to issues and stories that may have otherwise been unknown or not often thought about. This is the level of impact that has received the most attention, as films are often discussed in terms of their "educational" value. "A project's ability to raise awareness around a particular issue, since awareness is a critical building block for both individual change and broader social change" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Engagement. Impact, however, need not stop at simply raising public awareness. Engagement "indicates a shift from simply being aware of an issue to acting on this awareness. Were a film and its outreach campaign able to provide an answer to the question 'What can I do?' and more importantly mobilize that individual to act?" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This is where an associated film campaign becomes increasingly important, as transmedia outlets such as Facebook, websites, blogs, etc. can build off the interest and awareness developed through watching a film and provide outlets for viewers channel their constructive efforts. Social Movement. In addition to impacts on individuals, films can also serve to mobilize groups focused on a particular problem. The filmmaker can create a campaign around the film to promote its goals and/or work with existing groups focused on a particular issue, so that the film can be used as a tool for mobilization and collaboration. "Moving beyond measures of impact as they relate to individual awareness and engagement, we look at the project's impact as it relates to the broader social movement … if a project can strengthen the work of key advocacy organizations that have strong commitment to the issues raised in the film" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). Social Change. The final level of impact and "ultimate goal" of an issue-based film is long-term and systemic social change. "While we understand that realizing social change is often a long and complex process, we do believe it is possible and that for some projects and issues there are key indicators of success" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This can take the form of policy or legislative change, passed through film-based lobbying efforts, or shifts in public dialogue and behavior. Legislative change typically takes place beyond the social movement stage, when there is enough support to pressure legislators to change or create policy. Film-inspired activism has been seen in issues ranging from environmental causes such as agriculture (Food Inc.) and toxic products (Blue Vinyl) to social causes such as foreign conflict (Invisible Children) and education (Waiting for Superman). Documentary films can also have a strong influence as media agenda-setters, as films provide dramatic "news pegs" for journalists seeking to either sustain or generation new coverage of an issue (Nisbet "Introduction" 5), such as the media coverage of climate change in conjunction with An Inconvenient Truth. Barrett and Leddy, however, note that not all films target all five impacts and that different films may lead to different impacts. "In some cases we could look to key legislative or policy changes that were driven by, or at least supported by the project... In other cases, we can point to shifts in public dialogue and how issues are framed and discussed" (7). It is possible that specific film and/or campaign characteristics may lead to different impacts; this is a nascent area for research and one with great promise for both practical and theoretical utility. Innovations in Tools and Methods Finally, the selection of tools is a vital component for assessing impact and the new media landscape is enabling innovations in the methods and strategies for program evaluation. Whereas the traditional domain of film impact measurement included box office statistics, focus groups, and exit surveys, innovations in data collection and analysis have expanded the reach of what questions we can ask and how we are able to answer them. For example, press coverage can assist in understanding and measuring the increase in awareness about an issue post-release. Looking directly at web-traffic changes "enables the creation of an information-seeking curve that can define the parameters of a teachable moment" (Hart and Leiserowitz 360). Audience reception can be measured, not only via interviews and focus groups, but also through content and sentiment analysis of web content and online analytics. "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden" (Manyika et al. 5). These new tools are significantly changing evaluation, expanding what we can learn about the social impacts of film through triangulation of self-report data with measurement of actual behavior in virtual environments. Conclusion The changing media landscape both allows and impels evaluation of film impacts on individual viewers and the broader culture in which they are imbedded. Although such analysis may have previously been limited to box office numbers, critics' reviews, and theater exit surveys, the rise of new media provides both the ability to connect filmmakers, activists, and viewers in new ways and the data in which to study the process. This capability, combined with significant growth in the documentary landscape, suggests a great potential for documentary film to contribute to some of our most pressing social and environmental needs. A social scientific approach, that combines empirical analysis with theory applied from basic science, ensures that impact can be measured and leveraged in a way that is useful for both filmmakers as well as funders. In the end, this attention to impact ensures a continued thriving marketplace for issue-based documentary films in our social landscape. References Abrash, Barbara. "Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement." American University Center for Social Media 21 Apr. 2010. 26 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/›. Aufderheide, Patricia. "The Changing Documentary Marketplace." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 24-28. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Barrett, Diana and Sheila Leddy. "Assessing Creative Media's Social Impact." The Fledgling Fund, Dec. 2008. 15 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.thefledglingfund.org/media/research.html›. Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1992. BRITDOC Foundation. The End of the Line: A Social Impact Evaluation. London: Channel 4, 2011. 12 Oct. 2011 ‹http://britdoc.org/news_details/the_social_impact_of_the_end_of_the_line/›. Cieply, Michael. "Uneven Growth for Film Studio with a Message." New York Times 5 Jun. 2011: B1. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Emerging Media and Documentary Practice." The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. Aug. 2008. 22 Sep. 2011. ‹http://www.gpia.info/node/911›. Grierson, John. "First Principles of Documentary (1932)." Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. Eds. Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 97-102. Hart, Philip Solomon and Anthony Leiserowitz. "Finding the Teachable Moment: An Analysis of Information-Seeking Behavior on Global Warming Related Websites during the Release of The Day After Tomorrow." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 3.3 (2009): 355-66. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. ———. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Confessions of an Aca-Fan. The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 Mar. 2007. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html›. Madaus, George, and Daniel Stufflebeam. "Program Evaluation: A Historical Overview." Evaluation in Education and Human Services 49.1 (2002): 3-18. Manyika, James, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Brad Brown, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, and Angela Hung Byers. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. May 2011 ‹http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/big_data/›. Muraskin, Lana. Understanding Evaluation: The Way to Better Prevention Programs. Washington: U.S. Department of Education, 1993. 8 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www2.ed.gov/PDFDocs/handbook.pdf›. Nichols, Bill. "Foreword." Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Eds. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1997. 11-13. Nisbet, Matthew. "Gasland and Dirty Business: Documentary Films Shape Debate on Energy Policy." Big Think, 9 May 2011. 1 Oct. 2011 ‹http://bigthink.com/ideas/38345›. ———. "Introduction: Understanding the Social Impact of a Documentary Film." Documentaries on a Mission: How Nonprofits Are Making Movies for Public Engagement. Ed. Karen Hirsch, Center for Social Media. Mar. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://aladinrc.wrlc.org/bitstream/1961/4634/1/docs_on_a_mission.pdf›. Nisbet, Matthew, and Patricia Aufderheide. "Documentary Film: Towards a Research Agenda on Forms, Functions, and Impacts." Mass Communication and Society 12.4 (2011): 450-56. Orszag, Peter. Increased Emphasis on Program Evaluation. Washington: Office of Management and Budget. 7 Oct. 2009. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/memoranda_2010/m10-01.pdf›. Participant Media. "Our Mission." 2011. 2 Apr. 2011 ‹http://www.participantmedia.com/company/about_us.php.›. Plantinga, Carl. Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Trochim, William, and James Donnelly. Research Methods Knowledge Base. 3rd ed. Mason: Atomic Dogs, 2007. Ubiñas, Luis. "President's Message." 2009 Annual Report. Ford Foundation, Sep. 2010. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.fordfoundation.org/about-us/2009-annual-report/presidents-message›. Vladica, Florin, and Charles Davis. "Business Innovation and New Media Practices in Documentary Film Production and Distribution: Conceptual Framework and Review of Evidence." The Media as a Driver of the Information Society. Eds. Ed Albarran, Paulo Faustino, and R. Santos. Lisbon, Portugal: Media XXI / Formal, 2009. 299-319. Whiteman, David. "Out of the Theaters and into the Streets: A Coalition Model of the Political Impact of Documentary Film and Video." Political Communication 21.1 (2004): 51-69. ———. "The Evolving Impact of Documentary Film: Sacrifice and the Rise of Issue-Centered Outreach." Post Script 22 Jun. 2007. 10 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.allbusiness.com/media-telecommunications/movies-sound-recording/5517496-1.html›. Winston, Brian. Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: British Film Institute, 1995. Working Films. "Nonprofits: Working Films." Foundation Source Access 31 May 2011. 5 Oct. 2011 ‹http://access.foundationsource.com/nonprofit/working-films/›.

Abstract:

In the contemporary era, media spectacle organizes and mobilizes economic life, political conflict, social interactions, culture, and everyday life. My recently published book Media Spectacle explores a profusion of developments in hi-tech culture, media-driven society, and spectacle politics. Spectacle culture involves everything from film and broadcasting to Internet cyberculture and encompasses phenomena ranging from elections to terrorism and to the media dramas of the moment. For ‘Logo’, I am accordingly sketching out briefly a terrain I probe in detail in the book from which these examples are taken.1 During the past decades, every form of culture and significant forms of social life have become permeated by the logic of the spectacle. Movies are bigger and more spectacular than ever, with high-tech special effects expanding the range of cinematic spectacle. Television channels proliferate endlessly with all-day movies, news, sports, specialty niches, re-runs of the history of television, and whatever else can gain an audience. The rock spectacle reverberates through radio, television, CDs, computers networks, and extravagant concerts. The Internet encircles the world in the spectacle of an interactive and multimedia cyberculture. Media culture excels in creating megaspectacles of sports championships, political conflicts, entertainment, "breaking news" and media events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the Death of Princess Diana, or the sex or murder scandal of the moment. Megaspectacle comes as well to dominate party politics, as the political battles of the day, such as the Clinton sex scandals and impeachment, the 36 Day Battle for the White House after Election 2000, and the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent Terror War. These dramatic media passion plays define the politics of the time, and attract mass audiences to their programming, hour after hour, day after day. The concept of "spectacle" derives from French Situationist theorist Guy Debord's 1972 book Society of the Spectacle. "Spectacle," in Debord's terms, "unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena" (Debord 1970: #10). In one sense, it refers to a media and consumer society, organized around the consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles. Spectacles are those phenomena of media culture which embody contemporary society's basic values, and dreams and nightmares, putting on display dominant hopes and fears. They serve to enculturate individuals into its way of life, and dramatize its conflicts and modes of conflict resolution. They include sports events, political campaigns and elections, and media extravaganzas like sensational murder trials, or the Bill Clinton sex scandals and impeachment spectacle (1998-1999). As we enter a new millennium, the media are becoming ever more technologically dazzling and are playing an increasingly central role in everyday life. Under the influence of a postmodern image culture, seductive spectacles fascinate the denizens of the media and consumer society and involve them in the semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, a semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, and drama, which deeply influence thought and action. For Debord: "When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present day society" (#18). Today, however, I would maintain it is the multimedia spectacle of sight, sound, touch, and, coming to you soon, smell that constitutes the multidimensional sense experience of the new interactive spectacle. For Debord, the spectacle is a tool of pacification and depoliticization; it is a "permanent opium war" (#44) which stupefies social subjects and distracts them from the most urgent task of real life -- recovering the full range of their human powers through creative praxis. The concept of the spectacle is integrally connected to the concept of separation and passivity, for in passively consuming spectacles, one is separated from actively producing one's life. Capitalist society separates workers from the products of their labor, art from life, and consumption from human needs and self-directing activity, as individuals passively observe the spectacles of social life from within the privacy of their homes (#25 and #26). The situationist project by contrast involved an overcoming of all forms of separation, in which individuals would directly produce their own life and modes of self-activity and collective practice. Since Debord's theorization of the society of the spectacle in the 1960s and 1970s, spectacle culture has expanded in every area of life. In the culture of the spectacle, commercial enterprises have to be entertaining to prosper and as Michael J. Wolf (1999) argues, in an "entertainment economy," business and fun fuse, so that the E-factor is becoming major aspect of business.2 Via the "entertainmentization" of the economy, television, film, theme parks, video games, casinos, and so forth become major sectors of the national economy. In the U.S., the entertainment industry is now a $480 billion industry, and consumers spend more on having fun than on clothes or health care (Wolf 1999: 4).3 In a competitive business world, the "fun factor" can give one business the edge over another. Hence, corporations seek to be more entertaining in their commercials, their business environment, their commercial spaces, and their web sites. Budweiser ads, for instance, feature talking frogs who tell us nothing about the beer, but who catch the viewers' attention, while Taco Bell deploys a talking dog, and Pepsi uses Star Wars characters. Buying, shopping, and dining out are coded as an "experience," as businesses adopt a theme-park style. Places like the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues are not renowned for their food, after all; people go there for the ambience, to buy clothing, and to view music and media memorabilia. It is no longer good enough just to have a web site, it has to be an interactive spectacle, featuring not only products to buy, but music and videos to download, games to play, prizes to win, travel information, and "links to other cool sites." To succeed in the ultracompetitive global marketplace, corporations need to circulate their image and brand name so business and advertising combine in the promotion of corporations as media spectacles. Endless promotion circulates the McDonald’s Golden Arches, Nike’s Swoosh, or the logos of Apple, Intel, or Microsoft. In the brand wars between commodities, corporations need to make their logos or “trademarks” a familiar signpost in contemporary culture. Corporations place their logos on their products, in ads, in the spaces of everyday life, and in the midst of media spectacles like important sports events, TV shows, movie product placement, and wherever they can catch consumer eyeballs, to impress their brand name on a potential buyer. Consequently, advertising, marketing, public relations and promotion are an essential part of commodity spectacle in the global marketplace. Celebrity too is manufactured and managed in the world of media spectacle. Celebrities are the icons of media culture, the gods and goddesses of everyday life. To become a celebrity requires recognition as a star player in the field of media spectacle, be it sports, entertainment, or politics. Celebrities have their handlers and image managers to make sure that their celebrities continue to be seen and positively perceived by publics. Just as with corporate brand names, celebrities become brands to sell their Madonna, Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, or Jennifer Lopez product and image. In a media culture, however, celebrities are always prey to scandal and thus must have at their disposal an entire public relations apparatus to manage their spectacle fortunes, to make sure their clients not only maintain high visibility but keep projecting a positive image. Of course, within limits, “bad” and transgressions can also sell and so media spectacle contains celebrity dramas that attract public attention and can even define an entire period, as when the O.J. Simpson murder trials and Bill Clinton sex scandals dominated the media in the mid and late 1990s. Entertainment has always been a prime field of the spectacle, but in today's infotainment society, entertainment and spectacle have entered into the domains of the economy, politics, society, and everyday life in important new ways. Building on the tradition of spectacle, contemporary forms of entertainment from television to the stage are incorporating spectacle culture into their enterprises, transforming film, television, music, drama, and other domains of culture, as well as producing spectacular new forms of culture such as cyberspace, multimedia, and virtual reality. For Neil Gabler, in an era of media spectacle, life itself is becoming like a movie and we create our own lives as a genre like film, or television, in which we become "at once performance artists in and audiences for a grand, ongoing show" (1998: 4). On Gabler’s view, we star in our own "lifies," making our lives into entertainment acted out for audiences of our peers, following the scripts of media culture, adopting its role models and fashion types, its style and look. Seeing our lives in cinematic terms, entertainment becomes for Gabler "arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time--a force so overwhelming that it has metastasized into life" to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish between the two (1998: 9). As Gabler sees it, Ralph Lauren is our fashion expert; Martha Stewart designs our sets; Jane Fonda models our shaping of our bodies; and Oprah Winfrey advises us on our personal problems.4 Media spectacle is indeed a culture of celebrity who provide dominant role models and icons of fashion, look, and personality. In the world of spectacle, celebrity encompasses every major social domain from entertainment to politics to sports to business. An ever-expanding public relations industry hypes certain figures, elevating them to celebrity status, and protects their positive image in the never-ending image wars and dangers that a celebrity will fall prey to the machinations of negative-image and thus lose celebrity status, and/or become figures of scandal and approbation, as will some of the players and institutions that I examine in Media Spectacle (Kellner 2003). Sports has long been a domain of the spectacle with events like the Olympics, World Series, Super Bowl, World Soccer Cup, and NBA championships attracting massive audiences, while generating sky-high advertising rates. These cultural rituals celebrate society's deepest values (i.e. competition, winning, success, and money), and corporations are willing to pay top dollar to get their products associated with such events. Indeed, it appears that the logic of the commodity spectacle is inexorably permeating professional sports which can no longer be played without the accompaniment of cheerleaders, giant mascots who clown with players and spectators, and raffles, promotions, and contests that feature the products of various sponsors. Sports stadiums themselves contain electronic reproduction of the action, as well as giant advertisem*nts for various products that rotate for maximum saturation -- previewing environmental advertising in which entire urban sites are becoming scenes to boost consumption spectacles. Arenas, like the United Center in Chicago, America West Arena in Phoenix, on Enron Field in Houston are named after corporate sponsors. Of course, after major corporate scandals or collapse, like the Enron spectacle, the ballparks must be renamed! The Texas Ranger Ballpark in Arlington, Texas supplements its sports arena with a shopping mall, office buildings, and a restaurant in which for a hefty price one can watch the athletic events while eating and drinking.5 The architecture of the Texas Rangers stadium is an example of the implosion of sports and entertainment and postmodern spectacle. A man-made lake surrounds the stadium, the corridor inside is modeled after Chartes Cathedral, and the structure is made of local stone that provides the look of the Texas Capitol in Austin. Inside there are Texas longhorn cattle carvings, panels of Texas and baseball history, and other iconic signifiers of sports and Texas. The merging of sports, entertainment, and local spectacle is now typical in sports palaces. Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, Florida, for instance, "has a three-level mall that includes places where 'fans can get a trim at the barber shop, do their banking and then grab a cold one at the Budweiser brew pub, whose copper kettles rise three stories. There is even a climbing wall for kids and showroom space for car dealerships'" (Ritzer 1998: 229). Film has long been a fertile field of the spectacle, with "Hollywood" connoting a world of glamour, publicity, fashion, and excess. Hollywood film has exhibited grand movie palaces, spectacular openings with searchlights and camera-popping paparazzi, glamorous Oscars, and stylish hi-tech film. While epic spectacle became a dominant genre of Hollywood film from early versions of The Ten Commandments through Cleopatra and 2001 in the 1960s, contemporary film has incorporated the mechanics of spectacle into its form, style, and special effects. Films are hyped into spectacle through advertising and trailers which are ever louder, more glitzy, and razzle-dazzle. Some of the most popular films of the late 1990s were spectacle films, including Titanic, Star Wars -- Phantom Menace, Three Kings, and Austin Powers, a spoof of spectacle, which became one of the most successful films of summer 1999. During Fall 1999, there was a cycle of spectacles, including Topsy Turvy, Titus, Cradle Will Rock, Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, and Magnolia, with the latter featuring the biblical spectacle of the raining of frogs in the San Fernando Valley, in an allegory of the decadence of the entertainment industry and deserved punishment for its excesses. The 2000 Academy Awards were dominated by the spectacle Gladiator, a mediocre film that captured best picture award and best acting award for Russell Crowe, thus demonstrating the extent to which the logic of the spectacle now dominates Hollywood film. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular films of 2001 are also hi-tech spectacle, such as Moulin Rouge, a film spectacle that itself is a delirious ode to spectacle, from cabaret and the brothel to can-can dancing, opera, musical comedy, dance, theater, popular music, and film. A postmodern pastiche of popular music styles and hits, the film used songs and music ranging from Madonna and the Beatles to Dolly Parton and Kiss. Other 2001 film spectacles include Pearl Harbor, which re-enacts the Japanese attack on the U.S. that propelled the country to enter World War II, and that provided a ready metaphor for the September 11 terror attacks. Major 2001 film spectacles range from David Lynch’s postmodern surrealism in Mulholland Drive to Steven Spielberg’s blending of his typically sentimental spectacle of the family with the formalist rigor of Stanley Kubrick in A.I. And the popular 2001 military film Black-Hawk Down provided a spectacle of American military heroism which some critics believed sugar-coated the actual problems with the U.S. military intervention in Somalia, causing worries that a future U.S. adventure by the Bush administration and Pentagon would meet similar problems. There were reports, however, that in Somalian cinemas there were loud cheers as the Somalians in the film shot down the U.S. helicopter, and pursued and killed American soldiers, attesting to growing anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world against Bush administration policies. Television has been from its introduction in the 1940s a promoter of consumption spectacle, selling cars, fashion, home appliances, and other commodities along with consumer life-styles and values. It is also the home of sports spectacle like the Super Bowl or World Series, political spectacles like elections (or more recently, scandals), entertainment spectacle like the Oscars or Grammies, and its own spectacles like breaking news or special events. Following the logic of spectacle entertainment, contemporary television exhibits more hi-tech glitter, faster and glitzier editing, computer simulations, and with cable and satellite television, a fantastic array of every conceivable type of show and genre. TV is today a medium of spectacular programs like The X-Files or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and spectacles of everyday life such as MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, or the globally popular Survivor and Big Brother series. Real life events, however, took over TV spectacle in 2000-2001 in, first, an intense battle for the White House in a dead-heat election, that arguably constitutes one of the greatest political crimes and scandals in U.S. history (see Kellner 2001). After months of the Bush administration pushing the most hardright political agenda in memory and then deadlocking as the Democrats took control of the Senate in a dramatic party re-affiliation of Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, the world was treated to the most horrifying spectacle of the new millennium, the September 11 terror attacks and unfolding Terror War that has so far engulfed Afghanistan and Iraq. These events promise an unending series of deadly spectacle for the foreseeable future.6 Hence, we are emerging into a new culture of media spectacle that constitutes a novel configuration of economy, society, politics, and everyday life. It involves new cultural forms, social relations, and modes of experience. It is producing an ever-proliferating and expanding spectacle culture with its proliferating media forms, cultural spaces, and myriad forms of spectacle. It is evident in the U.S. as the new millennium unfolds and may well constitute emergent new forms of global culture. Critical social theory thus faces important challenges in theoretically mapping and analyzing these emergent forms of culture and society and the ways that they may contain novel forms of domination and oppression, as well as potential for democratization and social justice. Works Cited Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1967. Gabler, Neil. Life the Movie. How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Kellner, Douglas. Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. Thousand Oaks, Cal. and London: Sage, 1998. Wolf, Michael J. Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces are Transforming Our Lives. New York: Times Books, 1999. Notes 1 See Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 2 Wolf's book is a detailed and useful celebration of the "entertainment economy," although he is a shill for the firms and tycoons that he works for and celebrates them in his book. Moreover, while entertainment is certainly an important component of the infotainment economy, it is an exaggeration to say that it drives it and is actually propelling it, as Wolf repeatedly claims. Wolf also downplays the negative aspects of the entertainment economy, such as growing consumer debt and the ups and downs of the infotainment stock market and vicissitudes of the global economy. 3 Another source notes that "the average American household spent $1,813 in 1997 on entertainment -- books, TV, movies, theater, toys -- almost as much as the $1,841 spent on health care per family, according to a survey by the US Labor Department." Moreover, "the price we pay to amuse ourselves has, in some cases, risen at a rate triple that of inflation over the past five years" (USA Today, April 2, 1999: E1). The NPD Group provided a survey that indicated that the amount of time spent on entertainment outside of the home –- such as going to the movies or a sport event – was up 8% from the early to the late 1990s and the amount of time in home entertainment, such as watching television or surfing the Internet, went up 2%. Reports indicate that in a typical American household, people with broadband Internet connections spend 22% more time on all-electronic media and entertainment than the average household without broadband. See “Study: Broadband in homes changes media habits” (PCWORLD.COM, October 11, 2000). 4 Gabler’s book is a synthesis of Daniel Boorstin, Dwight Macdonald, Neil Poster, Marshall McLuhan, and other trendy theorists of media culture, but without the brilliance of a Baudrillard, the incisive criticism of an Adorno, or the understanding of the deeper utopian attraction of media culture of a Bloch or Jameson. Likewise, Gabler does not, a la cultural studies, engage the politics of representation, or its economics and political economy. He thus ignores mergers in the culture industries, new technologies, the restructuring of capitalism, globalization, and shifts in the economy that are driving the impetus toward entertainment. Gabler does get discuss how new technologies are creating new spheres of entertainment and forms of experience and in general describes rather than theorizes the trends he is engaging. 5 The project was designed and sold to the public in part through the efforts of the son of a former President, George W. Bush. Young Bush was bailed out of heavy losses in the Texas oil industry in the 1980s by his father's friends and used his capital gains, gleaned from what some say as illicit insider trading, to purchase part-ownership of a baseball team to keep the wayward son out of trouble and to give him something to do. The soon-to-be Texas governor, and future President of the United States, sold the new stadium to local taxpayers, getting them to agree to a higher sales tax to build the stadium which would then become the property of Bush and his partners. This deal allowed Bush to generate a healthy profit when he sold his interest in the Texas Rangers franchise and to buy his Texas ranch, paid for by Texas tax-payers (for sources on the scandalous life of George W. Bush and his surprising success in politics, see Kellner 2001 and the further discussion of Bush Jr. in Chapter 6). 6 See Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kellner, Douglas. "Engaging Media Spectacle " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>. APA Style Kellner, D. (2003, Jun 19). Engaging Media Spectacle . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>

Abstract:

History is not over and that includes media history. Jay Rosen (Zelizer & Allan 33) The media in their reporting on terrorism tend to be judgmental, inflammatory, and sensationalistic. — Susan D. Moeller (169) In short, we are directed in time, and our relation to the future is different than our relation to the past. All our questions are conditioned by this asymmetry, and all our answers to these questions are equally conditioned by it. Norbert Wiener (44) The Clash of Geopolitical Pundits America’s geo-strategic engagement with the world underwent a dramatic shift in the decade after the Cold War ended. United States military forces undertook a series of humanitarian interventions from northern Iraq (1991) and Somalia (1992) to NATO’s bombing campaign on Kosovo (1999). Wall Street financial speculators embraced market-oriented globalization and technology-based industries (Friedman 1999). Meanwhile the geo-strategic pundits debated several different scenarios at deeper layers of epistemology and macrohistory including the breakdown of nation-states (Kaplan), the ‘clash of civilizations’ along religiopolitical fault-lines (Huntington) and the fashionable ‘end of history’ thesis (f*ckuyama). Media theorists expressed this geo-strategic shift in reference to the ‘CNN Effect’: the power of real-time media ‘to provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to both global and national events’ (Robinson 2). This media ecology is often contrasted with ‘Gateholder’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent’ models. The ‘CNN Effect’ privileges humanitarian and non-government organisations whereas the latter models focus upon the conformist mind-sets and shared worldviews of government and policy decision-makers. The September 11 attacks generated an uncertain interdependency between the terrorists, government officials, and favourable media coverage. It provided a test case, as had the humanitarian interventions (Robinson 37) before it, to test the claim by proponents that the ‘CNN Effect’ had policy leverage during critical stress points. The attacks also revived a long-running debate in media circles about the risk factors of global media. McLuhan (1964) and Ballard (1990) had prophesied that the global media would pose a real-time challenge to decision-making processes and that its visual imagery would have unforeseen psychological effects on viewers. Wark (1994) noted that journalists who covered real-time events including the Wall Street crash (1987) and collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989) were traumatised by their ‘virtual’ geographies. The ‘War on Terror’ as 21st Century Myth Three recent books explore how the 1990s humanitarian interventions and the September 11 attacks have remapped this ‘virtual’ territory with all too real consequences. Piers Robinson’s The CNN Effect (2002) critiques the theory and proposes the policy-media interaction model. Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan’s anthology Journalism After September 11 (2002) examines how September 11 affected the journalists who covered it and the implications for news values. Sandra Silberstein’s War of Words (2002) uncovers how strategic language framed the U.S. response to September 11. Robinson provides the contextual background; Silberstein contributes the specifics; and Zelizer and Allan surface broader perspectives. These books offer insights into the social construction of the nebulous War on Terror and why certain images and trajectories were chosen at the expense of other possibilities. Silberstein locates this world-historical moment in the three-week transition between September 11’s aftermath and the U.S. bombings of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Descriptions like the ‘War on Terror’ and ‘Axis of Evil’ framed the U.S. military response, provided a conceptual justification for the bombings, and also brought into being the geo-strategic context for other nations. The crucial element in this process was when U.S. President George W. Bush adopted a pedagogical style for his public speeches, underpinned by the illusions of communal symbols and shared meanings (Silberstein 6-8). Bush’s initial address to the nation on September 11 invoked the ambiguous pronoun ‘we’ to recreate ‘a unified nation, under God’ (Silberstein 4). The 1990s humanitarian interventions had frequently been debated in Daniel Hallin’s sphere of ‘legitimate controversy’; however the grammar used by Bush and his political advisers located the debate in the sphere of ‘consensus’. This brief period of enforced consensus was reinforced by the structural limitations of North American media outlets. September 11 combined ‘tragedy, public danger and a grave threat to national security’, Michael Schudson observed, and in the aftermath North American journalism shifted ‘toward a prose of solidarity rather than a prose of information’ (Zelizer & Allan 41). Debate about why America was hated did not go much beyond Bush’s explanation that ‘they hated our freedoms’ (Silberstein 14). Robert W. McChesney noted that alternatives to the ‘war’ paradigm were rarely mentioned in the mainstream media (Zelizer & Allan 93). A new myth for the 21st century had been unleashed. The Cycle of Integration Propaganda Journalistic prose masked the propaganda of social integration that atomised the individual within a larger collective (Ellul). The War on Terror was constructed by geopolitical pundits as a Manichean battle between ‘an “evil” them and a national us’ (Silberstein 47). But the national crisis made ‘us’ suddenly problematic. Resurgent patriotism focused on the American flag instead of Constitutional rights. Debates about military tribunals and the USA Patriot Act resurrected the dystopian fears of a surveillance society. New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani suddenly became a leadership icon and Time magazine awarded him Person of the Year (Silberstein 92). Guiliani suggested at the Concert for New York on 20 October 2001 that ‘New Yorkers and Americans have been united as never before’ (Silberstein 104). Even the series of Public Service Announcements created by the Ad Council and U.S. advertising agencies succeeded in blurring the lines between cultural tolerance, social inclusion, and social integration (Silberstein 108-16). In this climate the in-depth discussion of alternate options and informed dissent became thought-crimes. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s report Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America (2002), which singled out “blame America first” academics, ignited a firestorm of debate about educational curriculums, interpreting history, and the limits of academic freedom. Silberstein’s perceptive analysis surfaces how ACTA assumed moral authority and collective misunderstandings as justification for its interrogation of internal enemies. The errors she notes included presumed conclusions, hasty generalisations, bifurcated worldviews, and false analogies (Silberstein 133, 135, 139, 141). Op-ed columnists soon exposed ACTA’s gambit as a pre-packaged witch-hunt. But newscasters then channel-skipped into military metaphors as the Afghanistan campaign began. The weeks after the attacks New York City sidewalk traders moved incense and tourist photos to make way for World Trade Center memorabilia and anti-Osama shirts. Chevy and Ford morphed September 11 catchphrases (notably Todd Beamer’s last words “Let’s Roll” on Flight 93) and imagery into car advertising campaigns (Silberstein 124-5). American self-identity was finally reasserted in the face of a domestic recession through this wave of vulgar commercialism. The ‘Simulated’ Fall of Elite Journalism For Columbia University professor James Carey the ‘failure of journalism on September 11’ signaled the ‘collapse of the elites of American journalism’ (Zelizer & Allan 77). Carey traces the rise-and-fall of adversarial and investigative journalism from the Pentagon Papers and Watergate through the intermediation of the press to the myopic self-interest of the 1988 and 1992 Presidential campaigns. Carey’s framing echoes the earlier criticisms of Carl Bernstein and Hunter S. Thompson. However this critique overlooks several complexities. Piers Robinson cites Alison Preston’s insight that diplomacy, geopolitics and elite reportage defines itself through the sense of distance from its subjects. Robinson distinguished between two reportage types: distance framing ‘creates emotional distance’ between the viewers and victims whilst support framing accepts the ‘official policy’ (28). The upsurge in patriotism, the vulgar commercialism, and the mini-cycle of memorabilia and publishing all combined to enhance the support framing of the U.S. federal government. Empathy generated for September 11’s victims was tied to support of military intervention. However this closeness rapidly became the distance framing of the Afghanistan campaign. News coverage recycled the familiar visuals of in-progress bombings and Taliban barbarians. The alternative press, peace movements, and social activists then retaliated against this coverage by reinstating the support framing that revealed structural violence and gave voice to silenced minorities and victims. What really unfolded after September 11 was not the demise of journalism’s elite but rather the renegotiation of reportage boundaries and shared meanings. Journalists scoured the Internet for eyewitness accounts and to interview survivors (Zelizer & Allan 129). The same medium was used by others to spread conspiracy theories and viral rumors that numerology predicted the date September 11 or that the “face of Satan” could be seen in photographs of the World Trade Center (Zelizer & Allan 133). Karim H. Karim notes that the Jihad frame of an “Islamic Peril” was socially constructed by media outlets but then challenged by individual journalists who had learnt ‘to question the essentialist bases of her own socialization and placing herself in the Other’s shoes’ (Zelizer & Allan 112). Other journalists forgot that Jihad and McWorld were not separate but two intertwined worldviews that fed upon each other. The September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center also had deep symbolic resonances for American sociopolitical ideals that some journalists explored through analysis of myths and metaphors. The Rise of Strategic Geography However these renegotiated boundariesof new media, multiperspectival frames, and ‘layered’ depth approaches to issues analysiswere essentially minority reports. The rationalist mode of journalism was soon reasserted through normative appeals to strategic geography. The U.S. networks framed their documentaries on Islam and the Middle East in bluntly realpolitik terms. The documentary “Minefield: The United States and the Muslim World” (ABC, 11 October 2001) made explicit strategic assumptions of ‘the U.S. as “managing” the region’ and ‘a definite tinge of superiority’ (Silberstein 153). ABC and CNN stressed the similarities between the world’s major monotheistic religions and their scriptural doctrines. Both networks limited their coverage of critiques and dissent to internecine schisms within these traditions (Silberstein 158). CNN also created different coverage for its North American and international audiences. The BBC was more cautious in its September 11 coverage and more global in outlook. Three United Kingdom specials – Panorama (Clash of Cultures, BBC1, 21 October 2001), Question Time (Question Time Special, BBC1, 13 September 2001), and “War Without End” (War on Trial, Channel 4, 27 October 2001) – drew upon the British traditions of parliamentary assembly, expert panels, and legal trials as ways to explore the multiple dimensions of the ‘War on Terror’ (Zelizer & Allan 180). These latter debates weren’t value free: the programs sanctioned ‘a tightly controlled and hierarchical agora’ through different containment strategies (Zelizer & Allan 183). Program formats, selected experts and presenters, and editorial/on-screen graphics were factors that pre-empted the viewer’s experience and conclusions. The traditional emphasis of news values on the expert was renewed. These subtle forms of thought-control enabled policy-makers to inform the public whilst inoculating them against terrorist propaganda. However the ‘CNN Effect’ also had counter-offensive capabilities. Osama bin Laden’s videotaped sermons and the al-Jazeera network’s broadcasts undermined the psychological operations maxim that enemies must not gain access to the mindshare of domestic audiences. Ingrid Volkmer recounts how the Los Angeles based National Iranian Television Network used satellite broadcasts to criticize the Iranian leadership and spark public riots (Zelizer & Allan 242). These incidents hint at why the ‘War on Terror’ myth, now unleashed upon the world, may become far more destabilizing to the world system than previous conflicts. Risk Reportage and Mediated Trauma When media analysts were considering the ‘CNN Effect’ a group of social contract theorists including Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck were debating, simultaneously, the status of modernity and the ‘unbounded contours’ of globalization. Beck termed this new environment of escalating uncertainties and uninsurable dangers the ‘world risk society’ (Beck). Although they drew upon constructivist and realist traditions Beck and Giddens ‘did not place risk perception at the center of their analysis’ (Zelizer & Allan 203). Instead this was the role of journalist as ‘witness’ to Ballard-style ‘institutionalized disaster areas’. The terrorist attacks on September 11 materialized this risk and obliterated the journalistic norms of detachment and objectivity. The trauma ‘destabilizes a sense of self’ within individuals (Zelizer & Allan 205) and disrupts the image-generating capacity of collective societies. Barbie Zelizer found that the press selection of September 11 photos and witnesses re-enacted the ‘Holocaust aesthetic’ created when Allied Forces freed the Nazi internment camps in 1945 (Zelizer & Allan 55-7). The visceral nature of September 11 imagery inverted the trend, from the Gulf War to NATO’s Kosovo bombings, for news outlets to depict war in detached video-game imagery (Zelizer & Allan 253). Coverage of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent Bali bombings (on 12 October 2002) followed a four-part pattern news cycle of assassinations and terrorism (Moeller 164-7). Moeller found that coverage moved from the initial event to a hunt for the perpetrators, public mourning, and finally, a sense of closure ‘when the media reassert the supremacy of the established political and social order’ (167). In both events the shock of the initial devastation was rapidly followed by the arrest of al Qaeda and Jamaah Islamiyah members, the creation and copying of the New York Times ‘Portraits of Grief’ template, and the mediation of trauma by a re-established moral order. News pundits had clearly studied the literature on bereavement and grief cycles (Kubler-Ross). However the neo-noir work culture of some outlets also fueled bitter disputes about how post-traumatic stress affected journalists themselves (Zelizer & Allan 253). Reconfiguring the Future After September 11 the geopolitical pundits, a reactive cycle of integration propaganda, pecking order shifts within journalism elites, strategic language, and mediated trauma all combined to bring a specific future into being. This outcome reflected the ‘media-state relationship’ in which coverage ‘still reflected policy preferences of parts of the U.S. elite foreign-policy-making community’ (Robinson 129). Although Internet media and non-elite analysts embraced Hallin’s ‘sphere of deviance’ there is no clear evidence yet that they have altered the opinions of policy-makers. The geopolitical segue from September 11 into the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq also has disturbing implications for the ‘CNN Effect’. Robinson found that its mythic reputation was overstated and tied to issues of policy certainty that the theory’s proponents often failed to examine. Media coverage molded a ‘domestic constituency ... for policy-makers to take action in Somalia’ (Robinson 62). He found greater support in ‘anecdotal evidence’ that the United Nations Security Council’s ‘safe area’ for Iraqi Kurds was driven by Turkey’s geo-strategic fears of ‘unwanted Kurdish refugees’ (Robinson 71). Media coverage did impact upon policy-makers to create Bosnian ‘safe areas’, however, ‘the Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq case studies’ showed that the ‘CNN Effect’ was unlikely as a key factor ‘when policy certainty exists’ (Robinson 118). The clear implication from Robinson’s studies is that empathy framing, humanitarian values, and searing visual imagery won’t be enough to challenge policy-makers. What remains to be done? Fortunately there are some possibilities that straddle the pragmatic, realpolitik and emancipatory approaches. Today’s activists and analysts are also aware of the dangers of ‘unfreedom’ and un-reflective dissent (Fromm). Peter Gabriel’s organisation Witness, which documents human rights abuses, is one benchmark of how to use real-time media and the video camera in an effective way. The domains of anthropology, negotiation studies, neuro-linguistics, and social psychology offer valuable lessons on techniques of non-coercive influence. The emancipatory tradition of futures studies offers a rich tradition of self-awareness exercises, institution rebuilding, and social imaging, offsets the pragmatic lure of normative scenarios. The final lesson from these books is that activists and analysts must co-adapt as the ‘War on Terror’ mutates into new and terrifying forms. Works Cited Amis, Martin. “Fear and Loathing.” The Guardian (18 Sep. 2001). 1 March 2001 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4259170,00.php>. Ballard, J.G. The Atrocity Exhibition (rev. ed.). Los Angeles: V/Search Publications, 1990. Beck, Ulrich. World Risk Society. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1999. Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999. Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar & Rhinehart, 1941. f*ckuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Kaplan, Robert. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War. New York: Random House, 2000. Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Death and Dying. London: Tavistock, 1969. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964. Moeller, Susan D. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War, and Death. New York: Routledge, 1999. Robinson, Piers. The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention. New York: Routledge, 2002. Silberstein, Sandra. War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1948. Zelizer, Barbie, and Stuart Allan (eds.). Journalism after September 11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Links http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Burns, Alex. "The Worldflash of a Coming Future" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (2003, Apr 23). The Worldflash of a Coming Future. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>

Abstract:

'Self-awareness' and the development of the autonomous subject (derived from Enlightenment and the Anglo-European philosophical traditions) has often been implicated in discussions of modernity. In East Asian societies where the Confucianist social order is seen as a deep-rooted social and cultural force, discussions of modernity and modernisation have often revolved around the tension between the spread of individualism and liberalism that come with modernisation and contact with the West. The preservation of traditional sociocultural values and familial and social structures that stress mutual obligations, social harmony and a certain form of "benign" paternalism have been key concerns. The popular television dramas in these societies seem to provide a public imaginary space where such tensions and conflicts are often played out in dramatic ways. They provide places were simulated or compromised solutions are proposed and explored. Popular TV romance dramas in particular can serve as a window to the ways in which the topic of the (non-) self-determining subject is explored. These dramas typically present a scenario in which strong mutual love and desire between two people come into conflict with the existing sociocultural values (e.g., familial, social constraints). In this paper, I analyse a recent popular South Korean TV romance drama: (1) Autumn in My Heart (also known as Endless Love I, Autumn for short below) and contrast it with (2) Friends, another recent popular TV romance drama jointly produced by television companies in Japan and South Korea. These cultural products are shown not only in their respective societies but also sold to television companies in other neighbouring countries; their VCD/DVDs are widely marketed and circulated in East Asian areas (e.g., Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China). 1 Autumn is about a brother (played by Song Seung-hun) and sister (played by Song Hye-kyo) who had grown up together and had developed a very close relationship in a happy middle class family until one day the family found out that the girl was actually not their own. There had been a mistake in the hospital and two baby girls were swapped. Hye-kyo was 14 when this mistake was discovered. She returned to her real mother's poor working class home (her father died from blood cancer before she was born), while the middle class family left Korea for the States with their son and newly recovered daughter as an attempt to forget about the whole incident. From then on, Hye-kyo was separated from her "brother" (Seung-hun) and started her longing for him. Ten years later, the middle class family returned to South Korea and the "brother" and "sister" met again and fell in love. Seung-hun wanted to break his prior engagement with his fiancée to marry Hye-kyo. However, family and friends still saw them as "brother" and "sister" (despite the fact that they are not related in blood) and imposed great familial and social pressure on them to end their "improper" relationship. Later, Hye-kyo discovered that she had blood cancer. She hid her illness from Seung-hun and wished him happiness with his fiancé. Seung-hun, not knowing about Hye-kyo's illness, and under a guilty conscience to make it up to his fiancée (who had attempted suicide for him), consented to leave Hye-kyo and go back to the States with his fiancé. At the last moment, he found out about Hye-kyo's illness and rushed to the hospital. Families and friends were finally moved by their love for each other and did not prevent them from spending their last days together. Hye-kyo died from her illness soon and Seung-hun, having lost all hope and interest in life, was hit by a truck. To the Western audience, such a storyline may seem implausible and perhaps impossible. For instance, how can family and friends find any legitimate reasons to prevent Seung-hun and Hye-kyo from loving each other when they are not blood relatives? Seung-hun's father mentioned once that their "improper relationship" would bring disgrace to the family. His mother did not support their union, either, as she could not bear to see the "brother-sister" relationship being transformed into a romantic, sexual relationship. She became ill, tormented by her own guilty feelings: she blamed herself for not taking Hye-kyo with her to the States ten years ago and she thought that their "love" for each other was a tragic distortion of their original brotherly and sisterly feelings due to their long separation. On the other hand, Seung-hun felt guilty for breaking his prior promise to his fiancé. Hye-kyo was also full of guilty feelings for she felt that they were hurting everybody who cared about them. Almost 90% of the time when the couple talked to each other, they were in tears and were deeply tormented by the conflict between their perceived obligations towards family and friends who loved them and their strong desire to stay together. At one point, they decided to part so that "no one would get hurt any more" (without admitting that they themselves were deeply hurt). Such self-negating actions were coupled with an unquestioning acceptance of the legitimacy of the familial and social demands on them. Is the current South Korean society very much against the development of an autonomous individual and the individual's self-determining actions? On this issue, Korean cultural studies scholar Lee Dong-hoo had the following comments: Many Korean dramas, especially daily soap operas, put values on relationships, such as family relationship and friendship. Even a success story, which emphasizes one's own will to succeed, doesn't neglect the aspect of human relationships. … The traditional Confucianist ethics or patriarchal ideology can be found in the dramas' emphasis on relationship or one's social role. And I think that keeping good relationships is one of the survival strategies in Korea. The Korean society has been maintained by the closely connected social nets. The dramas may (unconsciously) reflect this reality. Lee's remarks about the importance of Confucianism in the Korean society are evidenced in the long-term activities of the well-organised Confucianist society ("Confucian Forest"), which maintains special schools in major cities and counties, offering instruction in Confucianist ethics, rituals and practices (Wu 27). Another example of Confucianist relational ethics can be found in the recent rejection by the South Korean parliament of the nominated female prime minister; one of the reasons quoted is that her son has chosen to be an American citizen (Nan 26). Before moving on to a discussion of the ideological implications of the tragic ending in Autumn, let us first look at another recent popular TV romance drama, Friends, which was jointly produced by Japanese and South Korean television companies. Interestingly, Friends did not start with a scene in Korea or Japan but with the Victorian Harbor scene in Hong Kong, with spectacular cosmopolitan skyscrapers in the background, and a Western-style saxophonist playing Jazz music in a busy street corner. Tomoko, a tourist from Japan, was left on her own by her colleague who had travelled with her on holiday but was keen to see her boyfriend who worked in Hong Kong. Soon, Tomoko was robbed of her handbag in a busy street. In chasing the robber, she mistook Kim as the culprit. After the misunderstanding was cleared up, they became friends. Kim was a college student from South Korea and an active member of the Film society in his university. He was in Hong Kong trying to shoot his first and last movie on a shoestring budget (last because he had decided to give up film-making after this to conform to his father's wish for him to run the family business). Tomoko agreed to help Kim by acting in his movie, which was about a young woman running and searching for true love in the busy streets of a foreign place (Hong Kong). After the short stay in Hong Kong, they returned to Japan and Korea respectively and started their e-mail correspondence. Soon they fell in love. Tomoko felt that corresponding with Kim made her able to like herself again. Coming from a divorced, single-parent family and not doing very well in school, she had tried to commit suicide before. Her lowly, routine job as a sales assistant in a big department store in Tokyo also gave her little satisfaction and purpose in life. However, after starting her romance with Kim, Tomoko seemed to have regained confidence in herself and a purpose in life -- she started taking lessons in the Korean language, worked very hard and finally succeeded in becoming a tour guide for Korean trips so that she could move to South Korea. Likewise, Kim found that he could become himself again when he was with Tomoko. Tomoko encouraged him to pursue his dream of becoming a movie director. However, aggravating family pressure later made Kim wonder whether he was right in defying his father's wishes (by pursuing a film career and loving a Japanese woman) and he blamed Tomoko for his strained relationship with his father. Tomoko, dejected and heart-broken, returned to Japan. Kim, having lost Tomoko, came to his senses and returned to his low-paid job as a film production assistant. Finally he succeeded in gaining a prize for his movie and his parents came to the award ceremony indicating a softening on the part of his father, who finally came to recognise the value of, and his passion for, film work. Kim later became re-united with Tomoko. The happy ending of Friends stands in sharp contrast with the tragic ending of Autumn. The simulated ending of Friends reflects "imaginary realism", one of the newly appropriated strategies based on marketing considerations found in the recent hugely successful blockbuster movies produced in South Korea; it "enables [one] to escape the restrictions of reality without losing a sense of the real" (Lee 12). In Autumn, Hye-kyo frequently said to Seung-hun that their actions would be punished and she later remarked that her illness was a punishment for hurting other people. This tragic ending thus seems to have the ideological, didactic effect of teaching about the punishment for violating the Confucianist social order. Friends, on the other hand, seems to use the hybrid, third space created by the cosmopolitan scene and Western symbols (the Western street musician playing jazz) in Hong Kong (a former British colony which claims itself to be "the Manhattan of Asia") to fabricate a modernised, Westernised and yet still Asian background for the love story to start in. Tomoko was instrumental in inducing Kim to follow his dream, to become the person he really wanted to be. Kim's subsequent success which helped win the acceptance of his father symbolises the possibility of the maturing of the self-determining subject in the new, globalised economic order (Kim's superior in Kim's military service once encouraged him to follow his passion and contribute to the film-making industry to bring glory to the nation) and the possible gradual transition from Confucianism to a certain form of nationalist liberalism in South Korea (e.g., following one's dream and contributing to national glory simultaneously), under the influence of seemingly more Wesernised neighbouring societies (e.g., Japan, Hong Kong). Autumn and Friends seem to represent two different possible stances towards the traditional order at this historical juncture when South Korea is experiencing enormous economic success and going through modernisation and a certain degree of Westernisation that come with its participation in the global economic order. Sociocultural tensions, conflicts and resolutions are simulated and explored in the relatively safe, imaginary space of popular TV dramas, which apart from playing their economic part in a highly successful national media industry, also play an important role in engaging the transnational public (e.g., audiences in East Asian societies which share a Confucianist tradition) with sociocultural issues in an imaginary space. As in the feminist retelling and re-staging of the traditional Chinese opera Butterfly Lovers in newly formed Communist China in the 1950s to explore the self-determining subject and autonomous actions of the female protagonist (Li), these Korean TV dramas seem to provide an important public space for the explorations of a society's cultural ethos and the contested issues of modernity, Westernisation and cosmopolitanisation. They reflect the articulation of different (contradictory) cultural, economic and historical forces and their potential constitutive impact on the future sociocultural landscape of East Asian societies awaits further research. Notes For instance, the media in Hong Kong and China readily talk of the coming of the "Korean Wave" and the names of Korean TV idols such as Song Hye-kyo, Song Seung-hun and Won Bin (who co-starred in Autumn) are familiar to many Chinese young people. The final episode of Autumn aired on Asia Television (ATV) in August 2002 had attracted as high as 70% of that night's television audience in Hong Kong, a rare phenomenon that ATV hurried to boast of. References Lee, Dong-Hoo. "Relationships in Korean Dramas". E-mail communication to the author, 6 August 2002. Lee, Sooyeon. Explaining the South Korean blockbuster movies: An industrial and textual analysis. Unpublished manuscript. Korean Women's Development Institute, South Korea, 2002. Li, Siu Leung. Cross-dressing in Chinese opera. Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong Press, 2001. Nan, Li Ming. "Broken dream of female prime minister in a sad South Korea [in Chinese]." Yazhou Zhoukan—The International Chinese Newsweekly, 12-18 August 2002: 26. Wu, Le Shan. "Female prime minister in South Korea's new era [in Chinese]." Yazhou Zhoukan—The International Chinese Newsweekly, 22-28 July 2002: 26-27. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Lin, Angel M. Y.. "Modernity and the Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Lin.html &gt. Chicago Style Lin, Angel M. Y., "Modernity and the Self" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Lin.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Lin, Angel M. Y.. (2002) Modernity and the Self. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Lin.html &gt ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and most particularly since 9/11, the government of the United States has used its security services to enforce the order it desires for the world. The US government and its security services appreciate the importance of creating the ideological environment that allows them full-scope in their activities. To these ends they have turned to the movie industry which has not been slow in accommodating the purposes of the state. In establishing the parameters of the War Against Terror after 9/11, one of the Bush Administration’s first stops was Hollywood. White House strategist Karl Rove called what is now described as the Beverley Hills Summit on 19 November 2001 where top movie industry players including chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, Jack Valenti met to discuss ways in which the movie industry could assist in the War Against Terror. After a ritual assertion of Hollywood’s independence, the movie industry’s powerbrokers signed up to the White House’s agenda: “that Americans must be called to national service; that Americans should support the troops; that this is a global war that needs a global response; that this is a war against evil” (Cooper 13). Good versus evil is, of course, a staple commodity for the movie industry but storylines never require the good guys to fight fair so with this statement the White House got what it really wanted: Hollywood’s promise to stay on the big picture in black and white while studiously avoiding the troubling detail in the exercise extra-judicial force and state-sanctioned murder. This is not to suggest that the movie industry is a monolithic ideological enterprise. Alternative voices like Mike Moore and Susan Sarandon still find space to speak. But the established economics of the scenario trade are too strong for the movie industry to resist: producers gain access to expensive weaponry to assist production if their story-lines are approved by Pentagon officials (‘Pentagon provides for Hollywood’); the Pentagon finances movie and gaming studios to provide original story formulas to keep their war-gaming relevant to emerging conditions (Lippman); and the Central Intelligence Agency’s “entertainment liaison officer” assists producers in story development and production (Gamson). In this context, the moulding of story-lines to the satisfaction of the Pentagon and CIA is not even an issue, and protestations of Hollywood’s independence is meaningless, as the movie industry pursues patriotic audiences at home and seeks to garner hearts and minds abroad. This is old history made new again. The Cold War in the 1950s saw movies addressing the disruption of world order not so much by Communists as by “others”: sci-fi aliens, schlock horror zombies, vampires and werewolves and mad scientists galore. By the 1960s the James Bond movie franchise, developed by MI5 operative Ian Fleming, saw Western secret agents ‘licensed to kill’ with the justification that such powers were required to deal with threats to world order, albeit by fanciful “others” such as the fanatical scientist Dr. No (1962). The Bond villains provide a catalogue of methods for the disruption of world order: commandeering atomic weapons and space flights, manipulating finance markets, mind control systems and so on. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, Hollywood produced a wealth of material that excused the paranoid nationalism of the security services through the hegemonic masculinity of stars such as Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal and Bruce Willis (Beasley). Willis’s Die Hard franchise (1988/1990/1995) characterised US insouciance in the face of newly created terrorist threats. Willis personified the strategy of the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations: a willingness to up the ante, second guess the terrorists and cower them with the display of firepower advantage. But the 1997 instalment of the James Bond franchise saw an important shift in expectations about the source of threats to world order. Tomorrow Never Dies features a media tycoon bent on world domination, manipulating the satellite feed, orchestrating conflicts and disasters in the name of ratings, market share and control. Having dealt with all kinds of Cold War plots, Bond is now confronted with the power of the media itself. As if to mark this shift, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) made a mockery of the creatively bankrupt conventions of the spy genre. But it was the politically corrupt use to which the security services could be put that was troubling a string of big-budget filmmakers in the late 90s. In Enemy of the State (1998), an innocent lawyer finds himself targeted by the National Security Agency after receiving evidence of a political murder motivated by the push to extend the NSA’s powers. In Mercury Rising (1998), a renegade FBI agent protects an autistic boy who cracks a top-secret government code and becomes the target for assassins from an NSA-like organisation. Arlington Road (1999) features a college professor who learns too much about terrorist organisations and has his paranoia justified when he becomes the target of a complex operation to implicate him as a terrorist. The attacks on September 11 and subsequent Beverley Hills Summit had a major impact on movie product. Many film studios edited films (Spiderman) or postponed their release (Schwarzenegger’s Collateral Damage) where they were seen as too close to actual events but insufficiently patriotic (Townsend). The Bond franchise returned to its staple of fantastical villains. In Die Another Day (2002), the bad guy is a billionaire with a laser cannon. The critical perspective on the security services disappeared overnight. But the most interesting development has been how fantasy has become the key theme in a number of franchises dealing with world order that have had great box-office success since 9/11, particularly Lord of the Rings (2001/2/3) and Harry Potter (2001/2/4). While deeply entrenched in the fantasy genre, each of these franchises also addresses security issues: geo-political control in the Rings franchise; the subterfuges of the Ministry for Muggles in the _Potter _franchise. Looking at world order through the supernatural lens has particular appeal to audiences confronted with everyday threats. These fantasies follow George Bush’s rhetoric of the “axis of evil” in normalising the struggle for world order in term of black and white with the expectation that childish innocence and naïve ingenuity will prevail. Only now with three years hindsight since September 11 can we begin to see certain amount of self-reflection by disenchanted security staff return to the cinema. In Man on Fire (2004) the burned-out ex-CIA assassin has given up on life but regains some hope while guarding a child only to have everything disintegrate when the child is killed and he sets out on remorseless revenge. Spartan (2004) features a special forces officer who fails to find a girl and resorts to remorseless revenge as he becomes lost in a maze of security bureaucracies and chance events. Security service personnel once again have their doubts but only find redemption in violence and revenge without remorse. From consideration of films before and after September 11, it becomes apparent that the movie industry has delivered on their promises to the Bush administration. The first response has been the shift to fantasy that, in historical terms, will be seen as akin to the shift to musicals in the Depression. The flight to fantasy makes the point that complex situations can be reduced to simple moral decisions under the rubric of good versus evil, which is precisely what the US administration requested. The second, more recent response has been to accept disenchantment with the personal costs of the War on Terror but still validate remorseless revenge. Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill franchise (2003/4) seeks to do both. Thus the will to world order being fought out in the streets of Iraq is sublimated into fantasy or excused as a natural response to a world of violence. It is interesting to note that television has provided more opportunities for the productive consideration of world order and the security services than the movies since September 11. While programs that have had input from the CIA’s “entertainment liaison officer” such as teen-oriented, Buffy-inspired Alias and quasi-authentic The Agency provide a no-nonsense justification for the War on Terror (Gamson), others such as 24, West Wing _and _Threat Matrix have confronted the moral problems of torture and murder in the War on Terrorism. 24 uses reality TV conventions of real-time plot, split screen exposition, unexpected interventions and a close focus on personal emotions to explore the interactions between a US President and an officer in the Counter Terrorism Unit. The CTU officer does not hesitate to summarily behead a criminal or kill a colleague for operational purposes and the president takes only a little longer to begin torturing recalcitrant members of his own staff. Similarly, the president in West Wing orders the extra-judicial death of a troublesome player and the team in Threat Matrix are ready to exceeded their powers. But in these programs the characters struggle with the moral consequences of their violent acts, particularly as family members are drawn into the plot. A running theme of Threat Matrix is the debate within the group of their choices between gung-ho militarism and peaceful diplomacy: the consequences of a simplistic, hawkish approach are explored when an Arab-American college professor is wrongfully accused of supporting terrorists and driven towards the terrorists because of his very ordeal of wrongful accusation. The world is not black and white. Almost half the US electorate voted for John Kerry. Television still must cater for liberal, and wealthy, demographics who welcome the extended format of weekly television that allows a continuing engagement with questions of good or evil and whether there is difference between them any more. Against the simple world view of the Bush administration we have the complexities of the real world. References Beasley, Chris. “Reel Politics.” Australian Political Studies Association Conference, University of Adelaide, 2004. Cooper, Marc. “Lights! Cameras! Attack!: Hollywood Enlists.” The Nation 10 December 2001: 13-16. Gamson, J. “Double Agents.” The American Prospect 12.21 (3 December 2001): 38-9. Lippman, John. “Hollywood Casts About for a War Role.” Wall Street Journal 9 November 2001: A1. “Pentagon Provides for Hollywood.” USA Today 29 March 2001. http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/2001-05-17-pentagon-helps-hollywood.htm>. Townsend, Gary. “Hollywood Uses Selective Censorship after 9/11.” e.press 12 December 2002. http://www.scc.losrios.edu/~express/021212hollywood.html>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Stockwell, Stephen. "The Manufacture of World Order: The Security Services and the Movie Industry." M/C Journal 7.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/10-stockwell.php>. APA Style Stockwell, S. (Jan. 2005) "The Manufacture of World Order: The Security Services and the Movie Industry," M/C Journal, 7(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0501/10-stockwell.php>.

Abstract:

Introduction The recent AOL/Time-Warner merger invites us to re-think the relationships amongst content producers, distributors, and audiences. Worth an estimated $300 billion (US), the largest Internet transaction of all time, the deal is 45 times larger than the AOL/Netscape merger of November 1998 (Ledbetter). Additionally, the Time Warner/EMI merger, which followed hard on the heels of the AOL/Time-Warner deal and is itself worth $28 billion (US), created the largest content rights organisation in the music industry. The joining of the Internet giant (AOL) with what was already the world's largest media corporation (Time-Warner-EMI) has inspired some exuberant reactions. An Infoworld column proclaimed: The AOL/Time-Warner merger signals the demise of traditional media companies and the ascendancy of 'new economy' media companies that will force any industry hesitant to adopt a complete electronic-commerce strategy to rethink and put itself on Internet time. (Saap & Schwarrtz) This comment identifies the distribution channel as the dominant component of the "new economy" media. But this might not really be much of an innovation. Indeed, the assumption of all industry observers is that Time-Warner will provide broadband distribution (through its extensive cable holdings) as well as proprietary content for AOL. It is also expected that Time-Warner will adopt AOL's strategy of seeking sponsorship for development projects as well as for content. However, both of these phenomena -- merger and sponsorship -- are at least as old as radio. It seems that the Internet is merely repeating an old industrial strategy. Nonetheless, one important difference distinguishes the Internet from earlier media: its characterisation of the audience. Internet companies such as AOL and Microsoft tend towards a simple and simplistic media- centred view of the audience as market. I will show, however, that as the Internet assumes more of the traditional mass media functions, it will be forced to adopt a more sophisticated notion of the mass audience. Indeed, the Internet is currently the site in which audience definitions borrowed from broadcasting are encountering and merging with definitions borrowed from marketing. The Internet apparently lends itself to both models. As a result, definitions of what the Internet does or is, and of how we should understand the audience, are suitably confused and opaque. And the behaviour of big Internet players, such as AOL and MSN, perfectly reflects this confusion as they seem to careen between a view of the Internet as the new television and a contrasting view of the Internet as the new shopping mall. Meanwhile, Internet users move in ways that most observers fail to capture. For example, Baran and Davis characterise mass communication as a process involving (1) an organized sender, (2) engaged in the distribution of messages, (3) directed toward a large audience. They argue that broadcasting fits this model whereas a LISTSERV does not because, even though the LISTSERV may have very many subscribers, its content is filtered through a single person or Webmaster. But why is the Webmaster suddenly more determining than a network programmer or magazine editor? The distinction seems to grow out of the Internet's technological characteristics: it is an interactive pipeline, therefore its use necessarily excludes the possibility of "broadcasting" which in turn causes us to reject "traditional" notions of the audience. However, if a media organisation were to establish an AOL discussion group in order to promote Warner TV shows, for example, would not the resulting communication suddenly fall under the definition as set out by Baran and Davis? It was precisely the confusion around such definitions that caused the CRTC (Canada's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator) to hold hearings in 1999 to determine what kind of medium the Internet is. Unlike traditional broadcasting, Internet communication does indeed include the possibility of interactivity and niche communities. In this sense, it is closer to narrowcasting than to broadcasting even while maintaining the possibility of broadcasting. Hence, the nature of the audience using the Internet quickly becomes muddy. While such muddiness might have led us to sharpen our definitions of the audience, it seems instead to have led many to focus on the medium itself. For example, Morris & Ogan define the Internet as a mass medium because it addresses a mass audience mediated through technology (Morris & Ogan 39). They divide producers and audiences on the Internet into four groups: One-to-one asynchronous communication (e-mail); Many-to-many asynchronous communication (Usenet and News Groups); One-to-one, one-to-few, and one-to-many synchronous communication (topic groups, construction of an object, role-playing games, IRC chats, chat rooms); Asynchronous communication (searches, many-to-one, one-to-one, one to- many, source-receiver relations (Morris & Ogan 42-3) Thus, some Internet communication qualifies as mass communication while some does not. However, the focus remains firmly anchored on either the sender or the medium because the receiver --the audience -- is apparently too slippery to define. When definitions do address the content distributed over the Net, they make a distinction between passive reception and interactive participation. As the World Wide Web makes pre-packaged content the norm, the Internet increasingly resembles a traditional mass medium. Timothy Roscoe argues that the main focus of the World Wide Web is not the production of content (and, hence, the fulfilment of the Internet's democratic potential) but rather the presentation of already produced material: "the dominant activity in relation to the Web is not producing your own content but surfing for content" (Rosco 680). He concludes that if the emphasis is on viewing material, the Internet will become a medium similar to television. Within media studies, several models of the audience compete for dominance in the "new media" economy. Denis McQuail recalls how historically, the electronic media furthered the view of the audience as a "public". The audience was an aggregate of common interests. With broadcasting, the electronic audience was delocalised and socially decomposed (McQuail, Mass 212). According to McQuail, it was not a great step to move from understanding the audience as a dispersed "public" to thinking about the audience as itself a market, both for products and as a commodity to be sold to advertisers. McQuail defines this conception of the audience as an "aggregate of potential customers with a known social- economic profile at which a medium or message is directed" (McQuail, Mass 221). Oddly though, in light of the emancipatory claims made for the Internet, this is precisely the dominant view of the audience in the "new media economy". Media Audience as Market How does the marketing model characterise the relationship between audience and producer? According to McQuail, the marketing model links sender and receiver in a cash transaction between producer and consumer rather than in a communicative relationship between equal interlocutors. Such a model ignores the relationships amongst consumers. Indeed, neither the effectiveness of the communication nor the quality of the communicative experience matters. This model, explicitly calculating and implicitly manipulative, is characteristically a "view from the media" (McQuail, Audience 9). Some scholars, when discussing new media, no longer even refer to audiences. They speak of users or consumers (Pavick & Dennis). The logic of the marketing model lies in the changing revenue base for media industries. Advertising-supported media revenues have been dropping since the early 1990s while user-supported media such as cable, satellite, online services, and pay-per-view, have been steadily growing (Pavlik & Dennis 19). In the Internet-based media landscape, the audience is a revenue stream and a source of consumer information. As Bill Gates says, it is all about "eyeballs". In keeping with this view, AOL hopes to attract consumers with its "one-stop shopping and billing". And Internet providers such as MSN do not even consider their subscribers as "audiences". Instead, they work from a consumer model derived from the computer software industry: individuals make purchases without the seller providing content or thematising the likely use of the software. The analogy extends well beyond the transactional moment. The common practice of prototyping products and beta-testing software requires the participation of potential customers in the product development cycle not as a potential audience sharing meanings but as recalcitrant individuals able to uncover bugs. Hence, media companies like MTV now use the Internet as a source of sophisticated demographic research. Recently, MTV Asia established a Website as a marketing tool to collect preferences and audience profiles (Slater 50). The MTV audience is now part of the product development cycle. Another method for getting information involves the "cookie" file that automatically provides a Website with information about the user who logs on to a site (Pavick & Dennis). Simultaneously, though, both Microsoft and AOL have consciously shifted from user-subscription revenues to advertising in an effort to make online services more like television (Gomery; Darlin). For example, AOL has long tried to produce content through its own studios to generate sufficiently heavy traffic on its Internet service in order to garner profitable advertising fees (Young). However, AOL and Microsoft have had little success in providing content (Krantz; Manes). In fact, faced with the AOL/Time-Warner merger, Microsoft declared that it was in the software rather than the content business (Trott). In short, they are caught between a broadcasting model and a consumer model and their behaviour is characteristically erratic. Similarly, media companies such as Time-Warner have failed to establish their own portals. Indeed, Time-Warner even abandoned attempts to create large Websites to compete with other Internet services when it shut down its Pathfinder site (Egan). Instead it refocussed its Websites so as to blur the line between pitching products and covering them (Reid; Lyons). Since one strategy for gaining large audiences is the creation of portals - - large Websites that keep surfers within the confines of a single company's site by providing content -- this is the logic behind the AOL/Time-Warner merger though both companies have clearly been unsuccessful at precisely such attempts. AOL seems to hope that Time- Warner will act as its content specialist, providing the type of compelling material that will make users want to use AOL, whereas Time- Warner seems to hope that AOL will become its privileged pipeline to the hearts and minds of untold millions. Neither has a coherent view of the audience, how it behaves, or should behave. Consequently, their efforts have a distinctly "unmanaged" and slighly inexplicable air to them, as though everyone were simultaneously hopeful and clueless. While one might argue that the stage is set to capitalise on the audience as commodity, there are indications that the success of such an approach is far from guaranteed. First, the AOL/Time-Warner/EMI transaction, merely by existing, has sparked conflicts over proprietary rights. For example, the Recording Industry Association of America, representing Sony, Universal, BMG, Warner and EMI, recently launched a $6.8 billion lawsuit against MP3.com -- an AOL subsidiary -- for alleged copyright violations. Specifically, MP3.com is being sued for selling digitized music over the Internet without paying royalties to the record companies (Anderson). A similar lawsuit has recently been launched over the issue of re- broadcasting television programs over the Internet. The major US networks have joined together against Canadian Internet company iCravetv for the unlawful distribution of content. Both the iCravetv and the MP3.com cases show how dominant media players can marshal their forces to protect proprietary rights in both content and distribution. Since software and media industries have failed to recreate the Internet in the image of traditional broadcasting, the merger of the dominant players in each industry makes sense. However, their simultaneous failure to secure proprietary rights reflects both the competitive nature of the "new media economy" and the weakness of the marketing view of the audience. Media Audience as Public It is often said that communication produces social cohesion. From such cohesion communities emerge on which political or social orders can be constructed. The power of social cohesion and attachment to group symbols can even create a sense of belonging to a "people" or nation (Deutsch). Sociologist Daniel Bell described how the mass media helped create an American culture simply by addressing a large enough audience. He suggested that on the evening of 7 March 1955, when one out of every two Americans could see Mary Martin as Peter Pan on television, a kind of social revolution occurred and a new American public was born. "It was the first time in history that a single individual was seen and heard at the same time by such a broad public" (Bell, quoted in Mattelart 72). One could easily substitute the 1953 World Series or the birth of little Ricky on I Love Lucy. The desire to document such a process recurs with the Internet. Internet communities are based on the assumption that a common experience "creates" group cohesion (Rheingold; Jones). However, as a mass medium, the Internet has yet to find its originary moment, that event to which all could credibly point as the birth of something genuine and meaningful. A recent contender was the appearance of Paul McCartney at the refurbished Cavern Club in Liverpool. On Tuesday, 14 December 1999, McCartney played to a packed club of 300 fans, while another 150,000 watched on an outdoor screen nearby. MSN arranged to broadcast the concert live over the Internet. It advertised an anticipated global audience of 500 million. Unfortunately, there was such heavy Internet traffic that the system was unable to accommodate more than 3 million people. Servers in the United Kingdom were so congested that many could only watch the choppy video stream via an American link. The concert raises a number of questions about "virtual" events. We can draw several conclusions about measuring Internet audiences. While 3 million is a sizeable audience for a 20 minute transmission, by advertising a potential audience of 500 million, MSN showed remarkably poor judgment of its inherent appeal. The Internet is the first medium that allows access to unprocessed material or information about events to be delivered to an audience with neither the time constraints of broadcast media nor the space limitations of the traditional press. This is often cited as one of the characteristics that sets the Internet apart from other media. This feeds the idea of the Internet audience as a participatory, democratic public. For example, it is often claimed that the Internet can foster democratic participation by providing voters with uninterpreted information about candidates and issues (Selnow). However, as James Curran argues, the very process of distributing uninterrupted, unfiltered information, at least in the case of traditional mass media, represents an abdication of a central democratic function -- that of watchdog to power (Curran). In the end, publics are created and maintained through active and continuous participation on the part of communicators and audiences. The Internet holds together potentially conflicting communicative relationships within the same technological medium (Merrill & Ogan). Viewing the audience as co-participant in a communicative relationship makes more sense than simply focussing on the Internet audience as either an aggregate of consumers or a passively constructed symbolic public. Audience as Relationship Many scholars have shifted attention from the producer to the audience as an active participant in the communication process (Ang; McQuail, Audience). Virginia Nightingale goes further to describe the audience as part of a communicative relationship. Nightingale identifies four factors in the relationship between audiences and producers that emphasize their co-dependency. The audience and producer are engaged in a symbiotic relationship in which consumption and use are necessary but not sufficient explanations of audience relations. The notion of the audience invokes, at least potentially, a greater range of activities than simply use or consumption. Further, the audience actively, if not always consciously, enters relationships with content producers and the institutions that govern the creation, distribution and exhibition of content (Nightingale 149-50). Others have demonstrated how this relationship between audiences and producers is no longer the one-sided affair characterised by the marketing model or the model of the audience as public. A global culture is emerging based on critical viewing skills. Kavoori calls this a reflexive mode born of an increasing familiarity with the narrative conventions of news and an awareness of the institutional imperatives of media industries (Kavoori). Given the sophistication of the emergent global audience, a theory that reduces new media audiences to a set of consumer preferences or behaviours will inevitably prove inadequate, just as it has for understanding audience behavior in old media. Similarly, by ignoring those elements of audience behavior that will be easily transported to the Web, we run the risk of idealising the Internet as a medium that will create an illusory, pre-technological public. Conclusion There is an understandable confusion between the two models of the audience that appear in the examples above. The "new economy" will have to come to terms with sophisticated audiences. Contrary to IBM's claim that they want to "get to know all about you", Internet users do not seem particularly interested in becoming a perpetual source of market information. The fragmented, autonomous audience resists attempts to lock it into proprietary relationships. Internet hypesters talk about creating publics and argue that the Internet recreates the intimacy of community as a corrective to the atomisation and alienation characteristic of mass society. This faith in the power of a medium to create social cohesion recalls the view of the television audience as a public constructed by the common experience of watching an important event. However, MSN's McCartney concert indicates that creating a public from spectacle it is not a simple process. In fact, what the Internet media conglomerates seem to want more than anything is to create consumer bases. Audiences exist for pleasure and by the desire to be entertained. As Internet media institutions are established, the cynical view of the audience as a source of consumer behavior and preferences will inevitably give way, to some extent, to a view of the audience as participant in communication. Audiences will be seen, as they have been by other media, as groups whose attention must be courted and rewarded. Who knows, maybe the AOL/Time-Warner merger might, indeed, signal the new medium's coming of age. References Anderson, Lessley. "To Beam or Not to Beam. MP3.com Is Being Sued by the Major Record Labels. Does the Digital Download Site Stand a Chance?" Industry Standard 31 Jan. 2000. <http://www.thestandard.com>. Ang, Ien. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Methuen, 1985. Baran, Stanley, and Dennis Davis. Mass Communication Theory: Foundations, Ferment, and Future. 2nd ed. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth 2000. Curran, James. "Mass Media and Democracy Revisited." Mass Media and Society. Eds. James Curran and Michael Gurevitch. New York: Hodder Headline Group, 1996. Darlin, Damon. "He Wants Your Eyeballs." Forbes 159 (16 June 1997): 114-6. Egan, Jack, "Pathfinder, Rest in Peace: Time-Warner Pulls the Plug on Site." US News and World Report 126.18 (10 May 1999): 50. Gomery, Douglas. "Making the Web Look like Television (American Online and Microsoft)." American Journalism Review 19 (March 1997): 46. Jones, Steve, ed. CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. Kavoori, Amandam P. "Discursive Texts, Reflexive Audiences: Global Trends in Television News Texts and Audience Reception." Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 43.3 (Summer 1999): 386-98. Krantz, Michael. "Is MSN on the Block?" Time 150 (20 Oct. 1997): 82. Ledbetter, James. "AOL-Time-Warner Make It Big." Industry Standard 11 Jan. 2000. <http://www.thestandard.com>. Lyons, Daniel. "Desparate.com (Media Companies Losing Millions on the Web Turn to Electronic Commerce)." Forbes 163.6 (22 March 1999): 50-1. Manes, Stephen. "The New MSN as Prehistoric TV." New York Times 4 Feb. 1997: C6. McQuail, Denis. Audience Analysis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1997. ---. Mass Communication Theory. 2nd ed. London: Sage, 1987. Mattelart, Armand. Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture. Trans. Susan Emanuel and James A. Cohen. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. Morris, Merrill, and Christine Ogan. "The Internet as Mass Medium." Journal of Communications 46 (Winter 1996): 39-50. Nightingale, Virginia. Studying Audience: The Shock of the Real. London: Routledge, 1996. Pavlik, John V., and Everette E. Dennis. New Media Technology: Cultural and Commercial Perspectives. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. Reid, Calvin. "Time-Warner Seeks Electronic Synergy, Profits on the Web (Pathfinder Site)." Publisher's Weekly 242 (4 Dec. 1995): 12. Rheingold, Howard. Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: Harper, 1993. Roscoe, Timothy. "The Construction of the World Wide Web Audience." Media, Culture and Society 21.5 (1999): 673-84. Saap, Geneva, and Ephraim Schwarrtz. "AOL-Time-Warner Deal to Impact Commerce, Content, and Access Markets." Infoworld 11 January 2000. <http://infoworld.com/articles/ic/xml/00/01/11/000111icimpact.xml>. Slater, Joanna. "Cool Customers: Music Channels Hope New Web Sites Tap into Teen Spirit." Far Eastern Economic Review 162.9 (4 March 1999): 50. Trott, Bob. "Microsoft Views AOL-Time-Warner as Confirmation of Its Own Strategy." Infoworld 11 Jan. 2000. <http://infoworld.com/articles/pi/xml/00/01/11/000111pimsaoltw.xml>. Yan, Catherine. "A Major Studio Called AOL?" Business Week 1 Dec. 1997: 1773-4. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel M. Downes. "The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass Audience in the New Media Economy." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php>. Chicago style: Daniel M. Downes, "The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass Audience in the New Media Economy," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Daniel M. Downes. (2000) The Medium Vanishes? The Resurrection of the Mass Audience in the New Media Economy. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/mass.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

It is time for the truth to be brought out ... . Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. -- Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence (1947-50), signed statement to Congress, 22 Aug. 1960 As an avid UFO enthusiast, an enduring subject of frustration for me is the complacency and ignorance that tends to characterise public knowledge of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. Its hard for people like myself to understand how anyone could not be interested in UFOs, let alone Congressional statements from ex-Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency testifying to an official policy of secrecy and ridicule (in other words, propaganda), which aims to suppress public interest and belief in UFOs. As a student of cultural studies who also happens to be a conspiracy theorist, the idea of the Central Intelligence Agency seeking to manipulate one of the twentieth century's most significant icons -- the UFO -- is a fascinating one, because it allows for the possibility that the ways in which the UFO has come to be understood by the public may involve more than the everyday cultural processes described by cultural studies. A review of the history of the CIA's interest in UFO phenomena actually suggests, quite compellingly I think, that since the 1950s, American culture (and, indirectly and to a lesser degree, the rest of the western world) may have been subjected to a highly sophisticated system of UFO propaganda that originated from the Central Intelligence Agency. This is, of course, a highly contentious claim which would bring many important repercussions should it turn out to be true. There is no point pretending that it doesn't sound like a basic premise of The X-Files -- of course it does. So to extract the idea from its comfortable fictional context and attempt to place it into a real historical one (a completely legitimate endeavour) one must become familiar with the politics of the UFO phenomenon in Cold War America, a field of history which is, to understate the matter, largely ignored by academia. A cursory glance at the thousands of (now declassified) UFO-related documents that once circulated through some of the highest channels of US intelligence reveal that, rather than the nonsense topic it is often considered, the UFO phenomenon has been a matter of great concern for the US government since 1947. To get a sense of just how seriously UFOs were taken by the CIA in the 1950s, consider this declassified 'Secret' memorandum from H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, to the Director of Central Intelligence, General Walter Bedell Smith, dated 24 September 1952: a world-wide reporting system has been instituted and major Air Force bases have been ordered to make interceptions of unidentified flying objects ... . Since 1947, ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center, a branch of the US Air Force] has received approximately 1500 official reports of sightings ... . During 1952 alone, official reports totalled 250. Of the 1500 reports, Air Force carries 20 percent as unexplained and of those received from January through July 1952 it carries 28 percent as unexplained. (qtd. in Good 390) Fifteen-hundred reports in five years is roughly three-hundred reports per year, which is dangerously close to one per day. Although only twenty percent, or one-fifth of these reports were unexplained, equalling about 60 unexplained sightings per year, this still equalled more than one unexplained sighting per week. But these were just the unexplained, official sightings collected by ATIC, which was by no means a comprehensive database of all sightings occurring in the United States, or the rest of the world, for that matter. Extrapolation of these figures suggested that the UFO problem was probably much more extensive than the preliminary findings were indicating, hence the erection of a world-wide reporting system and the interception of UFOs by major US Air Force bases. The social consequences of the UFO problem quickly became a matter of major importance to the CIA. Chadwell went on to point out that: The public concern with the phenomena, which is reflected both in the United States press and in the pressure of inquiry upon the Air Force, indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic. (qtd. in Good 393) By "acceptance of the incredible" Chadwell was probably referring to acceptance of the existence of intelligently controlled, disc-shaped craft which are capable of performing aerial manoeuvres far in excess of those possible with contemporary technology. Flying saucers were, and remain, incredible. Yet belief in them had permeated the US government as early as 1947, when a 'Secret' Air Materiel Command report (now declassified) from Lieutenant General Nathan Twining to the Commanding General, Army Air Forces, announced that: It is the opinion that: (a) The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary and fictitious. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors. (b) The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, manoeuvrability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft or radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely. -- (qtd. in Good 313-4) This report was compiled only two months after the term flying saucer had been invented, following pilot Kenneth Arnold's historic sighting of nine saucer-like objects in June 1947. The fact that a phenomenon which should have been ignored as a tabloid fad was being confirmed, extremely quickly, by the Air Materiel Command Headquarters suggested that those people mentally conditioned to accept the impossible were not restricted to the public domain. They also, apparently, held positions of considerable power within the government itself. This rapid acceptance, at the highest levels of America's defense agencies, of the UFO reality must have convinced certain segments of the CIA that a form of hysteria had already begun, so powerful that those whose job it was to not only remain immune from such psychosocial forces, but to manage them, were actually succumbing to it themselves. What the CIA faced, then, was nothing short of a nation on the verge of believing in aliens. Considering this, it should become a little clearer why the CIA might develop an interest in the UFO phenomenon at this point. Whether aliens were here or not did not, ultimately, matter. What did matter was the obvious social phenomenon of UFO belief. Walter Bedell Smith, Director of Central Intelligence, realised this in 1952, and wrote to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (in a letter previously classified 'Secret'): It is my view that this situation has possible implications for our national security which transcend the interests of a single service. A broader, coordinated effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of the several phenomena which apparently are involved in these reports, and to assure ourselves that the incidents will not hamper our present efforts in the Cold War or confuse our early warning system in case of an attack. I therefore recommend that this Agency and the agencies of the Department of Defense be directed to formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects ... . This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Strategy Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate. (qtd. in Good 400-1) What the Director was asserting, basically, was that the UFO problem was too big for the CIA to solve alone. Any government agencies it was deemed necessary to involve were to be called into action to deal with the UFOs. If this does not qualify UFOs as serious business, it is difficult to imagine what would. In the same year, Chadwell again reported to the CIA Director in a memo which suggests that he and his colleagues were on the brink of believing not only that UFOs were real, but that they represented an extraterrestrial presence: At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... . Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles. (qtd. in Good 403) In 1953, these concerns eventually led to the CIA's most public investigation of the UFO phenomenon, the Robertson Panel. Its members were Dr H. P. Robertson (physics and radar); Dr Lloyd V. Berkner (geophysics); Dr Samuel Goudsmit (atomic structure and statistical problems); and Dr Thornton Page (astronomy and astrophysics). Associate members were Dr J. Allen Hynek (astronomy) and Frederick C. Durant (missiles and rockets). Twelve hours of meetings ensued (not nearly enough time to absorb all of the most compelling UFO data gathered at this point), during which the panel was shown films of UFOs, case histories and sightings prepared by the ATIC, and intelligence reports relating to the Soviet Union's interest in US sightings, as well as numerous charts depicting, for example, frequency and geographic location of sightings (Good 404). The report (not fully declassified until 1975) concluded with a highly skeptical, and highly ambiguous, view of UFO phenomena. Part IV, titled "Comments and Suggestions of the Panel", stated that: Reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings ... by deduction and scientific method it could be induced (given additional data) that other cases might be explained in a similar manner. (qtd. in Good 404) However, even if the panel's insistence that UFOs were not of extraterrestrial origin seemed disingenuous, it still noted the subjectivity of the public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare (qtd. in Good 405). To remedy this, it recommended quite a profound method of propaganda: The debunking aim would result in reduction in public interest in flying saucers which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such [as] television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the secret is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy ... . It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program ... . It was believed that business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the mystery and then the explanation would be forceful ... . The continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic ... . [It is recommended that] the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired; that the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognise most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action. We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures. (qtd. in Good 405-6) The general aim of the Robertson Panel's recommendations, then, was to not only stop people believing in UFOs, but to stop people seeing UFOs, which constitutes an extreme manipulation of the public consciousness. It was the intention of the CIA to ensure, as subtly as was possible, that most people interpreted specific visual experiences (i.e. UFO sightings) in terms of a strict CIA-developed criterion. This momentous act basically amounts to an attempt to define, control and enforce a particular construction of reality which specifically excludes UFOs. In an ironic way, the Robertson Panel report advocated a type of modern exorcism, and may have been the very birthplace of the idea that such an obvious icon of wonder and potential as the UFO is, it can never be more than a misidentification or a hoax. We cannot be certain to what extent the recommendations of the Robertson Panel were put into practice, but we can safely assume that its findings were not ignored by the CIA. For example, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Chief of the ATIC's Aerial Phenomena Branch, has testified that "[We were] ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out, we have to publish a fast explanation -- make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can't find a plausible answer. We even have to discredit our own pilots" (Good 407). Comments like these make one wonder just how extensive the program of debunking and ridicule actually was. What I have suggested here is that during the 1950s, and possibly throughout the four decades since, an objective of the CIA has been to downplay its own interest in the UFO phenomenon to the public whilst engaging in secret, complex investigations of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. If this is the case, as the evidence -- the best of which can be found in the government's own files (even though such evidence, as tens of thousands of conspiracy theorists continue to stress, can hardly be taken simply at face value) -- indicates, then the construction of the UFO in western popular culture will have to be revised as a process involving more than just the projection of popular hopes, desires and anxieties onto an abstract, mythical object. It will also need to be seen as involving the clandestine manipulation of this process by immeasurably powerful groups within the culture itself, such as the CIA. And since the CIAs major concerns about UFOs haved traditionally been explicitly related to the Cold War, the renewed prominence of the UFO in western popular culture since the demise of the Soviet Union requires immediate, serious investigation in a political context. For the UFO issue is, and has always been, a political issue. I suggest that until this fascinating chapter of American domestic history is explored more thoroughly, the cultural function of the UFO will remain just as poorly understood as its physical nature. References Good, Timothy. Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat. London: MacMillan, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php>. Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Adam Dodd. (1999) Making it unpopular: the CIA and UFOs in popular culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Photo by Finding Dan | Dan Grinwis on Unsplash We who grew up texting, instant messaging, and emailing are blessed with native fluency in internet slang that varies according to country and language. Growing up in Sub-Saharan Africa, my schoolmates and I particularly loved to say TIA or, “This Is Africa.”[1] Largely popularized through the 2006 film, “Blood Diamond”,[2] TIA was the answer to all of the idiosyncrasies that accompanied living in the middle of the second-largest continent. Pulled over by local traffic police who demand a “cold drink”? TIA. Helped push the school bus out of a massive pothole during monsoon season? TIA. Reached for your Nokia brick only to pull a similarly sized co*ckroach from your purse? TIA. Largely isolated from the rest of the world, disease hysteria triggered by bird flu, SARS, and MERS passed by Sub-Saharan Africa as a far- off echo – my community was preoccupied with more imminent threats like malaria and cholera. The 2013 Ebola epidemic was the first time I was exposed to the narrow focus and broad indifference with which the wider world regards Africa. Mass hysteria over an “African disease” that threatened US shores exhibited narrow focus[3] while broad indifference manifested as radio silence following the resolution of cases in the US and Europe. The outbreak lasted until 2016 but coverage waned after 2015, when the only Ebola patients outside of Africa were expats shipped home for recovery.[4] As a freshman in college, my new British friends asked whether my family was at risk (they were not) and whether it was safe for me to go home for the holidays (it was). The 2013 outbreak primarily affected West Africa, on the opposite side of the continent. But to my college friends, Africa was a disease-ridden monolith. TIA, that is Africa. To the indifferent journalist, Africa is a convenient narrative device. By refusing to think of parts of Africa as anything other than the whole, we reduce a continent of 54 nations to a single entity – smaller and more manageable. The same occurred at the height of COVID-19 anxieties. As the healthcare systems of “more developed” countries threatened imminent collapse, a cry rattled across the globe: what will the Africans do?[5] Military-enforced lockdowns?[6] Will we have to take care of their citizens again?[7] While catching up with some friends in July 2020, I resisted an eyeroll as an acquaintance, grinning smugly, announced a new Ebola outbreak plaguing Congo.[8] (He probably meant DRC but he did not specify, and I am not sure he knew the difference.) A quick Google search confirmed the news, reported with glee in all major news media.[9] The Zoom call erupted in a flurry of sighs as my friends contemplated the new threat to US soil. Ever the party pooper, I emphasized that the outbreak was nothing new. The Ebola virus takes its name from its eponymous river in the DRC and the Congolese government had only just announced the end to a two-year struggle with Ebola in April.[10] Soon afterwards, the world lost interest; Al-Jazeera posted its last Ebola article on July 25.[11] Concurrently, coverage on ‘Africa’s COVID-19 crisis’ dwindled, eclipsed by worldwide #BLM protests, unrest in Belarus, and the US elections. As the attention on other world events settled, the “developed” world checked in with “poor, underdeveloped” Africa.[12] Despite concerns about cramped South African townships and the veracity of disease reports in Nigeria,[13] the number of COVID-19 cases and death rates in the continent have stayed low.[14] Citing a young population, existing contact-tracing infrastructure, and cross-immunity from other coronaviruses, several published articles analyze Africa’s mortality statistics.[15] Some, as pointed out by Ghanaian journalist, Karen Attiah, strive to paint the successes of African COVID-19 responses with stereotypical images of poverty and instability. After all, TIA. But while the world was not looking, African healthcare systems rallied. Wild poliovirus was completely eradicated from the continent in August.[16] Uganda began developing its own COVID-19 testing kits in May.[17] COVID-19 cases were limited to ten of Africa’s 54 countries while the DRC’s leading Ebola expert[18] reported that the new outbreak was under control.[19]Though there are still economic concerns due to reduced import-export activity between countries, Africa stands strong as second waves in Europe threaten to overrun hospitals.[20] A year from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO shared concerns of a lack of justice and equality in global vaccine distribution.[21] Higher income countries have had enough stock to vaccinate one fourth of their population, on average, while low income countries are limited to around 1 in 500.[22] However, a headline in CBS News implies that the low vaccination rate in South Africa is due to a domestic class struggle between the rich and poor citizens,[23] rather than an issue of vaccine nationalism. There are some reporters in Western news media, like Peter Mwai who reports for the BBC, who portray African healthcare systems in a balanced way. Seeking out unbiased writers’ articles is the best way to ensure exposure to balanced news. However, this is an exercise that many readers overlook because they depend on headlines for information. The bias is systematic, and the reliability of a few reporters is outweighed by countless examples of careless copy editing. As evidenced by the CBS News clip, quick turnaround time for publishing live television broadcast clips online leads to sloppy research, injecting prejudices in news media. Perhaps it is too early to celebrate. But as Western media spotlights claims that Africa was spared due to herd immunity from previous coronaviruses blazing through poverty-stricken neighborhoods, it does not seem so bad to rebuff the stereotype.[24] The US currently leads in total COVID-19 cases, followed by India, Brazil, and France. South Africa does not even break the top ten. Morocco, next in line, resides comfortably at 32.[25] For the moment, we can be proud. Decades of experience building infrastructure around highly contagious diseases paid off. Many public health officials in African governments acknowledged and addressed COVID-19’s potential early. Aggressive lockdowns were effective in reducing community transmission. This is Africa. [1] Abdullah, Kia. “‘This Is Africa’: Useful Mantra or Ugly Prejudice?” Atlas &amp; Boots. Atlas &amp; Boots, December 24, 2019. https://www.atlasandboots.com/tia-this-is-africa/. [2] Blood Diamond. Blood Diamond Archer Meets Maggie (TIA) This Is Africa. United States: Warner Bros., 2006. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3frHm9hw5bI. [3] Lupkin, Sydney. “Ebola in America: Timeline of the Deadly Virus.” ABC News. ABC News Network, November 17, 2014. https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-america-timeline/story?id=26159719. [4] BBC. “Ebola: Seventh British Health Worker Sent Home.” BBC News. BBC, March 16, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-31908301. [5] Nyenswah, Tolbert. “Africa Has a COVID-19 Time Bomb to Defuse.” World Economic Forum. World Economic Forum, April 6, 2020. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/africa-covid-19-time-bomb-defuse/. [6] Noko, Karsten. “The Problem with Army Enforced Lockdowns in the Time of COVID-19.” Opinions | Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, April 2, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/4/2/the-problem-with-army-enforced-lockdowns-in-the-time-of-covid-19/. [7] Picheta, Rob. “Coronavirus Pandemic Will Cause Global Famines of 'Biblical Proportions,' UN Warns.” CNN. Cable News Network, April 22, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/africa/coronavirus-famine-un-warning-intl/index.html. [8] WHO. “Ebola Virus Disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo.” World Health Organization. World Health Organization, July 9, 2020. https://www.who.int/csr/don/26-June-2020-ebola-drc/en/. [9] Fisher, Nicole. “New Ebola Outbreak In Congo Creates Unparalleled Challenges During A Pandemic.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, August 10, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2020/08/10/new-ebola-outbreak-in-congo-creates-unparalleled-challenges-during-a-pandemic/?sh=4f4a88015877.; BBC World Service. “Ebola Virus.” BBC News. BBC, July 17, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/cjnwl8q4qj1t/ebola-virus.; Al Jazeera. “'Great Concern' as New Ebola Outbreak Grows in Western DR Congo.” Democratic Republic of the Congo | Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, July 14, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/14/great-concern-as-new-ebola-outbreak-grows-in-western-dr-congo. [10] Yeung, Peter. “'Enormous Relief' as Ebola Outbreak in DRC to Be Declared Over.” Democratic Republic of the Congo | Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, April 10, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/10/enormous-relief-as-ebola-outbreak-in-drc-to-be-declared-over. [11] Al Jazeera. “Western DRC Ebola Cases up to 60 as WHO Warns of Funeral Risks.” Democratic Republic of the Congo | Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, July 20, 2020. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/20/western-drc-ebola-cases-up-to-60-as-who-warns-of-funeral-risks. [12] Mobarak, Ahmed Mushfiq, and Rifaiyat Mahbub. “Opinion: What the US Can Learn from How African Countries Handled Covid.” CNN. Cable News Network, November 3, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/03/africa/africa-coronavirus-lessons-opinion-intl/index.html.; Makoni, Munyaradzi. “The World Could Learn a Lot from How Africa Is Handling COVID-19.” WIRED UK. WIRED UK, November 2, 2020. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/COVID-19-africa. [13] McKenzie, David. “Africa's Battle against Covid-19 Will Be Won or Lost Here.” CNN. Cable News Network, July 6, 2020. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/africa/western-cape-south-africa-coronavirus-epicenter-intl/index.html.; Peralta, Eyder. “Why Forecasters Can't Make Up Their Mind About Africa And The Coronavirus.” NPR. NPR, June 10, 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/10/872789379/why-forecasters-cant-make-up-their-mind-about-africa-and-the-coronavirus. [14] Mwai, Peter. “Coronavirus: What's Happening to the Numbers in Africa?” BBC News. BBC, November 5, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53181555. [15] Attiah, Karen. “Opinion | Africa Has Defied the Covid-19 Nightmare Scenarios. We Shouldn't Be Surprised.” The Washington Post. WP Company, September 22, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/22/africa-has-defied-covid-19-nightmare-scenarios-we-shouldnt-be-surprised/.; Lock, Helen. “The UK Has Seen More Deaths From COVID-19 Than the Whole of Africa. Here Are 6 Reasons Why.” Global Citizen. Global Citizen, November 4, 2020. https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/uk-more-deaths-covid-19-africa-reasons-why/.; Deutsche Welle. “COVID-19 in Africa: Milder-than-Expected Pandemic Has Experts Puzzled: DW: 14.09.2020.” DW.COM. Deutsche Welle, September 14, 2020. https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-in-africa-milder-than-expected-pandemic-has-experts-puzzled/a-54918467.; Smith, Chris. “Scientists Can't Explain Puzzling Lack of Coronavirus Outbreaks in Africa.” New York Post. New York Post, September 7, 2020. https://nypost.com/2020/09/04/scientists-cant-explain-puzzling-lack-of-coronavirus-outbreaks-in-africa/?link=TD_mansionglobal_new_mansion_global.11147f181987fd93. [16] Scherbel-Ball, Naomi. “Africa Declared Free of Wild Polio in 'Milestone'.” BBC News. BBC, August 25, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53887947. [17] Achan, Jacky. “Dr. Wayengera: The Man behind Uganda's COVID-19 Testing Kits.” New Vision | Uganda News. New Vision, May 30, 2020. https://www.newvision.co.ug/news/1518668/dr-misaki-wayengera-uganda-covid-19-test-kits. [18] Mukwege, Denis. “Jean-Jacques Muyembe Tamfum Is on the 2020 TIME 100 List.” Time. Time, September 23, 2020. https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2020/5888331/jean-jacques-muyembe-tamfum/. [19] Mwai. “Coronavirus: What's Happening to the Numbers in Africa?” (2020); AFP. “DR Congo's Latest Ebola Outbreak 'under Control.” CGTN Africa. CGTN, October 18, 2020. https://africa.cgtn.com/2020/10/18/dr-congos-latest-ebola-outbreak-under-control/. [20] Dillon, Conor, and Gabriel Borrud. “Belgium's COVID-19 Health Care Collapse: 'It Will Happen in 10 Days': DW: 30.10.2020.” DW.COM. Deutsche Welle, October 30, 2020. https://www.dw.com/en/belgiums-covid-19-health-care-collapse-it-will-happen-in-10-days/a-55451750. [21] Mwai, Peter. “Covid-19 Africa: What Is Happening with Vaccines?” BBC News. BBC, April 8, 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/56100076. [22] Miao, Hannah. “WHO Says More than 87% of the World's Covid Vaccine Supply Has Gone to Higher-Income Countries.” CNBC. CNBC, April 10, 2021. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/09/who-says-poor-countries-have-received-just-0point2percent-of-worlds-vaccine-supply.html. [23] Patta, Deborah. “Protests over ‘Shocking Imbalance’ of COVID Vaccine Distribution in South Africa.” CBS News. CBS Interactive, April 11, 2021. https://www.cbsnews.com/video/protests-over-shocking-imbalance-of-covid-vaccine-distribution-in-south-africa/#x. [24] Harding, Andrew. “Coronavirus in South Africa: Scientists Explore Surprise Theory for Low Death Rate.” BBC News. BBC, September 2, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53998374. [25] Worldometers.info. “Coronavirus Cases.” Worldometer. Worldometer, November 9, 2020. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.

Abstract:

Rather than trying to lead an audience into a suspension of disbelief, cornball artists who get their own joke hope everyone will play along, or anyway enjoy the joke, which suggests that successful corn involves a suspension of embarrassment, or else a revel in it. (Marcus 323) Sure, it was corny as anything, pretentious, and silly beyond reason. But it felt so refreshing to see a band so absolutely devoid of irony and hipster chic, to see them perform and actually have enough sense and gravitas to not take themselves so damned seriously. And I think that, for a lot of people (myself included), that was a breath of fresh air. If there had been even the slightest trace of irony in the Illinoisemakers’ performance, the crowd would have picked up on it, and I doubt Sufjan and Co would have made it out with their pom-poms intact. (Morehead) The club was packed tight but I managed to find a spot to stand for the next two hours, squeezed along the rail of the upstairs balcony, looking down almost directly at the top of Sufjan Stevens’s head and, in front of him, an unusually hushed audience of fresh-faced indie rock kids. In conversation with some of the club’s staff a few days after the show, they would confide in me that they were unnerved by the evening’s crowd: “Where did these people come from?”, just “too well-behaved” for an all-ages show, there was something vaguely eerie about the level of rapt attention, about their/our unembarrassed affection for the on-stage spectacle. After all, with his gender-split six-piece back-up band (why have just one glockenspiel when two could be better?) dressed in matching cheerleader uniforms (offering between-song cheers and “spirit fingers” and a show-closing human pyramid) and himself all decked-out in a silk American flag jumpsuit, which may or may not have also had a cape, it would be tempting to see and hear 30-year-old Sufjan Stevens and his band – known, on this tour, as the Illinoisemakers – as “kitsch” or “camp”, but that’s not quite it. The affective tone is a bit too far off the mark – the archly self-ironic quotation marks – to qualify as camp or kitsch (or, for that matter, it is also far too waxing to fit any thesis about the waning of affect, such as Fredric Jameson’s notion of “blank parody”). Migrating elsewhere, this affect locates its heartfelt kernel, unabashedly, as corn. Susan Sontag, in her 1964 essay Notes on “Camp”, helped to set out the critical coordinates for the camp sensibility. Among them, an affection for the affectations of artifice and exaggeration, a rewiring of the logics of taste (bad can be good!) in order to account for an excessiveness and/or a “failed seriousness” that doubles back to slip quotation marks around itself, often undertaking a kind of historical salvage operation whereby the once-banal might now be redeemed as fantastic. As a significant subset of (non-naïve) camp, kitsch pertains to the more intentionally frivolous or ostentatious, and it inheres, most immediately, in the practices/objects produced through the camp sensibility. In sum, camp and kitsch take pleasure and refuge in affectedness, and regularly draw upon a particular relationship to the past: a past not to be conserved as it once was but to be transformed toward different, potentially more liberating ends within the present. The sensibility of corn occupies an almost coincidental space in our contemporary moment (where else could it be?) but its initial impulse faces in the other direction: rather than a past, it seeks to redeem a future for the present. Although by no means bypassing the powers of being affected (though without ironically turning this affectedness upon itself), cornball art sets to work by fictively divulging capacities to affect among existing constellations of forces and aesthetic figures, finding hidden-in-plain-sight alliances and branchings, offering a glimpse of a future not quite in view. That is, if camp and especially kitsch are the sound of a world chortling in the mirror at the sight of its own enlightened cynicism, corn gives voice to the near-impossible belief, in the face of all-available evidence to the contrary, that traversing the dreadfully familiar still holds the chance potential for imagining (and perhaps creating) a world that is decidedly otherwise. A work of (“successful”) corn actively dedicates itself to conjuring up an affective topography – opening the way for the possibility of collective inhabitation or contagion – within and around the hollows and shadows of the cliché and the commonplace, extracting from the field of its circulation the tiniest differences and variations. Although camp and kitsch are “statistically” on the political left (in the same way that Roland Barthes claims that “myth” is statistically on the right), corn has no intrinsic political valence. Making itself at home in the midst of the already known and patently obvious, corn’s stubborn (“silly beyond reason”) act of faith in the conversion of the banal becomes the future-oriented task of the always-to-be-made. The fabulist potential of corn then is that, beginning in the middle of nowhere, it can deliver us somewhere else: even if somewhere else is inevitably right here (no-where turned now-here). Corn’s politics don’t arrive in advance but only through its own act of creative, patchwork assembling. Rather than camp’s self-inoculating wink of solidarity (often delivered from arm’s length), whatever might be the coming politics of corn, it is precisely in its articulations and the expanse of its arms-wide embrace. Sufjan Stevens is already a fairly complex tangle of articulations all by himself: a plainly quirky musical composer-arranger and multi-instrumentalist (imagine Philip Glass writing “twee lo-fi” scores for a local community theater) / simultaneously straightforward balladeer and goofy-assed cheerleader-bandleader / fabulating geo-philosopher / practicing Christian (Episcopalian) of the non-evangelical variety / undeterred and affectionate chronicler of an increasingly unsettled America. What keeps this tangle of articulations from falling into a mess of contradictions is his earnestly cornball conceit as a musical surveyor – with or without a cape – of the vast American landscape. Stevens’s new Come on Feel the Illinoise and his 2003 release Greetings from Michigan serve merely as the first two states in an ambitious and admittedly foolhardy “50 States” project. Stevens re-conjures these states as immensely intimate geographies of the everyday mundane (folding laundry, wasp stings, zoo visits), of the cosmically mythic (UFOs, God, ghosts), and through figures, events and places, both past and present (Mary Todd Lincoln, the Black Hawk War, Decatur, his stepmother). In and across his musical compositions, there are no conceptual, lyrical or moral hierarchies (no above or below, including God); everything is situated alongside each other. Nothing is subordinated to anything else, and all are linked as one. Describing his “poetics of landscape”, Stevens says: I think this is a complicated subject, this idea of environment and geography shaping our doctrines, our behavior, our memory, even our inclinations … Now, our life is not a series of compartments. Here is our health. Here is our diet. Here is our genealogy. Here is our religion. Here is our politics. Here is our job. No, these things are all one big thing. Landscape is the palate of all activity. We live and move on the surface of this planet. Of course the character of that geography informs us. Even more, it determines us, and we affect it as well. It’s correlative … (Dodd). Although everything is already in immanence, it is also always to be articulated. Or, in the case of Sufjan Stevens’s rewrite of the United States’ national anthem, it is still all to be re-articulated: reclaiming God from the religious right while declaiming America’s militarism. The affective-aesthetic resonance of these articulations, through corn’s familiar traversal of the recurring same, serves as a selective ontology that comes to guide what falls out or rises up – the difference in repetition – into resources for hope in the present (Massumi). By nurturing these hopeful fall-outs and rise-ups into their next iterations, and by sustaining them into ever-expanding and self-varying accumulation, corn’s peculiar affective sensibility invokes its ethical task and, thus, its capacity to deliver its audience – though there are no guarantees – from nowhere (especially given the present sorry state of affairs on the US political left). It takes landscape as the palate of its activity, and then “populate[s] it with other instances, with other poetic, novelistic, or even pictorial or musical entities” (Deleuze and Guattari 66-7), populates it with a people to come. At present, it is safe to say that Sufjan Stevens is almost precisely nowhere, a mere speck on the popular music landscape of North America – at least as such matters might be determined through sales statistics or mainstream radio airplay. But a growing number of US music critics, journalists, and music bloggers have begun to take notice. See, for example, the critics at Amazon.com in the US or Metacritic.com – a Website that cross-tabulates critical reviews (mostly US and British) of film, television, music, etc – where, in both, Stevens’s Illinoise stands as the number one music release for 2005. All of which might add up, of course, to next to nothing (a temporary crush, this year’s model, a critical darling). Except that, wedged along the balcony rail as I observed the evening’s crowd in resonant conjunction with Stevens and his band, there seemed and still seems every reason to believe or every reason to want to believe that a reconfigured, newly-weird and corn-fed America may be nudging its way onto the horizon as an emergent, fledgling generational sensibility. Or, so, that’s the infectious hope anyway … admittedly as naïve as any before it. Think of it as a manifestation of what Deleuze calls the need for belief (and not its suspension) in the world. In this world (this world now: no waiting for a next one) belief that operates, in one way, through “the powers of the false” (fabulation): supplanting the close-to-expired effectivity of “speaking truth to power” anytime too soon. Deleuze and Guattari maintain that, “belief becomes a genuine concept only when it is made into belief in this world and is connected rather than projected” (92). To connect. To fabulate. To pass into the landscape. To create the conditions for a people-who-are-missing. But, more than any other ingredient to be drawn as political necessity from the contemporary moment, it is belief – unembarrassed by its open expression, unfettered by irony’s built-in self-protection mechanism – that sets corn apart from camp and kitsch. It is belief in this world that sets Sufjan Stevens’s music and its live performance, as corn, into motion: belief as force for belonging. Corn lends itself, almost by its very nature (albeit its fictive nature), to such gathering-up, to collective enunciation. “All things go / All things go / To re-create us / All things grow / All things grow”, Stevens sings in part of the chorus of his Chicago (arguably the centrepiece of Illinoise), his voice supported – both live and on record – by what feels like every other voice in its vicinity. But, in the song, Chicago serves as just a momentary passing through on the way to somewhere else, on the way to New York and beyond that: “Freedom from myself and from the land”. In the sliver of this moment (beyond one state or two, a nation or land dissolving into what develops), the affect of corn reveals its opening on to a boundless expansion of landscape, out past the amber waves of grain, the majesty of purple mountains, and God shedding his grace, pom-poms intact. References Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. H. Tomlinson, and G. Burchell. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. Dodd, J. “Feature Interview with Sufjan Stevens.” Bandoppler #5. 10 Oct. 2005 http://www.bandoppler.com/5_F_Sufjan.htm>. Marcus, G. Ranters and Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-92. New York: Anchor, 1993. Massumi, Brian. “Navigating Movements.” In M. Zournazi, Hope: New Philosophies for Change. New York: Routledge, 2002. This interview with Massumi is also available online: http://www.21cmagazine.com/issue2/massumi.html>. Morehead, J. “Omaha, Lift Up Your Weary Head.” OpusZine.com 23 Sep. 2005. http://www.opuszine.com/blog/entry.html?ID=1276>. Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Against Interpretation. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Seigworth, Gregory J. "The Affect of Corn." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/12-seigworth.php>. APA Style Seigworth, G. (Dec. 2005) "The Affect of Corn," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/12-seigworth.php>.

Abstract:

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

Abstract:

Nearly 50 years on from Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock (1971), contemporary society finds itself navigating the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This era has been described as the convergence of digitisation, robotics, artificial intelligence, globalisation—and speed (Johannessen). As such, temporality is taking on a turbulent and elusive edge. In the previous century, Toffler highlighted that technological change accelerated perceptions of time, and he predicted that by the 21st century, people would find it “increasingly painful to keep up with the incessant demand for change that characterises our time”, where change would come about “with waves of ever accelerating speed and unprecedented impact” (18). While Toffler could not have predicted the exact nature and detail of the specificities of day-to-day life in 2019, we suggest Toffler’s characterisation marks an insightful ‘jumping off’ point for further introspection. With Toffler’s concerns in mind, this issue of M/C Journal is interested in multiple ways that digital media influences and expresses conceptions of temporality in this historical period, the final weeks of 2019. On the basis of the pieces that comprise this issue, we take this concern further to politicise the temporal figurations of media, which we propose permeate all aspects of contemporary experience. Theoretically, this position pays homage to the work performed by Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin more than two decades ago. In 1996, Bolter and Grusin ruminated on the “the wire”, a fictional device that was the central focus of the film Strange Days (1995), a media gadget that could mediate experience from one subject to another, “pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex” (311). For Bolter and Grusin, ‘the wire’ epitomised contemporary culture’s movement toward virtual reality, “with its goal of unmediated visual and aural experience” and they suggested that the film provided a critique of the historical mode “in which digital technologies are proliferating faster than our cultural, legal, or educational institutions can keep up with them” (313). For us, perhaps even more urgently, the wire epitomises the colonisation, infiltration and permeation of the production of temporal layers through media systems and devices into the subject’s direct experience. The wire symbolises, among many things, a simulation of the terrain of time according to the Jorge Luis Borges fable, that is, one-for-one.Contingent upon new shifts, and the academic literature which has sought to critique them thus far, in this editorial, we raise the contention that the technologies and operations of power brought about through the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and its media apparatus, have exposed the subject to a multiplicity of timescapes. In doing so, these configurations have finally colonised subjective experience of time and temporality.Consequently, we have specifically featured a broad selection of articles that explore and discuss the presence of online, mobile, or streamed media as the primary means through which culture understands, expresses, and communicates the world, and ideas around temporality. The articles featured herein explore the ways in which constructs of time organise (and are organised by) other constructs such as; neoliberalism (Bianchino), relaxation (Pont), clocks (Cambpell), surveillance, biopower, narrative (Glitsos), monetisation (Grandinetti), memorialising (Wishart), time travel (Michael), utopias and dystopias (Herb). Through the spectrum of topics, we hope to elucidate to the reader the ways in which digital culture performs and generates ontological shifts that rewrite the relationship between media, time, and experience.ContemporaneityA key concern for us in this issue is the idea of ‘contemporaneity,’ which has been discussed more recently in art theory and criticism by Terry Smith, and Peter Osborne, amongst others. Both Smith and Osborne use the term to articulate the effects of contemporary globalisation, transnationalism, and post-conceptual art. Smith reminds us that in contemporary society there isthe insistent presentness of multiple, often incompatible temporalities accompanied by the failure of all candidates that seek to provide the overriding temporal framework – be it modern, historical, spiritual, evolutionary, geological, scientific, globalizing, planetary. (196)As a result, artists are negotiating and critiquing multiple intersecting and contradictory time codes that pervade contemporary society in order to grapple with contemporaneity today. Yet, concerns with overlayed temporalities enter our everyday more and more, as explored through Justin Grandinetti’s piece, “A Question of Time: HQ Trivia and Mobile Streaming Temporality”, in which he interrogates mobile streaming practices and the ways in which new devices seek out every possible moment that might be monetised and ‘made productive.’Grandinetti’s concern, like the others featured in this issue, attends to the notion of time as evasive, contradictory and antonymous while forming a sense of urgency around the changing present, and also reconciling a multiplicity of time codes at play through technology today. The present is immediately written and archived through news media live feeds, GPS tracking and bio data in apps used for fitness and entertainment amongst others, while the pace of national television, print media, and local radio is folded through our daily experiences. Consequently, we’re interested in the multiple, and sometimes incompatible temporalities that emerge through the varied ways in which digital media is used to express, explore, and communicate in the world today beyond the arenas of contemporary art and art history that Smith and Osborne are primarily concerned with. ExperienceExperience is key. Experience may in fact be the key that unlocks these following conversations about time and the subject, after all, time is nothing if not experiential. Empirically, we might claim that, time is “conceived as the intervals during which events occur” (Toffler 21). However, of course one can only be if one is being in time. Through Bergson we might say that the individual’s perception of time manifests “rightly or wrongly, to be inside and outside us at one and the same time … . To each moment of our inner life there thus corresponds a moment of our body and of all environing matter that is ‘simultaneous’ with it” (205). Time is the platform through which experience of consciousness is mediated, thus the varying manipulations of time through media apparatuses are therefore inextricable with our lived ‘everyday’.E.P. Thompson might call this our “time-sense”, a kind of “inward notation of time” (58), however this rationalisation of time is amplified and complicated by digital media, as warned by Campbell in this issue. Campbell explores the performativity of publicly writing the self on social media that commodifies experience. An inward notion of time therefore becomes inverted and publicly performed through digital media, which is a key source of anxiety and control for individuals. In Toffler’s estimation, even by as early as the 1970s the technoscience of Western culture had “released a totally new social force” and he contends that this had reshaped the collective psyche witha stream of change so accelerated that it influences our sense of time, revolutionizes the tempo of daily life, and affects the very way we “feel” the world around us. We no longer “feel” life as men [sic] did in the past. And this is the ultimate difference, the distinction that separates the truly contemporary man [sic] from all others. (17)While Toffler was referring to a different technological context, he serves as a reminder that digital media amplifies pre-existing effects of technology. Therefore, while autofiction and the public writing of the self is not necessarily new, it is nevertheless key to contemporary feelings of acceleration and the temporal vernacular of contemporaneity – one that exacerbates the experiences of acceleration, inertia, and how we ‘feel’ the present and our presence in the world.In this issue we also wish to note the ways in which digital culture, and perhaps in particular new media platforms and narratives that permeate our homes, appear to be directing the Western “time-sense” (Thompson 80) away from metaphors constructed through the linear trope of ‘rivers’ or ‘streams’ and toward the more complex arrangements that we suggest are more suited to metaphors of ‘confetti’ or ‘snow’, as Laura Glitsos elucidates in her piece “From Rivers to Confetti: Reconfigurations of Time through New Media Landscapes”.As just one example, we might think of the multiplicity of ‘peculiar times’ built upon each other in the production, distribution, consumption and convergence of so many levels of digital media. In one sense, we might approach ‘peculiar times’ as the peculiarity of temporality in any given context. However, in another sense, we might also recognise the layering of standardisation which is then peculiar to each of the modes of production, consumption, and distribution (as laid out by Althusser and Balibar). As just one example, in the context of streaming services, we find the “flattening of historical frames” (Kaplan 144) in the scrolling back and forward on social media timelines (Powell 2). So perhaps our peculiar time speaks of the collapsing between ontological boundaries of past, present, and future—a kind of contemporaneity that splits between the peculiarities of production and consumption of digital media.StandardisationHistoriographies of time-sense in the Western tradition have been covered by thinkers as diverse as E.P. Thompson, Graeme Davidson, Bernard Stiegler, and Henri Lefebvre. While it is not our aim to repeat those narratives here, we concede some markers are crucial to note in order to set the context for our selected pieces. Beginning in the early- to mid- middle ages in Europe, up until the spread of clocks in the 14th century, time was largely related to processes, tasks or stages of light during the day, and time does still continues to exist in this way for some communities (Thompson 58). During this era, and of even back to the third century BCE, there were time-keeping technologies which could measure smaller increments of the day, such as the water-clock, the sun-dial, and the hour-glass, but everyday activities for the working people were largely regulated by natural or circadian rhythms (Thompson). It is perhaps these rhythms which served to shape the ‘inward notation of time’, in Thompson’s words, through the discourses of nature, that is through the language of streams and rivers—or ‘flows’.The 13th century saw the advent of mechanical time-keeping technology utilising what is called a “verge escapement mechanism”, that is, a “feedback regulator that controls the speed of a mechanical clock” (Headrick 42). About a century later, coupled with the emergence of puritanism, Thompson tells us that we start to see a shift in the construction of time which more and more depends on the synchronisation of labour (Thompson 70). Even so, working rhythms remain fairly irregular, still more suited to what Thompson describes as “a natural human rhythm” (71). This changes suddenly in the 19th century when, with the explosion of the Industrial Age, we witness the dominance of factory-time and, of course, the adoption and standardisation of railway-time across Britain, Europe, India and North America (Schivelbusch). The trend toward standardisation continues into the mid-20th century with what George Ritzer has famously called “McDonaldization” (2008). Thus, through the blanketing nature of 20th century “industrial capitalism” (Thompson 80), everyday experience became predicated on standardisation. Thompson tells us that these “changes in manufacturing technique … demand greater synchronization of labour and a greater exactitude in time-routines in society” (80). For Thompson, the “technological conditioning” of “time-sense” ushers in the model of “time-measurement as a means of labour exploitation” (80). This historical point is central to Giacomo Bianchino’s argument in “Afterwork and Overtime: The Social Reproduction of Human Capital”, in his discussion of the fundamental nature of capitalism in shaping time-sense. However, what we suggest is that this theme of ‘time-sense’ as shaped by the broader political economy of media is found within each of the pieces in the issue.A discussion of standardisation is problematic, however, in the wider conceptualisation of time as elusive, multi-dynamic and fractured. Surely, standardisation should at least come with the ability of certainty, in some respects. However, this is the paradox of the digital and new media age: That standardisation is both arbitrary and, in echo of Balibar and Althusser, ‘peculiar’ to an endless layering of separate time-streams. It is, perhaps, the jumping between them, which has become a necessary function of living in the digital age, that produces the sense of fracture, the loss of standard.This issue of M/C Journal explores the various ways in which the constellation of current media practices that are online, offline, embodied, and networked, collectively inform and express concepts of time. The feature article "With This Body, I Subtract Myself from Neoliberalised Time: Sub-Habituality & Relaxation after Deleuze", written by Antonia Pont, keenly asks how relaxation might be used to evade neoliberal machinations around organising time, efficiency, and productivity, all of which endanger a diversity of temporalities. While all media have their own unique limitations and affordances regarding influencing and expressing relationships to time, they are also impacted by current perceptions of uncertainty and neoliberal agendas that underlie the working relationships between people, the media that they engage in, and representations of the world.The feelings of inertia expressed by Toffler nearly 50 years ago has not only been accelerated through technological expansion, but by a layering of multiple time codes which reflect the wide range of media practices that permeate the contemporary vernacular. In 2019, concepts from the current post-Internet stage are beginning to emerge and we are finding that digital media fragments as much as it connects and unites. An ‘inward notion of time’ becomes brokered through automated processes, issues around surveillance, affect, standardisation, norms, nostalgia, and the minutiae of digital time.ReferencesAlthusser, Louis, and Etienne Balibar. Reading Capital. London: NBL, 1970.Ansell-Pearson, Keith, John Ó Maoilearca, and Melissa McMahon. Henri Bergson: Key Writings. New York: Continuum, 2002.Bolter, Jay, and Richard Grusin. “Remediation.” Configurations 4.3 (1996): 311-358.Davison, Graeme. The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time. Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1993.Headrick, M.V. “Origin and Evolution of the Anchor Clock Escapement.” IEEE Control Systems 22.2 (2002): 41-52.Johannessen, Jon-Arild. Automation, Innovation and Economic Crisis: Surviving the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Milton: Routledge, 2018.Kaplan, E. Ann. Rocking around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture. New York: Methuen, 1987.Powell, Helen. Stop the Clocks! Time and Narrative in Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of Society. Los Angeles: Pine Forge P, 2008.Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century. Oakland: U of California P, 2014.Smith, Terry. What Is Contemporary Art? Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2009.Thompson, E.P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” Past and Present 38.1 (1967): 56-97.Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. London: Bodley Head, 1970.

Abstract:

When we think of disability today in the Western world, Christopher Reeve most likely comes to mind. A film star who captured people’s imagination as Superman, Reeve was already a celebrity before he took the fall that would lead to his new position in the fame game: the role of super-crip. As a person with acquired quadriplegia, Christopher Reeve has become both the epitome of disability in Western culture — the powerful cultural myth of disability as tragedy and catastrophe — and, in an intimately related way, the icon for the high-technology quest for cure. The case of Reeve is fascinating, yet critical discussion of Christopher Reeve in terms of fame, celebrity and his performance of disability is conspicuously lacking (for a rare exception see McRuer). To some extent this reflects the comparative lack of engagement of media and cultural studies with disability (Goggin). To redress this lacuna, we draw upon theories of celebrity (Dyer; Marshall; Turner, Bonner, & Marshall; Turner) to explore the production of Reeve as celebrity, as well as bringing accounts of celebrity into dialogue with critical disability studies. Reeve is a cultural icon, not just because of the economy, industrial processes, semiotics, and contemporary consumption of celebrity, outlined in Turner’s 2004 framework. Fame and celebrity are crucial systems in the construction of disability; and the circulation of Reeve-as-celebrity only makes sense if we understand the centrality of disability to culture and media. Reeve plays an enormously important (if ambiguous) function in the social relations of disability, at the heart of the discursive underpinning of the otherness of disability and the construction of normal sexed and gendered bodies (the normate) in everyday life. What is distinctive and especially powerful about this instance of fame and disability is how authenticity plays through the body of the celebrity Reeve; how his saintly numinosity is received by fans and admirers with passion, pathos, pleasure; and how this process places people with disabilities in an oppressive social system, so making them subject(s). An Accidental Star Born September 25, 1952, Christopher Reeve became famous for his roles in the 1978 movie Superman, and the subsequent three sequels (Superman II, III, IV), as well as his role in other films such as Monsignor. As well as becoming a well-known actor, Reeve gained a profile for his activism on human rights, solidarity, environmental, and other issues. In May 1995 Reeve acquired a disability in a riding accident. In the ensuing months, Reeve’s situation attracted a great deal of international attention. He spent six months in the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey, and there gave a high-rating interview on US television personality Barbara Walters’ 20/20 program. In 1996, Reeve appeared at the Academy Awards, was a host at the 1996 Paralympic Games, and was invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention. In the same year Reeve narrated a film about the lives of people living with disabilities (Mierendorf). In 1998 his memoir Still Me was published, followed in 2002 by another book Nothing Is Impossible. Reeve’s active fashioning of an image and ‘new life’ (to use his phrase) stands in stark contrast with most people with disabilities, who find it difficult to enter into the industry and system of celebrity, because they are most often taken to be the opposite of glamorous or important. They are objects of pity, or freaks to be stared at (Mitchell & Synder; Thomson), rather than assuming other attributes of stars. Reeve became famous for his disability, indeed very early on he was acclaimed as the pre-eminent American with disability — as in the phrase ‘President of Disability’, an appellation he attracted. Reeve was quickly positioned in the celebrity industry, not least because his example, image, and texts were avidly consumed by viewers and readers. For millions of people — as evident in the letters compiled in the 1999 book Care Packages by his wife, Dana Reeve — Christopher Reeve is a hero, renowned for his courage in doing battle with his disability and his quest for a cure. Part of the creation of Reeve as celebrity has been a conscious fashioning of his life as an instructive fable. A number of biographies have now been published (Havill; Hughes; Oleksy; Wren). Variations on a theme, these tend to the hagiographic: Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy (Alter). Those interested in Reeve’s life and work can turn also to fan websites. Most tellingly perhaps is the number of books, fables really, aimed at children, again, on a characteristic theme: Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve (Kosek; see also Abraham; Howard). The construction, but especially the consumption, of Reeve as disabled celebrity, is consonant with powerful cultural myths and tropes of disability. In many Western cultures, disability is predominantly understood a tragedy, something that comes from the defects and lack of our bodies, whether through accidents of birth or life. Those ‘suffering’ with disability, according to this cultural myth, need to come to terms with this bitter tragedy, and show courage in heroically overcoming their lot while they bide their time for the cure that will come. The protagonist for this this script is typically the ‘brave’ person with disability; or, as this figure is colloquially known in critical disability studies and the disability movement — the super-crip. This discourse of disability exerts a strong force today, and is known as the ‘medical’ model. It interacts with a prior, but still active charity discourse of disability (Fulcher). There is a deep cultural history of disability being seen as something that needs to be dealt with by charity. In late modernity, charity is very big business indeed, and celebrities play an important role in representing the good works bestowed on people with disabilities by rich donors. Those managing celebrities often suggest that the star finds a charity to gain favourable publicity, a routine for which people with disabilities are generally the pathetic but handy extras. Charity dinners and events do not just reinforce the tragedy of disability, but they also leave unexamined the structural nature of disability, and its associated disadvantage. Those critiquing the medical and charitable discourses of disability, and the oppressive power relations of disability that it represents, point to the social and cultural shaping of disability, most famously in the British ‘social’ model of disability — but also from a range of other perspectives (Corker and Thomas). Those formulating these critiques point to the crucial function that the trope of the super-crip plays in the policing of people with disabilities in contemporary culture and society. Indeed how the figure of the super-crip is also very much bound up with the construction of the ‘normal’ body, a general economy of representation that affects everyone. Superman Flies Again The celebrity of Christopher Reeve and what it reveals for an understanding of fame and disability can be seen with great clarity in his 2002 visit to Australia. In 2002 there had been a heated national debate on the ethics of use of embryonic stem cells for research. In an analysis of three months of the print media coverage of these debates, we have suggested that disability was repeatedly, almost obsessively, invoked in these debates (‘Uniting the Nation’). Yet the dominant representation of disability here was the cultural myth of disability as tragedy, requiring cure at all cost, and that this trope was central to the way that biotechnology was constructed as requiring an urgent, united national response. Significantly, in these debates, people with disabilities were often talked about but very rarely licensed to speak. Only one person with disability was, and remains, a central figure in these Australian stem cell and biotechnology policy conversations: Christopher Reeve. As an outspoken advocate of research on embryonic stem-cells in the quest for a cure for spinal injuries, as well as other diseases, Reeve’s support was enlisted by various protagonists. The current affairs show Sixty Minutes (modelled after its American counterpart) presented Reeve in debate with Australian critics: PRESENTER: Stem cell research is leading to perhaps the greatest medical breakthroughs of all time… Imagine a world where paraplegics could walk or the blind could see … But it’s a breakthrough some passionately oppose. A breakthrough that’s caused a fierce personal debate between those like actor Christopher Reeve, who sees this technology as a miracle, and those who regard it as murder. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) Sixty Minutes starkly portrays the debate in Manichean terms: lunatics standing in the way of technological progress versus Christopher Reeve flying again tomorrow. Christopher presents the debate in utilitarian terms: CHRISTOPHER REEVE: The purpose of government, really in a free society, is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And that question should always be in the forefront of legislators’ minds. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) No criticism of Reeve’s position was offered, despite the fierce debate over the implications of such utilitarian rhetoric for minorities such as people with disabilities (including himself!). Yet this utilitarian stance on disability has been elaborated by philosopher Peter Singer, and trenchantly critiqued by the international disability rights movement. Later in 2002, the Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, invited Reeve to visit Australia to participate in the New South Wales Spinal Cord Forum. A journalist by training, and skilled media practitioner, Carr had been the most outspoken Australian state premier urging the Federal government to permit the use of embryonic stem cells for research. Carr’s reasons were as much as industrial as benevolent, boosting the stocks of biotechnology as a clean, green, boom industry. Carr cleverly and repeated enlisted stereotypes of disability in the service of his cause. Christopher Reeve was flown into Australia on a specially modified Boeing 747, free of charge courtesy of an Australian airline, and was paid a hefty appearance fee. Not only did Reeve’s fee hugely contrast with meagre disability support pensions many Australians with disabilities live on, he was literally the only voice and image of disability given any publicity. Consuming Celebrity, Contesting Crips As our analysis of Reeve’s antipodean career suggests, if disability were a republic, and Reeve its leader, its polity would look more plutocracy than democracy; as befits modern celebrity with its constitutive tensions between the demotic and democratic (Turner). For his part, Reeve has criticised the treatment of people with disabilities, and how they are stereotyped, not least the narrow concept of the ‘normal’ in mainstream films. This is something that has directly effected his career, which has become limited to narration or certain types of television and film work. Reeve’s reprise on his culture’s notion of disability comes with his starring role in an ironic, high-tech 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchco*ck’s Rear Window (Bleckner), a movie that in the original featured a photojournalist injured and temporarily using a wheelchair. Reeve has also been a strong advocate, lobbyist, and force in the politics of disability. His activism, however, has been far more strongly focussed on finding a cure for people with spinal injuries — rather than seeking to redress inequality and discrimination of all people with disabilities. Yet Reeve’s success in the notoriously fickle star system that allows disability to be understood and mapped in popular culture is mostly an unexplored paradox. As we note above, the construction of Reeve as celebrity, celebrating his individual resilience and resourcefulness, and his authenticity, functions precisely to sustain the ‘truth’ and the power relations of disability. Reeve’s celebrity plays an ideological role, knitting together a set of discourses: individualism; consumerism; democratic capitalism; and the primacy of the able body (Marshall; Turner). The nature of this cultural function of Reeve’s celebrity is revealed in the largely unpublicised contests over his fame. At the same time Reeve was gaining fame with his traditional approach to disability and reinforcement of the continuing catastrophe of his life, he was attracting an infamy within certain sections of the international disability rights movement. In a 1996 US debate disability scholar David T Mitchell put it this way: ‘He’s [Reeve] the good guy — the supercrip, the Superman, and those of us who can live with who we are with our disabilities, but who cannot live with, and in fact, protest and retaliate against the oppression we confront every second of our lives are the bad guys’ (Mitchell, quoted in Brown). Many feel, like Mitchell, that Reeve’s focus on a cure ignores the unmet needs of people with disabilities for daily access to support services and for the ending of their brutal, dehumanising, daily experience as other (Goggin & Newell, Disability in Australia). In her book Make Them Go Away Mary Johnson points to the conservative forces that Christopher Reeve is associated with and the way in which these forces have been working to oppose the acceptance of disability rights. Johnson documents the way in which fame can work in a variety of ways to claw back the rights of Americans with disabilities granted in the Americans with Disabilities Act, documenting the association of Reeve and, in a different fashion, Clint Eastwood as stars who have actively worked to limit the applicability of civil rights legislation to people with disabilities. Like other successful celebrities, Reeve has been assiduous in managing his image, through the use of celebrity professionals including public relations professionals. In his Australian encounters, for example, Reeve gave a variety of media interviews to Australian journalists and yet the editor of the Australian disability rights magazine Link was unable to obtain an interview. Despite this, critiques of the super-crip celebrity function of Reeve by people with disabilities did circulate at the margins of mainstream media during his Australian visit, not least in disability media and the Internet (Leipoldt, Newell, and Corcoran, 2003). Infamous Disability Like the lives of saints, it is deeply offensive to many to criticise Christopher Reeve. So deeply engrained are the cultural myths of the catastrophe of disability and the creation of Reeve as icon that any critique runs the risk of being received as sacrilege, as one rare iconoclastic website provocatively prefigures (Maddox). In this highly charged context, we wish to acknowledge his contribution in highlighting some aspects of contemporary disability, and emphasise our desire not to play Reeve the person — rather to explore the cultural and media dimensions of fame and disability. In Christopher Reeve we find a remarkable exception as someone with disability who is celebrated in our culture. We welcome a wider debate over what is at stake in this celebrity and how Reeve’s renown differs from other disabled stars, as, for example, in Robert McRuer reflection that: ... at the beginning of the last century the most famous person with disabilities in the world, despite her participation in an ‘overcoming’ narrative, was a socialist who understood that disability disproportionately impacted workers and the power[less]; Helen Keller knew that blindness and deafness, for instance, often resulted from industrial accidents. At the beginning of this century, the most famous person with disabilities in the world is allowing his image to be used in commercials … (McRuer 230) For our part, we think Reeve’s celebrity plays an important contemporary role because it binds together a constellation of economic, political, and social institutions and discourses — namely science, biotechnology, and national competitiveness. In the second half of 2004, the stem cell debate is once again prominent in American debates as a presidential election issue. Reeve figures disability in national culture in his own country and internationally, as the case of the currency of his celebrity in Australia demonstrates. In this light, we have only just begun to register, let alone explore and debate, what is entailed for us all in the production of this disabled fame and infamy. Epilogue to “Fame and Disability” Christopher Reeve died on Sunday 10 October 2004, shortly after this article was accepted for publication. His death occasioned an outpouring of condolences, mourning, and reflection. We share that sense of loss. How Reeve will be remembered is still unfolding. The early weeks of public mourning have emphasised his celebrity as the very embodiment and exemplar of disabled identity: ‘The death of Christopher Reeve leaves embryonic-stem-cell activism without one of its star generals’ (Newsweek); ‘He Never Gave Up: What actor and activist Christopher Reeve taught scientists about the treatment of spinal-cord injury’ (Time); ‘Incredible Journey: Facing tragedy, Christopher Reeve inspired the world with hope and a lesson in courage’ (People); ‘Superman’s Legacy’ (The Express); ‘Reeve, the Real Superman’ (Hindustani Times). In his tribute New South Wales Premier Bob Carr called Reeve the ‘most impressive person I have ever met’, and lamented ‘Humankind has lost an advocate and friend’ (Carr). The figure of Reeve remains central to how disability is represented. In our culture, death is often closely entwined with disability (as in the saying ‘better dead than disabled’), something Reeve reflected upon himself often. How Reeve’s ‘global mourning’ partakes and shapes in this dense knots of associations, and how it transforms his celebrity, is something that requires further work (Ang et. al.). The political and analytical engagement with Reeve’s celebrity and mourning at this time serves to underscore our exploration of fame and disability in this article. Already there is his posthumous enlistment in the United States Presidential elections, where disability is both central and yet marginal, people with disability talked about rather than listened to. The ethics of stem cell research was an election issue before Reeve’s untimely passing, with Democratic presidential contender John Kerry sharply marking his difference on this issue with President Bush. After Reeve’s death his widow Dana joined the podium on the Kerry campaign in Columbus, Ohio, to put the case herself; for his part, Kerry compared Bush’s opposition to stem cell research as akin to favouring the candle lobby over electricity. As we write, the US polls are a week away, but the cultural representation of disability — and the intensely political role celebrity plays in it — appears even more palpably implicated in the government of society itself. References Abraham, Philip. Christopher Reeve. New York: Children’s Press, 2002. Alter, Judy. Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy. Danbury, Conn.: Franklin Watts, 2000. Ang, Ien, Ruth Barcan, Helen Grace, Elaine Lally, Justine Lloyd, and Zoe Sofoulis (eds.) Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning. Sydney: Research Centre in Intercommunal Studies, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997. Bleckner, Jeff, dir. Rear Window. 1998. Brown, Steven E. “Super Duper? The (Unfortunate) Ascendancy of Christopher Reeve.” Mainstream: Magazine of the Able-Disabled, October 1996. Repr. 10 Aug. 2004 http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/brown96c.html>. Carr, Bob. “A Class Act of Grace and Courage.” Sydney Morning Herald. 12 Oct. 2004: 14. Corker, Mairian and Carol Thomas. “A Journey around the Social Model.” Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Ed. Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. Donner, Richard, dir. Superman. 1978. Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: BFI Macmillan, 1986. Fulcher, Gillian. Disabling Policies? London: Falmer Press, 1989. Furie, Sidney J., dir. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. 1987. Finn, Margaret L. Christopher Reeve. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1997. Gilmer, Tim. “The Missionary Reeve.” New Mobility. November 2002. 13 Aug. 2004 http://www.newmobility.com/>. Goggin, Gerard. “Media Studies’ Disability.” Media International Australia 108 (Aug. 2003): 157-68. Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005. —. “Uniting the Nation?: Disability, Stem Cells, and the Australian Media.” Disability & Society 19 (2004): 47-60. Havill, Adrian. Man of Steel: The Career and Courage of Christopher Reeve. New York, N.Y.: Signet, 1996. Howard, Megan. Christopher Reeve. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1999. Hughes, Libby. Christopher Reeve. Parsippany, NJ.: Dillon Press, 1998. Johnson, Mary. Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and the Case Against Disability Rights. Louisville : Advocado Press, 2003. Kosek, Jane Kelly. Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve. 1st ed. New York : PowerKids Press, 1999. Leipoldt, Erik, Christopher Newell, and Maurice Corcoran. “Christopher Reeve and Bob Carr Dehumanise Disability — Stem Cell Research Not the Best Solution.” Online Opinion 27 Jan. 2003. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=510>. Lester, Richard (dir.) Superman II. 1980. —. Superman III. 1983. Maddox. “Christopher Reeve Is an Asshole.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=creeve>. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Mierendorf, Michael, dir. Without Pity: A Film about Abilities. Narr. Christopher Reeve. 1996. “Miracle or Murder?” Sixty Minutes. Channel 9, Australia. March 17, 2002. 15 June 2002 http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2002_03_17/story_532.asp>. Mitchell, David, and Synder, Sharon, eds. The Body and Physical Difference. Ann Arbor, U of Michigan, 1997. McRuer, Robert. “Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies.” Journal of Medical Humanities 23 (2002): 221-37. Oleksy, Walter G. Christopher Reeve. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 2000. Reeve, Christopher. Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2002. —. Still Me. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1998. Reeve, Dana, comp. Care Packages: Letters to Christopher Reeve from Strangers and Other Friends. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1999. Reeve, Matthew (dir.) Christopher Reeve: Courageous Steps. Television documentary, 2002. Thomson, Rosemary Garland, ed. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York UP, 1996. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. Thousands Oak, CA: Sage, 2004. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and David P Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2000. Wren, Laura Lee. Christopher Reeve: Hollywood’s Man of Courage. Berkeley Heights, NJ : Enslow, 1999. Younis, Steve. “Christopher Reeve Homepage.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/greatsleep/1023/main.html>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard & Newell, Christopher. "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. & Newell, C. (Nov. 2004) "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.php>.

Abstract:

A friend of mine once tried to capture the feeling that one gets from a new thing. He decided that there was no word to describe the sensation of having an unblemished eraser when you were in primary school, but nevertheless it produced a kind of fascinating awe in the apparent perfection of the new. A similar feeling captures the new car owner in smelling the interior's recently minted plastic. Used car dealers would doubtless love to bottle that smell because it produces the momentary pleasure of new ownership. And I am sure there are certain people who are addicted to that smell, and go test drive new cars with no intention of buying just for the experience of the "new" smell. New clothes produce that same sensation: most of us ignore the label which says "wash before wearing" because we want to experience the incredible stiff tactile sensation of a new shirt. My friend called this gle-gle, and it is a pervasive relationship to New in a variety of guises. New implies two kinds of objects or practices: it implies either the replacement of the old or it points to the emergence of something that has not existed before. In both cases, new always heralds change and has the potential for social or cultural transformation. As a result, popular writers and ad copy editors often link new with revolution. For example, the advent of the computer was seen to be revolutionary. Similarly a new detergent which worked in cold water promised cataclysmic change in the 1960s. But these promises of revolution through some innovation have not necessarily led to massive social upheaval; rather they have identified a discursive trope of contemporary culture which links new with rejuvenation. The claim that something is new is the mantra of modernity and the kitsch of the postmodern. This double-play of the concept of the new is best untangled through thinking how a once new object becomes the contemporary way of expressing the former hope of progress and change -- with raised and knowing eyebrow. I recently stumbled into one of these double-plays. While searching for bedding for yet another birthday slumber party, I picked up an old mattress which still had its 1950s label, where it proudly announced that the cushioning was the wonderful new revolutionary foam system called the Dunlopillo. The Dunlopillo system was certainly trademarked and no doubt patented for its then unique system of troughs and cones of army green foam; but in its current incarnation the foam was weak and the bed easily crumpled in half. All that was left of the sentiment of newness was the label, which in its graphics expressed the necessary connection to science as the future, and authoritative zeal in its seriousness of its revolutionary potential. But seen from 1998, the claims seemed bombastic and beautifully optimistic. Modernity's relationship to the new is to celebrate the potential for change. It is a cultural project that has enveloped the sentiments of capitalism and socialism from their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, and manifested itself in what Schudson labelled "capitalist realism" in advertising, and what is known as socialist realism as a state-sanctioned artistic movement in the Soviet Union. Both representations provided their systems with the capacity to repaint the cultural canvas with each new product such as Dunlopillo, or in the Soviet system with each new five-year productivity plan for the collective. Maintaining the unity of the cultural project was a challenge to each system's representational regime; sustaining the power of the new as a revolutionary force is the fundamental link between capitalist and socialist systems throughout the twentieth century. These representational regimes were in fact connected to the production of new phenomena, new materials, new social formations. However, the message of the new has gradually weakened over the last thirty years. Think of the way in which the Space Race produced all sorts of new technologies of computing, calculation and the integration of electronics into the running of the automobile. It also produced the breakfast orange-juice substitute, 'Tang'. Indeed, the first advertisem*nts for Tang intoned that it was the drink that astronauts enjoyed in space. Tang and its flavour crystals provided the ultimate form of efficiency and convenience, and provided a clear link between the highly ideologically driven space program and the everyday lives of citizens of the "free" world. In the 60s and 70s the link between the general project of modernity and improving everyday life was made evidently clear every time you added water to your Tang flavour crystals. One has to ask: where is Tang today? Not only is it difficult to find in my supermarket, but even if it were available it would not operate as the same representation of progress and the project of modernity. Instead, it would have little more than a nostalgic -- or, kitsch -- hold on a generation that has seen too many representations of the new and too many attempts at indicating improvement. The decay of the cultural power of the new is clearly linked to consumer culture's dependence on and overuse of the concept. The entire century has been enveloped by an accelerating pattern of symbolic change. Symbolic change is not necessarily the same as the futurologist Toffler claiming that we are in a constant state of "future shock"; rather it is much more the introduction of new designs as if there were not only transformed designs, but fundamentally transformed products. This perpetually 'new' is a feature of the fashion industry as it works toward seasonal transformation. Toothbrushes have also been the object of this design therapy, which produces both continual change over the last twenty years, and claims of new revolutionary designs. Central to this notion of symbolic change is advertising. Advertising plays with the hopes and desires of its audience by providing the contradictory symbolic materiality of progressive change. The cultural and political power of the new is the symbolic terrain that advertising has mined to present its "images of well-being". What one can now detect in the circulation of advertising is at least two responses to the decay of the power of the new. First, instead of advertising invoking the wonders of science and its technological offspring providing you with something revolutionary, advertising has moved increasingly towards personal transformation, echoing the 30-year-old self-help, self-discovery book industry. In Australia, GM-Holden's Barina television ads provide a typical example. No technical detail about the car is given in the ads, but a great deal of information --- via the singing, the superimposed dancers, and the graphics employed -- signifies that the car is designed for the young female driver. Symbolically, the car is transformed into a new space of feminine subjectivity. Second, advertising plays with the cynicism of the cognoscenti. If the new itself can no longer work to signify genuine change and improvement in contemporary culture, it is instead represented as a changed attitude to the contemporary world that only a particular demographic will actually comprehend. The level of sophistication in reading the new as a cultural phenomenon by advertisers (or by proxy, their agencies) is sometimes astounding. A recent Coca-Cola radio ad played with a singing style of ennui and anger that embodied punk, but only as punk has been reinvented in the mid-90s through such groups as Green Day. The lyrics were identical to the rest of the "Always Coca-Cola" campaign that has been circulating internationally for the last five years; however, the cynicism of the singers, the bare tunefulness, and even the use of a popular culture icon such as co*ke as the object of a song (and ridicule), tries to capture a particular new cultural moment with a different audience. Advertising as a cultural discourse on its own expresses a malaise within the transforming promise of the new that has been so much a part of modernity. However, the myths of modernity -- its clear association with social progress -- have never completely dissipated. In contemporary culture, it has fallen on new computer technologies to keep the ember of modernity and progress glowing. Over the last two decades the personal computer has maintained the naiveté of the new that was central to mid-twentieth century advertising, if not post-war culture in general. Very much like the Space Race stitched together an ideological weave that connected the populace to the interests of what Eisenhower first described as a military-industrial complex, the computer has ignited a new generation of optimism. It has been appropriated by governments from Singapore and Malaysia (think of the Multimedia Super Corridor) to the United States (think of Vice President Al Gore's NII) as the rescue package for the organisation of capitalism. Through Microsoft's hegemony there is a sense of coherence in "operating systems" which makes their slogan "where do you want to go today?", in its evocation of choice, also an invocation of unity of purpose. The wonderful synergy of the personal computer is that it weaves the conception of personal desire back into a generalisable social system of value. Despite all these efforts at harnessing the new computer technologies into established political and economic forces, the new nature of computer technology draws us back to the reason why new is intrinsically exciting: the defining nature of the new is that it offers the potential for some form of social change. The Internet has been the source for this new discourse of utopia. If we follow Howard Rheingold's logic, New "virtual communities" are formed online. A disequilibrium in who controls the flow of information is part of the appeal of the Internet, and the very appearance of this journal stems from that sense of new access. The Internet is said to challenge the boundaries of nations and states (although English language hegemony and pure economic access continue to operate to control the flow of those boundaries), with regulation devolving out of state policy towards the individual. Transforming identities are also very much an element of online communities: if nothing else, the play of gender in online game and chat programs identifies the constructed nature of our identities. All of this energy, and what I would call affect, refers to how computer technology and the Internet have managed to produce a sensation of agency. What I mean by agency is not necessarily attached to the project of modernity; rather it is the sense of being able to produce the new itself, as opposed to just living in the architecture of the new provided by someone else. On one level, the Internet and personal computers do provide a way to make your information look as if it is more significant and of a higher quality. The continuing proliferation of personal websites attests to this narcissistic drive of contemporary culture. On another level, the narcissism also identifies activity and agency in engaging in a form of communication with others. The Internet then can be thought of as paralleling movements in contemporary music, where the ability to construct soundscapes through computer interfaces has given the musician greater agency in the production of new electronic music. The new is intrinsically an odd phenomenon. It continually threatens established patterns. What is different about the new and its meaning in the twentieth century is that it has become part of the central ideology of western culture in its characterised representation of modernity. In a strange mix, the new reinforces the old and established. Nonetheless, the new, like culture itself, is never completely contained by any overarching architecture. The new expresses the potential, and occasionally the enactment, of significant cultural change. The fatigue that I have identified in our thinking about the new identifies a decline in the power of modernity to capture change, difference and transformation. That very fatigue may indicate in and of itself something profoundly new. References Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Schudson, Michael. Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. London: Pan Books, 1971. Citation reference for this article MLA style: P. David Marshall. "Thinking through New." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.1 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php>. Chicago style: P. David Marshall, "Thinking through New," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 1 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: P. David Marshall. (1998) Thinking through new. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s.There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs. This article investigates the use of brands as prosthesis.Coats and Crests: Identity Garnered on Garments in the Middle Ages and the Muromachi PeriodA logo, at its most basic, is a pictorial sign. In his essay, The Visual Language, Ernest Gombrich described the principle as reducing images to “distinctive features” (Gombrich 46). They represent a “simplification of code,” the meaning of which we are conditioned to recognise (Gombrich 46). Logos may also be interpreted as a manifestation of totemism. According to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the principle exists in all civilisations and reflects an effort to evoke the power of nature (71-127). Totemism is also a method of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166).This principle, in a form garnered on garments, is manifested in Mon Kiri. The practice of cutting out family crests evolved into a form of corporate branding in Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) (Christensen 14). During the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the crests provided an integral means of identification on the battlefield (Christensen 13). The adorning of crests on armour was also exercised in Europe during the twelfth century, when the faces of knights were similarly obscured by helmets (Family Crests of Japan 8). Both Mon Kiri and “Coat[s] of Arms” utilised totemic symbols (Family Crests of Japan 8; Elven 14; Christensen 13). The mon for the imperial family (figs. 1 & 2) during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia flowers (Goin’ Japaneque). “Coat[s] of Arms” in Britain featured a menagerie of animals including lions (fig. 3), horses and eagles (Elven).The prothesis of identity through garnering symbols on the battlefield provided “safety” through demonstrating “belongingness”. This constituted a conflation of two separate “needs” in the “hierarchy of prepotency” propositioned by Maslow. Fig. 1. The mon symbolising the Imperial Family during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia. "Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>.Fig. 2. An example of the crest being utilised on a garment can be found in this portrait of samurai Oda Nobunaga. "Japan's 12 Most Famous Samurai." All About Japan. 27 Aug. 2018. 27 July 2019 <https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5818/>.Fig. 3. A detail from the “Index of Subjects of Crests.” Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. Henry Washbourne, 1847.The Pursuit of Prestige: Prosthetic Pedigree from the Late Georgian to the Victorian Eras In 1817, the seal engraver to Prince Regent, Alexander Deuchar, described the function of family crests in British Crests: Containing The Crest and Mottos of The Families of Great Britain and Ireland; Together with Those of The Principal Cities and Heraldic Terms as follows: The first approach to civilization is the distinction of ranks. So necessary is this to the welfare and existence of society, that, without it, anarchy and confusion must prevail… In an early stage, heraldic emblems were characteristic of the bearer… Certain ordinances were made, regulating the mode of bearing arms, and who were entitled to bear them. (i-v)The partitioning of social classes in Britain had deteriorated by the time this compendium was published, with displays of “conspicuous consumption” displacing “heraldic emblems” as a primary method of status signalling (Deuchar 2; Han et al. 18). A consumerism born of newfound affluence, and the desire to signify this wealth through luxury goods, was as integral to the Industrial Revolution as technological development. In Rebels against the Future, published in 1996, Kirkpatrick Sale described the phenomenon:A substantial part of the new population, though still a distinct minority, was made modestly affluent, in some places quite wealthy, by privatization of of the countryside and the industrialization of the cities, and by the sorts of commercial and other services that this called forth. The new money stimulated the consumer demand… that allowed a market economy of a scope not known before. (40)This also reflected improvements in the provision of “health, food [and] education” (Maslow; Snow 25-28). With their “physiological needs” accommodated, this ”substantial part” of the population were able to prioritised their “esteem needs” including the pursuit for prestige (Sale 40; Maslow).In Britain during the Middle Ages laws “specified in minute detail” what each class was permitted to wear (Han et al. 15). A groom, for example, was not able to wear clothing that exceeded two marks in value (Han et al. 15). In a distinct departure during the Industrial Era, it was common for the “middling and lower classes” to “ape” the “fashionable vices of their superiors” (Sale 41). Although mon-like labels that were “simplified so as to be conspicuous and instantly recognisable” emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century their application on garments remained discrete up until the early twentieth century (Christensen 13-14; Moore and Reid 24). During the 1920s, the French companies Hermes and Coco Chanel were amongst the clothing manufacturers to pioneer this principle (Chaney; Icon).During the 1860s, Lincolnshire-born Charles Frederick Worth affixed gold stamped labels to the insides of his garments (Polan et al. 9; Press). Operating from Paris, the innovation was consistent with the introduction of trademark laws in France in 1857 (Lopes et al.). He would become known as the “Father of Haute Couture”, creating dresses for royalty and celebrities including Empress Eugene from Constantinople, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Australian Opera Singer Nellie Melba (Lopes et al.; Krick). The clothing labels proved and ineffective deterrent to counterfeit, and by the 1890s the House of Worth implemented other measures to authenticate their products (Press). The legitimisation of the origin of a product is, arguably, the primary function of branding. This principle is also applicable to subjects. The prothesis of brands, as totemic symbols, assisted consumers to relocate themselves within a new system of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166). It was one born of commerce as opposed to heraldry.Selling of Self: Conferring Identity from the Neolithic to Modern ErasIn his 1817 compendium on family crests, Deuchar elaborated on heraldry by writing:Ignoble birth was considered as a stain almost indelible… Illustrious parentage, on the other hand, constituted the very basis of honour: it communicated peculiar rights and privileges, to which the meaner born man might not aspire. (v-vi)The Twinings Logo (fig. 4) has remained unchanged since the design was commissioned by the grandson of the company founder Richard Twining in 1787 (Twining). In addition to reflecting the heritage of the family-owned company, the brand indicated the origin of the tea. This became pertinent during the nineteenth century. Plantations began to operate from Assam to Ceylon (Jones 267-269). Amidst the rampant diversification of tea sources in the Victorian era, concerns about the “unhygienic practices” of Chinese producers were proliferated (Wengrow 11). Subsequently, the brand also offered consumers assurance in quality. Fig. 4. The Twinings Logo reproduced from "History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>.The term ‘brand’, adapted from the Norse “brandr”, was introduced into the English language during the sixteenth century (Starcevic 179). At its most literal, it translates as to “burn down” (Starcevic 179). Using hot elements to singe markings onto animals been recorded as early as 2700 BCE in Egypt (Starcevic 182). However, archaeologists concur that the modern principle of branding predates this practice. The implementation of carved seals or stamps to make indelible impressions of handcrafted objects dates back to Prehistoric Mesopotamia (Starcevic 183; Wengrow 13). Similar traditions developed during the Bronze Age in both China and the Indus Valley (Starcevic 185). In all three civilisations branding facilitated both commerce and aspects of Totemism. In the sixth millennium BCE in “Prehistoric” Mesopotamia, referred to as the Halaf period, stone seals were carved to emulate organic form such as animal teeth (Wengrow 13-14). They were used to safeguard objects by “confer[ring] part of the bearer’s personality” (Wengrow 14). They were concurrently applied to secure the contents of vessels containing “exotic goods” used in transactions (Wengrow 15). Worn as amulets (figs. 5 & 6) the seals, and the symbols they produced, were a physical extension of their owners (Wengrow 14).Fig. 5. Recreation of stamp seal amulets from Neolithic Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 14.Fig. 6. “Lot 25Y: Rare Syrian Steatite Amulet – Fertility God 5000 BCE.” The Salesroom. 27 July 2019 <https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/artemis-gallery-ancient-art/catalogue-id-srartem10006/lot-a850d229-a303-4bae-b68c-a6130005c48a>. Fig. 7. Recreation of stamp seal designs from Mesopotamia from the late fifth to fourth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49. 1 (2008): 16.In the following millennia, the seals would increase exponentially in application and aesthetic complexity (fig. 7) to support the development of household cum cottage industries (Wengrow 15). In addition to handcrafts, sealed vessels would transport consumables such as wine, aromatic oils and animal fats (Wengrow 18). The illustrations on the seals included depictions of rituals undertaken by human figures and/or allegories using animals. It can be ascertained that the transition in the Victorian Era from heraldry to commerce, from family to corporation, had precedence. By extension, consumers were able to participate in this process of value attribution using brands as signifiers. The principle remained prevalent during the modern and post-modern eras and can be respectively interpreted using structuralist and post-structuralist theory.Totemism to Simulacrum: The Evolution of Advertising from the Modern to Post-Modern Eras In 2011, Lisa Chaney wrote of the inception of the Coco Chanel logo (fig. 8) in her biography Chanel: An Intimate Life: A crucial element in the signature design of the Chanel No.5 bottle is the small black ‘C’ within a black circle set as the seal at the neck. On the top of the lid are two more ‘C’s, intertwined back to back… from at least 1924, the No5 bottles sported the unmistakable logo… these two ‘C’s referred to Gabrielle, – in other words Coco Chanel herself, and would become the logo for the House of Chanel. Chaney continued by describing Chanel’s fascination of totemic symbols as expressed through her use of tarot cards. She also “surrounded herself with objects ripe with meaning” such as representations of wheat and lions in reference prosperity and to her zodiac symbol ‘Leo’ respectively. Fig. 8. No5 Chanel Perfume, released in 1924, featured a seal-like logo attached to the bottle neck. “No5.” Chanel. 25 July 2019 <https://www.chanel.com/us/fragrance/p/120450/n5-parfum-grand-extrait/>.Fig. 9. This illustration of the bottle by Georges Goursat was published in a women’s magazine circa 1920s. “1921 Chanel No5.” Inside Chanel. 26 July 2019 <http://inside.chanel.com/en/timeline/1921_no5>; “La 4éme Fête de l’Histoire Samedi 16 et dimache 17 juin.” Ville de Perigueux. Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord. 28 Mar. 2018. 26 July 2019 <https://www.perigueux-maap.fr/category/archives/page/5/>. This product was considered the “financial basis” of the Chanel “empire” which emerged during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (Tikkanen). Chanel is credited for revolutionising Haute Couture by introducing chic modern designs that emphasised “simplicity and comfort.” This was as opposed to the corseted highly embellished fashion that characterised the Victorian Era (Tikkanen). The lavish designs released by the House of Worth were, in and of themselves, “conspicuous” displays of “consumption” (Veblen 17). In contrast, the prestige and status associated with the “poor girl” look introduced by Chanel was invested in the story of the designer (Tikkanen). A primary example is her marinière or sailor’s blouse with a Breton stripe that epitomised her ascension from café singer to couturier (Tikkanen; Burstein 8). This signifier might have gone unobserved by less discerning consumers of fashion if it were not for branding. Not unlike the Prehistoric Mesopotamians, this iteration of branding is a process which “confer[s]” the “personality” of the designer into the garment (Wengrow 13 -14). The wearer of the garment is, in turn, is imbued by extension. Advertisers in the post-structuralist era embraced Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropological theories (Williamson 50). This is with particular reference to “bricolage” or the “preconditioning” of totemic symbols (Williamson 173; Pool 50). Subsequently, advertising creatives cum “bricoleur” employed his principles to imbue the brands with symbolic power. This symbolic capital was, arguably, transferable to the product and, ultimately, to its consumer (Williamson 173).Post-structuralist and semiotician Jean Baudrillard “exhaustively” critiqued brands and the advertising, or simulacrum, that embellished them between the late 1960s and early 1980s (Wengrow 10-11). In Simulacra and Simulation he wrote,it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)The symbolic power of the Chanel brand resonates in the ‘profound reality’ of her story. It is efficiently ‘denatured’ through becoming simplified, conspicuous and instantly recognisable. It is, as a logo, physically juxtaposed as simulacra onto apparel. This simulacrum, in turn, effects the ‘profound reality’ of the consumer. In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class:Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods it the means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure… costly entertainments, such as potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end… he consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption… he is also made to witness his host’s facility in etiquette. (47)Therefore, according to Veblen, it was the witnessing of “wasteful” consumption that “confers status” as opposed the primary conspicuous act (Han et al. 18). Despite television being in its experimental infancy advertising was at “the height of its powers” during the 1920s (Clark et al. 18; Hill 30). Post-World War I consumers, in America, experienced an unaccustomed level of prosperity and were unsuspecting of the motives of the newly formed advertising agencies (Clark et al. 18). Subsequently, the ‘witnessing’ of consumption could be constructed across a plethora of media from the newly emerged commercial radio to billboards (Hill viii–25). The resulting ‘status’ was ‘conferred’ onto brand logos. Women’s magazines, with a legacy dating back to 1828, were a primary locus (Hill 10).Belonging in a Post-Structuralist WorldIt is significant to note that, in a post-structuralist world, consumers do not exclusively seek upward mobility in their selection of brands. The establishment of counter-culture icon Levi-Strauss and Co. was concurrent to the emergence of both The House of Worth and Coco Chanel. The Bavarian-born Levi Strauss commenced selling apparel in San Francisco in 1853 (Levi’s). Two decades later, in partnership with Nevada born tailor Jacob Davis, he patented the “riveted-for-strength” workwear using blue denim (Levi’s). Although the ontology of ‘jeans’ is contested, references to “Jene Fustyan” date back the sixteenth century (Snyder 139). It involved the combining cotton, wool and linen to create “vestments” for Geonese sailors (Snyder 138). The Two Horse Logo (fig. 10), depicting them unable to pull apart a pair of jeans to symbolise strength, has been in continuous use by Levi Strauss & Co. company since its design in 1886 (Levi’s). Fig. 10. The Two Horse Logo by Levi Strauss & Co. has been in continuous use since 1886. Staff Unzipped. "Two Horses. One Message." Heritage. Levi Strauss & Co. 1 July 2011. 25 July 2019 <https://www.levistrauss.com/2011/07/01/two-horses-many-versions-one-message/>.The “rugged wear” would become the favoured apparel amongst miners at American Gold Rush (Muthu 6). Subsequently, between the 1930s – 1960s Hollywood films cultivated jeans as a symbol of “defiance” from Stage Coach staring John Wayne in 1939 to Rebel without A Cause staring James Dean in 1955 (Muthu 6; Edgar). Consequently, during the 1960s college students protesting in America (fig. 11) against the draft chose the attire to symbolise their solidarity with the working class (Hedarty). Notwithstanding a 1990s fashion revision of denim into a diversity of garments ranging from jackets to skirts, jeans have remained a wardrobe mainstay for the past half century (Hedarty; Muthu 10). Fig. 11. Although the brand label is not visible, jeans as initially introduced to the American Goldfields in the nineteenth century by Levi Strauss & Co. were cultivated as a symbol of defiance from the 1930s – 1960s. It documents an anti-war protest that occurred at the Pentagon in 1967. Cox, Savannah. "The Anti-Vietnam War Movement." ATI. 14 Dec. 2016. 16 July 2019 <https://allthatsinteresting.com/vietnam-war-protests#7>.In 2003, the journal Science published an article “Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion” (Eisenberger et al.). The cross-institutional study demonstrated that the neurological reaction to rejection is indistinguishable to physical pain. Whereas during the 1940s Maslow classified the desire for “belonging” as secondary to “physiological needs,” early twenty-first century psychologists would suggest “[social] acceptance is a mechanism for survival” (Weir 50). In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal… (1)In the intervening thirty-eight years since this document was published the artifice of our interactions has increased exponentially. In order to locate ‘belongness’ in this hyperreality, the identities of the seekers require a level of encoding. Brands, as signifiers, provide a vehicle.Whereas in Prehistoric Mesopotamia carved seals, worn as amulets, were used to extend the identity of a person, in post-digital China WeChat QR codes (fig. 12), stored in mobile phones, are used to facilitate transactions from exchanging contact details to commerce. Like other totems, they provide access to information such as locations, preferences, beliefs, marital status and financial circ*mstances. These individualised brands are the most recent incarnation of a technology that has developed over the past eight thousand years. The intermediary iteration, emblems affixed to garments, has remained prevalent since the twelfth century. Their continued salience is due to their visibility and, subsequent, accessibility as signifiers. Fig. 12. It may be posited that Wechat QR codes are a form individualised branding. Like other totems, they store information pertaining to the owner’s location, beliefs, preferences, marital status and financial circ*mstances. “Join Wechat groups using QR code on 2019.” Techwebsites. 26 July 2019 <https://techwebsites.net/join-wechat-group-qr-code/>.Fig. 13. Brands function effectively as signifiers is due to the international distribution of multinational corporations. This is the shopfront of Chanel in Dubai, which offers customers apparel bearing consistent insignia as the Parisian outlet at on Rue Cambon. Customers of Chanel can signify to each other with the confidence that their products will be recognised. “Chanel.” The Dubai Mall. 26 July 2019 <https://thedubaimall.com/en/shop/chanel>.Navigating a post-structuralist world of increasing mobility necessitates a rudimental understanding of these symbols. Whereas in the nineteenth century status was conveyed through consumption and witnessing consumption, from the twentieth century onwards the garnering of brands made this transaction immediate (Veblen 47; Han et al. 18). The bricolage of the brands is constructed by bricoleurs working in any number of contemporary creative fields such as advertising, filmmaking or song writing. They provide a system by which individuals can convey and recognise identities at prima facie. They enable the prosthesis of identity.ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1994.Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.Chaney, Lisa. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2011.Christensen, J.A. Cut-Art: An Introduction to Chung-Hua and Kiri-E. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1989. Clark, Eddie M., Timothy C. 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Abstract:

IntroductionFood Studies is a relatively recent area of research enquiry in Australia and Magazine Studies is even newer (Le Masurier and Johinke), with the consequence that Australian culinary magazines are only just beginning to be investigated. Moreover, although many major libraries have not thought such popular magazines worthy of sustained collection (Fox and Sornil), considering these publications is important. As de Certeau argues, it can be of considerable consequence to identify and analyse everyday practices (such as producing and reading popular magazines) that seem so minor and insignificant as to be unworthy of notice, as these practices have the ability to affect our lives. It is important in this case as these publications were part of the post-war gastronomic environment in Australia in which national tastes in domestic cookery became radically internationalised (Santich). To further investigate Australian magazines, as well as suggesting how these cosmopolitan eating habits became more widely embraced, this article will survey the various ways in which the idea of “abroad” is expressed in one Australian culinary serial from the post-war period, Australian Wines & Food Quarterly magazine, which was published from 1956 to 1960. The methodological approach taken is an historically-informed content analysis (Krippendorff) of relevant material from these magazines combined with germane media data (Hodder). All issues in the serial’s print run have been considered.Australian Post-War Culinary PublishingTo date, studies of 1950s writing in Australia have largely focused on literary and popular fiction (Johnson-Wood; Webby) and literary criticism (Bird; Dixon; Lee). There have been far fewer studies of non-fiction writing of any kind, although some serial publications from this time have attracted some attention (Bell; Lindesay; Ross; Sheridan; Warner-Smith; White; White). In line with studies internationally, groundbreaking work in Australian food history has focused on cookbooks, and includes work by Supski, who notes that despite the fact that buying cookbooks was “regarded as a luxury in the 1950s” (87), such publications were an important information source in terms of “developing, consolidating and extending foodmaking knowledge” at that time (85).It is widely believed that changes to Australian foodways were brought about by significant post-war immigration and the recipes and dishes these immigrants shared with neighbours, friends, and work colleagues and more widely afield when they opened cafes and restaurants (Newton; Newton; Manfredi). Although these immigrants did bring new culinary flavours and habits with them, the overarching rhetoric guiding population policy at this time was assimilation, with migrants expected to abandon their culture, language, and habits in favour of the dominant British-influenced ways of living (Postiglione). While migrants often did retain their foodways (Risson), the relationship between such food habits and the increasingly cosmopolitan Australian food culture is much more complex than the dominant cultural narrative would have us believe. It has been pointed out, for example, that while the haute cuisine of countries such as France, Italy, and Germany was much admired in Australia and emulated in expensive dining (Brien and Vincent), migrants’ own preference for their own dishes instead of Anglo-Australian choices, was not understood (Postiglione). Duruz has added how individual diets are eclectic, “multi-layered and hybrid” (377), incorporating foods from both that person’s own background with others available for a range of reasons including availability, cost, taste, and fashion. In such an environment, popular culinary publishing, in terms of cookbooks, specialist magazines, and recipe and other food-related columns in general magazines and newspapers, can be posited to be another element contributing to this change.Australian Wines & Food QuarterlyAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly (AWFQ) is, as yet, a completely unexamined publication, and there appears to be only three complete sets of this magazine held in public collections. It is important to note that, at the time it was launched in the mid-1950s, food writing played a much less significant part in Australian popular publishing than it does today, with far fewer cookbooks released than today, and women’s magazines and the women’s pages of newspapers containing only small recipe sections. In this environment, a new specialist culinary magazine could be seen to be timely, an audacious gamble, or both.All issues of this magazine were produced and printed in, and distributed from, Melbourne, Australia. Although no sales or distribution figures are available, production was obviously a struggle, with only 15 issues published before the magazine folded at the end of 1960. The title of the magazine changed over this time, and issue release dates are erratic, as is the method in which volumes and issues are numbered. Although the number of pages varied from 32 up to 52, and then less once again, across the magazine’s life, the price was steadily reduced, ending up at less than half the original cover price. All issues were produced and edited by Donald Wallace, who also wrote much of the content, with contributions from family members, including his wife, Mollie Wallace, to write, illustrate, and produce photographs for the magazine.When considering the content of the magazine, most is quite familiar in culinary serials today, although AWFQ’s approach was radically innovative in Australia at this time when cookbooks, women’s magazines, and newspaper cookery sections focused on recipes, many of which were of cakes, biscuits, and other sweet baking (Bannerman). AWFQ not only featured many discursive essays and savory meals, it also featured much wine writing and review-style content as well as information about restaurant dining in each issue.Wine-Related ContentWine is certainly the most prominent of the content areas, with most issues of the magazine containing more wine-related content than any other. Moreover, in the early issues, most of the food content is about preparing dishes and/or meals that could be consumed alongside wines, although the proportion of food content increases as the magazine is published. This wine-related content takes a clearly international perspective on this topic. While many articles and advertisem*nts, for example, narrate the long history of Australian wine growing—which goes back to early 19th century—these articles argue that Australia's vineyards and wineries measure up to international, and especially French, examples. In one such example, the author states that: “from the earliest times Australia’s wines have matched up to world standard” (“Wine” 25). This contest can be situated in Australia, where a leading restaurant (Caprice in Sydney) could be seen to not only “match up to” but also, indeed to, “challenge world standards” by serving Australian wines instead of imports (“Sydney” 33). So good, indeed, are Australian wines that when foreigners are surprised by their quality, this becomes newsworthy. This is evidenced in the following excerpt: “Nearly every English businessman who has come out to Australia in the last ten years … has diverted from his main discussion to comment on the high quality of Australian wine” (Seppelt, 3). In a similar nationalist vein, many articles feature overseas experts’ praise of Australian wines. Thus, visiting Italian violinist Giaconda de Vita shows a “keen appreciation of Australian wines” (“Violinist” 30), British actor Robert Speaight finds Grange Hermitage “an ideal wine” (“High Praise” 13), and the Swedish ambassador becomes their advocate (Ludbrook, “Advocate”).This competition could also be located overseas including when Australian wines are served at prestigious overseas events such as a dinner for members of the Overseas Press Club in New York (Australian Wines); sold from Seppelt’s new London cellars (Melbourne), or the equally new Australian Wine Centre in Soho (Australia Will); or, featured in exhibitions and promotions such as the Lausanne Trade Fair (Australia is Guest;“Wines at Lausanne), or the International Wine Fair in Yugoslavia (Australia Wins).Australia’s first Wine Festival was held in Melbourne in 1959 (Seppelt, “Wine Week”), the joint focus of which was the entertainment and instruction of the some 15,000 to 20,000 attendees who were expected. At its centre was a series of free wine tastings aiming to promote Australian wines to the “professional people of the community, as well as the general public and the housewife” (“Melbourne” 8), although admission had to be recommended by a wine retailer. These tastings were intended to build up the prestige of Australian wine when compared to international examples: “It is the high quality of our wines that we are proud of. That is the story to pass on—that Australian wine, at its best, is at least as good as any in the world and better than most” (“Melbourne” 8).There is also a focus on promoting wine drinking as a quotidian habit enjoyed abroad: “We have come a long way in less than twenty years […] An enormous number of husbands and wives look forward to a glass of sherry when the husband arrives home from work and before dinner, and a surprising number of ordinary people drink table wine quite un-selfconsciously” (Seppelt, “Advance” 3). However, despite an acknowledged increase in wine appreciation and drinking, there is also acknowledgement that this there was still some way to go in this aim as, for example, in the statement: “There is no reason why the enjoyment of table wines should not become an Australian custom” (Seppelt, “Advance” 4).The authority of European experts and European habits is drawn upon throughout the publication whether in philosophically-inflected treatises on wine drinking as a core part of civilised behaviour, or practically-focused articles about wine handling and serving (Keown; Seabrook; “Your Own”). Interestingly, a number of Australian experts are also quoted as stressing that these are guidelines, not strict rules: Crosby, for instance, states: “There is no ‘right wine.’ The wine to drink is the one you like, when and how you like it” (19), while the then-manager of Lindemans Wines is similarly reassuring in his guide to entertaining, stating that “strict adherence to the rules is not invariably wise” (Mackay 3). Tingey openly acknowledges that while the international-style of regularly drinking wine had “given more dignity and sophistication to the Australian way of life” (35), it should not be shrouded in snobbery.Food-Related ContentThe magazine’s cookery articles all feature international dishes, and certain foreign foods, recipes, and ways of eating and dining are clearly identified as “gourmet”. Cheese is certainly the most frequently mentioned “gourmet” food in the magazine, and is featured in every issue. These articles can be grouped into the following categories: understanding cheese (how it is made and the different varieties enjoyed internationally), how to consume cheese (in relation to other food and specific wines, and in which particular parts of a meal, again drawing on international practices), and cooking with cheese (mostly in what can be identified as “foreign” recipes).Some of this content is produced by Kraft Foods, a major advertiser in the magazine, and these articles and recipes generally focus on urging people to eat more, and varied international kinds of cheese, beyond the ubiquitous Australian cheddar. In terms of advertorials, both Kraft cheeses (as well as other advertisers) are mentioned by brand in recipes, while the companies are also profiled in adjacent articles. In the fourth issue, for instance, a full-page, infomercial-style advertisem*nt, noting the different varieties of Kraft cheese and how to serve them, is published in the midst of a feature on cooking with various cheeses (“Cooking with Cheese”). This includes recipes for Swiss Cheese fondue and two pasta recipes: spaghetti and spicy tomato sauce, and a so-called Italian spaghetti with anchovies.Kraft’s company history states that in 1950, it was the first business in Australia to manufacture and market rindless cheese. Through these AWFQ advertisem*nts and recipes, Kraft aggressively marketed this innovation, as well as its other new products as they were launched: mayonnaise, cheddar cheese portions, and Cracker Barrel Cheese in 1954; Philadelphia Cream Cheese, the first cream cheese to be produced commercially in Australia, in 1956; and, Coon Cheese in 1957. Not all Kraft products were seen, however, as “gourmet” enough for such a magazine. Kraft’s release of sliced Swiss Cheese in 1957, and processed cheese slices in 1959, for instance, both passed unremarked in either the magazine’s advertorial or recipes.An article by the Australian Dairy Produce Board urging consumers to “Be adventurous with Cheese” presented general consumer information including the “origin, characteristics and mode of serving” cheese accompanied by a recipe for a rich and exotic-sounding “Wine French Dressing with Blue Cheese” (Kennedy 18). This was followed in the next issue by an article discussing both now familiar and not-so familiar European cheese varieties: “Monterey, Tambo, Feta, Carraway, Samsoe, Taffel, Swiss, Edam, Mozzarella, Pecorino-Romano, Red Malling, Cacio Cavallo, Blue-Vein, Roman, Parmigiano, Kasseri, Ricotta and Pepato” (“Australia’s Natural” 23). Recipes for cheese fondues recur through the magazine, sometimes even multiple times in the same issue (see, for instance, “Cooking With Cheese”; “Cooking With Wine”; Pain). In comparison, butter, although used in many AWFQ’s recipes, was such a common local ingredient at this time that it was only granted one article over the entire run of the magazine, and this was largely about the much more unusual European-style unsalted butter (“An Expert”).Other international recipes that were repeated often include those for pasta (always spaghetti) as well as mayonnaise made with olive oil. Recurring sweets and desserts include sorbets and zabaglione from Italy, and flambéd crepes suzettes from France. While tabletop cooking is the epitome of sophistication and described as an international technique, baked Alaska (ice cream nestled on liquor-soaked cake, and baked in a meringue shell), hailing from America, is the most featured recipe in the magazine. Asian-inspired cuisine was rarely represented and even curry—long an Anglo-Australian staple—was mentioned only once in the magazine, in an article reprinted from the South African The National Hotelier, and which included a recipe alongside discussion of blending spices (“Curry”).Coffee was regularly featured in both articles and advertisem*nts as a staple of the international gourmet kitchen (see, for example, Bancroft). Articles on the history, growing, marketing, blending, roasting, purchase, percolating and brewing, and serving of coffee were common during the magazine’s run, and are accompanied with advertisem*nts for Bushell’s, Robert Timms’s and Masterfoods’s coffee ranges. AWFQ believed Australia’s growing coffee consumption was the result of increased participation in quality internationally-influenced dining experiences, whether in restaurants, the “scores of colourful coffee shops opening their doors to a new generation” (“Coffee” 39), or at home (Adams). Tea, traditionally the Australian hot drink of choice, is not mentioned once in the magazine (Brien).International Gourmet InnovationsAlso featured in the magazine are innovations in the Australian food world: new places to eat; new ways to cook, including a series of sometimes quite unusual appliances; and new ways to shop, with a profile of the first American-style supermarkets to open in Australia in this period. These are all seen as overseas innovations, but highly suited to Australia. The laws then controlling the service of alcohol are also much discussed, with many calls to relax the licensing laws which were seen as inhibiting civilised dining and drinking practices. The terms this was often couched in—most commonly in relation to the Olympic Games (held in Melbourne in 1956), but also in relation to tourism in general—are that these restrictive regulations were an embarrassment for Melbourne when considered in relation to international practices (see, for example, Ludbrook, “Present”). This was at a time when the nightly hotel closing time of 6.00 pm (and the performance of the notorious “six o’clock swill” in terms of drinking behaviour) was only repealed in Victoria in 1966 (Luckins).Embracing scientific approaches in the kitchen was largely seen to be an American habit. The promotion of the use of electricity in the kitchen, and the adoption of new electric appliances (Gas and Fuel; Gilbert “Striving”), was described not only as a “revolution that is being wrought in our homes”, but one that allowed increased levels of personal expression and fulfillment, in “increas[ing] the time and resources available to the housewife for the expression of her own personality in the management of her home” (Gilbert, “The Woman’s”). This mirrors the marketing of these modes of cooking and appliances in other media at this time, including in newspapers, radio, and other magazines. This included features on freezing food, however AWFQ introduced an international angle, by suggesting that recipe bases could be pre-prepared, frozen, and then defrosted to use in a range of international cookery (“Fresh”; “How to”; Kelvinator Australia). The then-new marvel of television—another American innovation—is also mentioned in the magazine ("Changing concepts"), although other nationalities are also invoked. The history of the French guild the Confrerie de la Chaine des Roitisseurs in 1248 is, for instance, used to promote an electric spit roaster that was part of a state-of-the-art gas stove (“Always”), and there are also advertisem*nts for such appliances as the Gaggia expresso machine (“Lets”) which draw on both Italian historical antecedence and modern science.Supermarket and other forms of self-service shopping are identified as American-modern, with Australia’s first shopping mall lauded as the epitome of utopian progressiveness in terms of consumer practice. Judged to mark “a new era in Australian retailing” (“Regional” 12), the opening of Chadstone Regional Shopping Centre in suburban Melbourne on 4 October 1960, with its 83 tenants including “giant” supermarket Dickens, and free parking for 2,500 cars, was not only “one of the most up to date in the world” but “big even by American standards” (“Regional” 12, italics added), and was hailed as a step in Australia “catching up” with the United States in terms of mall shopping (“Regional” 12). This shopping centre featured international-styled dining options including Bistro Shiraz, an outdoor terrace restaurant that planned to operate as a bistro-snack bar by day and full-scale restaurant at night, and which was said to offer diners a “Persian flavor” (“Bistro”).ConclusionAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly was the first of a small number of culinary-focused Australian publications in the 1950s and 1960s which assisted in introducing a generation of readers to information about what were then seen as foreign foods and beverages only to be accessed and consumed abroad as well as a range of innovative international ideas regarding cookery and dining. For this reason, it can be posited that the magazine, although modest in the claims it made, marked a revolutionary moment in Australian culinary publishing. As yet, only slight traces can be found of its editor and publisher, Donald Wallace. The influence of AWFQ is, however, clearly evident in the two longer-lived magazines that were launched in the decade after AWFQ folded: Australian Gourmet Magazine and The Epicurean. Although these serials had a wider reach, an analysis of the 15 issues of AWFQ adds to an understanding of how ideas of foods, beverages, and culinary ideas and trends, imported from abroad were presented to an Australian readership in the 1950s, and contributed to how national foodways were beginning to change during that decade.ReferencesAdams, Jillian. “Australia’s American Coffee Culture.” Australian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 23–36.“Always to Roast on a Turning Spit.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 17.“An Expert on Butter.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 11.“Australia Is Guest Nation at Lausanne.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 18–19.“Australia’s Natural Cheeses.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 23.“Australia Will Be There.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 14.“Australian Wines Served at New York Dinner.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.5 (1958): 16.“Australia Wins Six Gold Medals.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.11 (1959/1960): 3.Bancroft, P.A. “Let’s Make Some Coffee.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 10. 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Abstract:

Introduction I am a transmigrant who has moved back and forth between the West and the Rest. I was born and raised in a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh, but I spent several years of my childhood in Pakistan. After my marriage, I lived in the United States for a year and a half, the Middle East for 5 years, Australia for three years, back to the Middle East for another 5 years, then, finally, in Australia for the last 12 years. I speak Bengali (my mother tongue), Urdu (which I learnt in Pakistan), a bit of Arabic (learnt in the Middle East); but English has always been my medium of instruction. So where is home? Is it my place of origin, the Muslim umma, or my land of settlement? Or is it my ‘root’ or my ‘route’ (Blunt and Dowling)? Blunt and Dowling (199) observe that the lives of transmigrants are often interpreted in terms of their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’, which are two frameworks for thinking about home, homeland and diaspora. Whereas ‘roots’ might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, ‘routes’ focuses on mobile, multiple and transcultural geographies of home. However, both ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are attached to emotion and identity, and both invoke a sense of place, belonging or alienation that is intrinsically tied to a sense of self (Blunt and Dowling 196-219). In this paper, I equate home with my root (place of birth) and route (transnational homing) within the context of the ‘diaspora and belonging’. First I define the diaspora and possible criteria of belonging. Next I describe my transnational homing within the framework of diaspora and belonging. Finally, I consider how Australia can be a ‘home’ for me and other Muslim Australians. The Diaspora and Belonging Blunt and Dowling (199) define diaspora as “scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and the places”. Cohen emphasised the ethno-cultural aspects of the diaspora setting; that is, how migrants identify and position themselves in other nations in terms of their (different) ethnic and cultural orientation. Hall argues that the diasporic subjects form a cultural identity through transformation and difference. Speaking of the Hindu diaspora in the UK and Caribbean, Vertovec (21-23) contends that the migrants’ contact with their original ‘home’ or diaspora depends on four factors: migration processes and factors of settlement, cultural composition, structural and political power, and community development. With regard to the first factor, migration processes and factors of settlement, Vertovec explains that if the migrants are political or economic refugees, or on a temporary visa, they are likely to live in a ‘myth of return’. In the cultural composition context, Vertovec argues that religion, language, region of origin, caste, and degree of cultural hom*ogenisation are factors in which migrants are bound to their homeland. Concerning the social structure and political power issue, Vertovec suggests that the extent and nature of racial and ethnic pluralism or social stigma, class composition, degree of institutionalised racism, involvement in party politics (or active citizenship) determine migrants’ connection to their new or old home. Finally, community development, including membership in organisations (political, union, religious, cultural, leisure), leadership qualities, and ethnic convergence or conflict (trends towards intra-communal or inter-ethnic/inter-religious co-operation) would also affect the migrants’ sense of belonging. Using these scholarly ideas as triggers, I will examine my home and belonging over the last few decades. My Home In an initial stage of my transmigrant history, my home was my root (place of birth, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Subsequently, my routes (settlement in different countries) reshaped my homes. In all respects, the ethno-cultural factors have played a big part in my definition of ‘home’. But on some occasions my ethnic identification has been overridden by my religious identification and vice versa. By ethnic identity, I mean my language (mother tongue) and my connection to my people (Bangladeshi). By my religious identity, I mean my Muslim religion, and my spiritual connection to the umma, a Muslim nation transcending all boundaries. Umma refers to the Muslim identity and unity within a larger Muslim group across national boundaries. The only thing the members of the umma have in common is their Islamic belief (Spencer and Wollman 169-170). In my childhood my father, a banker, was relocated to Karachi, Pakistan (then West Pakistan). Although I lived in Pakistan for much of my childhood, I have never considered it to be my home, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country. In this case, my home was my root (Bangladesh) where my grandparents and extended family lived. Every year I used to visit my grandparents who resided in a small town in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Thus my connection with my home was sustained through my extended family, ethnic traditions, language (Bengali/Bangla), and the occasional visits to the landscape of Bangladesh. Smith (9-11) notes that people build their connection or identity to their homeland through their historic land, common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh had common histories, their traditions of language, dress and ethnic culture were very different. For example, the celebration of the Bengali New Year (Pohela Baishakh), folk dance, folk music and folk tales, drama, poetry, lyrics of poets Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindra Sangeet) and Nazrul Islam (Nazrul Geeti) are distinct in the cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Special musical instruments such as the banshi (a bamboo flute), dhol (drums), ektara (a single-stringed instrument) and dotara (a four-stringed instrument) are unique to Bangladeshi culture. The Bangladeshi cuisine (rice and freshwater fish) is also different from Pakistan where people mainly eat flat round bread (roti) and meat (gosh). However, my bonding factor to Bangladesh was my relatives, particularly my grandparents as they made me feel one of ‘us’. Their affection for me was irreplaceable. The train journey from Dhaka (capital city) to their town, Noakhali, was captivating. The hustle and bustle at the train station and the lush green paddy fields along the train journey reminded me that this was my ‘home’. Though I spoke the official language (Urdu) in Pakistan and had a few Pakistani friends in Karachi, they could never replace my feelings for my friends, extended relatives and cousins who lived in Bangladesh. I could not relate to the landscape or dry weather of Pakistan. More importantly, some Pakistani women (our neighbours) were critical of my mother’s traditional dress (saree), and described it as revealing because it showed a bit of her back. They took pride in their traditional dress (shalwar, kameez, dopatta), which they considered to be more covered and ‘Islamic’. So, because of our traditional dress (saree) and perhaps other differences, we were regarded as the ‘Other’. In 1970 my father was relocated back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I was glad to go home. It should be noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were separated from India in 1947 – first as one nation; then, in 1971, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan. The conflict between Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan (then West Pakistan) originated for economic and political reasons. At this time I was a high school student and witnessed acts of genocide committed by the Pakistani regime against the Bangladeshis (March-December 1971). My memories of these acts are vivid and still very painful. After my marriage, I moved from Bangladesh to the United States. In this instance, my new route (Austin, Texas, USA), as it happened, did not become my home. Here the ethno-cultural and Islamic cultural factors took precedence. I spoke the English language, made some American friends, and studied history at the University of Texas. I appreciated the warm friendship extended to me in the US, but experienced a degree of culture shock. I did not appreciate the pub life, alcohol consumption, and what I perceived to be the lack of family bonds (children moving out at the age of 18, families only meeting occasionally on birthdays and Christmas). Furthermore, I could not relate to de facto relationships and acceptance of sex before marriage. However, to me ‘home’ meant a family orientation and living in close contact with family. Besides the cultural divide, my husband and I were living in the US on student visas and, as Vertovec (21-23) noted, temporary visa status can deter people from their sense of belonging to the host country. In retrospect I can see that we lived in the ‘myth of return’. However, our next move for a better life was not to our root (Bangladesh), but another route to the Muslim world of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. My husband moved to Dhahran not because it was a Muslim world but because it gave him better economic opportunities. However, I thought this new destination would become my home – the home that was coined by Anderson as the imagined nation, or my Muslim umma. Anderson argues that the imagined communities are “to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6; Wood 61). Hall (122) asserts: identity is actually formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always ‘being formed’. As discussed above, when I had returned home to Bangladesh from Pakistan – both Muslim countries – my primary connection to my home country was my ethnic identity, language and traditions. My ethnic identity overshadowed the religious identity. But when I moved to Saudi Arabia, where my ethnic identity differed from that of the mainstream Arabs and Bedouin/nomadic Arabs, my connection to this new land was through my Islamic cultural and religious identity. Admittedly, this connection to the umma was more psychological than physical, but I was now in close proximity to Mecca, and to my home of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mecca is an important city in Saudi Arabia for Muslims because it is the holy city of Islam, the home to the Ka’aba (the religious centre of Islam), and the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad [Peace Be Upon Him]. It is also the destination of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islamic faith. Therefore, Mecca is home to significant events in Islamic history, as well as being an important present day centre for the Islamic faith. We lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 5 years. Though it was a 2.5 hours flight away, I treasured Mecca’s proximity and regarded Dhahran as my second and spiritual home. Saudi Arabia had a restricted lifestyle for women, but I liked it because it was a Muslim country that gave me the opportunity to perform umrah Hajj (pilgrimage). However, Saudi Arabia did not allow citizenship to expatriates. Saudi Arabia’s government was keen to protect the status quo and did not want to compromise its cultural values or standard of living by allowing foreigners to become a permanent part of society. In exceptional circ*mstances only, the King granted citizenship to a foreigner for outstanding service to the state over a number of years. Children of foreigners born in Saudi Arabia did not have rights of local citizenship; they automatically assumed the nationality of their parents. If it was available, Saudi citizenship would assure expatriates a secure and permanent living in Saudi Arabia; as it was, there was a fear among the non-Saudis that they would have to leave the country once their job contract expired. Under the circ*mstances, though my spiritual connection to Mecca was strong, my husband was convinced that Saudi Arabia did not provide any job security. So, in 1987 when Australia offered migration to highly skilled people, my husband decided to migrate to Australia for a better and more secure economic life. I agreed to his decision, but quite reluctantly because we were again moving to a non-Muslim part of the world, which would be culturally different and far away from my original homeland (Bangladesh). In Australia, we lived first in Brisbane, then Adelaide, and after three years we took our Australian citizenship. At that stage I loved the Barossa Valley and Victor Harbour in South Australia, and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but did not feel at home in Australia. We bought a house in Adelaide and I was a full time home-maker but was always apprehensive that my children (two boys) would lose their culture in this non-Muslim world. In 1990 we once again moved back to the Muslim world, this time to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. My connection to this route was again spiritual. I valued the fact that we would live in a Muslim country and our children would be brought up in a Muslim environment. But my husband’s move was purely financial as he got a lucrative job offer in Muscat. We had another son in Oman. We enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle provided by my husband’s workplace and the service provided by the housemaid. I loved the beaches and freedom to drive my car, and I appreciated the friendly Omani people. I also enjoyed our frequent trips (4 hours flight) to my root, Dhaka, Bangladesh. So our children were raised within our ethnic and Islamic culture, remained close to my root (family in Dhaka), though they attended a British school in Muscat. But by the time I started considering Oman to be my second home, we had to leave once again for a place that could provide us with a more secure future. Oman was like Saudi Arabia; it employed expatriates only on a contract basis, and did not give them citizenship (not even fellow Muslims). So after 5 years it was time to move back to Australia. It was with great reluctance that I moved with my husband to Brisbane in 1995 because once again we were to face a different cultural context. As mentioned earlier, we lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s; I liked the weather, the landscape, but did not consider it home for cultural reasons. Our boys started attending expensive private schools and we bought a house in a prestigious Western suburb in Brisbane. Soon after arriving I started my tertiary education at the University of Queensland, and finished an MA in Historical Studies in Indian History in 1998. Still Australia was not my home. I kept thinking that we would return to my previous routes or the ‘imagined’ homeland somewhere in the Middle East, in close proximity to my root (Bangladesh), where we could remain economically secure in a Muslim country. But gradually I began to feel that Australia was becoming my ‘home’. I had gradually become involved in professional and community activities (with university colleagues, the Bangladeshi community and Muslim women’s organisations), and in retrospect I could see that this was an early stage of my ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow). Through my involvement with diverse people, I felt emotionally connected with the concerns, hopes and dreams of my Muslim-Australian friends. Subsequently, I also felt connected with my mainstream Australian friends whose emotions and fears (9/11 incident, Bali bombing and 7/7 tragedy) were similar to mine. In late 1998 I started my PhD studies on the immigration history of Australia, with a particular focus on the historical settlement of Muslims in Australia. This entailed retrieving archival files and interviewing people, mostly Muslims and some mainstream Australians, and enquiring into relevant migration issues. I also became more active in community issues, and was not constrained by my circ*mstances. By circ*mstances, I mean that even though I belonged to a patriarchally structured Muslim family, where my husband was the main breadwinner, main decision-maker, my independence and research activities (entailing frequent interstate trips for data collection, and public speaking) were not frowned upon or forbidden (Khan 14-15); fortunately, my husband appreciated my passion for research and gave me his trust and support. This, along with the Muslim community’s support (interviews), and the wider community’s recognition (for example, the publication of my letters in Australian newspapers, interviews on radio and television) enabled me to develop my self-esteem and built up my bicultural identity as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian country and as a Bangladeshi-Australian. In 2005, for the sake of a better job opportunity, my husband moved to the UK, but this time I asserted that I would not move again. I felt that here in Australia (now in Perth) I had a job, an identity and a home. This time my husband was able to secure a good job back in Australia and was only away for a year. I no longer dream of finding a home in the Middle East. Through my bicultural identity here in Australia I feel connected to the wider community and to the Muslim umma. However, my attachment to the umma has become ambivalent. I feel proud of my Australian-Muslim identity but I am concerned about the jihadi ideology of militant Muslims. By jihadi ideology, I mean the extremist ideology of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (Farrar 2007). The Muslim umma now incorporates both moderate and radical Muslims. The radical Muslims (though only a tiny minority of 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide) pose a threat to their moderate counterparts as well as to non-Muslims. In the UK, some second- and third-generation Muslims identify themselves with the umma rather than their parents’ homelands or their country of birth (Husain). It should not be a matter of concern if these young Muslims adopt a ‘pure’ Muslim identity, providing at the same time they are loyal to their country of residence. But when they resort to terrorism with their ‘pure’ Muslim identity (e.g., the 7/7 London bombers) they defame my religion Islam, and undermine my spiritual connection to the umma. As a 1st generation immigrant, the defining criteria of my ‘homeliness’ in Australia are my ethno-cultural and religious identity (which includes my family), my active citizenship, and my community development/contribution through my research work – all of which allow me a sense of efficacy in my life. My ethnic and religious identities generally co-exist equally, but when I see some Muslims kill my fellow Australians (such as the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005) my Australian identity takes precedence. I feel for the victims and condemn the perpetrators. On the other hand, when I see politics play a role over the human rights issues (e.g., the Tampa incident), my religious identity begs me to comment on it (see Kabir, Muslims in Australia 295-305). Problematising ‘Home’ for Muslim Australians In the European context, Grillo (863) and Werbner (904), and in the Australian context, Kabir (Muslims in Australia) and Poynting and Mason, have identified the diversity within Islam (national, ethnic, religious etc). Werbner (904) notes that in spite of the “wishful talk of the emergence of a ‘British Islam’, even today there are Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab mosques, as well as Turkish and Shia’a mosques”; thus British Muslims retain their separate identities. Similarly, in Australia, the existence of separate mosques for the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and Shia’a peoples indicates that Australian Muslims have also kept their ethnic identities discrete (Saeed 64-77). However, in times of crisis, such as the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, and the 1990-1991 Gulf crises, both British and Australian Muslims were quick to unite and express their Islamic identity by way of resistance (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 160-162; Poynting and Mason 68-70). In both British and Australian contexts, I argue that a peaceful rally or resistance is indicative of active citizenship of Muslims as it reveals their sense of belonging (also Werbner 905). So when a transmigrant Muslim wants to make a peaceful demonstration, the Western world should be encouraged, not threatened – as long as the transmigrant’s allegiances lie also with the host country. In the European context, Grillo (868) writes: when I asked Mehmet if he was planning to stay in Germany he answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course’. And then, after a little break, he added ‘as long as we can live here as Muslims’. In this context, I support Mehmet’s desire to live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world as long as this is peaceful. Paradoxically, living a Muslim life through ijtihad can be either socially progressive or destructive. The Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji relies on ijtihad, but so does Osama bin Laden! Manji emphasises that ijtihad can be, on the one hand, the adaptation of Islam using independent reasoning, hybridity and the contesting of ‘traditional’ family values (c.f. Doogue and Kirkwood 275-276, 314); and, on the other, ijtihad can take the form of conservative, patriarchal and militant Islamic values. The al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden espouses the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian who early in his career might have been described as a Muslim modernist who believed that Islam and Western secular ideals could be reconciled. But he discarded that idea after going to the US in 1948-50; there he was treated as ‘different’ and that treatment turned him against the West. He came back to Egypt and embraced a much more rigid and militaristic form of Islam (Esposito 136). Other scholars, such as Cesari, have identified a third orientation – a ‘secularised Islam’, which stresses general beliefs in the values of Islam and an Islamic identity, without too much concern for practices. Grillo (871) observed Islam in the West emphasised diversity. He stressed that, “some [Muslims were] more quietest, some more secular, some more clamorous, some more negotiatory”, while some were exclusively characterised by Islamic identity, such as wearing the burqa (elaborate veils), hijabs (headscarves), beards by men and total abstinence from drinking alcohol. So Mehmet, cited above, could be living a Muslim life within the spectrum of these possibilities, ranging from an integrating mode to a strict, militant Muslim manner. In the UK context, Zubaida (96) contends that marginalised, culturally-impoverished youth are the people for whom radical, militant Islamism may have an appeal, though it must be noted that the 7/7 bombers belonged to affluent families (O’Sullivan 14; Husain). In Australia, Muslim Australians are facing three challenges. First, the Muslim unemployment rate: it was three times higher than the national total in 1996 and 2001 (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 266-278; Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 63). Second, some spiritual leaders have used extreme rhetoric to appeal to marginalised youth; in January 2007, the Australian-born imam of Lebanese background, Sheikh Feiz Mohammad, was alleged to have employed a DVD format to urge children to kill the enemies of Islam and to have praised martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad (Chulov 2). Third, the proposed citizenship test has the potential to make new migrants’ – particularly Muslims’ – settlement in Australia stressful (Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79); in May 2007, fuelled by perceptions that some migrants – especially Muslims – were not integrating quickly enough, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test bill that proposes to test applicants on their English language skills and knowledge of Australian history and ‘values’. I contend that being able to demonstrate knowledge of history and having English language skills is no guarantee that a migrant will be a good citizen. Through my transmigrant history, I have learnt that developing a bond with a new place takes time, acceptance and a gradual change of identity, which are less likely to happen when facing assimilationist constraints. I spoke English and studied history in the United States, but I did not consider it my home. I did not speak the Arabic language, and did not study Middle Eastern history while I was in the Middle East, but I felt connected to it for cultural and religious reasons. Through my knowledge of history and English language proficiency I did not make Australia my home when I first migrated to Australia. Australia became my home when I started interacting with other Australians, which was made possible by having the time at my disposal and by fortunate circ*mstances, which included a fairly high level of efficacy and affluence. If I had been rejected because of my lack of knowledge of ‘Australian values’, or had encountered discrimination in the job market, I would have been much less willing to embrace my host country and call it home. I believe a stringent citizenship test is more likely to alienate would-be citizens than to induce their adoption of values and loyalty to their new home. Conclusion Blunt (5) observes that current studies of home often investigate mobile geographies of dwelling and how it shapes one’s identity and belonging. Such geographies of home negotiate from the domestic to the global context, thus mobilising the home beyond a fixed, bounded and confining location. Similarly, in this paper I have discussed how my mobile geography, from the domestic (root) to global (route), has shaped my identity. Though I received a degree of culture shock in the United States, loved the Middle East, and was at first quite resistant to the idea of making Australia my second home, the confidence I acquired in residing in these ‘several homes’ were cumulative and eventually enabled me to regard Australia as my ‘home’. I loved the Middle East, but I did not pursue an active involvement with the Arab community because I was a busy mother. Also I lacked the communication skill (fluency in Arabic) with the local residents who lived outside the expatriates’ campus. I am no longer a cultural freak. I am no longer the same Bangladeshi woman who saw her ethnic and Islamic culture as superior to all other cultures. I have learnt to appreciate Australian values, such as tolerance, ‘a fair go’ and multiculturalism (see Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79). My bicultural identity is my strength. With my ethnic and religious identity, I can relate to the concerns of the Muslim community and other Australian ethnic and religious minorities. And with my Australian identity I have developed ‘a voice’ to pursue active citizenship. Thus my biculturalism has enabled me to retain and merge my former home with my present and permanent home of Australia. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Housing and Population, 1996 and 2001. Blunt, Alison. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Cesari, Jocelyne. “Muslim Minorities in Europe: The Silent Revolution.” In John L. Esposito and Burgat, eds., Modernising Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East. London: Hurst, 2003. 251-269. Chulov, Martin. “Treatment Has Sheik Wary of Returning Home.” Weekend Australian 6-7 Jan. 2007: 2. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington, 1997. Doogue, Geraldine, and Peter Kirkwood. Tomorrow’s Islam: Uniting Old-Age Beliefs and a Modern World. Sydney: ABC Books, 2005. Esposito, John. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 3rd ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Farrar, Max. “When the Bombs Go Off: Rethinking and Managing Diversity Strategies in Leeds, UK.” International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations 6.5 (2007): 63-68. 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Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Aug. 2007) "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>.

Abstract:

Introduction In December 2010, Nespresso, the world’s leading brand of premium-portioned coffee, opened a flagship “boutique” in Sydney’s Pitt Street Mall. This was Nespresso’s fifth boutique opening of 2010, after Brussels, Miami, Soho, and Munich. The Sydney debut coincided with the mall’s upmarket redevelopment, which explains Nespresso’s arrival in the city: strategic geographic expansion is key to the brand’s growth. Rather than panoramic ubiquity, a retail option favoured by brands like McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks, Nespresso opts for iconic, prestigious locations. This strategy has been highly successful: since 2000 Nespresso has recorded year-on-year per annum growth of 30 per cent. This has been achieved, moreover, despite a global financial downturn and an international coffee market replete with brand variety. In turn, Nespresso marks an evolution in the coffee market over the last decade. The Nespresso Story Founded in 1986, Nespresso is the fasting growing brand in the Nestlé Group. Its headquarters are in Lausanne, Switzerland, with over 7,000 employees worldwide. In 2012, Nespresso had 270 boutiques in 50 countries. The brand’s growth strategy involves three main components: premium coffee capsules, “mated” with specially designed machines, and accompanied by exceptional customer service through the Nespresso Club. Each component requires some explanation. Nespresso offers 16 varieties of Grand Crus coffee: 7 espresso blends, 3 pure origin espressos, 3 lungos (for larger cups), and 3 decaffeinated coffees. Each 5.5 grams of portioned coffee is cased in a hermetically sealed aluminium capsule, or pod, designed to preserve the complex, volatile aromas (between 800 and 900 per pod), and prevent oxidation. These capsules are designed to be used exclusively with Nespresso-branded machines, which are equipped with a patented high-pressure extraction system designed for optimum release of the coffee. These machines, of which there are 28 models, are developed with 6 machine partners, and Antoine Cahen, from Ateliers du Nord in Lausanne, designs most of them. For its consumers, members of the Nespresso Club, the capsules and machines guarantee perfect espresso coffee every time, within seconds and with minimum effort—what Nespresso calls the “ultimate coffee experience.” The Nespresso Club promotes this experience as an everyday luxury, whereby café-quality coffee can be enjoyed in the privacy and comfort of Club members’ homes. This domestic focus is a relatively recent turn in its history. Nestlé patented some of its pod technology in 1976; the compatible machines, initially made in Switzerland by Turmix, were developed a decade later. Nespresso S. A. was set up as a subsidiary unit within the Nestlé Group with a view to target the office and fine restaurant sector. It was first test-marketed in Japan in 1986, and rolled out the same year in Switzerland, France and Italy. However, by 1988, low sales prompted Nespresso’s newly appointed CEO, Jean-Paul Gillard, to rethink the brand’s focus. Gillard subsequently repositioned Nespresso’s target market away from the commercial sector towards high-income households and individuals, and introduced a mail-order distribution system; these elements became the hallmarks of the Nespresso Club (Markides 55). The Nespresso Club was designed to give members who had purchased Nespresso machines 24-hour customer service, by mail, phone, fax, and email. By the end of 1997 there were some 250,000 Club members worldwide. The boom in domestic, user-friendly espresso machines from the early 1990s helped Nespresso’s growth in this period. The cumulative efforts by the main manufacturers—Krups, Bosch, Braun, Saeco and DeLonghi—lowered the machines’ average price to around US $100 (Purpura, “Espresso” 88; Purpura, “New” 116). This paralleled consumers’ growing sophistication, as they became increasingly familiar with café-quality espresso, cappuccino and latté—for reasons to be detailed below. Nespresso was primed to exploit this cultural shift in the market and forge a charismatic point of difference: an aspirational, luxury option within an increasingly accessible and familiar field. Between 2006 and 2008, Nespresso sales more than doubled, prompting a second production factory to supplement the original plant in Avenches (Simonian). In 2008, Nespresso grew 20 times faster than the global coffee market (Reguly B1). As Nespresso sales exceeded $1.3 billion AU in 2009, with 4.8 billion capsules shipped out annually and 5 million Club members worldwide, it became Nestlé’s fastest growing division (Canning 28). According to Nespresso’s Oceania market director, Renaud Tinel, the brand now represents 8 per cent of the total coffee market; of Nespresso specifically, he reports that 10,000 cups (using one capsule per cup) were consumed worldwide each minute in 2009, and that increased to 12,300 cups per minute in 2010 (O’Brien 16). Given such growth in such a brief period, the atypical dynamic between the boutique, the Club and the Nespresso brand warrants closer consideration. Nespresso opened its first boutique in Paris in 2000, on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It was a symbolic choice and signalled the brand’s preference for glamorous precincts in cosmopolitan cities. This has become the design template for all Nespresso boutiques, what the company calls “brand embassies” in its press releases. More like art gallery-style emporiums than retail spaces, these boutiques perform three main functions: they showcase Nespresso coffees, machines and accessories (all elegantly displayed); they enable Club members to stock up on capsules; and they offer excellent customer service, which invariably equates to detailed production information. The brand’s revenue model reflects the boutique’s role in the broader business strategy: 50 per cent of Nespresso’s business is generated online, 30 per cent through the boutiques, and 20 per cent through call centres. Whatever floor space these boutiques dedicate to coffee consumption is—compared to the emphasis on exhibition and ambience—minimal and marginal. In turn, this tightly monitored, self-focused model inverts the conventional function of most commercial coffee sites. For several hundred years, the café has fostered a convivial atmosphere, served consumers’ social inclinations, and overwhelmingly encouraged diverse, eclectic clientele. The Nespresso boutique is the antithesis to this, and instead actively limits interaction: the Club “community” does not meet as a community, and is united only in atomised allegiance to the Nespresso brand. In this regard, Nespresso stands in stark contrast to another coffee brand that has been highly successful in recent years—Starbucks. Starbucks famously recreates the aesthetics, rhetoric and atmosphere of the café as a “third place”—a term popularised by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe non-work, non-domestic spaces where patrons converge for respite or recreation. These liminal spaces (cafés, parks, hair salons, book stores and such locations) might be private, commercial sites, yet they provide opportunities for chance encounters, even therapeutic interactions. In this way, they aid sociability and civic life (Kleinman 193). Long before the term “third place” was coined, coffee houses were deemed exemplars of egalitarian social space. As Rudolf P. Gaudio notes, the early coffee houses of Western Europe, in Oxford and London in the mid-1600s, “were characterized as places where commoners and aristocrats could meet and socialize without regard to rank” (670). From this sanguine perspective, they both informed and animated the modern public sphere. That is, and following Habermas, as a place where a mixed cohort of individuals could meet and discuss matters of public importance, and where politics intersected society, the eighteenth-century British coffee house both typified and strengthened the public sphere (Karababa and Ger 746). Moreover, and even from their early Ottoman origins (Karababa and Ger), there has been an historical correlation between the coffee house and the cosmopolitan, with the latter at least partly defined in terms of demographic breadth (Luckins). Ironically, and insofar as Nespresso appeals to coffee-literate consumers, the brand owes much to Starbucks. In the two decades preceding Nespresso’s arrival, Starbucks played a significant role in refining coffee literacy around the world, gauging mass-market trends, and stirring consumer consciousness. For Nespresso, this constituted major preparatory phenomena, as its strategy (and success) since the early 2000s presupposed the coffee market that Starbucks had helped to create. According to Nespresso’s chief executive Richard Giradot, central to Nespresso’s expansion is a focus on particular cities and their coffee culture (Canning 28). In turn, it pays to take stock of how such cities developed a coffee culture amenable to Nespresso—and therein lays the brand’s debt to Starbucks. Until the last few years, and before celebrity ambassador George Clooney was enlisted in 2005, Nespresso’s marketing was driven primarily by Club members’ recommendations. At the same time, though, Nespresso insisted that Club members were coffee connoisseurs, whose knowledge and enjoyment of coffee exceeded conventional coffee offerings. In 2000, Henk Kwakman, one of Nestlé’s Coffee Specialists, explained the need for portioned coffee in terms of guaranteed perfection, one that demanding consumers would expect. “In general”, he reasoned, “people who really like espresso coffee are very much more quality driven. When you consider such an intense taste experience, the quality is very important. If the espresso is slightly off quality, the connoisseur notices this immediately” (quoted in Butler 50). What matters here is how this corps of connoisseurs grew to a scale big enough to sustain and strengthen the Nespresso system, in the absence of a robust marketing or educative drive by Nespresso (until very recently). Put simply, the brand’s ascent was aided by Starbucks, specifically by the latter’s success in changing the mainstream coffee market during the 1990s. In establishing such a strong transnational presence, Starbucks challenged smaller, competing brands to define themselves with more clarity and conviction. Indeed, working with data that identified just 200 freestanding coffee houses in the US prior to 1990 compared to 14,000 in 2003, Kjeldgaard and Ostberg go so far as to state that: “Put bluntly, in the US there was no local coffee consumptionscape prior to Starbucks” (Kjeldgaard and Ostberg 176). Starbucks effectively redefined the coffee world for mainstream consumers in ways that were directly beneficial for Nespresso. Starbucks: Coffee as Ambience, Experience, and Cultural Capital While visitors to Nespresso boutiques can sample the coffee, with highly trained baristas and staff on site to explain the Nespresso system, in the main there are few concessions to the conventional café experience. Primarily, these boutiques function as material spaces for existing Club members to stock up on capsules, and therefore they complement the Nespresso system with a suitably streamlined space: efficient, stylish and conspicuously upmarket. Outside at least one Sydney boutique for instance (Bondi Junction, in the fashionable eastern suburbs), visitors enter through a club-style cordon, something usually associated with exclusive bars or hotels. This demarcates the boutique from neighbouring coffee chains, and signals Nespresso’s claim to more privileged patrons. This strategy though, the cultivation of a particular customer through aesthetic design and subtle flattery, is not unique. For decades, Starbucks also contrived a “special” coffee experience. Moreover, while the Starbucks model strikes a very different sensorial chord to that of Nespresso (in terms of décor, target consumer and so on) it effectively groomed and prepped everyday coffee drinkers to a level of relative self-sufficiency and expertise—and therein is the link between Starbucks’s mass-marketed approach and Nespresso’s timely arrival. Starbucks opened its first store in 1971, in Seattle. Three partners founded it: Jerry Baldwin and Zev Siegl, both teachers, and Gordon Bowker, a writer. In 1982, as they opened their sixth Seattle store, they were joined by Howard Schultz. Schultz’s trip to Italy the following year led to an entrepreneurial epiphany to which he now attributes Starbucks’s success. Inspired by how cafés in Italy, particularly the espresso bars in Milan, were vibrant social hubs, Schultz returned to the US with a newfound sensitivity to ambience and attitude. In 1987, Schultz bought Starbucks outright and stated his business philosophy thus: “We aren’t in the coffee business, serving people. We are in the people business, serving coffee” (quoted in Ruzich 432). This was articulated most clearly in how Schultz structured Starbucks as the ultimate “third place”, a welcoming amalgam of aromas, music, furniture, textures, literature and free WiFi. This transformed the café experience twofold. First, sensory overload masked the dull hom*ogeny of a global chain with an air of warm, comforting domesticity—an inviting, everyday “home away from home.” To this end, in 1994, Schultz enlisted interior design “mastermind” Wright Massey; with his team of 45 designers, Massey created the chain’s decor blueprint, an “oasis for contemplation” (quoted in Scerri 60). At the same time though, and second, Starbucks promoted a revisionist, airbrushed version of how the coffee was produced. Patrons could see and smell the freshly roasted beans, and read about their places of origin in the free pamphlets. In this way, Starbucks merged the exotic and the cosmopolitan. The global supply chain underwent an image makeover, helped by a “new” vocabulary that familiarised its coffee drinkers with the diversity and complexity of coffee, and such terms as aroma, acidity, body and flavour. This strategy had a decisive impact on the coffee market, first in the US and then elsewhere: Starbucks oversaw a significant expansion in coffee consumption, both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the decades following the Second World War, coffee consumption in the US reached a plateau. Moreover, as Steven Topik points out, the rise of this type of coffee connoisseurship actually coincided with declining per capita consumption of coffee in the US—so the social status attributed to specialised knowledge of coffee “saved” the market: “Coffee’s rise as a sign of distinction and connoisseurship meant its appeal was no longer just its photoactive role as a stimulant nor the democratic sociability of the coffee shop” (Topik 100). Starbucks’s singular triumph was to not only convert non-coffee drinkers, but also train them to a level of relative sophistication. The average “cup o’ Joe” thus gave way to the latte, cappuccino, macchiato and more, and a world of coffee hitherto beyond (perhaps above) the average American consumer became both regular and routine. By 2003, Starbucks’s revenue was US $4.1 billion, and by 2012 there were almost 20,000 stores in 58 countries. As an idealised “third place,” Starbucks functioned as a welcoming haven that flattened out and muted the realities of global trade. The variety of beans on offer (Arabica, Latin American, speciality single origin and so on) bespoke a generous and bountiful modernity; while brochures schooled patrons in the nuances of terroir, an appreciation for origin and distinctiveness that encoded cultural capital. This positioned Starbucks within a happy narrative of the coffee economy, and drew patrons into this story by flattering their consumer choices. Against the generic sameness of supermarket options, Starbucks promised distinction, in Pierre Bourdieu’s sense of the term, and diversity in its coffee offerings. For Greg Dickinson, the Starbucks experience—the scent of the beans, the sound of the grinders, the taste of the coffees—negated the abstractions of postmodern, global trade: by sensory seduction, patrons connected with something real, authentic and material. At the same time, Starbucks professed commitment to the “triple bottom line” (Savitz), the corporate mantra that has morphed into virtual orthodoxy over the last fifteen years. This was hardly surprising; companies that trade in food staples typically grown in developing regions (coffee, tea, sugar, and coffee) felt the “political-aesthetic problematization of food” (Sassatelli and Davolio). This saw increasingly cognisant consumers trying to reconcile the pleasures of consumption with environmental and human responsibilities. The “triple bottom line” approach, which ostensibly promotes best business practice for people, profits and the planet, was folded into Starbucks’s marketing. The company heavily promoted its range of civic engagement, such as donations to nurses’ associations, literacy programs, clean water programs, and fair dealings with its coffee growers in developing societies (Simon). This bode well for its target market. As Constance M. Ruch has argued, Starbucks sought the burgeoning and lucrative “bobo” class, a term Ruch borrows from David Brooks. A portmanteau of “bourgeois bohemians,” “bobo” describes the educated elite that seeks the ambience and experience of a counter-cultural aesthetic, but without the political commitment. Until the last few years, it seemed Starbucks had successfully grafted this cultural zeitgeist onto its “third place.” Ironically, the scale and scope of the brand’s success has meant that Starbucks’s claim to an ethical agenda draws frequent and often fierce attack. As a global behemoth, Starbucks evolved into an iconic symbol of advanced consumer culture. For those critical of how such brands overwhelm smaller, more local competition, the brand is now synonymous for insidious, unstoppable retail spread. This in turn renders Starbucks vulnerable to protests that, despite its gestures towards sustainability (human and environmental), and by virtue of its size, ubiquity and ultimately conservative philosophy, it has lost whatever cachet or charm it supposedly once had. As Bryant Simon argues, in co-opting the language of ethical practice within an ultimately corporatist context, Starbucks only ever appealed to a modest form of altruism; not just in terms of the funds committed to worthy causes, but also to move thorny issues to “the most non-contentious middle-ground,” lest conservative customers felt alienated (Simon 162). Yet, having flagged itself as an ethical brand, Starbucks became an even bigger target for anti-corporatist sentiment, and the charge that, as a multinational giant, it remained complicit in (and one of the biggest benefactors of) a starkly inequitable and asymmetric global trade. It remains a major presence in the world coffee market, and arguably the most famous of the coffee chains. Over the last decade though, the speed and intensity with which Nespresso has grown, coupled with its atypical approach to consumer engagement, suggests that, in terms of brand equity, it now offers a more compelling point of difference than Starbucks. Brand “Me” Insofar as the Nespresso system depends on a consumer market versed in the intricacies of quality coffee, Starbucks can be at least partly credited for nurturing a more refined palate amongst everyday coffee drinkers. Yet while Starbucks courted the “average” consumer in its quest for market control, saturating the suburban landscape with thousands of virtually indistinguishable stores, Nespresso marks a very different sensibility. Put simply, Nespresso inverts the logic of a coffee house as a “third place,” and patrons are drawn not to socialise and relax but to pursue their own highly individualised interests. The difference with Starbucks could not be starker. One visitor to the Bloomingdale boutique (in New York’s fashionable Soho district) described it as having “the feel of Switzerland rather than Seattle. Instead of velvet sofas and comfy music, it has hard surfaces, bright colours and European hostesses” (Gapper 9). By creating a system that narrows the gap between production and consumption, to the point where Nespresso boutiques advertise the coffee brand but do not promote on-site coffee drinking, the boutiques are blithely indifferent to the historical, romanticised image of the coffee house as a meeting place. The result is a coffee experience that exploits the sophistication and vanity of aspirational consumers, but ignores the socialising scaffold by which coffee houses historically and perhaps naively made some claim to community building. If anything, Nespresso restricts patrons’ contemplative field: they consider only their relationships to the brand. In turn, Nespresso offers the ultimate expression of contemporary consumer capitalism, a hyper-individual experience for a hyper-modern age. By developing a global brand that is both luxurious and niche, Nespresso became “the Louis Vuitton of coffee” (Betts 14). Where Starbucks pursued retail ubiquity, Nespresso targets affluent, upmarket cities. As chief executive Richard Giradot put it, with no hint of embarrassment or apology: “If you take China, for example, we are not speaking about China, we are speaking about Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing because you will not sell our concept in the middle of nowhere in China” (quoted in Canning 28). For this reason, while Europe accounts for 90 per cent of Nespresso sales (Betts 15), its forays into the Americas, Asia and Australasia invariably spotlights cities that are already iconic or emerging economic hubs. The first boutique in Latin America, for instance, was opened in Jardins, a wealthy suburb in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In Nespresso, Nestlé has popularised a coffee experience neatly suited to contemporary consumer trends: Club members inhabit a branded world as hermetically sealed as the aluminium pods they purchase and consume. Besides the Club’s phone, fax and online distribution channels, pods can only be bought at the boutiques, which minimise even the potential for serendipitous mingling. The baristas are there primarily for product demonstrations, whilst highly trained staff recite the machines’ strengths (be they in design or utility), or information about the actual coffees. For Club members, the boutique service is merely the human extension of Nespresso’s online presence, whereby product information becomes increasingly tailored to increasingly individualised tastes. In the boutique, this emphasis on the individual is sold in terms of elegance, expedience and privilege. Nespresso boasts that over 70 per cent of its workforce is “customer facing,” sharing their passion and knowledge with Club members. Having already received and processed the product information (through the website, boutique staff, and promotional brochures), Club members need not do anything more than purchase their pods. In some of the more recently opened boutiques, such as in Paris-Madeleine, there is even an Exclusive Room where only Club members may enter—curious tourists (or potential members) are kept out. Club members though can select their preferred Grands Crus and checkout automatically, thanks to RFID (radio frequency identification) technology inserted in the capsule sleeves. So, where Starbucks exudes an inclusive, hearth-like hospitality, the Nespresso Club appears more like a pampered clique, albeit a growing one. As described in the Financial Times, “combine the reception desk of a designer hotel with an expensive fashion display and you get some idea what a Nespresso ‘coffee boutique’ is like” (Wiggins and Simonian 10). Conclusion Instead of sociability, Nespresso puts a premium on exclusivity and the knowledge gained through that exclusive experience. The more Club members know about the coffee, the faster and more individualised (and “therefore” better) the transaction they have with the Nespresso brand. This in turn confirms Zygmunt Bauman’s contention that, in a consumer society, being free to choose requires competence: “Freedom to choose does not mean that all choices are right—there are good and bad choices, better and worse choices. The kind of choice eventually made is the evidence of competence or its lack” (Bauman 43-44). Consumption here becomes an endless process of self-fashioning through commodities; a process Eva Illouz considers “all the more strenuous when the market recruits the consumer through the sysiphian exercise of his/her freedom to choose who he/she is” (Illouz 392). In a status-based setting, the more finely graded the differences between commodities (various places of origin, blends, intensities, and so on), the harder the consumer works to stay ahead—which means to be sufficiently informed. Consumers are locked in a game of constant reassurance, to show upward mobility to both themselves and society. For all that, and like Starbucks, Nespresso shows some signs of corporate social responsibility. In 2009, the company announced its “Ecolaboration” initiative, a series of eco-friendly targets for 2013. By then, Nespresso aims to: source 80 per cent of its coffee through Sustainable Quality Programs and Rainforest Alliance Certified farms; triple its capacity to recycle used capsules to 75 per cent; and reduce the overall carbon footprint required to produce each cup of Nespresso by 20 per cent (Nespresso). This information is conveyed through the brand’s website, press releases and brochures. However, since such endeavours are now de rigueur for many brands, it does not register as particularly innovative, progressive or challenging: it is an unexceptional (even expected) part of contemporary mainstream marketing. Indeed, the use of actor George Clooney as Nespresso’s brand ambassador since 2005 shows shrewd appraisal of consumers’ political and cultural sensibilities. As a celebrity who splits his time between Hollywood and Lake Como in Italy, Clooney embodies the glamorous, cosmopolitan lifestyle that Nespresso signifies. 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