Journal articles on the topic 'Dance styling'

The purpose of the article is to identify the features of the bachata social dance as a popular modern dance form; to analyse the stylistic features and the specifics of the technique of performance. Through the research, the historical method is to study the origin and popularisation of the dance; the typological approach is to identify the factors of dance formation and evolution, the features of transformative processes. In order to provide the background to the leading recent trends in social dance forms, the method of artistic and stylistic analysis is used; the method of artistic analysis is aimed at identifying the specific stylistic elements of bachata as a social and competitive dance. In Ukrainian art studies, the bachata dance is studied as a social, cultural and artistic phenomenon for the first time ever; the process of formation and development of this dance form in retrospect is considered; the stylistic features of Dominican bachata, Western “traditional” bachata, modern bachata, sensual bachata and the specifics of its performance technique in the world-class competitions (“Sobre Todo 2019”, “BachataStars Italy 2019”, “Paris Bachata Festival Contest 2019”, Bachatastars International Champions, etc.) are defined. Specific features of bachata as a social dance form are shown in the specifics of the dance symbolism, the extreme flexibility and plasticity of performance. The study revealed the characteristic features of modern bachata styles: the quick tempos of performance, number of footwork, lack of lifts and rotations (authentic style); closed position, a close tie between dance couple, soft hip movements, wise set of turns and figures, borrowing movements and elements of ballroom dance styling (Western style); a combination of elements of Western bachata, salsa, tango and ballroom dancing, the dominance of body and hip movements (modern style); improvisation, a large variety of figures, the presence of lifts and elements of the show, elegant dress (sensual style).

The Rahim Sungai Musi Dance is a dance that tells of diversity and ethnic diversity along the banks of the Musi River involving 43 women of various ages, teenagers to adults. The research problem is how the form of the presentation of the Rahim Sungai Musi Dance in the Ogan River, village 15 Ulu, Palembang City. The aim of this research is to find out and describe the form of presentation of the Musi River Rahim Dance in the Ogan River, village 15 Ulu, Palembang City. This research uses qualitative methods with data collection techniques in the form of observation, interviews, documentation, and literature study. The form of presentation of the Rahim Sungai Musi Dance, namely the overall form presented on stage, consists of conceptual aspects and dance performances including dance moves, dance space, dance music, dance titles, themes, dance types, presentation modes, dancers, fashion, make-up, and styling, Light, property. From the results of the research and analysis it was concluded that the Rahim Sungai Musi Dance is a dance work that developed in the post-traditional era with the themes of historical, ecological and cultural issues that describe the activities of riverside communities such as fishing, washing, boats as a means of transportation, and the existence of floating markets in ancient time.

In this paper, based on the style theory of Schusterman, a researcher of pragmatic aesthetics, the style of K-POP choreography and the self-styling of cover dance performed by fans were examined. Among the factors that have contributed to K-POP's global popularity and lasting influence, the choreography style of the detailed emotions and inherent impulses expressed by K-POP choreography is the most important, and global K-POP fans are fascinated by this choreography style and feel the desire to express it with my own body. This desire is triggered by kinesthetic empathy and mirrors K-pop choreography directly through community dance to make it self-styled. The K-pop choreography style embodied through the cover dance of K-POP choreography can be experienced and understood by the public, and can become a communication channel that can trigger re-creation.

The purpose of the article is to find out the main artistic and sociocultural factors that determined the formation of professional folk dance ensembles in the USSR. The research methodology is based on a combination of historical-cultural, formal-typological, comparative analysis, which made it possible to fully reveal the range of issues associated with the subject of the research. The scientific novelty consists in identifying the main artistic and sociocultural factors that led to the formation of professional folk dance ensembles in the USSR; clarification of the general and the difference in the principles of folklore dances adaptation by Y. Churko and K. Vasylenko. Conclusions. The article concludes that in the classification schemes of the principles of folklore dances adaptation by Y. Churko and K. Vasylenko, the first (minimal adaptation of the primary folklore source) and the third (the author’s work) principles coincide. Y. Churko states that the essential in the second principle is the connection with the folklore mainstay. K. Vasylenko places before arbitrary interpretation, enrichment with tricks, borrowing the styling of classical dance, a departure from folklore is allowed. The article found the cultural factors that determined the formation of professional folk dance ensembles in the USSR: the All-Union Folk Dance Festival in 1936 in Moscow; the success of the trykolinnyi (three-part) hopak in London in 1935; numerous shows and festivals of organised amateur performances and unorganised amateurs. Among the sociocultural ones is the article “The Ballet Falsity” (1936), which introduces the idea of the inorganic demonstration of folk dance on the ballet stage, emphasised the need to create independent forms of stage presentation of this kind of choreographic art; imposition of socialist realist principles, including “nationality”, “large-scale involvement”; replicating the formula of Soviet art “national in form, socialist in content,” which required the introduction of elements of national art in ideologically verified forms.

The purpose of the article is to identify the specifics of the implementation of the primary technique and artistic-figurative features of postmodern aesthetics in the Ukrainian folk dance stage adaptation of the 21st century. Research methodology. The author applied a cultural research method, which helped to develop an appropriate view towards the folk stage choreography of the 21st century and the specifics of the implementation of the concept of postmodernism in the stage space; the method of art history analysis, which made it possible to study the direction of stylisation of folk dance stage adaptation as a unique factor in the culture of postmodernism; the dialectical method, the use of which contributed to the identification of the relationship and interdependence of the development of sociocultural factors, factors of social art and the development of folk dance stage adaptation; the method of diachronic analysis, which contributed to the identification of traditional and innovative means of expressiveness of folk-stage dance. Scientific novelty. For the first time in Ukrainian art studies, there is an attempt to analyse the modern tendencies of folk dance stage adaptation through the prism of postmodern culture; to extrapolate the philosophical concept of postmodernism to the branch of folk stage choreography; to analyse and generalist trends in the development of folk dance in the modern sociocultural space; to reveal the specificity of the aesthetics of postmodernism as well as the main technique and artistic-figurative features of its implementation in the context of the development of Ukrainian folk dance stage adaptation of the 21st century. Conclusions. The study has shown that within the postmodern paradigm, folk dance stage adaptation as a form of choreographic art undergoes specific destruction, like any aesthetic value in its classical understanding. The influence of postmodernism is manifested in augmentation of images; strengthening the freedom of creative self-expression and the interest of Ukrainian choreographers-directors to the inner state of the audience (targeted emotional impact); shifting emphasis from complex artistic models to simple structures, to enhance the aesthetic effect; complication of the associative and metaphorical aspects of the styling of the choreographic performance; the use of techniques of transition from one sign system to another to create new dimensions of understanding the work; the use of audio and visual game technologies; enrichment of the semantic and content aspects of archetypal ideas.

This work aims to represent the figure of Ida Bagus Blangsinga, a master of the Kebyar Duduk dance in Blangsinga style. The method of creation used in this work uses the creation method which includes assessment, experimentation, and formation. This method is easily understood by the stylist to express and visualize several scenes in the work. The form of the chosen work is a new creation dance, because it provides space for development according to the wishes of the stylist. This work is danced by six female dancers and one male dancer using soft make-up and fashion that supports each part of the work. This work uses the fan and reverberation properties. This dance is made as a contribution to the development of Balinese dance especially to the new generation.

In 2004, Singaporean presenter Tang Fu Kuen commissioned French avant-garde choreographer Jérôme Bel to create a work in collaboration with classical Thai dancer-choreographer Pichet Klunchun. The resulting piece is unlike most intercultural collaborations. In the world of concert dance, East–West interculturalism takes place in a variety of ways: in costuming or set design, in theme or subject matter, in choreographic structure, in stylings of the body, in energetic impetus, in spatial composition, in philosophical attitude toward art making. Bel's work, titled Pichet Klunchun and Myself, does not combine aesthetics in any of these ways. In fact, the piece may more accurately be described not as a dance but as two verbal interviews (first by Bel of Klunchun and then vice versa) performed for an audience and separated by an intermission. There is no actual intermingling of forms—Thai classical dance with European contemporary choreography—in this performance. The intercultural “choreography” here comprises a staged conversation between the artists and some isolated physical demonstrations by each.

This research is useful for revealing and explaining the choreography of the Piriang Rampak Baayun Dance at the Rantiang Tagok Studio in Padang City. This research uses qualitative methods and is also driven by documentation and uses primary and secondary information. Steps to analyze information and prove information. The research shows the choreography process of the Piring Rampak Baayun dance at Sanggar Rantiang Tagok beginning with the findings of exploration, improvisation, and composition ideas. After finding ideas and ideas from the Piring Rampak Baayun dance, the choreographer thinks about the image of the dance that will be created. Exploration thought of a movement that describes a gadih nan tageh like a Minang tribal girl. Furthermore, improvisation was carried out by the choreographer when creating the Piring Rampak Baayun dance, which was an experiment with the form of movement of a dancer and various new movements with the creativity of the dance stylist. The improv session is combined with an assessment session to sort and choose which moves are suitable for the dance theme. Composition session, arrange or arrange the parts in such a way that each other is interconnected and together form a unified whole.

Siwo Megou merupakan karya tari yang berpijak pada gerak dasar tari Cangget Lampung. Karya ini terinspirasi dari kehidupan masyarakat Lampung. Siwo Megou diambil dari bahasa Lampung yang artinya Sembilan Marga. Kesembilan marga tersebut diikat oleh aliran sungai yang mengikat daerah tersebut. Kesembilan marga disatukan oleh ‘alat’ pemersatu yaitu siger pepadun. Kesembilan marga direpresentasikan ke dalam bentuk sebuah siger pepadun sebagai simbol persatuan. Musik yang digunakan berangkat dari tabuhan tradisi Lampung yang dikomposisi sesuai kebutuhan dan interpretasi penata. Karya ini ditarikan oleh sepuluh penari, sembilan lakilaki dan satu perempuan. Menggunakan rangsang kinestetik dan rangsang ideasional. Desain dramatik dibagi menjadi tiga segmen. ABSTRACT Siwo Megou is a dance work based on the basic movements of Cangget Lampung dance. This work is inspired by the life of the people of Lampung. Siwo Megou is taken from the Lampung language, which means the Nine Clans. The nine clans are bound by a river that binds the area. The nine clans are united by a unifying tool, the Siger Pepadun. The nine clans are represented in the form of a siger pepadun as a symbol of unity. The music used departed from the wasp of the Lampung tradition which was composed according to the needs and interpretation of the stylist. The theme used is unity. Dance works are danced by ten dancers, nine men and one woman. Using kinesthetic stimuli and professional stimuli. The dramatic design is divided into three segments according to the needs of this work.The discovery of motion in this work is the discovery of new motion according to the work requirements of this work. Motion motives obtained are then processed according to the creativity and interpretation of the stylist. The work of Siwo Megou's choreography arranged and danced in groups is a creation that is divided into three segments staged in the prosecenium stage on May 21, 2019.

This study aims to examine the process of creating musical accompaniment to dance composition and the function of music in a composition of dance works. This study is conducted by using qualitative descriptive method and systematic data analysis by using the concept of dance music creation theory to deepen and interpret data specifically, the answer are found that the process of creating a composition of dance accompaniment music with the theme of a combination of eight North Sumatra ethnic groups are as follows; 1) The creation process of the dance music is a process that involves intensely between dance stylists and dancers with music stylists along with music players, in adjusting between the gestures of the dancers and the form of music as a dance accompaniment. 2) Some important things done by the music stylist (composer) in the process of composing dance accompaniment music include; a) Conduct pre-composition, b) Perform initial composition, 3) Revise composition, 3) Perform final composition. 3) The function of music in dance works includes; a) Music functions in asserting movements in dance. b) Music functions as a marker in changing dance movements, c) Music functions as a marker of atmosphere in dance. d) Music functions to strengthen the emotions of dancer. e) Music functions to strengthen the picture of the atmosphere in parts of dance composition. f) Music functions to regulate the tempo, rhythm and dynamics of dance movements. g) Music functions to emphasize the accentuations of dance movements. h) Music functions as an introduction to the climax of dance work.

Penelitian ini bertujuan mendeskripsikan bentuk penyajian tari Ratoeh Jaroe di Sanggar Budaya Aceh Nusantara (BUANA) Banda Aceh. Sumber data dan lokasi dalam penelitian ini adalah ketua sanggar Budaya Aceh Nusantara (BUANA), koreografer atau penata tari, penari tari, dan penata musik tari Ratoeh Jaroe. Pendekatan yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kualitatif dan jenis penelitian deskriptif. Pengumpulan data dilakukan dengan teknik observasi, wawancara, dan dokumentasi. Teknik analisis data dalam penelitian ini yaitu mereduksi data, display, dan verifikasi. Hasil penelitian mengungkapkan ciri spesifik bentuk penyajian tari Ratoeh Jaroe pada sanggar Budaya Aceh Nusantara (BUANA) yang diciptakan oleh Khairul Anwar pada tahun 2008, serta judul tarian ini diciptakan oleh Khairul Anwar pada tahun 2011. Tari Ratoeh Jaroe ditarikan oleh sebelas penari wanita. Tari Ratoeh Jaroe memiliki tiga puluh tiga gerakan dan lima kali pengulangan gerak. Diiringi dengan alat musik tradisional Aceh seperti seurune kale, rapai, geundrang, dan darabbuka. Tata rias yang digunakan adalah rias korektif, serta tata busana yang disesuaikan dengan konsep tari Ratoeh Jaroe. Tari ini dipentaskan pada proscenium stage namun bisa juga di lapangan terbuka. Fungsi tari Ratoeh Jaroe sebagai salah satu media dakwah yang mencerminkan nilai-nilai kependidikan, keagamaan, sopan santun, kepahlawanan, kekompakan, dan kebersamaan yang diperlihatkan melalui gerakan jari tangan penari. Pada pentas tari Ratoeh Jaroe inilah penonton akan menangkap maksud karya yang ditampilkan.
 
 
 
 This research purposed to decribe forming of presenting Ratoeh Jaroe dance at Sanggar Budaya Aceh Nusantara (BUANA) Banda Aceh. Data resources and location of the research are head of sanggar Budaya Aceh Nusantara (BUANA), choreography or dance stylist of Ratoeh Jaroe dance, dancers of Ratoeh Jaroe dance, and music stylist of Ratoeh Jaroe dance. The approaching used in this research is qualitative with descriptive research. Data collection used with observation technique, inteview and documentations. Technique analysis data in this research was data reduction, data display and verification. The result of the research shown that Ratoeh Jaroe dance at sanggar Budaya Aceh Nusantara (BUANA) created by Khairul Anwar in 2009 along with title of this dance created by Khairul Anwar in 2011. Ratoeh Jaroe dance danced by 11 female dancers, and the function Ratoeh Jaroe dance as one of da’wah media which is reflected educative, religious, politeness, heroic, harmony and togetherness that is shown by the movement of dancers’ fingers. Ratoeh Jaroe dance has thirty three movements and eleven repeating movements. Accompanied by Aceh traditional music instruments like seurune kale, rapai, geundrang and darabbuka. Cosmetic used in this dance was beauty make up, and dressmaking which is adjusted by the concept of Ratoeh Jaroe dance. This dance performed at proscenium stage and performed at outdoor area as well, thus, in this stage Ratoeh Jaroe dance would be performing with the aim to make spectators at audiences understood the purpose of creation that performed.

Sky Maps is a contemporary dance work inspired by constellations. A constellation is a collection of stars connected into a pattern in the sky. In addition to predicting luck, the uses of constellations include, among others, as a sign for planting time, and also used as navigation or directions for fishermen at sea. Constellations can also be used to determine the cardinal directions in each direction east, south, west, north have their own constellations. The constellations consist of the Scorpio constellation, the Kite constellation, the hunter constellation, and the thunder constellation. This work focuses on the shape of each constellation transformed into dance movements according to the imagination of the stylist with his creativity. The process of creating Sky Maps uses the method of Alma M. Hawkins in her book Creating Through Dance translated by Y. Sumandiyo Hadi into the book Creating Through Dance, which mentions three important stages in the formation of dance works, namely, the exploration stage, the experimental stage (improvisation), and the forming stage. The Sky Maps dance work is danced by eight male dancers who are packaged into a contemporary dance form with a duration of approximately 14 minutes. The Sky Maps dance work uses MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) music in which there are several electronic music instruments to support the atmosphere in this dance work. This work uses fantasy makeup with clothing that uses a white jumpsuit (strait full body) with a combination of navy blue and uses reflective strips (scothlite) which are arranged in such a way in one dancer's outfit. The effect of the reflector strip (scothlite) itself reflects light when illuminated and will emit light when in the dark. Besides having a uniqueness that lies in the idea and concept, another uniqueness also lies in the movement called Nyiku Lintang.

RINGKASANMANTODEA merupakan karya tari yang memvisualisasikan siklus hidup dan gerak-gerik Belalang Sembah dewasa hingga Nimfa (bayi Belalang Sembah). Kata MANTODEA diambil dari ordo mantodea, yang dalam bahasa Yunani berarti satu jenis Belalang Sembah. Gerak-gerik yang dihadirkan dalam karya tari ini adalah simbolisasi sikap Belalang Sembah disaat diam, gerakan merangkak dan gerakan ngoyok kanan dan kiri (badan seperti tertiup angin). Ide koreografi MANTODEA mempunyai keunikan tersendiri. Keunikan tersebut terdapat pada postur tubuh penata tari sendiri yang ternyata mirip Belalang Sembah. Selain kemiripan postur tubuh, penata juga tertarik pada kehidupan Belalang Sembah yang mandiri dan memiliki cinta sejati. Kemandirian disaat menjalani kehidupan. Cinta sejati disaat Belalang Sembah jantan rela mati demi membuahi sel telur. Melalui karya tari ini diharapkan memberikan inspirasi untuk belajar mandiri dan rela berkorban untuk kehidupan selanjutnya.ABSTRACTMANTODEA is the title of this dance work. The concept presented is a visualization of the life cycle and movements of Praying Mantis. The word MANTODEA is taken from the order of mantodea. The order of mantodea adapted from Greek which means one type of praying Mantis. The life cycle that is visualized in this dance work is from adult Mantiss to nymphs (Praying Mantis baby). The movements that are presented in this dance work are symbolic of the attitude of the Praying Mantis while still, crawling movements and movements of the right and left (body like blowing in the wind). The compilation of the MANTODEA choreography is unique. The uniqueness is found in the posture of the dance stylist himself who turns out to be like the Praying Mantis as the main object. Besides the similarity of the same posture the stylist is also interested in his life. The interest of the dance stylist in the life of Praying Mantis is independence and true love. Independence while living life. True love when male locusts are willing to die to fertilize an egg. Through this dance work is expected to be able to learn independently and be willing to sacrifice.

The article proposes analyze of the balalaika art and technical potential. The complex of texture- and register and timbreand phonic methods of suites performing, which represent the Ukrainian interpretation tradition of the genre, is determined. Instrumentalism principles and impacts in balalaika performance in the composer’s works of the twentieth century are revealed. Texture features of the works for balalaika suite genre are considered, the characteristics on the genesis stage of balalaika are marked: simplifi ed chord texture with narrow range, predominant two and three-voice texture in cantilena, minute passage technique with a small set of traditional rotations. Texture types of musical thematic presentment and the level of virtuosity of the stringed instruments in the sound formation are determined. The object of research is the professional performance on the balalaika. The subject of research is performing on balalaikas of Kharkiv as a component of Ukrainian musical art. In terms of instrumentalism as a type of thinking the method of sound production on the balalaika, dependent by the direct contact of the right hand fi ngers with a string, which is basic, creating countless bar, dynamic and timbral combinations, is revealed. In for balalaika M. Stetsun “With Balalaika in Spain” analyzed genre prototypes of the, that the impacts of the new romantic suite, characterized by a compound of stable (required) and free-variable cycle parts, based on the experience of the other genre forms of music-making, are immediately traced. Attention is paid to the unplugged (where violin takes the leading position), dynamic (where piano owns leading positions) and texture capabilities. Balalaika qualities are analyzed: limitation of natural acoustic properties requires texture mobility and frequent use of the tremolo; dynamic capabilities are also limited, as the result the “step” dynamics development is applied; texture possibilities are largely constrained by the range and technology. The principle of genre and stylistic synthesis, in which song and dance origins of national folklore and shaping structural logic borrowed from the experience of the Ukraine tradition are organically combined, is formulated. Multiple ties with folk traditions, which include: reliance on folklore themes and quotes; development techniques of the song thematic (inner thematic variation, imitation roll, undervoice polyphony, hidden two-voice texture); metro-rhythmic formula, coming from the dance genre; irregular accent, intended to the saturation of images with internal dynamics are revealed in the Concerto for balalaika and orchestra by A. Gaidenko. The use of styling techniques of playing folk music instruments in the balalaika party, which was used for the creation of a bright and deep national painted images typing, is specially emphasized. Overbalance of the lyrical narrative thematic invention, where folk type of the thematic invention makes to rearrange semantic accents in the genre interpretation, is identifi ed in “Variations on the Ukrainian Theme” by Gregory Tsitsalyuk. Improvisation, interpreted by the composer as a fi xed freedom, numerous brilliant colored soloist’s ritornels together with the main themes performing at the piano, broken chords, scale-wise passages – all marked methods indicate a high level of both externally-demonstrative and deep-semantic level of the music content. The arsenal of technical complexity methods of performing (articulation, strokes, complex elements), running on the disclosure of the musical work style; diversity of the texture design of musical thematic invention; genre and semantic specifi city (landscapes, personal experiences, household sketches, dance and song images), which is also connected with the balalaika specifi cs; and the dynamic profi le of musical drama cycle is detected. The idea of the historically formed specifi cs of textured and tonal articulation intoning on the balalaika in its academic status is adopted. Such levels of analysis like detection of existing texture and melodic formulas and connected with it fi ngering and articulation complex; timbre and texture and register variance confi rmed the instrumentalism genre specifi city. Articulation, timbre and texture technological formulas of balalaika performance, in terms of suite genre, which are universal from the point of view of the instrumental thinking specifi city, are found; their role in other genre and stylistic creativity conditions for balalaika are justifi ed. There are identifi ed such outlooks of research as the Concerto for balalaika and orchestra by P. Haydamakа, A. Gaidenko and the creation of a special “dictionary” as a system of typical historically selected texture and genre formulas. Piece, which reveal the balalaika evolution in the musical performing culture, served the basis for research. Current stylistic processes and their transformation in modern concert- and pedagogical practice were depicted in f piece for balalaika by G. Tsitsalyuk, P. Haydamakа, A. Gaidenko like in the mirror. Analyzed examples demonstrate the individual stylistic interpretation of genre, typical for the development of academic instrumentalism in the XX century. It was found, that art of balalaika performing infl uences the instrumental style of composing and keeps a memory of genre of composing and performing art in this sphere (methods of instrumental phonation and timbre- and phonic development).

This research aims to analyze Zapin Bertasbih Dance Choreography in Sanggar Tasik Malay Art Pekanbaru. This type of research is qualitative research with descriptive methods of analysis. The research instrument is the researchers own and is assisted by supporting instruments such as stationery and cameras. Primary data types and secondary data. Data collection techniques are carried out by employing library studies, observations, interviews and documentation. The steps to analyze the data are to describe, interpret and draw conclusions. The results showed that Zapin Bertasbih dance choreography performed by choreographer Tri Sisca Noviani is a new dance creation worked with a choreographic approach. Zapin Bertasbih Dance Choreography can be seen in Form and Content. In the form motion, there are 15 kinds of motion, floor patterns in the form of vertical, horizontal, diagonal and zigzag, the composition of groups in the form of simultaneous and split, dancers (6 people), wearing Malay costumes, dance accompaniment by wearing gambus, accordion, flute, darbuka, marwas and tambur, property using tasbih. In content, among them the idea that arises from taking things done by Muslims in performing worship practices to the creator by using tasbih as his property. The atmosphere that appears in Zapin Dance is peaceful, joyful and calm. Therefore, Zapin Bertasbih Dance is worked on with choreographic planning by his stylist. Because Zapin Bertasbih Dance begins with an idea that departs from Zapin Melayu itself where Zapin Melayu underlies the creation of Zapin Bertasbih. The source of Garapan from Zapin Bertasbih is some movements from Zapin Melayu, namely the movement of worship, Middle Dizziness, Broken Chicks and the Movement of Meniti batang. Then worked by the stylist and arranged movements that have been created into a new form of dance. In content, among them the idea that arises from taking things done by Muslims in performing worship practices to the creator by using tasbih as his property.

Labaong Labuntar is a new creation of dance art originating from the folklore of Sumbawa, West Nusa Tenggara, depicting the character of two princess characters named Lala Balong and Lala Buntar from the Samawa Kingdom. The idea for this work is motivated by a social phenomenon, namely friendship relationships. The process or stages of creation that are followed include: (1) Ngawirasa (inspiration), (2) Ngawacak (exploration), (3) Ngeplan (conception), (4) Ngawangun (execution), (5) Ngebah (production). This work is realized in the form of a new dance creation consisting of two female dancers depicting their respective characters, namely Lala Balong and Lala Buntar. The structure of this work is divided into three parts, namely beginning, content and end. The dance accompaniment used in this work is Gong Genang with the addition of several instruments such as satong srek, gendang, pelompong, and serune. The "LABAONG LABUNTAR" dance uses minimalist make-up which depicts a princess and the fashion uses traditional Sumbawa costumes which have been modified by the stylist, without reducing the beauty and comfort of the user. The results of the dance creation process "LABAONG LABUNTAR" were performed at the Natya Mandala Building, Indonesian Arts Institute, Denpasar.

Jepaplok merupakan judul dari sebuah karya tari kelompok yang di dalamnya melibatkan sembilan penari perempuan. Kata Jepaplok yaitu berasal dari Njeplak (Manggap) dan Nyaplok (mencaplok). Karya tari ini berawal dari pertunjukan Jaranan di Tulungagung Jawa Timur. Barongan atau biasa disebut Caplokan/Jepaplok adalah penggambaran hewan mitologi berupa ular naga sebagai penguasa hutan yang jahat. Sosok yang dilihat dari segi visualnya menyeramkan dan ganas, serta dari sudut geraknya yang sangat ekspresif. Gerak-gerak dasar yang digunakan antara lain seperti leang-leong, ngaplak, ngepruk, sondongan, pattetan, dan sundangan. Karya tari Jepaplok terdiri dari 4 bagian adegan. Pada bagian introduksi dipertunjukkan sosok Barongan dan Jaranan yang berbeda ruang dan kemudian saling menyerang. Bagian 1 berfokus pada gerak Barongan tanpa menggunakan properti topeng. Pada bagian 2 persiapan penyerangan terhadap penari Jaranan, sehingga dalam bagian ini sudah menggunakan properti topeng. Bagian 3 lebih kepada esensi penggunakan topeng dan diolah dengan permainan ritme dan menggunakan komposisi berpasangan. Bagian 4 yaitu akhir dari pertunjukan karya tari Jepaplok yaitu perangan Barongan dan Jaranan. Tetapi pada bagian akhir ini tidak semata-mata saling berhadapan satu dengan yang lain melainkan hanya sebatas permainan per kelompok. ABSTRACT Jepaplok is the title of a workgroup in which dance involving nine female dancers. The word Jepaplok is derived from Njeplak (Mangap) and Nyaplok (annexed). This dance originated in the works of interest in dance salon when watching a show used Jaranan (dance horse) in Tulungagung, East Java. The point of view of the Director of the dance stopped when one of the characters enter the staging area performance Barongan. Suspenseful atmosphere emerges when section toward the battle between used Horse and Barongan. Barongan or commonly called Caplokan/Jepaplok is the depiction of mythological animals in the form of a dragon serpent as ruler of the evil forest. The figure is seen in terms of the Visual sinister and vicious, as well as from the point of highly expressive movements that inspired the stylist for him to dance in a group dance with paper based on motion and feel the music used Jaranan Sentherewe Tulungagung, East Java. The focus of the implementation work of the dance called Jepaplok is more to perangan and Barongan figures. Basic motion-motion that is used among other things such as leang-leong, ngaplak, ngepruk, sondongan, pattetan, and sundangan. In the work of this Jepaplok dance doesn't bring up the story and consists of four parts of the scene. On the introduction of a dance figure demonstrating Barongan and different spaces used Horse and then each other. Part one is more focused on motion the Barongan poured into members of the body of a dancer without using the mask property. In part two, namely more to preparation which showed Barongan attacks against dancers used Horse, so in this section are already using property mask. Part three more to the essence of the use of mask and mingled with the game rhythm and composition using paired. Part four, namely the ending of the show dance work Jepaplok, as in general the final part of the art used Horse namely perangan and Barongan used Horse. But in the end, it does not solely face each other with one another but rather only as a game between groups.

Kepret Kamale merupakan perpaduan dari kata Kepret yang diambil dari nama gerak tari Jaipongan Jawa Barat, dan Kamale yang dalam bahasa Sunda berarti kemana-mana. Maka jika digabungkan, kedua kata ini menjadi kepret yang kemana-mana. Karya ini menjadi sebuah karya yang memadukan tari Jaipongan dan gerak Pop Dance seperti Waking dan K-pop (Koreanstyle) tetapi tetap berorientasikan pada gerak Kepret. Tipe tarian Kepret Kamale adalah studi dari gerak Kepret tari Jaipongan. Dengan pengembangan gerak dan pengolahan gerak atas kemungkinan- kemungkinan dalam mengembangkan gerak tersebut, misalnya gerak Kepret pada umumnyadigerakkan pada tangan lalu divariasikan ke bagian tubuh lainnya seperti kepala, bahu, dada, badan, lengan, pinggul, pantat, dan kaki, maka akan menghasilkan teknik dan gerak yang baru. Kepret Kamale is Kepret taken from the name of Jaipongan dance movement of West Java and Kamale taken from the Sundanese language which means everywhere. Kepret motion taken from Jaipongan dance movement of West Java which is characteristic of dance that exist in West Java. Kepret motion is varied and then developed with aspects of time, space, and energy. So finding new techniques and moves.However, this dance will still be directed and oriented to Jaipongan dance and combined with Pop Dance movements such as Waking and K-pop (Koreanstyle) but still oriented to Kepret movement according to the ability of the stylist. Dance type KepretKamale is a study of motion Kepret Jaipongan dance. Search and development of motion or possibilities in developing the motion, for example Kepret motion is generally moved on the hands and then varied to other body parts such as head, shoulders, chest, body, arms, hips, buttocks and feet, it will produce techniques and motion the new one.

Abstract A prominent figure in national ballet, Oleg Danovski is one of the personalities of 20th century ballet. He gave the world a vast repertoire consisting of classical, neoclassical, modern ballets, Romanian ballets, and divertimentos for operas. Despite his success with classical ballet staging that would make him famous abroad, the choreographer also turned his attention to folklore, by addressing specific local themes. Thus, through this desire to study and stylize the folk dance, he brought an important contribution to the Romanian cultivated dance, from which the image of the Romanian character dance would stem. He was devoted to the idea of Romanian ballet theater and he advocated for original music for ballet, a national repertoire and the development of the Romanian ballet school. His Romanian creations are precious pages of the history of Romanian ballet that should not be forgotten, and that have enormously contributed to the enrichment of the original choreographic repertoire.

Background. The creative mastery process of the musical and rock opera genres has become one of the urgent vocational training problems today considering the growing popularity of these genres both in the world and in Ukrainian musical culture. There is a need to investigate the methodological aspect of professional activity in this direction like a set of requirements for the modern actor working in the music-dramatic genre. The lack of specialized literature and scientific works which investigates the embodiment phenomenon of vocal and stage images by actors in contemporary Ukrainian musicals and rock operas raises an urgent need for its consideration. Phenomenological analysis of the vocal and stage creativity of the actress Nataliya Sumska, namely, her stage works in rock operas “Eneida by Serhii Bedusenko based on the poem-burlesque by I. Kotliarevsky, “Bila Vorona” “(The White Crow”) by Genadii Tatarchenko and Yurii Rybchynskyi and “Nezrivnianna” (“The Incomparable”) Musical, based on the famous play by Peter Quilter (the composer Ivan Nebesnyi) are the material of this study. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to investigate the performing principles and vocal techniques that contribute to the embodiment of contentemotional female images characteristics in contemporary musicals and rock operas on the example of Nataliya Sumska’s acting creativity. The results of the study. The success of the Nataliya Sumska stage activity is closely related to the actress’ high level of vocal skills. Didona’s role in the rock opera “Eneida” has required from the performer a whole range of professional skills, first of all, vocal – that is, acting universalism. The vocal and stage image created by Nataliya Sumska is realized through singing, which organically combines the traditions of folk-song performance with the best achievements of the national academic and variety performing arts. The dominance of “folk” color in the sound of the voice is one of the creative tasks that the author of the rock opera sets before the actress. The bright individual “synthesizing” vocal and performing style is the original combination of ethnic origin with jazz and pop rhythms and harmonies offered by the composer, made the unique image of Didona by N. Sumska’s performance. Thus, a perfect actress’s mastery of different singing styles and the ability to use her own voice to achieve high artistic output is of great value, as composers in rock operas and musicals are constantly performing acts of styling. In the role of Jeanne d’Arc from the Ukrainian rock opera by Genadii Tatarchenko and Yurii Rybchynskyi’s “Bila Vorona” (“The White Crow”) the main features of N. Sumska’s art were clearly revealed, such as: great tragedy, heroic pathos and pathetics combined with lyric scourge and poetic sorrow. The stage techniques, by which N. Sumska created the image of Jeanne, were: enhanced sound supply and high dynamic tone of performance, expedient use of registers, expanded palette of sound dynamics and its filing (“filer un son”); going beyond the range of sound characteristic of academic vocal performance, the use of different singing styles and techniques; skillful presentation of intonation recitation gradations (from whisper to cry); possession of sound amplification equipment; maintaining a vocal line, subject to any nature of sound production; finally, acting is the ability to convey the character of the heroine through the voice, facial expressions, gestures, to make the viewer feel the pain and joy of her soul. Thus, Nataliya Sumska is fully capable of using the necessary means of artistic expression, various methods of performance, revealing the semantic and emotional content of the stage image and the work as a whole. In the “Nezrivnianna” (“The Incomparable”) Musical Nataliya Sumska embodied the comedic image of an American pianist who believed in her talent as an opera singer and one of the earliest representatives of “outsider music”. The actress brilliantly demonstrated that she was able to sing both “strictly past the notes” and only in “disgusting” voice, as her role required. She did not only change her voice for the horrific performance of operatic classics, but she was able to convey faith and belief in her own success to her Florence heroine. The actress was able to achieve great artistic power in the embodiment of the image, first of all, thanks to the mastery of vocal technique, as different modes of the larynx, specific techniques: conscious oscillation of sound, different attack power, accentuation of individual sounds, etc. Conclusions. Considered the creating specifics of vocal and stage image in contemporary rock operas and musicals by actress Nataliya Sumska, we came to the conclusion that vocal performance in modern rock operas and musicals poses special requirements for actresses. Modern musicals and rock opera demonstrate all possible polystylistic and polygenre syntheses, including the incorporation of folk and academic elements, and some genres of light music. The vocal part is complicated by changes in priorities in harmony, which is represented mainly by dissonant sounds. Accordingly, the melody of rock operas and musicals today is filled with unconventional unexpected intonations and lines, characteristic of metrorhythmic constructions. Conversational intonations, variety of singing manners and vocal techniques that form the basis of modern musical performances help to emphasize the emotional lines of the work. The presence of conversational dialogues, dance episodes with specific plasticity, the use of elements of the musical language of other cultures, a wide style range (from folklore to avant-garde, from Baroque stylings to jazz and smash hit), features of singing with a microphone – all this requires knowledge of specific acting and choreographic techniques, a good mastery of vocal technique, that is, all that constitutes professional acting universalism.

Coral rocks, as an iconic element of Bali's coast, have a central role in the island's art and culture. Music, musical arts and dance in Bali often use the character and unique shapes of coral rocks found along the coast to become inspiration for works of art. In Jembrana district, precisely in Pengeragoan village, there is Yeh Leh Beach, on this beach there are beautiful coral rocks which later became the inspiration for the creation of the creative percussion work entitled Wajaprani. The rock's sturdy character even when hit by waves is an inspiration for creating dynamic rhythms. with the character of the coral rocks on Yeh Leh Beach, the stylist thought it would be very suitable to use the medium of gamelan gong kebyar to implement the characters on the coral rocks.

Abstract The first four (out of eight) books of Daniello Bartoli’s (1608–85) officially commissioned Istoria della Compagnia di Gesù, dedicated to Asia, were devoted to recounting the miraculous deeds of Francis Xavier (1506–52). A century after his death, and thirty years after his canonization, Xavier was still an influential role model for all the Jesuits (especially those who desired to become missionaries in the “Indies”). Bartoli was a supreme stylist (Giacomo Leopardi later called him “the Dante of baroque prose”), and his talents were stretched to their limits by the imperative to celebrate Xavier’s miracles in ways that still accorded with the instructive genre of history. This article examines how Bartoli deployed his sources, which included not only previous biographies of the saint by João de Lucena and Orazio Torsellini, but unpublished letters and, most significantly, the report prepared for his canonization (the Relatio Rotae).

ABSTRACT-This study aims to describe the professional stimuli in using property in learning Malay dance creations in SMP Negeri 5 Medan. The theory used in this research is the professional excitatory theory and property theory. Professional stimulation according to Smith in Suharto (1985: 23), namely "the arable dance is the result of thought of imagination and pouring a visualized in accordance with the idea of the dance stylist". Property according to Endo (2006: 104) "is a tool that is used (driven in dancing." The population in this study was students of class VIII of SMP Negeri 5 Medan and the sample was students of class VIII-A of SMP Negeri 5 Medan, with a total of 34 The methodology in this research was carried out by direct observation, documentation, literature study and assessment using rubrics.The data analysis technique was quantitative descriptive.In the SMP Negeri 5 Medan school, the professional stimuli in learning Malay dance creations in class VIII-A were already This is because the students are able to develop ideas and ideas in making / working on dance moves with the Lancang Kuning music accompaniment using properties namely shawls and sticks.The observation of these values can be seen based on the rubric assessment with the results of individual scores with the assessment components of creativity, wiraga , wirama and wirasa get an average value 80.56, with the predicate "Good (80-90)" as many as 20 students and if presented is 58.83%, while the group assessment with the highest score achieved by group 1 is 93.75, this is because the calculation of scores based on aspects of the assessment of cooperation, floor patterns, and uniformity gets a score of 4 (very good). The explanation above shows that the teacher of the field of study has succeeded in teaching the method / material "Professional stimuli by using shawl and stick properties in producing simple choreography". Keywords: Professional stimuli, property ABSTRAK-Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mendeskripsikan rangsang idesional dalam menggunakan properti pada pembelajaran tari kreasi Melayu di SMP Negeri 5 Medan. Teori yang dipakai pada penelitian ini adalah teori rangsang idesional dan teori properti. Rangsang idesional menurut Smith dalam Suharto (1985: 23) yaitu “garapan tari merupakan hasil pemikiran dari imajinasi dan penuangan rasa yang divisualisasikan sesuai dengan ide penata tari”. Properti menurut Endo (2006: 104) “adalah suatu alat yang digunakan (digerakkan dalam menari.” Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah peserta didik kelas VIII SMP Negeri 5 Medan dan sampelnya adalah peserta didik kelas VIII-A SMP Negeri 5 Medan, dengan jumlah 34 peserta didik. Metodelogi dalam penelitian ini dilakukan dengan cara observasi langsung, dokumentasi, studi kepustakaan dan penilaian dengan menggunakan rubrik. Teknik analisis datanya adalah deskriptif kuantitatif. Pada sekolah SMP Negeri 5 Medan, rangsang idesional pada pembelajaran tari Kreasi Melayu di kelas VIII-A sudah tercapai. Hal ini dikarenakan para siswa mampu untuk mengembangkan ide dan gagasannya dalam membuat/menggarap gerak tari dengan iringan musik Lancang Kuning menggunakan properti yakni selendang dan tongkat. Pengamatan nilai tersebut dapat dilihat berdasarkan penilaian rubrik dengan hasil perolehan nilai individu dengan komponen penilaian kreativitas, wiraga, wirama dan wirasa mendapatkan nilai rata-rata 80.56, dengan predikat “Baik (80-90)” sebanyak 20 siswa dan jika dipersentasikan adalah 58.83%, sedangkan penilaian kelompok dengan nilai tertinggi diraih oleh kelompok 1 yaitu 93.75, hal ini dikarenakan perhitungan skor yang berdasarkan aspek penilaian kerjasama, pola lantai, dan keseragaman mendapat skor 4 (sangat baik). Penjelasan di atas menunjukkan bahwa guru bidang studi telah berhasil dalam mengajarkan metode/materi “Rangsang Idesional dengan menggunakan properti selendang dan tongkat dalam menghasilkan koreografi yang sederhana”. Kata Kunci : Rangsang Idesional, Properti

The article explains the role of extra-musical factors in the creation of the compositions, caused by the action of the art synthesis as a cross-cutting theme of the composer’s creativity in the European tradition. In the academic art, this phenomenon has acquired the status of the program method, which to some extent has directed the listeners’ perceptions. The actualization of the present topic and its predetermined task is to determine the degree of the correlation of the semantics of a new composition to its artistic original, since it is precisely on the “artistic type translation” that both the programmability and the ways of its implementation by means of the performing interpretation depend. The object of the article is the programmability as a condition of the composer’s idea; the subject is the author’s concept of “The Ancient Kiev Frescoes” by A. Stashevsky for the accordion, implemented in the genre-stylistic system of the individual and national-musical thinking. The purpose of the article is to identify the genre-stylistic factors of the author’s conception of the selected composition, which reflects the sound-poetic ideas about the ancient history of the native land, while forming the national memory of the modern Ukrainian. Analysis of the recent publications on the research topic. Among the fundamental works devoted to programmability, we should point out the works by V. Konen, which trace the tendency to expand the limits of programmability in music at the expense of non-musical influences, as well as those by M. Lobanova, who characterizes the synthetic genres (opera, theatre music, ballet, program symphony) in the historical dimension. G. Khutorskaya owing to the introduction of the category “interspecific translation” into the scientific circulation explains the means of the synthesis of arts in vocal compositions [5]. The interspecific interaction of the theatre, painting, dance, poetry and literature contributes to the reproduction of the complete picture of the world in music. The material for the development of the problem is the composition for the accordion called “The Ancient Kiev Frescoes” by A. Stashevsky, one of the bright representatives of the modern accordion school of Ukraine. Observing the author’s premieres (in particular, the accordion compositions) in the quality of a professional listener, one can state that his creativity has become an important part of the musical culture of the Slobozhanska Ukraine. As a multifaceted personality – an accordion performer, teacher, composer, and scientist – he embodies new ideas, genre-style models and corresponding techniques of the performing skills in his activities. A comprehensive analysis of the genre stylistics and a personal view of the performance dramaturgy of the interpretation of the program cycle have been given. “The Ancient Kiev Frescoes” by A. Stashevsky (2005), besides the program name, have a genre refinement of the “suite-notebook”, which contains the key to understanding the essence of the stated program. First, the notebook (the album) is holistic, and contains information about interrelated events of a certain era, arranged in a timeline (the linear sequence). Secondly, the pages of the notebook can be represented as the planes where the images are located – the frescoes of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kiev. The most valuable decoration of the cathedral is the mural, which has been preserved for centuries and is an example of the skill and artistic taste of ancient Ukrainians. In general, St. Sophia Cathedral embodies the philosophical credo of the era with its national idea, the expression of the spirituality of the Christian worldview. There are nine parts in the suite-notebook, each with a program title. The author’s idea is realized, on the one hand, through the programmability of the picture type, when the parts of the suite cycle constitute a single composition that is associated with a multi-figured mural (with its mosaic, stained glass). It is impossible to capture it at one glance, so getting acquainted with it implies a consistent arrangement of the fragments of the whole in time. On the other hand, there is a pervasive narrative throughout the cycle: all the parts sound attacca. The pages of the chronicle seem to be expanded in the temporal axis; there is also a general logic of changing the various musical murals that is subordinate to the latent programmability: from “Intrada” to the climax in Part 8 and Part 9 an associate connection (a story line) is established. Programmability-driven musical stylistic contains repetitive segments of the author’s language focused on archaic styling. Because of the singing type of thematism, the ostinato nature and variability of the means of its development, the expanded fret and tonal nature, the mosaic principle of the stringing of the motives, and their combining. In the conclusions it is emphasized that in the program composition for the accordion A. Stashevsky skillfully realized his plan as a projection on historical, musical-performing and picture-everyday images-echo. The incarnation of the ancient history of Kievan Rus by means of the fret-harmonious, texture-timbre and compositional-dramatic means fully presents the author’s conception of the composition – the harmony of a man and history, the updating of the Past, in order to understand one’s own mental foundations, self-awareness in the national cosmos and logo.

Research objective. The article aims to describe the structural and stylistic components of performing folklorism and consideration regarding the existing definitions of multifaceted concept «performing folklorism», which represents theoretical and methodological tools for deep analysis of stylistics, genre, technical and performing elements and musical features that folklore expresses, their extrapolation to performing interpretative diversity in the context of Ukrainian music art. The methodology of the research is based on the theoretical, historical, comparative and analytical methods. The scientific novelty outlines structural and stylistic components of performing folklorism, which significantly affect the expression of national features in modern Ukrainian performing art. Conclusions. In a concept “performing folklorism” are two ponderable constituents in the dialogic form of intercommunication of these systems: professional academic performing art and folklore in his various palette of expression. Performing interpretation is a main point of arranged and ethnographic folklorism, that present performing folklorism. An important value in the context of modern national performing style belongs to the Hutsul instrumental traditional music, which is the unique artistic phenomenon of the Ukrainian musical culture. In general, the Hutsul genres played an important role in the formation and development of Ukrainian instrumental music, even though the Hutsul performance tradition mostly has an instrumental type of music presentation. The Hutsul region presents a numeral musical tool, ramified genre palette, and original stylish description that is provided due to the whole complex of structural and performing elements (strokes, articulation, fingering principles, timbre descriptions of sounding, dynamic). The outlined lines of the Hutsul folklore are traced in academic performing art. It follows to underline the originality of artistic expression and stylish originality of musical art of the Carpathian region, that predefined by the row of objective structural and style components: 1) maintenance and functioning of archaic elements of musical structure, such as a variant, improvisation, repetition; 2) considerable genre variety of executable music (kolomyjka, hutsulka, Ukrainian dance, hopak, snowstorm); 3) rhythms, as a cementing factor of musically-composition structure; 4) ornamental melodious line. The outlined structural and style components of the Hutsul folklore present wide interpretation multiplicity within the performing folklorism. The ponderable constituent of traditional music is the various system of technically-performing features. On technically-performing and genre-stylish levels, violin traditional art of the Hutsul region presents all system of the musical expressive features, presents traditional professional school of the violin performing art with a clear vector on the maintenance of archaic structures of musical compositions and them highly-artistic interpretation based on a wide palette of the whole complex of technical possibilities, that crystallized in the folktraditional performing. Ukrainian vocal, instrumental and vocally-instrumental collectives reconstruct an authentic genre-stylish model within the performing folklorism. Underlined the diversity of folk styles, symbiosis of the folk manner of singing with the academic vocal art. Thus, the national performing style provides an intelligent and deep interpretation of authorial works of folklore maintenance, a study of a wide palette of the traditional music that is characterized by ethnic characteristic intonation (concept of O. Kozarenko) musicians. The stylish component of performing folklorism presents differentiation of folk styles of implementation, following regional features, genres, forms, features of the traditional musical expressiveness. Performing folklorism, as a highly artistic phenomenon in Ukrainian music art, opened new possibilities for the representation of folk-instrumental and vocal traditions in the context of the national professional academic performing. Review and learning of the structural and stylistic components of performing folklorism, such as ethnic-regional style, genre characteristics, details, articulation, fingering, manner of play, vocal manner, dynamic nuances, timbral coloristic palette, determines the quality of the performing interpretation of the music compositions with the brightly national dominant. Within the performing folklorism crystallized appropriate professional repertoire, which comprises genres of vocal, choir, and instrumental music with the bright images and symbols of Ukrainian national folklore.

RINGKASANSelf-Accepptance merupakan karya tari yang berangkat dari pengalaman empiris serta refleksi diri terhadap peristiwa yang dialami di masa lalu hingga kini. Self-Acceptance adalah suatu kondisi dan sikap positif individu dalam bentuk penghargaan terhadap diri, menerima segala kelebihan dan kekurangan, mengetahui kemampuan dan kelemahan, tidak menyalahkan diri sendiri maupun orang lain dan berusaha sebaik mungkin agar dapat berubah menjadi lebih baik dari sebelumnya. Self-Acceptance menginterpretasikan bagaimana penata menyikapi beauty bullying yang terjadi dan dampaknya, yang kemudian berproses pada penerimaan serta cinta terhadap diri. Kecantikan seharusnya tentang bagaimana persepsi diri terhadap diri sendiri serta penerimaan dan cinta terhadap diri seutuhnya. Mencintai serta menerima akan kekurangan fisik yang ada pada diri merupakan hal yang sangat penting untuk disadari dan diterapkan pada diri sendiri.ABSTRACTSelf-Acceptance. Self-Acceptance is a dance work that departs from empirical experience and self-reflection on events experienced in the past until now. Self-acceptance is a condition and positive attitude of individuals in the form of self-respect, accepting all strengths and weaknesses, knowing their abilities and weaknesses, not blaming themselves or others and trying their best to change for the better than before. Self-Acceptance interprets how the stylist responds to beauty bullying that occurs to him and the impact that occurs after finding the beauty bullying, which then proceeds to acceptance and self-love. Beauty should be about how you perceive yourself and accept and love yourself completely. Loving and accepting the physical shortcomings that exist in yourself is very important to realize and apply to yourself.

Introduction. Nowadays, continuing the neo-style trend in musical art started in the 20 century, increased attention is being attracted to the intentions of stylization and reinterpretation of a certain historical artistic models, where stylistic allusions (a kind of indirect citation, hint) use. This stylistic phenomenon has special spiritual and ethical preconditions that culturologists interpret in view of the so-called neo-restoration trends in culture. The above also applies to Ukrainian violin music, where the creative method of stylization, which has acquired such great importance in the art of the twentieth century, is actively in demand even today, in the modern postmodern style situation. Thus, the appearance of pieces in the Ukrainian violin repertoire, which even by their name declare its relation with the models of baroque genres, programming a certain creative idea, deserves to be studied in order to explore their direct relation to the original genre form and identify the algorithms for its stylization. All this, at least, will have a positive effect on the practice of the perception of stylization artifacts of a certain genre invariant, including the miniatures of the baroque type. The material of this research is the works of modern Ukrainian composers in the genre of violin miniatures, based on stylization of Baroque genre forms, which have taken a prominent place in academic musical creativity in general and in the history of the formation of the violin repertoire in particular. The stylistic variety of genre reminiscences in the Ukrainian violin repertoire is reflected in a number of materials by Ukrainian researchers (I. Andrievskyi, I. Hrebneva, V. Zaranskyi, I. Karachevtseva, V. Lapsiuk, I. Pilatiuk, S. Sandiuk, L. Skrypnyk, S. Yadlovskyi), where, in particular, the question of the demand for the so-called “violin miniature” (A. Haray, N. Pilatiuk) appears. However, the conceptual definition of a violin miniature today does not look completely methodologically adequate: the stereotypical norms of comprehending this class of genres touch exclusively the side of scale proportions, which contradicts the latest approaches to the interpretation of genre forms by the method of semantic analysis, namely, when the genre invariant is considered as a sign of a certain typed content. However, only taking into account the act of typification, the reference indications necessary for the formation of musical consciousness are established, which serve as a reliable guide in recognizing the genre nature of a work and discovering the cultural, historical and communicative ties necessary for its understanding. Thus, the purpose of this article is to reveal the peculiarities of stylistic modifications of baroque genres in the Ukrainian violin repertoire of the early XXI century and to propose methodological guidelines for analyzing the diversity of interpretations of the genre invariant under the influence of the historically actual style. The complex of the analytical methods (analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, comparative studies), as well as the historicaltypological and the prognostic approach was used in this research. Results of the research. The examples of stylization of baroque genres prove that in the postmodern stylistic dimension the intention to genre-stylistic allusions to the historically known is an important factor in the expression of the cultureforming ties of distant eras with modernity. Quite often, the very name of the genre used by the composer gives an orientation towards the perception of the range of corresponding historical and stylistic associations. The method of stylizing baroque genres and their rethinking thanks to new means of musical expression (specific melodic development, a special character of sound production and articulation, etc.) gives vivid artistic results. The samples examined demonstrate a variety of interesting author’s solutions based on the involvement of a historical genre model. Thus, Hanna Leonova’s Toccata (2010) is quite consistent with the genre image oftoccata as a “motor” piece. However, we note that the genre form of toccata is by no means associated (at least for today) with the actual violin repertoire, especially with the miniature, since it primarily existed in clavier music (recall, in particular, the clavier toccatas by J. S. Bach), and a row of the samples has a magnificent solemnity of sound and compositional monumentality. Nevertheless, the author found the opportunities to implement the “toccata” style, hinting at the genesis of this genre (etymologically – from “touch”, “sort out”), thanks to the compositional and performance specifics – improvisation, stability of rhythmical “motor” movement and high virtuosity. In “Sarabanda” by Vitalii Manik (2013) we observe only partial keeping of the three-beat meter normative for the chosen genre model, however, with a polyphonic presentation adequate in relation to the primary stylistic modus; in “Minuet” by Oleksii Voitenko (2003) – the stylistics of “music to dance”, but within the compositional boundaries of sonatina without the developing part. Victor Telichko’s “Partita” (2011) demonstrates cyclicality and reliance on dance elements, quite characteristic of the baroque version of this genre, but embodied in Ukrainian folk material. Avoiding quotations, the author preserves the melodic-rhythmic structure of folk-song material and creates his own thematic complex. At the same time, the use of a solo violin in this work is fully consistent with the traditions of the Baroque era, namely, Bach’s partita model; that is why a kind of allusion to the genre invariant arises. That is, applying allusions to baroque genres in violin miniature, contemporary Ukrainian composers demonstrate at least two approaches: the first is stylistic adequacy to the genre invariant (in its baroque version); the second is its actual stylization with the introduction of either a certain stylistic context, or an individual author’s compositional idea. Conclusions. Thus, the new conceptualization of the violin miniature requires an appropriate research approach, the basis of which is the semantic method of analyzing the genre invariant in musical works-stylizations, which has proven its fruitfulness in the postmodern era. Since the method of stylization always provides for a special relation to the genre invariant, the constancy of which has the ability to accumulate ever new typifying meanings, only a combination of analytical discourses that take into account both the genesis of the genre form and its stylistic modifications can form theoretically verified analytical models that are useful, among other things, in the learning process, contributing to the development of the musical consciousness of the recipient – the performer and the listener.

Статья посвящена анализу фортепианных циклов якутского композитора К. А. Герасимова, предназначенных для учащихся детских музыкальных школ. Существуют небольшие заметки о сочинениях, принадлежащие З. И. Кириллиной, А. П. Решетниковой, Н. Л. Габышевой. Цель настоящей работы — обозначить творческие подходы композитора, выработанные при создании репертуара для детей. Материалом для анализа послужили циклы «День из детства», «Якутская сюита», «На птичьем дворе», а также Концертино для фортепиано с оркестром, в которых композитор органично сочетает элементы национальной традиционной культуры с инструктивными техническими задачами. Важным достижением становится и неизменная опора на современный музыкальный язык, позволяющий подготовить юных исполнителей к пониманию актуальных произведений искусства. К. А. Герасимов практически не использует цитатный материал, но его мастерское проникновение в стиль традиционной якутской музыки вызывает стойкие ассоциации с узнаваемыми прообразами. В «Чабырҕах» («Скороговорки») и «Оhуохай» («Осуохай) это — одноименные жанры, во второй теме Концертино, а также в пьесах «Ѳтѳххѳ» («У старинной якутской усадьбы»), «Биhик ырыата» («Колыбельная»), «Пробуждение», «Грусть», «Утро» и других — стиль мышления дьиэрэтии ырыа. Танцевальные ритмоформулы прослеживаются в тематизме Концертино, в «Yнкүү» («Танец»), в «Марше цыплят». Фактически можно утверждать, что черты национального традиционного искусства Якутии становятся стилеобразующими в произведениях композитора The article is devoted to the analysis of piano cycles of the Yakut composer K. A. Gerasimov, intended for students of children's music schools. There are small notes on works belonging to Z. I. Kirillina, A. P. Reshetnikova, N. L. Gabysheva. The purpose of this work is to consider the composer's creative approaches developed when creating a repertoire for children. The material for the analysis was the cycles «Day from the Childhood», «Yakut Suite», «In the Birdyard», as well as Concertino for piano and orchestra, in which the composer organically combines elements of national traditional culture with instructive technical tasks. An important achievement is the constant reliance on the modern musical language, which allows you to prepare young performers to understand relevant works of art. K. A. Gerasimov practically does not use quote material, but his masterful penetration to the style of traditional Yakut music causes persistent associations with recognizable prototypes. In «Chabyrgah» («Fleeters») and «Ohuohai» («Osuohai») these are the genres of the same name, in the second theme of the Concertino, as well as in the plays «Ѳtѳkhhѳ» («At the old Yakut estate»), «Bihik yryata» («Lullaby»), «Awakening», «Sadness», «Morning» and оthers. Dance rhythm formulas are traced in the main thema of Concertino, in «Unkuu» («Dance»), in «March of Chickens». In fact, it can be argued that the features of the national traditional art of Yakutia become styling in the composer's works

Rerahsa merupakan sebuah karya tari kelompok yang ditarikan tujuh orang penari putra. Tari ini merupakan penuangan ide serta kreativitas dari rangsang kinestetik dan rangsang gagasan yaitu pengalaman empiris penata yang pernah berproses dengan tuna daksa sehingga menginspirasi penata untuk mengangkat tokoh pewayangan yaitu Gareng dengan dasar gerak yaitu gerak tidak wajar (cacat) dalam dasar tari tradisi Jawa gaya Yogyakarta. Fokus karya ini lebih kepada esensigerak cacat dan lebih memainkan ekspresi. Alasan penata mengambil tokoh Gareng karena Gareng ini merupakan salah satu simbol contoh kepemimpinan yang dapat memberikan contoh baik kepada generasi penerus saat ini, karena cacat fisik bukanlah hal yang memalukan, justru dapat memotivasi hidup untuk menjadi lebih baik. Menurut penata, dari masa ke masa seorang pemimpin sudah tidak lagi memiliki watak/sifat seperti tokoh Gareng, sehingga menjadi salah satu motivasi penata untuk menggarap karya Rerahsa ini.Pada karya ini terdiri dari 3 adegan. Pada introduksi penata membicarakan Gareng sebagai abdi/pamong. Pada adegan 1 lebih fokus kepada studi gerak gareng dengan berbagai karakter, sedangkan adegan 2 membicarakan 3 poin, yaitu Gareng yang lupa akan titahnya sebagai pamong, membicarakan ketika Gareng menjadi Raja, dan imajinasi Gareng terhadap wanita pujaannya yaitu Dewi Saradewati. Pada adegan 3, penata membicarakan sosok Gareng yang kembali ke perenungan dan berintrospeksi diri.Diharapkan dengan adanya karya cipta tari ini, masyarakat dan penonton dapat mengerti dan memahami bahwa janganlah memandang orang sebelah mata, jangan melihat dari segi fisik, namun lihatlah orang dari hatinya, sebagaimana yang digambarkan oleh sosok Gareng ini. Rerahsa is a group dance work which danced by seven male dancer. This dance is the way of pouring ideas and creativity from kinesthetic stimuli and notion stimuli, namely the idea of empirical experience by the stylist who ever proceed with the disabled so as to inspire the stylist to lift the puppet characters named Gareng, as the basic of the unnatural motion (defects) in basic Javanese traditional dance, Yogyakarta’s style. The focus of this work is the essence of defects motion and plays more expressions. The stylist takes Gareng as one of the leadership symbols that can provide a good example to the next generation nowadays, to show that a physical disability is not a shameful thing; it can motivates our life to be better. According to the stylist, a leader nowadays has no longer Gareng characteristics, thus becoming one of the stylist motivations to work on this Rerahsa work.This work consists of three scenes. In the introduction, the stylist indicates Gareng as servants / officials. Scene one is focusing on the study of Gareng’s motion with various characters, while the second scene is talking about three points. The first one is when Gareng who forgot his position as officials, the second one is when Gareng became a king, and the last one is about Gareng imagination against his female idol, goddess Saradewati. In the third scene, the stylist discusses Gareng who returns to self-reflection and introspection.Hopefully by this dance artworks, the public and the audience can see and understand to do not judge the book from the cover, do not judge someone by the physical looking, but look at their heart, as is illustrated by the figure of Gareng.

Rerahsa merupakan sebuah karya tari kelompok yang ditarikan tujuh orang penari putra. Tari ini merupakan penuangan ide serta kreativitas dari rangsang kinestetik dan rangsang gagasan yaitu pengalaman empiris penata yang pernah berproses dengan tuna daksa sehingga menginspirasi penata untuk mengangkat tokoh pewayangan yaitu Gareng dengan dasar gerak yaitu gerak tidak wajar (cacat) dalam dasar tari tradisi Jawa gaya Yogyakarta. Fokus karya ini lebih kepada esensigerak cacat dan lebih memainkan ekspresi. Alasan penata mengambil tokoh Gareng karena Gareng ini merupakan salah satu simbol contoh kepemimpinan yang dapat memberikan contoh baik kepada generasi penerus saat ini, karena cacat fisik bukanlah hal yang memalukan, justru dapat memotivasi hidup untuk menjadi lebih baik. Menurut penata, dari masa ke masa seorang pemimpin sudah tidak lagi memiliki watak/sifat seperti tokoh Gareng, sehingga menjadi salah satu motivasi penata untuk menggarap karya Rerahsa ini.Pada karya ini terdiri dari 3 adegan. Pada introduksi penata membicarakan Gareng sebagai abdi/pamong. Pada adegan 1 lebih fokus kepada studi gerak gareng dengan berbagai karakter, sedangkan adegan 2 membicarakan 3 poin, yaitu Gareng yang lupa akan titahnya sebagai pamong, membicarakan ketika Gareng menjadi Raja, dan imajinasi Gareng terhadap wanita pujaannya yaitu Dewi Saradewati. Pada adegan 3, penata membicarakan sosok Gareng yang kembali ke perenungan dan berintrospeksi diri.Diharapkan dengan adanya karya cipta tari ini, masyarakat dan penonton dapat mengerti dan memahami bahwa janganlah memandang orang sebelah mata, jangan melihat dari segi fisik, namun lihatlah orang dari hatinya, sebagaimana yang digambarkan oleh sosok Gareng ini. Rerahsa is a group dance work which danced by seven male dancer. This dance is the way of pouring ideas and creativity from kinesthetic stimuli and notion stimuli, namely the idea of empirical experience by the stylist who ever proceed with the disabled so as to inspire the stylist to lift the puppet characters named Gareng, as the basic of the unnatural motion (defects) in basic Javanese traditional dance, Yogyakarta’s style. The focus of this work is the essence of defects motion and plays more expressions. The stylist takes Gareng as one of the leadership symbols that can provide a good example to the next generation nowadays, to show that a physical disability is not a shameful thing; it can motivates our life to be better. According to the stylist, a leader nowadays has no longer Gareng characteristics, thus becoming one of the stylist motivations to work on this Rerahsa work.This work consists of three scenes. In the introduction, the stylist indicates Gareng as servants / officials. Scene one is focusing on the study of Gareng’s motion with various characters, while the second scene is talking about three points. The first one is when Gareng who forgot his position as officials, the second one is when Gareng became a king, and the last one is about Gareng imagination against his female idol, goddess Saradewati. In the third scene, the stylist discusses Gareng who returns to self-reflection and introspection.Hopefully by this dance artworks, the public and the audience can see and understand to do not judge the book from the cover, do not judge someone by the physical looking, but look at their heart, as is illustrated by the figure of Gareng.

In the article, the author defines the main methods of stylization of Ukrainian folk dance. One of the most important forms of preservation and transmission of accumulated experience from one generation to another is the ability of Ukrainian folk dance to give birth and form new stage forms. The basis of any stylized number is folklore and ethnographic material, which conveys the entire atmosphere of the historical environment and reproduces the national flavor. The stylization of Ukrainian folk dance consists in the ability to competently combine modern acrobatic tricks and virtuosic movements with purely folk dance movements. Stylization makes it possible to reflect and convey the entire atmosphere of the national and historical environment, contributes to the strengthening of expressiveness in choreographic works. Ukrainian folk dance developed throughout the history of our people, accumulating new means of expression, because from its original ceremonial form, it underwent a thousand-year development, as a result of which it was enriched, complicated by new movements, accompanied by songs. Currently, Ukrainian folk dance occupies a significant place among the cultural heritage of our people, and its high popularity in Ukraine and abroad is explained by the wealth of plots and themes, humor, sincerity, cheerful character, etc. The presence of expressive everyday features, common and different, combined with technically virtuosic movements, gives Ukrainian folk dance its originality, originality and unique flavor. All structural elements of Ukrainian folk dance are subject to transformation: music, imagery, plot, vocabulary. All this is developed and developed by the choreographer, based on his own vision and creative individual style, the presence of thorough knowledge of classical, folk, modern, ballroom dance, knowledge of national choreographic features and culture of various peoples, etc. Ways of stylizing Ukrainian folk dance are built according to a clear algorithm. First, the ways of stylization, its stages and components are determined, and only then practical work on the choreographic piece begins. The methods of stylization used by the choreographer-producer to create a choreographic work based on Ukrainian folk dance must meet the interests of modern performers and spectators on the one hand, and on the other - preserve traditions, nurture personality through folk music and dance folklore.

Sir Alec Issigonis was an automobile engineer whose name will always be associated with the design of the Morris Minor and the Mini motor cars. He followed a line of innovative British car designers that includes amongst their number Frederick Lanchester, William Lyons (principally for styling) and, later, Colin Chapman. With Ettore Bugatti, Ferdinand Porsche and Dante Giacosa he was one of the last of those who were totally responsible for their cars’ design, styling as well as engineering - disciplines too often separated in modern industrial practice. He was an unusual Fellow of the Society, more artist than scientist, although the two were blended to make the engineer. He liked to describe himself, self-deprecatingly, as an ironmonger - not a term which the modern professional mechanical engineer would much like. In truth, although he himself would have contested it, because he thought of himself primarily as an engineer, the artist was probably as strong as the engineer in his make-up. This showed itself in his working method, which was to produce freehand sketches of his requirements, leaving others to do the necessary calculations and to convert the sketches into working drawings, although, as will appear later, he was no mean draughtsman himself. Issigonis was a believer in the product being design-driven rather than market-led - he was very scornful of market research. The product, of course, had to be his - he was not known as Arrigonis for nothing, and he was sometimes disappointed when the customer did not see it his way. This was exemplified by the Mini, which he conceived as a simple, cheap, peoples’ car but which turned out to be so expensive to make that it is doubtful whether the manufacturer made much profit from it, and it became a cult car for the few rather than a cheap, car for the masses. Nevertheless, by his innovative ideas on car packaging and perhaps particularly by his work on suspensions - latterly in association with Alex Moulton - he did much to influence thinking on motor car design within the industry, and to raise the public profile of the engineering designer and of the automobile engineer in the UK. Although he was autocratic in his working methods, he could also be very charming and invariably secured the respect of his team and of his collaborators, exemplified by the large number of tributes its members have paid to him since his death.

Stutson, Caroline. Cats’ Night Out. Jon Klassen. Illus. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print. This is an immediately appealing and well designed book – a pleasing convergence of balanced palettes and retro details. Sophisticated and stylish little urban cats cavort throught an overview of twentieth century dance styles against the backdrop of an understatedly cool Gotham night. The minimal text is mindfully integrated into the page design and its counting rhyme cadence comes to an enjoyable visually unstructured, cartoonish climax. When I read Cats’… to myself I was concerned that it shared one short coming with other attractive children’s books. Did the level of textual comprehension required, complexity of the popular culture references and the dark, low contrast palette cohere into a narrative and visual text that is holistically appropriate for a particular children’s age group? It’s discouraging when artful and ambitious books elude toddlers and preschool age audiences while seeming too simplistic to older children to offer sufficient engagement. Such books wash over children leaving them unmoved. Creating a beautiful picture book - which Cats’ Night Out certainly is - is a great accomplishment. Creating a picture book that is beautiful and that is truly directed at and calibrated for children is even more challenging. I knew that Cats’ Night Out would please discerning adults but, what little sartorialist cat-lover and junior aficionado of dance and monochromatic retro architecture would have an affinity for this book? Well, as it turns out, my four year old loves it and goes back through the book to examine all the details and explain which shoes, clothes and colours are the best and ask me baffling questions about “polka dotted Swiss” (I had to look it up – it’s a vintage fabric style). Very well done, indeed. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Matilda RocheMatilda spends her days lavishing attention on the University of Alberta’s metadata but children’s illustrated books, literature for young adults and graphic novels also make her heart sing. Her reviews benefit from the critical influence of a four year old daughter and a one year old son – both geniuses. Matilda’s super power is the ability to read comic books aloud.

Introduction Jerusalema, a song from Mzansi — an informal isiZulu name for South Africa — became a global hit during the Covid-19 pandemic. Set to a repetitive, slow four-to-a-bar beat characteristic of South African house music, the gospel-influenced song was released through Open Mic Productions in 2019 by the DJ and record producer Kgaogelo Moagi, popularly known as ‘Master KG’. The production resulted from a collaboration between Master KG, the music producer Charmza The DJ, who composed the music, and the vocalist Nomcebo Zikode, who wrote the lyrics and performed the song for the master recording. Jerusalema immediately trended on social media and, as a “soundtrack of the pandemic” (Modise), became one of the most popular songs of 2020. Soon, it reached no. 1 on the music charts in Belgium, Romania, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Switzerland, while going triple platinum in Italy and double platinum in Spain (Hissong). By September 2020, Jerusalema was the most Shazammed song in history. To date, it has generated more than half a billion views on YouTube. After its initial success as a music video, the song’s influence was catapulted to a global cultural phenomenon by the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge video posted by the Angolan dance troupe Fenómenos do Semba in 2020, featuring exquisite dance steps that inspired a viral social media challenge. Some observed that footwork in several of the videos posted, suggested dance types associated with pantsula jive and kwaito music, both of which originated from the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid era. Yet, the leader of the Angolan dance troupe Fenómenos do Semba, Adilson Maiza claimed that the group’s choreography mixed kuduro dance steps (derived from the Angolan Portuguese term “cu duro” or “hard ass”) and Afro-beat. According to Master KG, indeed, the choreography made famous by the Angolan dancers conveyed an Angolan touch, described by Maiza as signature ginga e banga Angolana (Angolan sway and swag; Kabir). As a “counter-contagion” in the age of Coronavirus (Kabir), groups of individuals, ranging from school learners and teachers, police officers, and nursing staff in Africa to priests and nuns in Europe and Palestinians in the Old City of Jerusalem were posting Jerusalema dance videos. Famous efforts came from Vietnam, Switzerland, Ireland, Austria, and Morocco. Numerous videos of healthcare workers became a source of hope for patients with COVID-19 (Chingono). Following the thought of Zygmunt Bauman, in this article I interpret Jerusalema as a “re-enchantment” of a disenchanted world. Focussing on the song’s “magic”, I interrogate why this music video could take on such special meaning for millions of individuals and inspire a viral dance craze. My understanding of “magic” draws on the writings of Patrick Curry, who, in turn, bases his definition of the term on the thought of J.R.R. Tolkien. Curry (5) cites Tolkien in differentiating between two ways in which the word “magic” is generally used: “one to mean enchantment, as in: ‘It was magic!’ and the other to denote a paranormal means to an end, as in: ‘to use magic’”. The argument in this article draws on the first of these explications. As a global media sensation, Jerusalema placed a spotlight on the paucity of a “de-spiritualized, de-animated world,” a world “waging war against mystery and magic” (Baumann x-xi). However, contexts of production and reception, as outlined in Burns and Hawkins (2ff.), warrant consideration of social and cultural values and ideologies masked by the music video’s idealised representation of everyday South African life and its glamourised expression of faith. Thus, while referring to the millennia-old Jerusalem trope and its ensuing mythologies via an intertextual reading, I shall also consider the song alongside the South African-produced epic gangster action film Jerusalema (2008; Orange) while furthermore reflecting on the contexts of its production. Why Jerusalema — Why Its “Magic”? The global fame attained by Master KG’s Jerusalema brought to the fore questions of what made the song and its ensuing dance challenge so exceptional and what lay behind its “magic” (Ndzuta). The song’s simple yet deeply spiritual words appeal to God to take the singer to the heavenly city. In an abbreviated form, as translated from the original isiZulu, the words mean, “Jerusalem is my home, guard me, walk with me, do not leave me here — Jerusalem is my home, my place is not here, my kingdom is not here” (“Jerusalema Lyrics in English”). These words speak of the yearning for salvation, home, and togetherness, with Jerusalem as its spiritual embodiment. As Ndzuta notes, few South African songs have achieved the kind of global status attained by “Jerusalema”. A prominent earlier example is Miriam Makeba’s dance hit Pata Pata, released in the 1960s during the apartheid era. The song’s global impact was enabled by Makeba’s fame and talent as a singer and her political activism against the apartheid regime (Ndzuta). Similarly, the South African hits included on Paul Simon’s Graceland album (1986) — like Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Homeless — emanated from a specific politico-historical moment that, despite critique against Simon for violating the cultural boycott against South Africa at the time, facilitated their international impact and dissemination (Denselow). Jerusalema’s fame was not tied to political activism but derived from the turbulent times of the COVID-19 pandemic, which, according to statistics published by the World Health Organization, by the end of 2020 had claimed more than 3 million lives globally (“True Death Toll of Covid-19”). Within this context, the song’s message of divine guidance and the protection of a spiritual home was particularly relevant as it lifted global spirits darkened by the pandemic and the many losses it incurred. Likewise, the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge brought joy and feelings of togetherness during these challenging times, as was evidenced by the countless videos posted online. The Magic of the Myth Central to the lyrics of Jerusalema is the city of Jerusalem, which has, as Hees (95) notes, for millennia been “an intense marker of personal, social and religious identity and aspirations in words and music”. Nevertheless, Master KG’s Jerusalema differs from other “Jerusalem songs” in that it encompasses dense layering of “enchantment”. In contrast to Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s Awu Jerusalema, for instance, with its solemn, hymn-like structure and close harmonic vocal delivery, Master KG’s Jerusalema features Nomcebo’s sensuous and versatile voice in a gripping version of the South African house/gospel style known affectionately as the “Amapiano sound” — a raw hybrid of deep house, jazz and lounge music characterised by the use of synthesizers and wide percussive basslines (Seroto). In the original music video, in combination with Nomcebo’s soulful rendition, visuals featuring everyday scenes from South African township life take on alluring, if not poetic dimensions — a magical sensory mix, to which an almost imperceptible slow-motion camera effect adds the impression of “time slowing down”, simultaneously “softening” images of poverty and decay. Fig. 1: “Enchantment” and the joy of the dance. Still from the video “Jerusalema”. From a philosophical perspective, Zygmunt Bauman (xi) contends that “it is against a dis-enchanted world that the postmodern re-enchantment is aimed”. Yet, in a more critical vein, he also argues that, within the postmodern condition, humanity has been left alone with its fears and with an existential void that is “here to stay”: “postmodernity has not allayed the fears that modernity injected into humanity; postmodernity only privatized these fears”. For this reason, Bauman believes, postmodernity “had to become an age of imagined communities” (xviii-xxix). Furthermore, he deems that it is because of its extreme vulnerability that community provides the focus of postmodern concerns in attracting so much intellectual and “real-world” attention (Bauman xxix). Most notably, and relevant to the phenomenon of the media craze, as discussed in this article, Bauman defines the imagined community by way of the cogito “I am seen, therefore I exist” (xix). Not only does Bauman’s line of thought explain the mass and media appeal of populist ideologies of postmodernity that strive to “fill the void”, like Sharon Blackie’s The Enchanted Life — Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday, or Mattie James’s acclaimed Everyday Magic: The Joy of Not Being Everything and Still Being More than Enough; it also illuminates the immense collective appeal of the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge. Here, Bauman’s thought on the power of shared experience — in this case, mass-mediated experience — is, again, of particular relevance: “having no other … anchors except the affections of their ‘members’, imagined communities exist solely through … occasional outbursts of togetherness” (xix). Among these, he lists “demonstrations, marches, festivals, riots” (xix). Indeed, the joyous shared expression of the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge videos posted online during the COVID-19 pandemic may well sort under similar festive public “outbursts”. As a ceremonial dance that tells the story of shared experiences and longings, Jerusalema may be seen as one such collective celebration. True to African dance tradition, more than being merely entertainment for the masses, each in its own way, the dance videos recount history, convey emotion, celebrate rites of passage, and help unify communities in one of the darkest periods of the recent global past. An Intertextual Context for Reading “Jerusalema” However, historical dimensions of the “Jerusalem trope” suggest that Jerusalema might also be understood from a more critical perspective. As Hees (92) notes, the trope of the loss of and longing for the city of Jerusalem represents a merging of mythologies through the ages, embodied in Hebrew, Roman, Christian, Muslim, and Zionist religious cultures. Still, many Jerusalem narratives refrain from referring to its historical legacy, which fuelled hostility between the West and the Muslim world still prevalent today. Thus, the historical realities of fraud, deceit, greed, betrayal, massacres, and even cannibalism are often shunned so that Jerusalem — one of the holiest yet most blood-soaked cities in the world (Hees 92, 95) — is elevated as a symbol of the Heavenly City. In this respect, the South African crime epic Gangster Paradise: Jerusalema, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2008 and was later submitted to the Academy Awards for consideration to qualify as a nominee for Best Foreign Language Film (De Jager), stands in stark contrast to the divine connotations of Master KG’s Jerusalema. According to its director Ralph Ziman (Stecker), the film, inspired by a true story, offers a raw look into post-apartheid crime and corruption in the South African city of Johannesburg (De Villiers 8). Its storyline provides a sharp critique of the economic inequalities that torment South Africa in post-apartheid democracy, capturing the dissatisfaction and the “wave of violent crimes that resulted from the economic realities at its root” (Azuawusiefe 102). The irony of the narrative resides in the fact that the main protagonist, Lucky Kunene, at first reluctant to resort to a life of crime, turns to car hijacking and then to hijacking derelict, over-crowded buildings in the inner-city centre of Hillbrow (Hees 90). Having become a wealthy crime boss, Johannesburg, for him, becomes symbolic of a New Jerusalem (“Jerusalem Entjha”; Azuawusiefe 103; Hees 91-92). Entangled in the criminal underbelly of the city and arrested for murder, Kunene escapes from prison, relocating to the coastal city of Durban where, again, he envisages “Jerusalem Enthjha” (which, supposedly, once more implies a life of crime). As a portrayal of inner-city life in Johannesburg, this narrative takes on particular relevance for the current state of affairs in the country. In September this year, an uncontainable fire at a derelict, overcrowded hijacked building owned by Johannesburg municipal authorities claimed the lives of 73 people — a tragic event reported on by all major TV networks worldwide. While the events and economic actualities pictured in the film thus offer a realistic view of the adversities of current South African life, visual content in Master KG’s Jerusalema sublimates everyday South African scenes. Though the deprivation, decay, and poverty among which the majority of South Africans live is acknowledged in the video, its message of a yearning for salvation and a “better home” is foregrounded while explicit critique is shunned. This means that Jerusalema’s plea for divine deliverance is marked by an ambivalence that may weaken an understanding of the video as “pure magic”. Fig. 2: Still from the video Jerusalema showing decrepit living conditions in the background. “Jerusalema” as Layers of Meaning From Bauman’s perspective, Jerusalema — both as a music video and the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge — may represent a more profound human longing for imagined communal celebration beyond mass-mediated entertainment. From such a viewpoint, it may be seen as one specific representation of the millennia-old trope of a heavenly, transcendent Jerusalem in the biblical tradition, the celestial city providing a dwelling for the divine to enter this world (Thompson 647). Nevertheless, in Patrick Curry’s terms, as a media frenzy, the song and its ensuing dance challenge may also be understood as “enchantment enslaved by magic”; that is, enchantment in the service of mass-mediated glamour (7). This implies that Jerusalema is not exempt from underlying ideologised conditions of production, or an endorsement of materialistic values. The video exhibits many of the characteristics of a prototypical music video that guarantee commercial success — a memorable song, the incorporation of noteworthy dance routines, the showcasing of a celebrated artist, striking relations between music and image, and flashy visuals, all of which are skilfully put together (compare Korsgaard). Auslander observes, for instance, that in current music video production the appearance and behaviour of artists are the basic units of communication from which genre-specific personae are constructed (100). In this regard, the setting of a video is crucial for ensuring coherence with the constructed persona (Vernallis 87). These aspects come to the fore in Master KG’s video rendition of Jerusalema. The vocalist Nomcebo Zikode is showcased in settings that serve as a favourable backdrop to the spiritual appeal of the lyrics, either by way of slightly filtered scenes of nature or scenes of worshippers or seekers of spiritual blessing. In addition, following the gospel genre type, her gestures often suggest divine adoration. Fig. 3: Vocalist Nomcebo Zikode in a still from the video Jerusalema. However, again some ambiguity of meaning may be noted. First, the fashionable outfits featured by the singer are in stark contrast with scenes of poverty and deprivation later in the video. The impression of affluence is strengthened by her stylish make-up and haircut and the fact that she changes into different outfits during the song. This points to a glamorisation of religious worship and an idealisation of township life that disregards South Africa’s dire economic situation, which existed even before COVID-19, due to massive corruption and state capture in which the African National Congress is fully implicated (Momoniat). Furthermore, according to media reportage, Jerusalema’s context of production was not without controversy. Though the video worked its magic in the hearts of millions of viewers and listeners worldwide, the song’s celebration as a global hit was marred by legal battles over copyright and remuneration issues. First, it came to light that singer-songwriter Nomcebo Zikode had for a considerable period not been paid for her contribution to the production following Jerusalema’s commercial release in 2019 (Modise). Therefore, she resorted to a legal dispute. Also, it was alleged that Master KG was not the original owner of the music and was not even present when the song was created. Thus, the South African artists Charmza The DJ (Presley Ledwaba) and Biblos (Ntimela Chauke), who claimed to be the original creators of the track, also instituted legal action against Kgaogelo Moagi, his record label Open Mic Productions, and distributor Africori SA whose majority shareholder is the Warner Music Group (Madibogo). The Magic of the Dance Despite these moral and material ambiguities, Jerusalema’s influence as a global cultural phenomenon during the era of COVID spoke to a more profound yearning for the human condition, one that was not necessarily based on religious conviction (Shoki). Perhaps this was vested foremost in the simplicity and authenticity that transpired from the original dance challenge video and its countless pursuals posted online at the time. These prohibit reading the Jerusalema phenomenon as pseudo-enchantment driven only by a profit motive. As a wholly unforeseen, unifying force of hope and joy, the dance challenge sparked a global trend that fostered optimism among millions. Fig. 4: The Angolan dance troupe Fenómenos do Semba. (Still from the original #JerusalemaDanceChallenge video.) As stated earlier, Jerusalema did not originate from political activism. Yet, Professor of English literature Ananya Kabir uncovers a layer of meaning associated with the dance challenge, which she calls “alegropolitics” or a “politics of joy” — the joy of the dance ­­— that she links on the one hand with the Jerusalem trope and its history of trauma and dehumanisation, and, on the other, with Afro-Atlantic expressive culture as associated with enslavement, colonialism, and commodification. In her reading of the countless videos posted, their “gift to the world” is “the secret of moving collectively”. By way of individual responses to “poly-rhythmic Africanist aesthetic principles … held together by a master-structure”, Kabir interprets this communal dance as “resistance, incorporating kinetic and rhythmic principles that circulated initially around the Atlantic rim (including the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa)”. For her, the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge is “an example of how dance enables convivencia (living together)”; “it is a line dance (animation in French, animação in Portuguese, animación in Spanish) that enlivens parties through simple choreography that makes people dance together”. In this sense, the routine’s syncopated steps allow more and more people to join as each repetition unfolds — indeed, a celebratory example of Bauman’s imagined community that exists through an “outburst of togetherness” (xix). Such a collective “fest” demonstrates how, in dance leader Maiza’s words, “it is possible to be happy with little: we party with very little” (Kabir). Accordingly, as part of a globally mediated community, with just the resources of the body (Kabir), the locked-down world partied, too, for the duration of the magical song. Whether seen as a representation of the millennia-old trope of a heavenly, transcendent Jerusalem, or, in Curry’s understanding, as enchantment in the service of mass-mediated glamour, Jerusalema and its ensuing dance challenge form an undeniable part of recent global history involving the COVID-19 pandemic. As a media frenzy, it contributed to the existing body of “Jerusalem songs”, and lifted global spirits clouded by the pandemic and its emotional and material losses. Likewise, the #JerusalemaDanceChallenge was symbolic of an imagined global community engaging in “the joy of the dance” during one of the most challenging periods in humanity’s recent past. References Auslander, Philip. “Framing Personae in Music Videos.” The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Video Analysis. Eds. Loria A. Burns and Stan Hawkins. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. 92-109. Azuawusiefe, Chijioke. “Jerusalema: On Violence and Hope in a New South Africa.” The Nigerian Journal of Theology 34-36 (2020-2022): 101-112. Baumann, Zygmunt. Intimations of Postmodernity. New York: Routledge, 1992. Blackie, Sharon. The Enchanted Life – Unlocking the Magic of the Everyday. Oakfield, CI: September, 2018. Burns, Lori A., and Stan Hawkins, eds. Introduction. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Video Analysis. London: Bloomsbury, 2019. 1-9. Chingono, Nyasha. “Jerusalema: Dance Craze Brings Hope from Africa to the World Amid Covid.” The Guardian 24 Sep. 2020. 30 June 2023 <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/sep/24/jerusalema-dance-craze-brings-hope-from-africa-to-the-world-amid-covid>. ———. “‘I Haven’t Been Paid a Cent’: Jerusalema Singer’s Claim Stirs Row in South Africa.” The Guardian 13 July 2021. 15 July 2023 <https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/13/i-havent-been-paid-a-cent-jerusalema-singers-claim-stirs-row-in-south africa>. Curry, Patrick. “Magic vs. Enchantment.” Mallorn: The Journal of the Tolkien Society 38 (2001): 5-10. De Jager, Christelle. “Oscar Gets Trip to ‘Jerusalema’.” Variety 7 Oct. 2008. 8 July 2023 <https://variety.com/2008/film/awards/oscar-gets-trip-to-jerusalema-1117993596/>. Denselow, Robin. “Paul Simon's Graceland: The Acclaim and the Outrage.” The Guardian 19 Apr. 2012. 15 July 2023 <https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/apr/19/paul-simon-graceland-acclaim-outrage>. De Villiers, Dawid W. “After the Revolution: Jerusalema and the Entrepreneurial Present.” South African Theatre Journal 23 (2009): 8-22. Hees, Edwin. “Jerusalema.” Journal of the Musical Arts in Africa 6.1 (2009): 89-99. <https://doi.org/10.2989/JMAA.2009.6.1.9.1061>. Hissong, Samantha. “How South Africa’s ‘Jerusalema’ Became a Global Hit without Ever Having to Be Translated.” Rolling Stone 16 Oct. 2020. 15 June 2023 <https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/jerusalema-global-dance-hit-south-africa-spotify-1076474/>. James, Mattie. Everyday Magic. The Joy of Not Being Everything and Still Being More than Enough. Franklin, Tennessee: Worthy Publishing, 2022. “Jerusalema Lyrics in English.” Afrika Lyrics 2019. 7 July 2023 <https://afrikalyrics.com/master-kg-jerusalema- translation>. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. “The Angolan Dancers Who Helped South African Anthem Jerusalema Go Global.” The Conversation 29 Oct. 2020. 30 June 2023 <https://theconversation.com/the-angolan-dancers-who-helped-south-african-anthem-jerusalema-go-global-148782>. Korsgaard, Mathias. Music Video after MTV: Audio-Visual Studies, New Media, and Popular Music. New York: Routledge, 2017. Madibogo, Julia. “Master KG Slapped with a Lawsuit for Jerusalema.” City Press 26 July 2022. 4 July 2023 <https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/master-kg-slapped-with-a-lawsuit-for-jerusalema-20220726>. Modise, Julia Mantsali. “Jerusalema, a Heritage Day Song of the Covid-19 Pandemic.” Religions 14.45 (2022). 30 June 2023 <https//doi.org/10.3390/rel1401004>. Modise, Kedibone. “Nomcebo Zikode Reveals Ownership Drama over ‘Jerusalema’ Has Intensified.” IOL Entertainment 6 June 2022. 30 June 2023 <https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/music/local/nomcebo-zikode-reveals-ownership-drama-over-jerusalema-has-intensified-211e2575-f0c6-43cc-8684-c672b9da4c04>. Momoniat, Ismail. “How and Why Did State Capture and Massive Corruption Occur in South Africa?”. IMF PFM Blog 10 Apr. 2023. 15 June 2023 <https://blog-pfm.imf.org/en/pfmblog/2023/04/how-and-why-did-state-capture-and-massive-corruption-occur-in-south-africa>. Ndzuta, Akhona. “How Viral Song Jerusalema Joined the Ranks of South Africa’s Greatest Hits.” The Conversation 29 Oct. 2020. 30 June 2023 <https://theconversation.com/how-viral-song-jerusalema-joined-the-ranks-of-south-africas-greatest-hits-148781>. Orange, B. Allen. “Ralph Ziman Talks Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema [Exclusive].” Movieweb 2010. 15 July 2023 <https://movieweb.com/exclusive-ralph-ziman-talks-gangsters-paradise-jerusalema/>. Seroto, Butchie. “Amapiano: What Is It All About?” Music in Africa 30 Sep. 2020. 15 June 2023 <https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/amapiano-what-it-all-about>. Shoki, William. “‘Jerusalema’ Is about Self-Determination.” Jacobin 10 Dec. 2020. 30 June 2023 <https://jacobin.com/2020/10/jerusalema-south-africa-coronavirus-covid>. Stecker, Joshua. “Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema – Q & A with Writer/Director Ralph Ziman.” Script 11 June 2010. 30 June 2023 <https://scriptmag.com/features/gangsters-paradise-jerusalema-qa-with-writerdirector-ralph-ziman>. Thompson, Thomas L. “Jerusalem as the City of God's Kingdom: Common Tropes in the Bible and the Ancient Near East.” Islamic Studies 40.3-4 (2001): 631-647. Vernallis, Carol. Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context. New York: Columbia UP, 2004. World Health Organisation. “The True Death Toll of Covid-19.” N.d. 15 July 2023 <https://www.who.int/data/stories/the-true-death-toll-of-covid-19-estimating-global-excess-mortality>.

Introduction The sensational appearance of kawaii fashion in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood—full of freedom, fun, and frills— has captivated hearts and imaginations worldwide. A key motivational concept for this group is “kawaii” which is commonly translated as “cute” and can also be used to describe things that are “beautiful”, “funny”, “pretty”, “wonderful”, “great”, “interesting”, and “kind” (Yamane 228; Yomota 73; Dale 320). Representations in media such as the styling of Harajuku street model and J-pop star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, directed by Sebastian Masuda, have helped bring this fashion to a wider audience. Of this vibrant community, decora fashion is perhaps best known with its image well documented in in street-fashion magazines such as Shoichi Aoki’s FRUiTS (1997–2017), Websites such as Tokyo Fashion (2000–present), and in magazines like KERA (1998–2017). In particular, decora fashion captures the “do-it-yourself” approach for which Harajuku is best known for (Yagi 17). In this essay we draw on New Materialism to explore the ways in which decora fashion practitioners form kawaii affective assemblages with the objects they collect and transform into fashion items. We were motivated to pursue this research to build on other qualitative studies that aimed to include the voices of practitioners in accounts of their lifestyles (e.g. Nguyen; Monden; Younker) and respond to claims that kawaii fashion is a form of infantile regression. We—an Australian sociologist and kawaii fashion practitioner, a Japanese decora fashion practitioner and Harajuku street model, and a Japanese former owner of a tearoom in Harajuku—have used an action-led participatory research method to pool our expertise. In this essay we draw on both a New Materialist analysis of our own fashion practices, a 10-year longitudinal study of Harajuku (2012–2022), as well as interviews with twelve decora fashion practitioners in 2020. What Is Decora Fashion? Decora is an abbreviation of “decoration”, which reflects the key aesthetic commitment of the group to adorn their bodies with layers of objects, accessories, and stickers. Decora fashion uses bright clothing from thrift stores, layers of handmade and store-bought accessories, and chunky platform shoes or sneakers. Practitioners enjoy crafting accessories from old toys, kandi and perler beads, weaving, braiding, crocheting novelty yarn and ribbon, and designing and printing their own textiles. In addition to this act of making, decora practitioners also incorporate purchases from specialty brands like 6%DOKI DOKI, Nile Perch, ACDC Rag, YOSUKE USA, and minacute. According to our interviewees, whom we consulted in 2020, excess is key; as Momo told us: “if it’s too plain, it’s not decora”. Decora uses clashing, vibrant, electric colours, and a wild variety of kawaii versions of monsters, characters, and food which appear as motifs on their clothing (Groom 193; Yagi 17). Clashing textures and items—such as a sweat jackets, gauzy tutus, and plastic toy tiaras—are also a key concept (Koga 81). Colour is extended to practitioners’ hair through colourful hair dyes, and the application of stickers, bandaids, and jewels across their cheeks and nose (Rose, Kurebayashi and Saionji). These principles are illustrated in fig. 1, a street snap from 2015 of our co-author, Kurebayashi. Working with the contrasting primary colours across her hair, clothes, and accessories, she incorporates both her own handmade garments and found accessories to form a balanced outfit. Her Lisa Frank cat purse, made from a psychedelic vibrant pink faux fur, acts as a salient point to draw in our eyes to a cacophony of colour throughout her ensemble. The purse is a prized item from her own collection that was a rare find on Mercari, an online Japanese auction Website, 15 years ago. Her sweater dress is handmade, with a textile print she designed herself. The stickers on the print feature smiley faces, rainbows, ducks, and candy—all cheap and cheerful offerings from a discount store. Through intense layering and repetition, Kurebayashi has created a collage that is reminiscent of the clips and bracelets that decorate her hair and wrists. This collage also represents the colour, fun, and whimsy that she immerses herself in everyday. Her platform shoes are by Buffalo London, another rare find for her collection. Her hair braids are handmade by Midoroya, an online artist, which she incorporates to create variety in the textures in her outfit from head to toe. Peeking beneath her sweater is a short colourful tutu that floats and bounces with each step. Together the items converge and sing, visually loud and popping against the urban landscape. Fig. 1: Kurebayashi’s street snap in an decora fashion outfit of her own styling and making, 2015. Given the street-level nature of decora fashion, stories of its origins draw on oral histories of practitioners, alongside writings from designers and stores that cater to this group (Ash). Its emergence was relatively organic in the early 1990s, with groups enjoying mixing and combining found objects and mis-matching clothing items. Initially, decorative styles documented in street photography used a dark colour palette with layers of handmade accessories, clips, and decorations, and a Visual-kei influence. Designers such as Sebastian Masuda, who entered the scene in 1995, also played a key role by introducing accessories and clothes inspired by vintage American toys, Showa era (1926-1989) packaging, and American West Club dance culture (Sekikawa and Kumagi 22–23). Pop idols such as Tomoe Shinohara and Kyary Pamyu Pamyu are also key figures that have contributed to the pop aesthetic of decora. While decora was already practiced prior to the release of Shinohara’s 1995 single Chaimu, her styling resonated with practitioners and motivated them to pursue a more “pop” aesthetic with an emphasis on bright colours, round shapes, and handmade colourful accessories. Shinohara herself encouraged fans to take on a rebelliously playful outlook and presentation of self (Nakao 15–16; Kondō). This history resonates with more recent pop idol Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s costuming and set design, which was directed by Sebastian Masuda. Kyary’s kawaii fashion preceded her career, as she regularly participated in the Harajuku scene and agreed to street snaps. While the costuming and set design for her music videos, such as Pon Pon Pon, resonate with the Harajuku aesthetic, her playful persona diverges. Her performance uses humour, absurdity, and imperfection to convey cuteness and provide entertainment (Iseri 158), but practitioners in Harajuku do not try to replicate this performance; Shinohara and Kyary’s stage persona promotes ‘immaturity’ and ‘imperfection’ as part of their youthful teenage rebellion (Iseri 159), while kawaii fashion practitioners prefer not to be seen in this light. When considering the toys, stickers, and accessories incorporated into decora fashion, and the performances of Shinohara and Kyary, it is understandable that some outsiders may interpret the fashion as a desire to return to childhood. Some studies of kawaii fashion more broadly have interpreted the wearing of clothing like this as a resistance to adulthood and infantile regression (e.g., Kinsella 221–222; Winge; Lunning). These studies suggest that practitioners desire to remain immature in order to “undermin[e] current ideologies of gender and power” (Hasegawa 140). In particular, Kinsella in her 1995 chapter “in Japan” asserts that fashion like this is an attempt to act “vulnerable in order to emphasize … immaturity and inability to carry out social responsibilities” (241), and suggests that this regression is “self-mutilation [which denies] the existence of a wealth of insights, feelings and humour that maturity brings with it” (235). This view has spread widely in writing about kawaii fashion, and Steele, Mears, Kawamura, and Narumi observe for instance that “prolonging childhood is compelling” as an attractive component of Harajuku culture (48). While we recognise that this literature uses the concept of “childishness” to acknowledge the rebellious nature of Harajuku fashion, our participants would like to discourage this interpretation of their practice. In particular, participants highlighted their commitment to studies, paying bills, caring for family members, and other markers they felt indicated maturity and responsibility. They also found this belief that they wanted to deny themselves adult “insights, feelings and humour” deeply offensive as it disregards their lived experience and practice. From a Sociological perspective, this infantilising interpretation is concerning as it reproduces Orientalist framings of Japanese women who enjoy kawaii culture as dependent and submissive, rather than savvy consumers (Bow 66–73; Kalnay 95). Furthermore, this commentary on youth cultures globally, which points to an infantilisation of adulthood (Hayward 230), has also been interrogated by scholars as an oversimplistic reading that doesn’t recognise the rich experiences of adults who engage in these spaces while meeting milestones and responsibilities (Woodman and Wyn; Hodkinson and Bennett; Bennett). Through our lived experience and work with the decora fashion community, we offer in this essay an alternative account of what kawaii means to these practitioners. We believe that agency, energy, and vibrancy is central to the practice of decora fashion. Rather than intending to be immature, practitioners are looking for vibrant ways to exist. A New Materialist lens offers a framework with which we can consider this experience. For example, our informant Momota, in rejecting the view that her fashion was about returning to childhood, explained that decora fashion was “rejuvenating” because it gave them “energy and power”. Elizabeth Groscz in her essay on freedom in New Materialism encourages us to consider new ways of living, not as an expression of “freedom from” social norms, but rather “freedom to” new ways of being, as expression of their “capacity for action” (140). In other words, rather than seeking freedom from adult responsibilities and regressing into a state where one is unable to care for oneself, decora fashion is a celebration of what practitioners are “capable of doing” (Groscz 140–141) by finding pleasure in collecting and making. Through encounters with kawaii objects, and the act of creating through these materials, decora fashion practitioners’ agential capacities are increased through experiences of elation, excitement and pleasure. Colourful Treasures, Fluttering Hearts: The Pleasures of Collecting kawaii Matter Christine Yano describes kawaii as having the potential to “transform the mundane material world into one occupied everywhere by the sensate and the sociable” (“Reach Out”, 23). We believe that this conceptualisation of kawaii has strong links to New Materialist theory. New Materialism highlights the ways in which human subjects are “are unstable and emergent knowing, sensing, embodied, affective assemblages of matter, thought, and language, part of and inseparable from more-than human worlds” (Lupton). Matter in this context is a social actor in its own right, energising and compelling practitioners to incorporate them into their everyday lives. For example, kawaii matter can move us to be more playful, creative, and caring (Aiwaza and Ohno; Nishimura; Yano, Pink Globalization), or help us relax and feel calm when experiencing high levels of stress (Stevens; Allison; Yano, “Reach Out”). Studies in the behavioral sciences have shown how kawaii objects pique our interest, make us feel happy and excited, and through sharing our excitement for kawaii things become kinder and more thoughtful towards each other (Nittono; Ihara and Nittono; Kanai and Nittono). Decora fashion practitioners are sensitive to this sensate and sociable aspect of kawaii; specific things redolent with “thing-power” (Bennett) shine and twinkle amongst the cultural landscape and compel practitioners to gather them up and create unique outfits. Decora fashion relies on an ongoing hunt for objects to upcycle into fashion accessories, thrifting second-hand goods in vintage stores, dollar stores, and craft shops such as DAISO, Omocha Spiral, and ACDC Rag. Practitioners select plastic goods with smooth forms and shapes, and soft, breathable, and light clothing, all with highly saturated colours. Balancing the contrast of colours, practitioners create a rainbow of matter from which they assemble their outfits. The concept of the rainbow is significant to practitioners as the synergy of contrasting colours expresses its own kawaii vitality. As our interviewee, Kanepi, described, “price too can be kawaii” (Yano, Pink Globalization 71); affordable products such as capsule toys and accessories allow practitioners to amass large collections of glistening and twinkling objects. Rare items are also prized, such as vintage toys and goods imported from America, resonating with their own “uniqueness”, and providing a point of difference to the Japanese kawaii cultural landscape. In addition to the key principles of colour, rarity, and affordability, there is also a personalised aspect to decora fashion. Amongst the mundane racks of clothing, toys, and stationary, specific matter twinkles at practitioners like treasures, triggering a moment of thrilling encounter. Our interviewee Pajorina described this moment as having a “fateful energy to it”. All practitioners described this experience as “tokimeki” (literally, a fluttering heart beat), which is used to refer to an experience of excitement in anticipation of something, or the elating feeling of infatuation (Occhi). Our interviewees sought to differentiate this experience of kawaii from feelings of care towards an animal or children through writing systems. While the kanji for “kawaii” was used to refer to children and small animals, the majority of participants wrote “kawaii” to express the vivid and energetic qualities of their fashion. We found each practitioner had a tokimeki response to certain items that and informed their collecting work. While some items fit a more mainstream interpretation of kawaii, such as characters like Hello Kitty, ribbons, and glitter, other practitioners were drawn to non-typical forms they believed were kawaii, such as frogs, snails, aliens, and monsters. As our interviewee Harukyu described: “I think people’s sense of kawaii comes from different sensibilities and perspectives. It’s a matter of feelings. If you think it is kawaii, then it is”. Guided by individual experiences of objects on the shop shelves, practitioners select things that resonate with their own inner beliefs, interests, and fantasies of what kawaii is. In this regard, kawaii matter is not “structured” or “fixed” but rather “emergent through relations” that unfold between the practitioner and the items that catch their eye in a given moment (Thorpe 12). This offers not only an affirming experience through the act of creating, but a playful outlet as well. By choosing unconventional kawaii motifs to include in their collection, and using more standard kawaii beads, jewels, and ribbons to enhance the objects’ cuteness, decora fashion practitioners are transforming, warping, and shifting kawaii aesthetic boundaries in new and experimental ways (Iseri 148; Miller 24–25). As such, this act of collecting is a joyous and elating experience of gathering and accumulating. Making, Meaning, and Memory: Creating kawaii Assemblages Once kawaii items are amassed through the process of collecting, their cuteness is intensified through hand-making items and assembling outfits. One of our interviewees, Momo, explained to us that this expressive act was key to the personalisation of their clothes as it allows them to “put together the things you like” and “incorporate your own feelings”. For example, the bracelets in fig. 2 are an assemblage made by our co-author Kurebayashi, using precious items she has collected for 10 years. Each charm has its own meaning in its aesthetics, memories it evokes, and the places in which it was found. Three yellow rubber duck charms bob along strands of twinkling pink and blue bubble-like beads. These ducks, found in a bead shop wholesaler while travelling in Hong Kong, evoke for Kurebayashi an experience of a bubble bath, where one can relax and luxuriate in self care. Their contrast with the pink and blue—forming the trifecta of primary colours—enhances the vibrant intensity of the bracelet. A large blue bear charm, contrasting in scale and colour, swings at her wrist, its round forms evoking Lorenz’s Kindchenschema. This bear charm is another rare find from America, a crowning jewel in Kurebayashi’s collection. It represents Kurebayashi’s interest in fun and colourful animals as characters, and as potential kawaii friends. Its translucent plastic form catches the light as it glistens. To balance the colour scheme of her creation, Kurebayashi added a large strawberry charm, found for just 50 Yen in a discount store in Japan. Together these objects resonate with key decora principles: personal significance, rarity, affordability, and bright contrasting colours. While the bear and duck reference childhood toys, they do not signify to Kurebayashi a desire to return to childhood. Rather, their rounded forms evoke a playful outlook on life informed by self care and creativity (Ngai 841; Rose). Through bringing the collection of items together in making these bracelets, the accessories form an entanglement of kawaii matter that carries both aesthetic and personal meaning, charged with memories, traces of past travels, and a shining shimmering vitality of colour and light. Fig. 2: Handmade decora fashion bracelet by Kurebayashi, 2022. The creation of decora outfits is the final act of expression and freedom. In this moment, decora fashion practitioners experience elation as they gleefully mix and match items from their collection to create their fashion style. This entanglement of practitioner and kawaii matter evokes what Gorscz would describe as “free acts … generated through the encounter of life with matter” (151). If we return to fig. 1, we can see how Kurebayashi and her fashion mutually energise each other as an expression of colourful freedom. While the objects themselves are found through encounters and given new life by Kurebayashi as fashion items, they also provide Kurebayashi with tools of expression that “expand the variety of activities” afforded to adults (Gorscz 154). She feels elated, full of feeling, insight, and humour in these clothes, celebrating all the things she loves that are bright, colourful, and fun. Conclusion In this essay, we have used New Materialist theory to illustrate some of the ways in which kawaii matter energises decora fashion practitioners, as an expression of what Gorscz would describe as “capacity for action” and a “freedom towards” new modes of expression. Practitioners are sensitive to kawaii’s affective potential, motivating them to search for and collect items that elate and excite them, triggering moments of thrilling encounters amongst the mundanity of the stores they search through. Through the act of making and assembling these items, practitioners form an entanglement of matter charged with their feelings, memories, and the vitality and vibrancy of their collections. Like shining rainbows in the streets, they shimmer and shine with kawaii life, vibrancy, and vitality. Acknowledgements This article was produced with the support of a Vitalities Lab Scholarship, UNSW Sydney, a National Library of Australia Asia Studies scholarship, as well as in-kind support from the University of Tokyo and the Japan Foundation Sydney. We also thank Deborah Lupton, Melanie White, Vera Mackie, Joshua Paul Dale, Masafumi Monden, Sharon Elkind, Emerald King, Jason Karlin, Elicia O’Reily, Gwyn McLelland, Erica Kanesaka, Sophia Saite, Lucy Fraser, Caroline Lennette, and Alisa Freedman for their kind input and support in helping bring this community project to life. Finally, we thank our decora fashion practitioners, our bright shining stars, who in the face of such unkind treatment from outsiders continue to create and dream of a more colourful world. We would not be here without your expertise. References Aizawa, Marie, and Minoru, Ohno. “Kawaii Bunka no Haikei [The Background of Kawaii Culture].” Shōkei gakuin daigaku kiyō [Shōkei Gakuin University Bulletin] 59 (2010): 23–34. Allison, Anne. “Cuteness as Japan’s Millennial Product.” Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. Ed. Joseph Tobin. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. 34–49. Aoki, Shoichi. FRUiTS. Renzu Kabushikigaisha. 1997–2017. Ash. “The History of: Decora.” The Comm, 31 May. 2022. <https://the-comm.online/blog/the-history-of-decora/>. Bennett, Andy. Music, Style and Aging: Growing Old Disgracefully? Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2013. Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. London: Duke UP, 2010. Bow, Leslie. Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy. Durham: Duke UP, 2022. Dale, Joshua. “Cuteness Studies and Japan.” The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture. Eds. Jennifer Coates, Lucy Fraser, and Mark Pendleton. New York: Routledge, 2020. 320–30. Groom, Amelia. “Power Play and Performance in Harajuku.” New Voices in Japanese Studies 4 (2011): 188–214. Groscz, Elizabeth. “Feminism, Materialism, and Freedom.” New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Eds. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost. Durham: Duke UP, 2007. Hasegawa, Yuko. “Post-Identity Kawaii: Commerce, Gender, and Contemporary Japanese Art.” Consuming Bodies: Sex and Contemporary Japanese Art. Ed. Fran Loyd. London: Reaktion Books, 2002. 127–41. Hayward, Keith. “Life Stage Dissolution’ in Anglo-American Advertising and Popular Culture: Kidults, Lil’ Britneys and Middle Youths.” The Sociological Review 61.3 (2013): 525–48. Hodkinson, Paul, and Andy Bennett. Ageing and Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity. London: Berg, 2013. Ihara, Namiha, and Hiroshi Nittono. “Osanasa no Teido ni Yoru ‘Kawaii’ no Kategori Bunrui [Categorization of “Kawaii” by Levels of Infantility].” Studies in Human Sciences 6.13 (2011): 13–18. Iseri, Makiko. “Flexible Femininities? Queering kawaii in Japanese Girls’ Culture.” Twenty-First Century Feminism: Forming and Performing Femininity. Eds. Claire Nally and Angela Smith. London: Palgrave Macmillian, 2015. Kanai, Yoshihiro, and Hiroshi Nittono. “Kyōkansei to Shinwa Dōki ni Yoru ‘Kawaii’ Kanjō no Yosoku Moderu Kōchiku [Building a Predictive Model of ‘Cute’ Emotions Using Empathy and Affinity Motivation].” Sonariti kenkyū 23.3 (2015): 131–41. Kalnay, Erica Kanesaka. “Yellow Peril, Oriental Plaything: Asian Exclusion and the 1927 U.S.-Japan Doll Exchange.” Journal of Asian American Studies 23.1 (2020): 93–124. KERA. JInternational. 1998–2017. Kinsella, Sharon. “Cuties in Japan.” Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan. Eds. Brian Moeran and Lisa Skov. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1995. 220–54. Koga, Reiko. ‘Kawaii’ no Teikoku: Mōdo to Media to Onna-no-Ko Tachi [Empire of Kawaii: Mode, Media and Girls]. Tokyo: Seidosha, 2009. Kondō, Masataka. “Shinohara tomoe 40-sai ni shinorābūmu kara no henbō-buri kyōretsu kyara wa engidatta no ka [Shinohara Tomoe, 40 years Old, Changed from the Shinohara Boom: Was Her Strong Character a Performance?”].” Bunshun Online 3 Sep. 2019. <https://bunshun.jp/articles/-/11297>. Lorenz, Konrad. “Die angeborenen Formen möglicher Erfahrung [The Innate Condition of the Possibility of Experience].” Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie 5.2 (1943): 245–409. Lunning, Frenchy.“Under the Ruffles: Shōjo and the Morphology of Power.” Mechademia 6 (2011): 63–19. Lupton, Deborah. “Toward a More-than-Human Analysis of Digital Health: Inspirations from Feminist New Materialism.” Qualitative Health Research 29.14 (2019): 1999–2009. Monden, Masafumi. Japanese Fashion Cultures: Dress and Gender in Contemporary Japan. Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2015. Miller, Laura. “Cute Masquerade and the Pimping of Japan.” International Journal of Japan 20.1 (2011): 18-29. Nakano, Atsumi. 2015. "The Formation and Commodification of Harajuku’s Image in Japan." Ritsumeikan Journal of Asia Pacific Studies. 34 (2016): 10–19. Ngai, Sianne. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2012. Nguyen, An. “Eternal Maidens: Kawaii Aesthetics and Otome Sensibility in Lolita Fashion.” Asian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2016): 15–31. Nishimura, Mika. “Kawaii-ron Shiron II: Kawaii-ron no Shatei [Essay about Kawaii, II: The Limits of Kawaii Theory].” Dezain riron 73 (2019): 43–52. Nittono, Hiroshi. “Kawaiisa to Osanasa: Bebīsukīma o Meguru Hihan-teki Kōsatsu [Cuteness and Childhood: Critical Reflections of the Baby Schema].” VISION 25.2 (2013): 100–04. Nittono, Hiroshi. “The Two-Layer Model of ‘Kawaii’: A Behavioral Science Framework for Understanding Kawaii and Cuteness.” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2016): 79–95. Occhi, Debra. “How to Have a HEART in Japanese.” Culture, Body, and Language: Conceptualizations of Internal Body Organs across Cultures and Languages. Eds. Farzad Sharifan, René Dirven, Ning Yu, and Susanne Niemeier. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2008. Rose, Megan Catherine. “Child’s Play? Exploring the Significance of Kawaii for Decora and Fairy-kei Fashion Practitioners in Harajuku through a Case-Focused Analysis.” New Voices in Japanese Studies 12 (2020): 80–102. Rose, Megan Catherine, Haruka Kurebayashi, and Rei Saionji. “Makeup in Decora Fashion, Harajuku, Tokyo.” Girls Museum, 2021. <https://www.girlmuseum.org/project/more-than-pretty/>. Sekikawa, Matoko, and Minori Kumagi. 6% DOKIDOKI Perfect Book. Tokyo: Takarajimasha, 2013. Steele, Valerie, Patricia Mears, Yuniya Kawamura, and Hiroshi Narumi, eds. Japan Fashion Now. New Haven: Yale UP, 2010. Stevens, Carolyn. “Cute But Relaxed: Ten Years of Rilakkuma in Precarious Japan.” M/C Journal 17.20 (2014): 1–10. Thorpe, Holly, Julie Brice, and Marianne Clark. Feminist New Materialisms, Sport and Fitness: A Lively Entanglement. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2020. Tokyo Fashion. Tokyo Fashion. 23 Dec. 2021. <https://www.tokyofashion.com>. Winge, Theresa. “Undressing and Dressing Loli: A Search for the Identity of Japanese Lolita.” Mechademia 3 (2008): 347–63. Woodman, Dan, and Johanna Wyn. Youth and Generation. California: SAGE, 2015. Yagi, Yoko. Tokyo Street Style. New York: Abrams, 2018. Yamane, Kazuma. Hentai shōjo moji no kenkyū [Research on Girls’ Strange Handwriting]. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1989. Yano, Christine. Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty's Trek across the Pacific. Durham: Duke UP, 2015. ———. “Reach Out and Touch Someone: Thinking through Sanrio’s Social Communication Empire.” Japanese Studies, 31.1 (2011): 23–36. Yomota, Inuhiko. Kawaii-ron [Theory of Cuteness]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 2006. Younker, Therese. “Japanese Lolita: Dreaming, Despairing, Defying.” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, 11.1 (2012): 97–110.

IntroductionFestivals, according to Chris Gibson and John Connell, are like “glue”, temporarily sticking together various stakeholders, economic transactions, and networks (9). Australia’s First Nations peoples see festivals as an opportunity to display cultural vitality (Henry 586), and to challenge a history which has rendered them absent (587). The 2017 Australia Council for the Arts Showcasing Creativity report indicates that performing arts by First Nations peoples are under-represented in Australia’s mainstream venues and festivals (1). Large Aboriginal cultural festivals have long thrived in Australia’s northern half, but have been under-developed in the south. Each regional happening develops a cultural landscape connected to a long and intimate relationship with the natural environment.The Far South East coast and mountainous hinterland of New South Wales is rich in pristine landscapes that ground the Yuin and Monaro Nations to Country as the Monaroo Bobberrer Gadu (Peoples of the Mountains and the Sea). This article highlights cross-sector interaction between Koori and mainstream organisations in producing the Giiyong (Guy-Yoong/Welcoming) Festival. This, the first large festival to be held within the Yuin Nation, took place on Aboriginal-owned land at Jigamy, via Eden, on 22 September 2018. Emerging regional artists joined national headline acts, most notably No Fixed Address (one of the earliest Aboriginal bands to break into the Australian mainstream music industry), and hip-hop artist Baker Boy (Danzal Baker, Young Australian of the Year 2019). The festival followed five years of sustained community preparation by South East Arts in association with Grow the Music, Twofold Aboriginal Corporation, the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council, and its Elders. We offer dual understandings of the Giiyong Festival: the viewpoints of a male Yuin Elder wedded to an Australian woman of European descent. We acknowledge, and rely upon, key information, statistics, and photographs provided by the staff of South East Arts including Andrew Gray (General Manager), Jasmin Williams (Aboriginal Creative and Cultural Engagement Officer and Giiyong Festival Project Manager), and Kate Howarth (Screen Industry Development Officer). We are also grateful to Wiradjuri woman Alison Simpson (Program Manager at Twofold Aboriginal Corporation) for valuable feedback. As community leaders from First Nations and non-First Nations backgrounds, Simpson and Williams complement each other’s talents for empowering Indigenous communities. They plan a 2020 follow-up event on the basis of the huge success of the 2018 festival.The case study is informed by our personal involvement with community. Since the general population barely comprehends the number and diversity of Australia’s Indigenous ‘nations’, the burgeoning Indigenous festival movement encourages First Nations and non-First Nations peoples alike to openly and confidently refer to the places they live in according to Indigenous names, practices, histories, and knowledge. Consequently, in the mental image of a map of the island-continent, the straight lines and names of state borders fade as the colours of the Indigenous ‘Countries’ (represented by David Horton’s wall map of 1996) come to the foreground. We reason that, in terms of ‘regionality,’ the festival’s expressions of “the agency of country” (Slater 141) differ vastly from the centre-periphery structure and logic of the Australian colony. There is no fixed centre to the mutual exchange of knowledge, culture, and experience in Aboriginal Australia. The broader implication of this article is that Indigenous cultural festivals allow First Nations peoples cultures—in moments of time—to assume precedence, that is to ‘stitch’ back together the notion of a continent made up of hundreds of countries, as against the exploitative structure of ‘hub and region’ colonial Australia.Festival Concepts and ContextsHoward Becker observed that cultural production results from an interplay between the person of the artist and a multitude of support personnel whose work is not frequently studied: “It is through this network of cooperation that the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be” (1). In assisting arts and culture throughout the Bega Valley, Eurobodalla, and Snowy Monaro, South East Arts delivers positive achievements in the Aboriginal arts and cultural sector. Their outcomes are significant in the light of the dispossession, segregation, and discrimination experienced by Aboriginal Australians. Michael Young, assisted by Indigenous authors Ellen Mundy and Debbie Mundy, recorded how Delegate Reserve residents relocating to the coast were faced with having their lives controlled by a Wallaga Lake Reserve manager or with life on the fringes of the towns in shacks (2–3). But as discovered in the records, “their retention of traditional beliefs, values and customs, reveal that the accommodation they were forced to make with the Europeans did not mean they had surrendered. The proof of this is the persistence of their belief in the value of their culture” (3–4). The goal of the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation is to create an inclusive place where Aboriginal people of the Twofold Bay Region can be proud of their heritage, connect with the local economy, and create a real future for their children. When Simpson told Williams of the Twofold Aboriginal Corporation’s and Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council’s dream of housing a large cultural festival at Jigamy, Williams rigorously consulted local Indigenous organisations to build a shared sense of community ownership of the event. She promoted the festival as “a rare opportunity in our region to learn about Aboriginal culture and have access to a huge program of Aboriginal musicians, dancers, visual artists, authors, academics, storytellers, cooks, poets, creative producers, and films” (McKnight).‘Uncle Ossie’ Cruse of Eden envisaged that the welcoming event would enliven the longstanding caring and sharing ethos of the Yuin-Monaro people. Uncle Ossie was instrumental in establishing Jigamy’s majestic Monaroo Bobberrer Gudu Keeping Place with the Eden Local Aboriginal Land Council in 1994. Built brick by brick by Indigenous workers, it is a centre for the teaching and celebration of Aboriginal culture, and for the preservation of artefacts. It represents the local community's determination to find their own solutions for “bridging the gap” by creating education and employment opportunities. The centre is also the gateway to the Bundian Way, the first Aboriginal pathway to be listed on the NSW State Heritage Register. Festival Lead-Up EventsEden’s Indigenous students learn a revived South Coast language at Primary and Secondary School. In 2015, Uncle Ossie vitally informed their input into The Black Ducks, a hip-hop song filmed in Eden by Desert Pea Media. A notable event boosting Koori musical socialisation was a Giiyong Grow the Music spectacle performed at Jigamy on 28 October 2017. Grow the Music—co-founded by Lizzy Rutten and Emily White—specialises in mentoring Indigenous artists in remote areas using digital recording equipment. Eden Marine High School students co-directed the film Scars as part of a programme of events with South East Arts and the Giiyong Festival 2018. The Eden Place Project and Campbell Page also create links between in- and out-of-school activities. Eden’s Indigenous students thus perform confidently at NAIDOC Week celebrations and at various festivals. Preparation and PersonnelAn early decision was made to allow free entry to the Giiyong Festival in order to attract a maximum number of Indigenous families. The prospect necessitated in-kind support from Twofold Aboriginal Corporation staff. They galvanised over 100 volunteers to enhance the unique features of Jigamy, while Uncle Ossie slashed fields of bushes to prepare copious parking space. The festival site was spatially focused around two large stages dedicated to the memory of two strong supporters of cultural creativity: Aunty Doris Kirby, and Aunty Liddy Stewart (Image 1). Image 1: Uncle Ossie Cruse Welcomes Festival-Goers to Country on the Aunty Liddy Stewart Stage. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts.Cultural festivals are peaceful weapons in a continuing ontological political contest (Slater 144). In a panel discussion, Uncle Ossie explained and defended the Makarrata: the call for a First Nations Voice to be enshrined in the Constitution.Williams also contracted artists with a view to capturing the past and present achievements of Aboriginal music. Apart from her brilliant centrepiece acts No Fixed Address and Baker Boy, she attracted Pitjantjatjara singer Frank Yamma (Image 2), Yorta Yorta singer/songwriter Benny Walker, the Central Desert Docker River Band, and Jessie Lloyd’s nostalgic Mission Songs Project. These stellar acts were joined by Wallaga Lake performers Robbie Bundle, Warren Foster, and Alison Walker as well as Nathan Lygon (Eden), Chelsy Atkins (Pambula), Gabadoo (Bermagui), and Drifting Doolgahls (Nowra). Stage presentations were technologically transformed by the live broadcast of acts on large screens surrounding the platforms. Image 2: Singer-Songwriter Frank Yamma Performs at Giiyong Festival 2018. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts.Giiyong Music and Dance Music and dance form the staple components of Indigenous festivals: a reflection on the cultural strength of ancient ceremony. Hundreds of Yuin-Monaro people once attended great corroborees on Mumbulla Mountain (Horton 1235), and oral history recorded by Janet Mathews evidences ceremonies at Fishy Flats, Eden, in the 1850s. Today’s highly regarded community musicians and dancers perform the social arrangements of direct communication, sometimes including their children on stage as apprentices. But artists are still negotiating the power structures through which they experience belonging and detachment in the representation of their musical identity.Youth gain positive identities from participating alongside national headline acts—a form of learning that propels talented individuals into performing careers. The One Mob Dreaming Choir of Koori students from three local schools were a popular feature (Image 3), as were Eden Marine student soloists Nikai Stewart, and Nikea Brooks. Grow the Music in particular has enabled these youngsters to exhibit the roots of their culture in a deep and touching way that contributes to their life-long learning and development. Image 3: The One Mob Dreaming Choir, Directed by Corinne Gibbons (L) and Chelsy Atkins (R). Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduction Courtesy of South East Arts. Brydie-Leigh Bartleet describes how discourses of pride emerge when Indigenous Australian youth participate in hip-hop. At the Giiyong Festival the relationship between musical expression, cultural representation, and political positioning shone through the songs of Baker Boy and Gabadoo (Image 4). Channelling emotions into song, they led young audiences to engage with contemporary themes of Indigeneity. The drones launched above the carpark established a numerical figure close on 6,000 attendees, a third of whom were Indigenous. Extra teenagers arrived in time for Baker Boy’s evening performance (Williams), revealing the typical youthful audience composition associated with the hip-hop craze (Image 5).Image 4: Bermagui Resident Gabadoo Performs Hip-Hop at the Giiyong Festival. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduced Courtesy South East Arts.Image 5: A Youthful Audience Enjoys Baker Boy’s Giiyong Festival Performance. Image Credit: David Rogers for South East Arts, Reproduced Courtesy South East Arts.Wallaga Lake’s traditional Gulaga Dancers were joined by Bermagui’s Gadhu Dancers, Eden’s Duurunu Miru Dancers, and Narooma’s Djaadjawan Dancers. Sharon Mason founded Djaadjawan Dancers in 2015. Their cultural practice connects to the environment and Mingagia (Mother Earth). At their festival tent, dancers explained how they gather natural resources from Walbanja Country to hand-make traditional dance outfits, accessories, and craft. They collect nuts, seeds, and bark from the bush, body paint from ancient ochre pits, shells from beaches, and bird feathers from fresh roadkill. Duurunu Miru dancer/didjeriduist Nathan Lygon elaborates on the functions of the Far South East Coast dance performance tradition:Dance provides us with a platform, an opportunity to share our stories, our culture, and our way of being. It demonstrates a beautiful positivity—a feeling of connection, celebration, and inclusion. The community needs it. And our young people need a ‘space’ in which they can grow into the knowledge and practices of their culture. The festival also helped the wider community to learn more about these dimensions. (n.p.)While music and dance were at the heart of the festival, other traditional skills were included, for example the exhibitions mounted inside the Keeping Place featured a large number of visual artists. Traditional bush cooking took place near Lake Pambula, and yarn-ups, poetry, and readings were featured throughout the day. Cultural demonstrations in the Bunaan Ring (the Yuin name for a corroboree circle) included ‘Gum Leaf Playing.’ Robin Ryan explained how the Yuin’s use of cultural elements to entertain settlers (Cameron 79) led to the formation of the Wallaga Lake Gum Leaf Band. As the local custodian of this unique musical practice, Uncle Ossie performed items and conducted a workshop for numerous adults and children. Festival Feedback and Future PlanningThe Giiyong Festival gained huge Indigenous cultural capital. Feedback gleaned from artists, sponsors, supporters, volunteers, and audiences reflected on how—from the moment the day began—the spirit of so many performers and consumers gathered in one place took over. The festival’s success depended on its reception, for as Myers suggests: “It is the audience who create the response to performance and if the right chemistry is achieved the performers react and excel in their presentation” (59). The Bega District News, of 24 September 2018, described the “incredibly beautiful event” (n.p.), while Simpson enthused to the authors:I believe that the amount of people who came through the gates to attend the Giiyong Festival was a testament to the wider need and want for Aboriginal culture. Having almost double the population of Eden attend also highlights that this event was long overdue. (n.p.)Williams reported that the whole festival was “a giant exercise in the breaking down of walls. Some signed contracts for the first time, and all met their contracts professionally. National artists Baker Boy and No Fixed Address now keep in touch with us regularly” (Williams). Williams also expressed her delight that local artists are performing further afield this year, and that an awareness, recognition, and economic impact has been created for Jigamy, the Giiyong Festival, and Eden respectively:We believe that not only celebrating, but elevating these artists and Aboriginal culture, is one of the most important things South East Arts can do for the overall arts sector in the region. This work benefits artists, the economy and cultural tourism of the region. Most importantly it feeds our collective spirit, educates us, and creates a much richer place to live. (Giiyong Festival Report 1)Howarth received 150 responses to her post-event survey. All respondents felt welcome, included, and willing to attend another festival. One commented, “not even one piece of rubbish on the ground.” Vanessa Milton, ABC Open Producer for South East NSW, wrote: “Down to the tiniest detail it was so obvious that you understood the community, the audience, the performers and how to bring everyone together. What a coup to pull off this event, and what a gift to our region” (Giiyong Festival Report 4).The total running cost for the event was $257,533, including $209,606 in government grants from local, state, and federal agencies. Major donor Create NSW Regional Partnerships funded over $100,000, and State Aboriginal Affairs gave $6,000. Key corporate sponsors included Bendigo Bank, Snowy Hydro and Waterway Constructions, Local Land Services Bega, and the Eden Fisherman’s Club. Funding covered artists’ fees, staging, the hiring of toilets, and multiple generators, including delivery costs. South East Arts were satisfied with the funding amount: each time a new donation arrived they were able to invite more performers (Giiyong Festival Report 2; Gray; Williams). South East Arts now need to prove they have the leadership capacity, financial self-sufficiency, and material resources to produce another festival. They are planning 2020 will be similar to 2018, provided Twofold Aboriginal Corporation can provide extra support. Since South East Arts exists to service a wider area of NSW, they envisage that by 2024, they would hand over the festival to Twofold Aboriginal Corporation (Gray; Williams). Forthcoming festivals will not rotate around other venues because the Giiyong concept was developed Indigenously at Jigamy, and “Jigamy has the vibe” (Williams). Uncle Ossie insists that the Yuin-Monaro feel comfortable being connected to Country that once had a traditional campsite on the east side. Evaluation and ConclusionAlthough ostensibly intended for entertainment, large Aboriginal festivals significantly benefit the educational, political, and socio-economic landscape of contemporary Indigenous life. The cultural outpourings and dissemination of knowledges at the 2018 Giiyong Festival testified to the resilience of the Yuin-Monaro people. In contributing to the processes of Reconciliation and Recognition, the event privileged the performing arts as a peaceful—yet powerful truth-telling means—for dealing with the state. Performers representing the cultures of far-flung ancestral lands contributed to the reimagining of a First Nations people’s map representing hundreds of 'Countries.’It would be beneficial for the Far South East region to perpetuate the Giiyong Festival. It energised all those involved. But it took years of preparation and a vast network of cooperating people to create the feeling which made the 2018 festival unique. Uncle Ossie now sees aspects of the old sharing culture of his people springing back to life to mould the quality of life for families. Furthermore, the popular arts cultures are enhancing the quality of life for Eden youth. As the cross-sector efforts of stakeholders and volunteers so amply proved, a family-friendly, drug and alcohol-free event of the magnitude of the Giiyong Festival injects new growth into an Aboriginal arts industry designed for the future creative landscape of the whole South East region. AcknowledgementsMany thanks to Andrew Gray and Jasmin Williams for supplying a copy of the 2018 Giiyong Festival Report. We appreciated prompt responses to queries from Jasmin Williams, and from our editor Rachel Franks. We are humbly indebted to our two reviewers for their expert direction.ReferencesAustralian Government. Showcasing Creativity: Programming and Presenting First Nations Performing Arts. Australia Council for the Arts Report, 8 Mar. 2017. 20 May 2019 <https://tnn.org.au/2017/03/showcasing-creativity-programming-and-presenting-first-nations-performing-arts-australia-council/>.Bartleet, Brydie-Leigh. “‘Pride in Self, Pride in Community, Pride in Culture’: The Role of Stylin’ Up in Fostering Indigenous Community and Identity.” The Festivalization of Culture. Eds. Andy Bennett, Jodie Taylor, and Ian Woodward. New York: Routledge, 2014.Becker, Howard S. Art Worlds. 25th anniversary edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 2008.Brown, Bill. “The Monaroo Bubberer [Bobberer] Gudu Keeping Place: A Symbol of Aboriginal Self-determination.” ABC South East NSW, 9 Jul. 2015. 20 May 2019 <http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/07/09/4270480.htm>.Cameron, Stuart. "An Investigation of the History of the Aborigines of the Far South Coast of NSW in the 19th Century." PhD Thesis. Canberra: Australian National U, 1987. Desert Pea Media. The Black Ducks “People of the Mountains and the Sea.” <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fbJNHAdbkg>.“Festival Fanfare.” Eden Magnet 28 June 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <edenmagnet.com.au>.Gibson, Chris, and John Connell. Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2012.Gray, Andrew. Personal Communication, 28 Mar. 2019.Henry, Rosita. “Festivals.” The Oxford Companion to Aboriginal Art and Culture. Eds. Syvia Kleinert and Margot Neale. South Melbourne: Oxford UP, 586–87.Horton, David R. “Yuin.” Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia. Ed. David R. Horton. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994.———. Aboriginal Australia Wall Map Compiled by David Horton. Aboriginal Studies Press, 1996.Lygon, Nathan. Personal Communication, 20 May 2019.Mathews, Janet. Albert Thomas Mentions the Leaf Bands That Used to Play in the Old Days. Cassette recorded at Wreck Bay, NSW on 9 July 1964 for the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (AIATSIS). LAA1013. McKnight, Albert. “Giiyong Festival the First of Its Kind in Yuin Nation.” Bega District News 17 Sep. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/5649214/giiyong-festival-the-first-of-its-kind-in-yuin-nation/?cs=7523#slide=2>. ———. “Giiyong Festival Celebrates Diverse, Enduring Cultures.” Bega District News 24 Sep. 2018. 1 Mar. 2019 <https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/5662590/giiyong-festival-celebrates-diverse-enduring-cultures-photos-videos/>.Myers, Doug. “The Fifth Festival of Pacific Arts.” Australian Aboriginal Studies 1 (1989): 59–62.Simpson, Alison. Personal Communication, 9 Apr. 2019.Slater, Lisa. “Sovereign Bodies: Australian Indigenous Cultural Festivals and Flourishing Lifeworlds.” The Festivalization of Culture. Eds. Andy Bennett, Jodie Taylor, and Ian Woodward. London: Ashgate, 2014. 131–46.South East Arts. "Giiyong Festival Report." Bega: South East Arts, 2018.———. Giiyong Grow the Music. Poster for Event Produced on Saturday, 28 Oct. 2017. Bega: South East Arts, 2017.Williams, Jasmin. Personal Communication, 28 Mar. 2019.Young, Michael, with Ellen, and Debbie Mundy. The Aboriginal People of the Monaro: A Documentary History. Sydney: NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, 2000.

In a field of study as well-established as the Gothic, it is surprising how much contention there is over precisely what that term refers to. Is Gothic a genre, for example, or a mode? Should it be only applicable to literary and film texts that deal with tropes of haunting and trauma set in a gloomy atmosphere, or might it meaningfully be applied to other cultural forms of production, such as music or animation? Can television shows aimed at children be considered Gothic? What about food? When is something “Gothic” and when is it “horror”? Is there even a difference? The Gothic as a phenomenon is commonly identified as beginning with Horace Walpole’s novel The Castle of Otranto (1764), which was followed by Clara Reeve’s The Old English Baron (1778), the romances of Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis’ The Monk (1796). Nineteenth-century Gothic literature was characterised by “penny dreadfuls” and novels such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). Frequently dismissed as sensational and escapist, the Gothic has experienced a critical revival in recent decades, beginning with the feminist revisionism of the 1970s by critics such as Ellen Moers, Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. With the appearance of studies such as David Punter’s The Literature of Terror (1980), Gothic literature became a reputable field of scholarly research, with critics identifying suburban Gothic, imperial Gothic, postcolonial Gothic and numerous national Gothics, including Irish Gothic and the Gothic of the American South. Furthermore, as this special edition on Gothic shows, the Gothic is by no means limited to literature, with film, television, animation and music all partaking of the Gothic inflection. Indeed, it would be unwise to negate the ways in which the Gothic has developed to find fertile ground beyond the bounds of literature. In our media-centred twenty-first century, the Gothic has colonised different forms of expression, where the impact left by literary works, that were historically the centre of the Gothic itself, is all but a legacy. Film, in particular, has a close connection to the Gothic, where the works of, for instance, Tim Burton, have shown the representative potential of the Gothic mode; the visual medium of film, of course, has a certain experiential immediacy that marries successfully with the dark aesthetics of the Gothic, and its connections to representing cultural anxieties and desires (Botting). The analysis of Gothic cinema, in its various and extremely international incarnations, has now established itself as a distinct area of academic research, where prominent Gothic scholars such as Ken Gelder—with the recent publication of his New Vampire Cinema (2012)—continue to lead the way to advance Gothic scholarship outside of the traditional bounds of the literary.As far as cinema is concerned, one cannot negate the interconnections, both aesthetic and conceptual, between traditional Gothic representation and horror. Jerrold Hogle has clearly identified the mutation and transformation of the Gothic from a narrative solely based on “terror”, to one that incorporates elements of “horror” (Hogle 3). While the separation between the two has a long-standing history—and there is no denying that both the aesthetics and the politics of horror and the Gothic can be fundamentally different—one has to be attuned to the fact that, in our contemporary moment, the two often tend to merge and intersect, often forming hybrid visions of the Gothic, with cinematic examples such as Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) playing testament to this. Indeed, the newly formed representations of “Gothic Horror” and “Gothic Terror” alerts us to the mutable and malleable nature of the Gothic itself, an adaptable mode that is always contextually based. Film is not, however, the only non-literary medium that has incorporated elements of the Gothic over the years. Other visual representations of the Gothic abound in the worlds of television, animation, comics and graphic novels. One must only think here of the multiple examples of recent television series that have found fruitful connections with both the psychologically haunting aspects of Gothic terror, and the gory and grisly visual evocations of Gothic horror: the list is long and diverse, and includes Dexter (2006-2013), Hannibal (2013-), and Penny Dreadful (2014-), to mention but a few. The animation front —in its multiple in carnations —has similarly been entangled with Gothic tropes and concerns, a valid interconnection that is visible both in cinematic and television examples, from The Corpse Bride (2005) to Coraline (2009) and Frankenweeinie (2012). Comics and graphics also have a long-standing tradition of exploiting the dark aesthetics of the Gothic mode, and its sensationalist connections to horror; the instances from this list pervade the contemporary media scope, and feature the inclusion of Gothicised ambiences and characters in both singular graphic novels and continuous comics —such as the famous Arkham Asylum (1989) in the ever-popular Batman franchise. The inclusion of these multi-media examples here is only representative, and it is an almost prosaic accent in a list of Gothicised media that extends to great bounds, and also includes the worlds of games and music. The scholarship, for its part, has not failed to pick up on the transformations and metamorphoses that the Gothic mode has undergone in recent years. The place of both Gothic horror and Gothic terror in a multi-media context has been critically evaluated in detail, and continues to attract academic attention, as the development of the multi-genre and multi-medium journey of the Gothic unfolds. Indeed, this emphasis is now so widespread that a certain canonicity has developed for the study of the Gothic in media such as television, extending the reach of Gothic Studies into the wider popular culture scope. Critical texts that have recently focused on identifying the Gothic in media beyond not only literature, but also film, include Helen Wheatley’s Gothic Television (2007), John C. Tibbetts’ The Gothic Imagination: Conversation of Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction in the Media (2011), and Julia Round’s Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels (2014). Critics often suggest that the Gothic returns at moments of particular cultural crisis, and if this is true, it seems as if we are in such a moment ourselves. Popular television shows such as True Blood and The Walking Dead, books such as the Twilight series, and the death-obsessed musical stylings of Lana Del Ray all point to the pertinence of the Gothic in contemporary culture, as does the amount of submissions received for this edition of M/C Journal, which explore a wide range of Gothic texts. Timothy Jones’ featured essay “The Black Mass as Play: Dennis Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out” suggests that although scholarly approaches to the Gothic tend to adopt the methodologies used to approach literary texts and applied them to Gothic texts, yielding readings that are more-or-less congruous with readings of other sorts of literature, the Gothic can be considered as something that tells us about more than simply ourselves and the world we live in. For Jones, the fact that the Gothic is a production of popular culture as much as “highbrow” literature suggests there is something else happening with the way popular Gothic texts function. What if, Jones asks, the popular Gothic were not a type of work, but a kind of play? Jones uses this approach to suggest that texts such as Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out might direct readers not primarily towards the real, but away from it, at least for a time. Wheatley’s novel is explored by Jones as a venue for readerly play, apart from the more substantial and “serious” concerns that occupy most literary criticism. Samantha Jane Lindop’s essay foregrounds the debt David Lynch’s film Mulholland Drive owes to J. Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) thus adding to studies of the film that have noted Lynch’s intertextual references to classic cinema such as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966). Lindop explores not just the striking similarity between Carmilla and Mulholland Drive in terms of character and plot, but also the way that each text is profoundly concerned with the uncanny. Lorna Piatti-Farnell’s contribution, “What’s Hidden in Gravity Falls: Strange Creatures and the Gothic Intertext” is similarly interested in the intertextuality of the Gothic mode, noting that since its inception this has taken many and varied incarnations, from simple references and allusions to more complicated uses of style and plot organisation. Piatti-Farnell suggests it is unwise to reduce the Gothic text to a simple master narrative, but that within its re-elaborations and re-interpretations, interconnections do appear, forming “the Gothic intertext”. While the Gothic has traditionally found fertile ground in works of literature, other contemporary media, such as animation, have offered the Gothic an opportunity for growth and adaptation. Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls is explored by Piatti-Farnell as a visual text providing an example of intersecting monstrous creatures and interconnected narrative structures that reveal the presence of a dense and intertextual Gothic network. Those interlacings are connected to the wider cultural framework and occupy an important part in unravelling the insidious aspects of human nature, from the difficulties of finding “oneself” to the loneliness of the everyday. Issues relating to identity also feature in Patrick Usmar’s “Born To Die: Lana Del Rey, Beauty Queen or Gothic Princess?”, which further highlights the presence of the Gothic in a wide range of contemporary media forms. Usmar explores the music videos of Del Rey, which he describes as Pop Gothic, and that advance themes of consumer culture, gender identity, sexuality and the male gaze. Jen Craig’s “The Agitated Shell: Thinspiration and the Gothic Experience of Eating Disorders” similarly focuses on contemporary media and gender identity, problematising these issues by exploring the highly charged topic of “thinspiration” web sites. Hannah Irwin’s contribution also focuses on female experience. “Not of this earth: Jack the Ripper and the development of Gothic Whitechapel” focuses on the murder of five women who were the victims of an assailant commonly referred to by the epithet “Jack the Ripper”. Irwin discusses how Whitechapel developed as a Gothic location through the body of literature devoted to the Whitechapel murders of 1888, known as “Ripperature”. The subject of the Gothic space is also taken up by Donna Brien’s “Forging Continuing Bonds from the Dead to the Living: Gothic Commemorative Practices along Australia’s Leichhardt Highway.” This essay explores the memorials along Leichhardt’s highway as Gothic practice, in order to illuminate some of the uncanny paradoxes around public memorials, as well as the loaded emotional terrain such commemorative practices may inhabit. Furthering our understanding of the Australian Gothic is Patrick West’s contribution “Towards a Politics & Art of the Land: Gothic Cinema of the Australian New Wave and its Reception by American Film Critics.” West argues that many films of the Australian New Wave of the 1970s and 1980s can be defined as Gothic and that international reviews of such films tended to overlook the importance of the Australian landscape, which functions less as a backdrop and more as a participating element, even a character, in the drama, saturating the mise-en-scène. Bruno Starrs’ “Writing My Indigenous Vampires: Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic” is dedicated to illuminating a new genre of creative writing: that of the “Aboriginal Fantastic”. Starrs’ novel That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! is part of this emerging genre of writing that is worthy of further academic interrogation. Similarly concerned with the supernatural, Erin Mercer’s contribution “‘A Deluge of Shrieking Unreason’: Supernaturalism and Settlement in New Zealand Gothic Fiction” explores the absence of ghosts and vampires in contemporary Gothic produced in New Zealand, arguing that this is largely a result of a colonial Gothic tradition utilising Maori ghosts that complicates the processes through which contemporary writers might build on that tradition. Although there is no reason why the Gothic must include supernatural elements, it is an enduring feature that is taken up by Jessica Balanzategui in “‘You Have a Secret that You Don’t Want To Tell Me’: The Child as Trauma in Spanish and American Horror Film.” This essay explores the uncanny child character and how such children act as an embodiment of trauma. Sarah Baker’s “The Walking Dead and Gothic Excess: The Decaying Social Structures of Contagion” focuses on the figure of the zombie as it appears in the television show The Walking Dead, which Baker argues is a way of exploring themes of decay, particularly of family and society. The essays contained in this special Gothic edition of M/C Journal highlight the continuing importance of the Gothic mode in contemporary culture and how that mode is constantly evolving into new forms and manifestations. The multi-faceted nature of the Gothic in our contemporary popular culture moment is accurately signalled by the various media on which the essays focus, from television to literature, animation, music, and film. The place occupied by the Gothic beyond representational forms, and into the realms of cultural practice, is also signalled, an important shift within the bounds of Gothic Studies which is bound to initiate fascinating debates. The transformations of the Gothic in media and culture are, therefore, also surveyed, so to continue the ongoing critical conversation on not only the place of the Gothic in contemporary narratives, but also its duplicitous, malleable, and often slippery nature. It is our hope that the essays here stimulate further discussion about the Gothic and we will hope, and look forward, to hearing from you. References Botting, Fred. Gothic: The New Critical Idiom. 2nd edition. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2014. Hogle, Jerrold. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture”. The Cambridge Companion of Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 1-20.


 
 
 “I realised some time ago that I am a showgirl. When I perform it is to show the girl, whereas some performers take the approach of caricaturing or ‘burlesquing’ the girl.” (Lola the Vamp) “Perhaps the most surprising idea of contemporary feminism is that women are female impersonators” (Tyler, 1) In recent years, femininity has been the subject of much debate in mainstream culture, as well as in feminist theory. The recent moral panic over “size zero” bodies is only the latest example of the anxieties and tensions generated by a culture in which every part of the female body is subject to endless surveillance and control. The backlash against the women’s movement of the late 20th century has seen the mainstreaming of high femininity on an unprecedented scale. The range of practices now expected of middle-class women, including cosmetic surgery, dieting, fake tanning, manicures, pedicures, and waxing (including pubic waxing) is staggering. Little wonder, then, that femininity has often been imagined as oppressive labour, as work. If women were to attempt to produce the ideal femininities promoted by women’s magazines in the UK, USA and Australia, there would be little time in the day—let alone money—for anything else. The work of femininity hence becomes the work of adapting oneself to a current set of social norms, a work of adaptation and adjustment that must remain invisible. The goal is to look natural while constantly labouring away in private to maintain the façade. Alongside this feminine ideal, a subculture has grown up that also promotes the production of an elaborately feminine identity, but in very different ways. The new burlesque is a subculture that began in club nights in London and New York, has since extended to a network of performers and fans, and has become a highly active community on the Internet as well as in offline cultural spaces. In these spaces, performers and audiences alike reproduce striptease performances, as well as vintage dress and styles. Performers draw on their own knowledge of the history of burlesque to create acts that may invoke late 19th-century vaudeville, the supper clubs of pre-war Germany, or 1950s pinups. However the audience for these performances is as likely to consist of women and gay men as the heterosexual men who comprise the traditional audience for such shows. The striptease star Dita von Teese, with her trademark jet-black hair, pale skin, red lips and tiny 16-inch corseted waist, has become the most visible symbol of the new burlesque community. However, the new burlesque “look” can be seen across a web of media sites: in film, beginning with Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001), and more recently in The Notorious Bettie Paige (Mary Harron, 2005), as well as in mainstream movies like Mrs Henderson Presents (Stephen Frears, 2005); in novels (such as Louise Welsh’s The Bullet Trick); in popular music, such as the iconography of Kylie Minogue’s Showgirl tour and the stage persona of Alison Goldfrapp; and in high fashion through the work of Vivienne Westwood and Roland Mouret. Since the debut in the late 1990’s of von Teese’s most famous act, in which she dances in a giant martini glass, the new burlesque has arisen in popular culture as a counterpoint to the thin, bronzed, blonde ideal of femininity that has otherwise dominated popular culture in the West. The OED defines burlesque as “a comically exaggerated imitation, especially in a literary or dramatic work; a parody.” In this article, I want to think about the new burlesque in precisely this way: as a parody of feminine identity that, by making visible the work involved in producing feminine identity, precisely resists mainstream notions of feminine beauty. As Lola the Vamp points out in the quotation that opens this article, new burlesque is about “caricaturing or burlesquing the girl”, but also about “showing the girl”, not only in the literal sense of revealing the body at the end of the striptease performance, but in dramatising and making visible an attachment to feminine identity. For members of the new burlesque community, I want to suggest, femininity is experienced as an identity position that is lived as authentic. This makes new burlesque a potentially fruitful site in which to think through the questions of whether femininity can be adapted, and what challenges such adaptations might pose, not only for mainstream culture, but for feminist theory. As I have stated, feminist responses to mainstream femininity have emphasised that femininity is work; that is, that feminine identities do not emerge naturally from certain bodies, but rather have to be made. This is necessary in order to resist the powerful cultural discourses through which gender identities are normalised. This model sees femininity as additive, as something that is superimposed on some mystical “authentic” self which cries out to be liberated from the artificially imposed constraints of high heels, makeup and restrictive clothing. This model of femininity is summed up by Naomi Wolf’s famous statement, in The Beauty Myth, that “femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society happens to be selling” (Wolf, 177; emphasis added). However, a potential problem with such a view of gender identity is that it tends to reproduce essentialist notions of identity. The focus on femininity as a process through which bodies are adapted to social norms suggests that there is an unmarked self that precedes adaptation. Sabina Sawhney provides a summary and critique of this position: Feminism seems to be relying on the notion that the authentic identity of woman would be revealed once the drag is removed. That is to say, when her various “clothes”—racial, ethnic, hetero/homosexual, class textured—are removed, the real, genuine woman would appear whose identity would pose no puzzles. But surely that is a dangerous assumption, for it not only prioritises certain forms of identity formation over others, but also essentialises a sexual or gendered identity as already known in advance. (5) As Sawhney suggests here, to see femininity only in terms of oppressive labour is implicitly essentialist, since it suggests the existence of a primary, authentic “femaleness”. Femininity consists of consumer “stuff” which is superimposed onto unproblematically female bodies. Sawhney is right, here, to compare femininity to drag: however, female and male femininities are read very differently in this account. Drag and cross-dressing are decried as deliberate (male) parodies of “women” (and it is interesting to note that parodies of femininity are inevitably misread as parodies of women, as though the two were the same). However, those women who engage in feminine identity practices are to be pitied, not blamed, or at least not explicitly. Femininity, the compulsion to adapt oneself to incorporate “whatever society is selling”, is articulated in terms of “social pressure”, as a miserable duty over which women have no control. As Samantha Holland argues, the danger is that women become positioned as “mindless consumers, in thrall to the power of media images” (10). Resisting the adaptations demanded by femininity thus becomes a way of resisting mindlessness, particularly through resisting excessive consumption. This anxiety about female excess is echoed in some of the press coverage of the burlesque scene. For example, an article in the British Sunday paper The Observer takes a sceptical position on some performers’ claims that their work is feminist, wondering whether the “fairy dust of irony really strips burlesque of any political dubiousness” (O’Connell, 4), while an article on a feminist Website argues that the movement “can still be interpreted as a form of exploitation of women’s bodies,” (DiNardo, 1), which rather suggests that it is the purpose of feminism to try and interpret all manifestations of femininity in this way: as if the writer is suggesting that feminism itself were a system for curbing feminine excess. This is not to deny that the new burlesque, like more mainstream forms of femininity, involves work. Indeed, a reading of online burlesque communities suggests that it is precisely the labour of femininity that is a source of pleasure. Many books and Websites associated with this movement offer lessons in stage performance; however, these real and virtual classes are not limited to those who wish to perform. In this subculture, much of the pleasure derives from a sense of community between performer and audience, a sense which derives mainly from the adaptation of a specific retro or vintage feminine identity. Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy offers courses in the more theatrical aspects of burlesque, such as stripping techniques, but also in subjects such as “makeup and wig tricks” and “walking in heels” (Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque). Burlesque, like cross-dressing suggests that femininity needs to be learnt: and learning femininity, in this sense, also involves unlearning whatever “one [usually restrictive] size fits all” forms of femininity are currently being sold by the fashion and beauty industries. In contrast to this normative model, the online accounts of burlesque fans and performers reveal an intense pleasure in creating and adapting new feminine identities within a subculture, through a “DIY” approach to femininity. This insistence on doing it yourself is important, since it is through the process of reclaiming vintage styles of clothing, hair and makeup that real adaptation takes place. Whereas mainstream femininity is positioned as empty consumption, and as a source of anxiety, burlesque is aligned with recycling, thrift shopping and the revival of traditional crafts such as knitting and weaving. This is most visible in magazines and Websites such as Bust magazine. This magazine, which launched in the early 1990s, was an early forerunner of the burlesque revival with its use of visual imagery taken from 1950s women’s magazines alongside pinups of the same era. The Website has been selling Bettie Page merchandise for some time alongside its popular Stitch n’ Bitch knitting books, and also hosts discussions on feminism, craft and “kitsch and make-up” (Bust). In the accounts cited above, femininity is clearly not imagined through an imperative to conform to social norms: instead, the practice of recovering and re-creating vintage looks is constructed as a pleasurable leisure activity that brings with it a sense of achievement and of engagement with a wider community. The appeal of burlesque, therefore, is not limited to a fetishistic preference for the trappings of burlesque or retro femininity: it is also defined by what it is not. Online discussions reveal a sense of dissatisfaction with more culturally visible forms of femininity promoted by celebrity culture and women’s magazines. Particular irritants include the low-maintenance look, skinniness, lip gloss, highlighted and layered hair, fake tan and, perhaps unexpectedly, jeans. These are seen as emblematic of precisely stereotypical and homogenising notions of feminine identity, as one post points out: “Dita VT particularly stands out in this day and age where it seems that the mysterious Blondifier and her evil twin, the Creosoter, get to every female celeb at some point.” (Bust Lounge, posted on Oct 17 2006, 3.32 am) Another reason for the appeal of New Burlesque is that it does not privilege slenderness: as another post says “i think i like that the women have natural bodies in some way” (Bust Lounge, posted on Oct 8 2006, 7:34 pm), and it is clear that the labour associated with this form of femininity consists of adorning the body for display in a way that opposes the dominant model of constructing “natural” beauty through invisible forms of labour. Burlesque performers might therefore be seen as feminist theorists, whose construction of a feminine image against normative forms of femininity dramatises precisely those issues of embodiment and identity that concern feminist theory. This open display and celebration of feminine identity practices, for example, makes visible Elizabeth Grosz’s argument, in Volatile Bodies, that all bodies are inscribed with culture, even when they are naked. A good example of this is the British performer Immodesty Blaize, who has been celebrated in the British press for presenting an ideal of beauty that challenges the cultural predominance of size zero bodies: a press cutting on her Website shows her appearance on the cover of the Sunday Times Style magazine for 23 April 2006, under the heading “More Is More: One Girl’s Sexy Journey as a Size 18” (Immodesty Blaize). However, this is not to suggest that her version of femininity is simply concerned with rejecting practices such as diet and exercise: alongside the press images of Immodesty in ornate stage costumes, there is also an account of the rigorous training her act involves. In other words, the practices involved in constructing this version of femininity entail bringing together accounts of multiple identity practices, often in surprising ways that resist conforming to any single ideal of femininity: while both the athletic body and the sexualised size 18 body may both be seen as sites of resistance to the culturally dominant slender body, it is unusual for one performer’s image to draw on both simultaneously as Blaize does. This dramatisation of the work involved in shaping the body can also be seen in the use of corsets by performers like von Teese, whose extremely tiny waist is a key aspect of her image. Although this may be read on one hand as a performance of conformity to feminine ideals of slimness, the public flaunting of the corset (which is after all a garment originally designed to be concealed beneath clothing) again makes visible the practices and technologies through which femininity is constructed. The DIY approach to femininity is central to the imperative to resist incorporation by mainstream culture. Dita von Teese makes this point in a press interview, in which she stresses the impossibility of working with stylists: “the one time I hired a stylist, they picked up a pair of my 1940’s shoes and said, these would look really cute with jeans. I immediately said, you’re out of here” (West, 10). With its constant dramatisation and adaptation of femininity, then, I would argue that burlesque precisely carries out the work which Grosz says is imperative for feminist theory, of problematising the notion of the body as a “blank, passive page” (156). If some feminist readings of femininity have failed to account for the multiplicity and diversity of feminine identity performances, it is perhaps surprising that this is also true of feminist research that has engaged with queer theory, especially theories of drag. As Carol-Ann Tyler notes, feminist critiques of drag performances have tended to read drag performances as a hostile parody of women themselves (60). I would argue that this view of drag as a parody of women is problematic, in that it reproduces an essentialist model in which women and femininity are one and the same. What I want to suggest is that it is possible to read drag in continuum with other performances, such as burlesque, as an often affectionate parody of femininity; one which allows female as well as male performers to think through the complex and often contradictory pleasures and anxieties that are at stake in performing feminine identities. In practice, some accounts of burlesque do see burlesque as a kind of drag performance, but they reveal that anxiety is not alleviated but heightened when the drag performer is biologically female. While drag is performed by male bodies, and hence potentially from a position of power, a female performer is held to be both complicit with patriarchal power, and herself powerless: the performance thus emanates from a doubly powerless position. Because femininity is imagined as a property of “women”, to parody femininity is to parody oneself and is hence open to being read as a performance of self-hatred. At best, the performer is herself held to occupy a position of middle class privilege, and hence to have access to what O’Connell, in the Observer article, calls “the fairy dust of irony” (4). For O’Connell however the performer uses this privilege to celebrate a normative, “politically dubious” form of femininity. In this reading, which positions itself as feminist, any potential for irony is lost, and burlesque is seen as unproblematically reproducing an oppressive model of feminine identities and roles. The Websites I have cited are aware of the potential power of burlesque as parody, but as a parody of femininity which attempts to work with the tensions inherent in feminine identity: its pleasures as well as its constraints and absurdities. Such a thinking-through of femininity is not the sole preserve of the male drag performer. Indeed, my current research on drag is engaged with the work of self-proclaimed female drag queens, also known as “bio queens” or “faux queens”: recently, Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters has spoken of her early experiences as a performer in a San Francisco drag show, where there is an annual faux-queen beauty pageant (Barber, 1). I would argue that there is a continuity between these performers and participants in the burlesque scene who may be conflicted about their relationship to “feminism” but are highly aware of the possibilities offered by this sense of parody, which is often articulated through an invocation of queer politics. Queer politics is often explicitly on the agenda in burlesque performance spaces; however the term “queer” is used not only to refer to performances that take place in queer spaces or for a lesbian audience, but to the more general way in which the very idea of women parodying femininity works to queer both feminist and popular notions of femininity that equate it with passivity, with false consciousness. While burlesque does celebrate extreme femininities, it does so in a highly self-aware and parodic manner which works to critique and denaturalise more normalised forms of femininity. It does so partly by engaging with a queer agenda (for example Miss Indigo’s Academy of Burlesque hosts lectures on queer politics and feminism alongside makeup classes and stripping lessons). New Burlesque stage performers use 19th- and 20th-century ideals of femininity to parody contemporary feminine ideals, and this satirical element is carried through in the audience and in the wider community. In burlesque, femininity is reclaimed as an identity precisely through aligning an excessive form of femininity with feminism and queer theory. This model of burlesque as queer parody of femininity draws out the connections as well as the discontinuities between male and female “alternative” femininities, a potentially powerful connectivity that is suggested by Judith Butler’s work and that disrupts the notion that femininity is always imposed on women through consumer culture. It is possible, then, to open up Butler’s writing on drag in order to make explicit this continuity between male and female parodies of femininity. Writing of the need to distinguish between truly subversive parody, and that which is likely to be incorporated, Butler explains: Parody by itself is not subversive, and there must be a way to understand what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony (Gender Trouble, 177). The problem with this is that femininity, as performed by biologically female subjects, is still positioned as other, as that which presents itself as natural, but is destabilised by more subversive gender performances, such as male drag, that reveal it as performative. The moment of judgment, when we as queer theorists decide which performances are truly subversive and which are not, is divisive: having drawn out the continuity between male and female performances of femininity, it reinstates the dualistic order in which women are positioned as lacking agency. If a practice is ultimately incorporated by consumer culture, this does not necessarily mean that it is not troubling or politically interesting. Such a reductive and pessimistic reading produces “the popular” as a bad object in a way that reproduces precisely the hegemonic discourse it is trying to disrupt. In this model, very few practices, including drag, could be held to be subversive at all. What is missing from Butler’s account is an awareness of the complex and multiple forms of pleasure and desire that characterise women’s attachment to feminine identities. I would argue that she opens up a potentially exhilarating possibility that has significant implications for feminist understandings of feminine identity in that it allows for an understanding of the ways in which female performers actively construct, rework and critique feminine identity, but that this possibility is closed down through the implication that only male drag performances are “truly troubling” (Gender Trouble, 177). By allowing female performers to ”parody the girl”, I am suggesting that burlesque potentially allows for an understanding in which female performances of femininity may, like drag, also be “truly troubling” (Butler, Gender Trouble, 177). Like drag, they require the audience both to reflect on the ways in which femininity is performatively constructed within the constraints of a normative, gendered culture, but also do justice to the extent to which feminine identity may be experienced as a source of pleasure. Striptease, in which feminine identity is constructed precisely through painstakingly creating a look whose layers are then stripped away in a stylised performance of feminine gesture, powerfully dramatises the historic tension between feminism and femininity. Indeed, the labour involved in burlesque performances can be adapted and adopted as feminist theoretical performances that speak back to hegemonic ideals of beauty, to feminism, and to queer theory. References Barber, Lynn. “Life’s a Drag”. The Guardian 26 Nov. 2006, 10. Bust Lounge. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.bust.com/>. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. ———. Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge, 2004 DiNardo, Kelly. “Burlesque Comeback Tries to Dance with Feminism.” Women’s E-News 2004. 1 Mar. 2007 http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2099>. Dita von Teese. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.dita.net>. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a New Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1994. Holland, Samantha. Alternative Femininities. London: Berg, 2004. Immodesty Blaize. 10 Apr. 2007 http://www.immodestyblaize.com/collage2.html>. Lola the Vamp. 8 Mar. 2006 http://www.lolathevamp.net>. Miss Indigo Blue’s Academy of Burlesque. 8 Mar. 2007 http://www.academyofburlesque.com>. O’Connell, Dee. “Tassels Will Be Worn.” The Observer 28 Sep. 2003, 4. Sawhney, Sabina. “Feminism and Hybridity Round Table.” Surfaces 7 (2006): 113. Tyler, Carol Ann. Female Impersonation. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. West, Naomi. “Art of the Teese.” Daily Telegraph online edition 6 Mar. 2006: 10. 1 Mar. 2007 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/main.jhtml?xml=/fashion/2006/03/06/efdita04.xml>. Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. London: Chatto and Windus, 1990. 
 
 
 
 Citation reference for this article
 
 MLA Style
 Ferreday, Debra. "Adapting Femininities: The New Burlesque." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/12-ferreday.php>. APA Style
 Ferreday, D. (May 2007) "Adapting Femininities: The New Burlesque," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/12-ferreday.php>. 

Cut In 1964, William S. Burroughs' Nova Express is published. Part of the trilogy of books Burroughs wrote in the early 1960s (The Soft Cell and The Ticket That Exploded are the other two), Nova Express explores the problems that technology creates in the information age; and the ways in which language and thought have come under the influence of mass media. The book begins with a broad declaration against consumerism and corporate control: Listen all you boards syndicates and governments of the earth. And you powers behind what filth deals consummated in what lavatory to take what is not yours. To sell the ground from unborn feet forever - "For God's sake don't let that Coca-Cola thing out -" (Nova Express 3) Rather than opt for conventional narrative as a means of uncovering the problems ideology brings with media-driven mass consumption, in the early '60s, Burroughs develops a method of writing he calls "the cut-up". The cut-up method entails taking a page of writing (a newspaper, a poem, a novel, an advertisement, a speech) and cutting it down the middle twice so that four sections remain. One then rearranges the sections in random order to create a new page. Variations of the four section cut are permissible and can lead to further juxtapositions. The purpose of the cut-up is to disclose ideological positions within media, to recontextualise the language of media often taken for granted as natural and not as a socially and economically constructed act. Information has become addictive, Burroughs says, invoking the junkie as a metaphor for mass consumption. Its addictive state leads to hallucinations, distortions of what is real and what is illusion; what do we need to live, and what do we buy for mere consumption. The scanning pattern we accept as "reality" has been imposed by the controlling power on this planet, a power primarily oriented towards total control - In order to retain control they have moved to monopolize and deactivate the hallucinogen drugs by effecting noxious alternations on a molecular level. (Nova Express 53) The cut-up provides a means to combat the "junky" in us all by revealing the powers of technology. In the end, the cut-up leads to a collagist practice of juxtaposition. As Burroughs and collaborator Byron Gysin explained in a later work, The cut-up method brings to writers the collage, which has been used by painters for fifty years. And used by the moving and still camera. In fact all street shots from movie or still cameras are by the unpredictable factors of passersby and juxtaposition cut-ups (Burroughs and Gysin 29). Through its structure, Nova Express is a lesson in making cut-ups, a demonstration of how power might be undermined in the digital age. Paste In 1964, the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham began. Influenced by Raymond Williams' 1958 Culture and Society, the Birmingham School legitimized the reading of popular culture as a means to uncovering dominant ideologies and power structures within institutional systems. In particular, the center proposed structuring scholasticism so that the study of media texts would allow for the questioning of social and political practices. The Birmingham school advised that curriculae supplement their agendas with the question of class; the complex relationships between power, which is an easier term to establish in the discourses of culture than exploitation, and exploitation; the question of a general theory which could, in a critical way, connect together in a critical reflection different domains of life, politics, and theory, theory and practice, economic, political ideological questions, and so on; the notion of critical knowledge itself and the production of critical knowledge as a practice. (Hall 279) One of the Birmingham School's first works was Stuart Hall and Paddy Whannel's Popular Arts, which searched out ways to teach media. In particular, Hall and Whannel viewed popular culture as a place to teach the power of ideology. There is, in fact, a growing recognition that the media of mass communication play such a significant role in society, and especially in the lives of young people, that the school must embrace the study of their organization, content, and impact. But there is little agreement about how such studies should be carried out. Just what shall be studied? With what precise purpose? In what relationship to the established subjects? Ultimately the answer will depend upon our attitude towards these media, our social thinking about the kind of society in which they wield their influence and, in particular, our response to the things the media offer - individual films, television programmes, popular songs, etc. (Hall and Whannel 21) Today, the Birmingham School is recognised as the beginning of contemporary cultural studies. It answers Hall and Whannel by using texts from popular culture to uncover the semiotic cultural codes that make up popular discourse. These methods shed light on how supposedly naturally constructed messages contain deeper meanings and purposes. Mix In 1964, DJ Alan Freed was convicted of tax evasion as a result of his involvement in the payola record business scandal of 1962. Considered one of the first rock and roll DJs, Freed is often credited for breaking ‘50s racial barriers by playing African-American music on the airwaves and hosting largely attended African-American dances and concerts. Even though Freed didn't invent the phrase "rock and roll," he credited himself with the term's introduction into music vocabulary, a myth-making act with far reaching implications. As critic Nick Tosch writes: "Though he was certainly not the first who had done so; he was only the most influential of those who had - Freed [had] rinsed the Dixie Peach from its image, rendering it more agreeable to the palate of a greater public" (Tosch 9). In the same year of Freed's conviction, another legendary DJ, Murray the K, found fame again by following the Beatles around on their 1964 North American tour. Murray the K had been popular in the late '50s for "his wild stammering of syllables, fragments of words, black slang, and meaningless, rhythmical burbling" to make transitions between songs (Poschardt 75). Mass copying of Murray the K's DJ stylings led to his redundancy. When New Journalist Tom Wolfe rediscovered the DJ tagging along with the Beatles, he became intrigued, describing him as "the original hysterical disk jockey": Murray the K doesn't operate on Aristotelian logic. He operates on symbolic logic. He builds up an atmosphere of breathless jollification, comic hysteria, and turns it up to a pitch so high it can hypnotize kids and keep them frozen. (Wolfe 34) While Freed introduced African-American culture to mainstream music, Murray the K's DJing worked from a symbolic logic of appropriation: sampled sounds, bits and pieces of eccentric outtakes used as vehicles to move from song to song. Both Freed and Murray the K, however, conceived the idea of the DJ as more than a spinner of records. They envisioned the DJ as a form of media, a myth maker, a composer of ideas through sounds and politics. In a sense, they saw their work as disseminating social commentary on '60s racial politics and ideology, working from a fairly new innovation: the rock and roll record. Their DJ work became the model for contemporary hip hop artists. Instead of considering isolated train whistles or glass crashing (the technique of Murray the K) as sources for sampling, contemporary DJs and digital samplers cut and paste fragments from the history of popular music in order to compose new works, compositions which function as vehicles of cultural critique. Groups like Public Enemy and The Roots utilise their record collections to make political statements on drug usage, economic problems within the African-American community, and racism. For Tricia Rose, these artists are the cultural studies writers of the digital age. "Rappers are constantly taking dominant discursive fragments and throwing them into relief, destabilizing hegemonic discourses and attempting to legitimate counterhegemonic interpretations." (Rose 102) Remix The juxtaposition of these three events in 1964 marks an interesting place to consider the potential for new media and cultural studies. Such a juxtaposition answers the calls of Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler in their introduction to Cultural Studies, a collection of essays from the 1970s and 1980s. The editors suggest that cultural studies can be thought of, in some ways, as a collagist practice. The methodology of cultural studies provides an equally uneasy marker, for cultural studies in fact has no distinct methodology, no unique statistical, ethnomethodological, or textual analysis to call its own. Its methodology, ambiguous from the beginning, could best be seen as a bricolage. (2) For these editors, "Cultural studies needs to remain open to unexpected, unimagined, even uninvited possibilities" (3). To consider cultural studies from the perspective of 1964 is to evoke the unexpected, the unimagined, and the uninvited. It is to resituate the demands of cultural study within the context of new media - the legacy of Burroughs' cut-up reborn in the digital sampler. In response to the editors of Cultural Studies, I propose the practice of temporal juxtaposition as a way of critical writing. My initial juxtaposition of 1964 asserts that to teach such a practice, one must teach cutting and mixing. The Break The break, as a DJ method, is "any short captured sound whatsoever" (Eshun 14). The break motivates digital sampling; it provides the points from which samplers appropriate past works into their own: "Break beats are points of rupture in their former contexts, points at which the thematic elements of a musical piece are suspended and the underlying rhythms brought center stage. In the early stages of rap, these break beats formed the core of rap DJs' mixing strategies" (Rose 73-74). Breaks are determined by how DJs produce cuts in previously recorded music. "The cut is a command, a technical and conceptual operation which cuts the lines of association" (Eshun 16). For William Burroughs, cuts create shock in readers; they are tools for destroying ideology. "Once machine lines are cut, the enemy is helpless" (Ticket That Exploded 111). In Nova Express, Burroughs issues the command, "Cut word lines" (62). And in Naked Lunch, the cut provides a set of reading instructions, a way for readers to uncover Burroughs' own ideological positions. You can cut into Naked Lunch at any intersection point . . . I have written many prefaces. . . Naked Lunch is a blueprint, a How-To Book. (Naked Lunch 224 For Roland Barthes, a major influence on the founding of the Birmingham School, the How-To functioned as a place for cultural critique. Barthes felt that semiotic analysis could break ideological positions constructed in popular culture. Barthes used the How-To as one example of what he called mythologies, items of popular culture assumed to be natural but latent with ideological meanings. He treated the how-to tourist guide (how to enjoy yourself on vacation) as one such place for further analysis. The good natured image of "the writer on holiday" is therefore no more than one of these cunning mystifications which the Establishment practices the better to enslave its writers. (Barthes 30) Mythologies has inspired contemporary cultural studies. Dick Hebdige states that through Barthes' work, "It was hoped that the invisible temporary seam between language, experience and reality could be located and prised open through a semiotic analysis" (Hebdige 10). My juxtapositions of 1964, however, tell me that the How-To for cultural studies is cutting and pasting, not hermeneutical or semiotic analysis (i.e. What does this mean? What do these codes reveal?), which have long been cultural studies' focus. 1964 updates cultural studies practices by reinventing its methods of inquiry. 1964 forces academic study to ask: How would a contemporary cultural critic cut into cultural texts and paste selections into a new media work? The Sample Cuts and breaks become samples, authorial chosen selections. My sample comes from Walter Benjamin, an early DJ of media culture who discovered in 19th century Paris a source for a new compositional practice. Benjamin's unfinished Arcades project proposed that the task of the writer in the age of mechanical reproduction is to become a collector. "The collector was the true inhabitant of the interior" (Benjamin 168). Benjamin felt that the "poets find their refuse on the street" (79) preempting William Gibson's now often cited remark, "the street finds its own use for things" (Gibson 186) and modern DJs who build record collections by rummaging bargain street sales. I find in Benjamin's work a place to sample, a break for cutting into Burroughs' nova method. "The basic nova mechanism is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflict - This is done by dumping life forms with incompatible conditions of existence on the same planet" (Nova Express 53). Like Burroughs, Benjamin expressed interest in the ideological conflicts created through juxtaposition. His collections of the Parisian Arcades led to a cultural history different from that of the Frankfurt School. The Arcades' juxtapositions of consumer goods and artifacts opposed the Frankfurt School's understandings of Marxism and methods of critique. The conflict I create is that of incorporating the concerns of cultural studies into media study as an alternative practice. This practice is a system of sampling, cutting, breaking, and pasting. What might initially seem incompatible to cultural studies, I propose as a method of critique. My initial juxtaposition of 1964 becomes the first step towards doing so: I critique current cultural studies' methods of semiotic and hermeneutical analysis by way of the cut and mix I create. This Benjamin sample is pasted onto the Networked Writing Environment (NWE) at the University of Florida where I teach media classes in one of several computer networked classrooms. Working from a sampled Benjamin and the juxtaposition of the previously described temporal events of 1964, I see a place to rethink new media and cultural studies. The NWE's graphical user interface completes the cut. Our Unix operating system uses X Windows for desktop display. The metaphor of the X, the slash, the cut, becomes a place to rethink what cultural studies admits to be a cut-up, or a non-unified practice (as stated by Grossberg et al). The X also recalls the crossroads, the iconic marker of the place of decision. Standing at the crossroads, I envision the blues song of the same name, which in 1964 was cut from its Robert Johnson origins and remixed as a new recording by the Yardbirds. This decision shifts the focus of media study to cultural collections, their juxtapositions, and the alternative understandings that surface. The tools of technology (like those we use in the NWE: the Web, MOO, and e-mail) cut the structural dominance of critique and encourage us to make new pedagogical decisions, like juxtaposing a William Burroughs novel with the founding of the Birmingham School with the rise of the DJ. Putting these practices into the mix, we redefine cultural critique. 1964, then, is the place where cultural mixing begins. References Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. Benjamin, Walter. Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Harry Zohn trans. London: NLB, 1973. Burroughs, William S. Naked Lunch. New York: Grove, 1982 (1959). _________________. Nova Express. New York: Grove, 1992 (1964). _________________. The Ticket That Exploded. New York: Grove, 1987 (1962). Burroughs, William S. and Byron Gysin. The Third Mind. New York: Viking Press, 1978. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than the Sun. London: Quartet, 1999. Gibson, William. "Burning Chrome." Burning Chrome. New York: Ace Books, 1981. Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds. Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1992. Hall, Stuart. "Theoretical Legacies." Cultural Studies. Hall, Stuart and Paddy Whannel. The Popular Arts. New York: Pantheon, 1964. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London and New York: Routledge, 1979. Poschardt, Ulf. DJ Culture. London: Quartet, 1998. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Black Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Tosch, Nick. Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll. New York: Da Capo Press, 1999. Wolfe, Tom. "The Fifth Beatle." The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby. New York: Pocket Books, 1965.

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 advertisements 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>

IntroductionThe 2009 American film Trash Humpers, directed by Harmony Korine, was released at a time when the hipster had become a ubiquitous concept, entering into the common vernacular of numerous cultures throughout the world, and gaining significant press, social media and academic attention (see Žižek; Arsel and Thompson; Greif et al.; Stahl; Ouellette; Reeve; Schiermer; Maly and Varis). Trash Humpers emerged soon after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis triggered Occupy movements in numerous cities, aided by social media platforms, reported on by blogs such as Gawker, and stylized by multi-national youth-subculture brands such as Vice, American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and a plethora of localised variants.Korine’s film, which is made to resemble found VHS footage of old-aged vandals, epitomises the ironic, retro stylizations and “counterculture-meets-kitsch” aesthetics so familiar to hipster culture. As a creative stereotype from 1940s and ‘50s jazz and beatnik subcultures, the hipster re-emerged in the twenty-first century as a negative embodiment of alternative culture in the age of the Internet. As well as plumbing the recent past for things not yet incorporated into contemporary marketing mechanisms, the hipster also signifies the blurring of irony and authenticity. Such “outsiderness as insiderness” postures can be regarded as a continuation of the marginality-from-the-centre logic of cool capitalism that emerged after World War Two. Particularly between 2007 and 2015, the post-postmodern concept of the hipster was a resonant cultural trope in Western and non-Western cultures alike, coinciding with the normalisation of the new digital terrain and the establishment of mobile social media as an integral aspect of many people’s daily lives. While Korine’s 79-minute feature could be thought of as following in the schlocky footsteps of the likes of Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2006), it is decidedly more arthouse, and more attuned to the influence of contemporary alternative media brands and independent film history alike – as if the love child of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) and Vice Video, the latter having been labelled as “devil-may-care hipsterism” (Carr). Upon release, Trash Humpers was described by Gene McHugh as “a mildly hip take on Jackass”; by Mike D’Angelo as “an empty hipster pose”; and by Aaron Hillis as either “the work of an insincere hipster or an eccentric provocateur”. Lacking any semblance of a conventional plot, Trash Humpers essentially revolves around four elderly-looking protagonists – three men and a woman – who document themselves with a low-quality video camera as they go about behaving badly in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee, where Korine still lives. They cackle eerily to themselves as they try to stave off boredom, masturbating frantically on rubbish bins, defecating and drinking alcohol in public, fellating foliage, smashing televisions, playing ten-pin bowling, lighting firecrackers and telling gay “hate” jokes to camera with no punchlines. In one purposefully undramatic scene half-way through the film, the humpers are shown in the aftermath of an attack on a man wearing a French maid’s outfit; he lies dead in a pool of blood on their kitchen floor with a hammer at his feet. The humpers are consummate “bad” performers in every sense of the term, and they are joined by a range of other, apparently lower-class, misfits with whom they stage tap dance routines and repetitively sing nursery-rhyme-styled raps such as: “make it, make it, don’t break it; make it, make it, don’t fake it; make it, make it, don’t take it”, which acts as a surrogate theme song for the film. Korine sometimes depicts his main characters on crutches or in a wheelchair, and a baby doll is never too far away from the action, as a silent and Surrealist witness to their weird, sinister and sometimes very funny exploits. The film cuts from scene to scene as if edited on a video recorder, utilising in-house VHS titling sequences, audio glitches and video static to create the sense that one is engaging voyeuristically with a found video document rather than a scripted movie. Mainstream AlternativesAs a viewer of Trash Humpers, one has to try hard to suspend disbelief if one is to see the humpers as genuine geriatric peeping Toms rather than as hipsters in old-man masks trying to be rebellious. However, as Korine’s earlier films such as Gummo (1997) attest, he clearly delights in blurring the line between failure and transcendence, or, in this case, between pretentious art-school bravado and authentic redneck ennui. As noted in a review by Jeannette Catsoulis, writing for the New York Times: “Much of this is just so much juvenile posturing, but every so often the screen freezes into something approximating beauty: a blurry, spaced-out, yellow-green landscape, as alien as an ancient photograph”. Korine has made a career out of generating this wavering uncertainty in his work, polarising audiences with a mix of critical, cinema-verité styles and cynical exploitations. His work has consistently revelled in ethical ambiguities, creating environments where teenagers take Ritalin for kicks, kill cats, wage war with their families and engage in acts of sexual deviancy – all of which are depicted with a photographer’s eye for the uncanny.The elusive and contradictory aspects of Korine’s work – at once ugly and beautiful, abstract and commercial, pessimistic and nostalgic – are evident not just in films such as Gummo, Julien Donkey Boy (1999) and Mister Lonely (2007) but also in his screenplay for Kids (1995), his performance-like appearances on The Tonight Show with David Letterman (1993-2015) and in publications such as A Crackup at the Race Riots (1998) and Pass the Bitch Chicken (2001). As well as these outputs, Korine is also a painter who is represented by Gagosian Gallery – one of the world’s leading art galleries – and he has directed numerous music videos, documentaries and commercials throughout his career. More than just update of the traditional figure of the auteur, Korine, instead, resembles a contemporary media artist whose avant-garde and grotesque treatments of Americana permeate almost everything he does. Korine wrote the screenplay for Kids when he was just 19, and subsequently built his reputation on the paradoxical mainstreaming of alternative culture in the 1990s. This is exemplified by the establishment of music and film genres such “alternative” and “independent”; the popularity of the slacker ethos attributed to Generation X; the increased visibility of alternative press zines; the birth of grunge in fashion and music; and the coining of “cool hunting” – a bottom-up market research phenomenon that aimed to discover new trends in urban subcultures for the purpose of mass marketing. Key to “alternative culture”, and its related categories such as “indie” and “arthouse”, is the idea of evoking artistic authenticity while covertly maintaining a parasitic relationship with the mainstream. As Holly Kruse notes in her account of the indie music scenes of the 1990s, which gained tremendous popularity in the wake of grunge bands such as Nirvana: without dominant, mainstream musics against which to react, independent music cannot be independent. Its existence depends upon dominant music structures and practices against which to define itself. Indie music has therefore been continually engaged in an economic and ideological struggle in which its ‘outsider’ status is re-examined, re-defined, and re-articulated to sets of musical practices. (Kruse 149)Alternative culture follows a similar, highly contentious, logic, appearing as a nebulous, authentic and artistic “other” whose exponents risk being entirely defined by the mainstream markets they profess to oppose. Kids was directed by the artist cum indie-director Larry Clark, who discovered Korine riding his skateboard with a group of friends in New York’s Washington Square in the early 1990s, before commissioning him to write a script. The then subcultural community of skating – which gained prominence in the 1990s amidst the increased visibility of “alternative sports” – provides an important backdrop to the film, which documents a group of disaffected New York teenagers at a time of the Aids crisis in America. Korine has been active in promoting the DIY ethos, creativity and anti-authoritarian branding of skate culture since this time – an industry that, in its attempts to maintain a non-mainstream profile while also being highly branded, has become emblematic of the category of “alternative culture”. Korine has undertaken commercial projects with an array skate-wear brands, but he is particularly associated with Supreme, a so-called “guerrilla fashion” label originating in 1994 that credits Clark and other 1990s indie darlings, and Korine cohorts, Chloë Sevigny and Terry Richardson, as former models and collaborators (Williams). The company is well known for its designer skateboard decks, its collaborations with prominent contemporary visual artists, its hip-hop branding and “inscrutable” web videos. It is also well known for its limited runs of new clothing lines, which help to stoke demand through one-offs – blending street-wear accessibility with the restricted-market and anti-authoritarian sensibility of avant-garde art.Of course, “alternative culture” poses a notorious conundrum for analysis, involving highly subjective demarcations of “mainstream” from “subversive” culture, not to mention “genuine subversion” from mere “corporate alternatives”. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, the roots of alternative culture lie in the Western tradition of the avant-garde and the “aesthetic gaze” that developed in the nineteenth century (Field 36). In analysing the modernist notion of advanced cultural practice – where art is presented as an alternative to bourgeois academic taste and to the common realm of cultural commodities – Bourdieu proposed a distinction between two types of “fields”, or logics of cultural production. Alternative culture follows what Bourdieu called “the field of restricted production”, which adheres to “art for art’s sake” ideals, where audiences are targeted as if like-minded peers (Field 50). In contrast, the “field of large-scale production” reflects the commercial imperatives of mainstream culture, in which goods are produced for the general public at large. The latter field of large-scale production tends to service pre-established markets, operating in response to public demand. Furthermore, whereas success in the field of restricted production is often indirect, and latent – involving artists who create niche markets without making any concessions to those markets – success in the field of large-scale production is typically more immediate and quantifiable (Field 39). Here we can see that central to the branding of “alternative culture” is the perceived refusal to conform to popular taste and the logic of capitalism more generally is. As Supreme founder James Jebbia stated about his brand in a rare interview: “The less known the better” (Williams). On this, Bourdieu states that, in the field of restricted production, the fundamental principles of all ordinary economies are inversed to create a “loser wins” scenario (Field 39). Profit and cultural esteem become detrimental attributes in this context, potentially tainting the integrity and marginalisation on which alternative products depend. As one ironic hipster t-shirt puts it: “Nothing is any good if other people like it” (Diesel Sweeties).Trash HipstersIn abandoning linear narrative for rough assemblages of vignettes – or “moments” – recorded with an unsteady handheld camera, Trash Humpers positions itself in ironic opposition to mainstream filmmaking, refusing the narrative arcs and unwritten rules of Hollywood film, save for its opening and closing credits. Given Korine’s much publicized appreciation of cinema pioneers, we can understand Trash Humpers as paying homage to independent and DIY film history, including Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures, William Eggleston’s Stranded in Canton (1973), Andy Warhol’s and Paul Morrissey’s Lonesome Cowboys (1967) and Trash (1970), and John Waters’s Pink Flamingos (1972), all of which jubilantly embraced the “bad” aesthetic of home movies. Posed as fantasized substitutions for mainstream movie-making, such works were also underwritten by the legitimacy of camp as a form of counter-culture critique, blurring parody and documentary to give voice to an array of non-mainstream and counter-cultural identities. The employment of camp in postmodern culture became known not merely as an aesthetic subversion of cultural mores but also as “a gesture of self-legitimation” (Derrida 290), its “failed seriousness” regarded as a critical response to the specific historical problem of being a “culturally over-saturated” subject (Sontag 288).The significant difference between Korine’s film and those of his 1970s-era forbears is precisely the attention he pays to the formal aspects of his medium, revelling in analogue editing glitches to the point of fetishism, in some cases lasting as long as the scenes themselves. Consciously working out-of-step with the media of his day, Trash Humpers in imbued with nostalgia from its very beginning. Whereas Smith, Eggleston, Warhol, Morrissey and Waters blurred fantasy and documentary in ways that raised the social and political identities of their subjects, Korine seems much more interested in “trash” as an aesthetic trope. In following this interest, he rightfully pays homage to the tropes of queer cinema, however, he conveniently leaves behind their underlying commentaries about (hetero-) normative culture. A sequence where the trash humpers visit a whorehouse and amuse themselves by smoking cigars and slapping the ample bottoms of prostitutes in G-strings confirms the heterosexual tenor of the film, which is reiterated throughout by numerous deadpan gay jokes and slurs.Trash Humpers can be understood precisely in terms of Korine’s desire to maintain the aesthetic imperatives of alternative culture, where formal experimentation and the subverting of mainstream genres can provide a certain amount of freedom from explicated meaning, and, in particular, from socio-political commentary. Bourdieu rightly points out how the pleasures of the aesthetic gaze often manifest themselves curiously as form of “deferred pleasure” (353) or “pleasure without enjoyment” (495), which corresponds to Immanuel Kant’s notion of the disinterested nature of aesthetic judgement. Aesthetic dispositions posed in the negative – as in the avant-garde artists who mined primitive and ugly cultural stereotypes – typically use as reference points “facile” or “vulgar” (393) working-class tropes that refer negatively to sensuous pleasure as their major criterion of judgment. For Bourdieu, the pleasures provided by the aesthetic gaze in such instances are not sensual pleasures so much as the pleasures of social distinction – signifying the author’s distance from taste as a form of gratification. Here, it is easy to see how the orgiastic central characters in Trash Humpers might be employed by Korine for a similar end-result. As noted by Jeremiah Kipp in a review of the film: “You don't ‘like’ a movie like Trash Humpers, but I’m very happy such films exist”. Propelled by aesthetic, rather than by social, questions of value, those that “get” the obscure works of alternative culture have a tendency to legitimize them on the basis of the high-degree of formal analysis skills they require. For Bourdieu, this obscures the fact that one’s aesthetic “‘eye’ is a product of history reproduced by education” – a privileged mode of looking, estranged from those unfamiliar with the internal logic of decoding presupposed by the very notion of “aesthetic enjoyment” (2).The rhetorical priority of alternative culture is, in Bourdieu’s terms, the “autonomous” perfection of the form rather than the “heteronomous” attempt to monopolise on it (Field 40). However, such distinctions are, in actuality, more nuanced than Bourdieu sometimes assumed. This is especially true in the context of global digital culture, which makes explicit how the same cultural signs can have vastly different meanings and motivations across different social contexts. This has arguably resulted in the destabilisation of prescriptive analyses of cultural taste, and has contributed to recent “post-critical” advances, in which academics such as Bruno Latour and Rita Felski advocate for cultural analyses and practices that promote relationality and attachment rather than suspicious (critical) dispositions towards marginal and popular subjects alike. Latour’s call for a move away from the “sledge hammer” of critique applies as much to cultural practice as it does to written analysis. Rather than maintaining hierarchical oppositions between authentic versus inauthentic taste, Latour understands culture – and the material world more generally – as having agency alongside, and with, that of the social world.Hipsters with No AlternativeIf, as Karl Spracklen suggests, alternativism is thought of “as a political project of resistance to capitalism, with communicative oppositionality as its defining feature” (254), it is clear that there has been a progressive waning in relevance of the category of “alternative culture” in the age of the Internet, which coincides with the triumph of so-called “neoliberal individualism” (258). To this end, Korine has lost some of his artistic credibility over the course of the 2000s. If viewed negatively, icons of 1990s alternative culture such as Korine can be seen as merely exploiting Dada-like techniques of mimetic exacerbation and symbolic détournement for the purpose of alternative, “arty” branding rather than pertaining to a counter-hegemonic cultural movement (Foster 31). It is within this context of heightened scepticism surrounding alternative culture that the hipster stereotype emerged in cultures throughout the world, as if a contested symbol of the aesthetic gaze in an era of neoliberal identity politics. Whatever the psychological motivations underpinning one’s use of the term, to call someone a hipster is typically to point out that their distinctive alternative or “arty” status appears overstated; their creative decisions considered as if a type of bathos. For detractors of alternative cultural producers such as Korine, he is trying too hard to be different, using the stylised codes of “alternative” to conceal what is essentially his cultural and political immaturity. The hipster – who is rarely ever self-identified – re-emerged in the 2000s to operate as a scapegoat for inauthentic markers of alternative culture, associated with men and women who appear to embrace Realpolitik, sincerity and authentic expressions of identity while remaining tethered to irony, autonomous aesthetics and self-design. Perhaps the real irony of the hipster is the pervasiveness of irony in contemporary culture. R. J Magill Jnr. has argued that “a certain cultural bitterness legitimated through trenchant disbelief” (xi) has come to define the dominant mode of political engagement in many societies since the early 2000s, in response to mass digital information, twenty-four-hour news cycles, and the climate of suspicion produced by information about terrorism threats. He analyses the prominence of political irony in American TV shows including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Simpsons, South Park, The Chappelle Show and The Colbert Report but he also notes its pervasiveness as a twenty-first-century worldview – a distancing that “paradoxically and secretly preserves the ideals of sincerity, honesty and authenticity by momentarily belying its own appearance” (x). Crucially, then, the utterance “hipster” has come to signify instances when irony and aesthetic distance are perceived to have been taken too far, generating the most disdain from those for whom irony, aesthetic discernment and cultural connoisseurship still provide much-needed moments of disconnection from capitalist cultures drowning in commercial hyperbole and grave news hype. Korine himself has acknowledged that Spring Breakers (2013) – his follow-up feature film to Trash Humpers – was created in response to the notion that “alternative culture”, once a legitimate challenge to mainstream taste, had lost its oppositional power with the decentralization of digital culture. He states that he made Spring Breakers at a moment “when there’s no such thing as high or low, it’s all been exploded. There is no underground or above-ground, there’s nothing that’s alternative. We’re at a point of post-everything, so it’s all about finding the spirit inside, and the logic, and making your own connections” (Hawker). In this context, we can understand Trash Humpers as the last of the Korine films to be branded with the authenticity of alternative culture. In Spring Breakers Korine moved from the gritty low-fi sensibility of his previous films and adopted a more digital, light-filled and pastel-coloured palette. Focussing more conventionally on plot than ever before, Spring Breakers follows four college girls who hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation. Critic Michael Chaiken noted that the film marks a shift in Korine’s career, from the alternative stylings of the pre-Internet generation to “the cultural heirs [of] the doomed protagonists of Kids: nineties babies, who grew up with the Internet, whose sensibilities have been shaped by the sweeping technological changes that have taken place in the interval between the Clinton and Obama eras” (33).By the end of the 2000s, an entire generation came of age having not experienced a time when the obscure films, music or art of the past took more effort to track down. Having been a key participant in the branding of alternative culture, Korine is in a good position to recall a different, pre-YouTube time – when cultural discernment was still caught up in the authenticity of artistic identity, and when one’s cultural tastes could still operate with a certain amount of freedom from sociological scrutiny. Such ideas seem a long way away from today’s cultural environments, which have been shaped not only by digital media’s promotion of cultural interconnection and mass information, but also by social media’s emphasis on mobilization and ethical awareness. ConclusionI should reiterate here that is not Korine’s lack of seriousness, or irony, alone that marks Trash Humpers as a response to the scepticism surrounding alternative culture symbolised by the figure of the hipster. It is, rather, that Korine’s mock-documentary about juvenile geriatrics works too hard to obscure its implicit social commentary, appearing driven to condemn contemporary capitalism’s exploitations of youthfulness only to divert such “uncool” critical commentaries through unsubtle formal distractions, visual poetics and “bad boy” avant-garde signifiers of authenticity. Before being bludgeoned to death, the unnamed man in the French maid’s outfit recites a poem on a bridge amidst a barrage of fire crackers let off by a nearby humper in a wheelchair. Although easily overlooked, it could, in fact, be a pivotal scene in the film. Spoken with mock high-art pretentions, the final lines of the poem are: So what? Why, I ask, why? Why castigate these creatures whose angelic features are bumping and grinding on trash? Are they not spawned by our greed? Are they not our true seed? Are they not what we’ve bought for our cash? We’ve created this lot, of the ooze and the rot, deliberately and unabashed. Whose orgiastic elation and one mission in creation is to savagely fornicate TRASH!Here, the character’s warning of capitalist overabundance is drowned out by the (aesthetic) shocks of the fire crackers, just as the stereotypical hipster’s ethical ideals are drowned out by their aesthetic excess. The scene also functions as a metaphor for the humpers themselves, whose elderly masks – embodiments of nostalgia – temporarily suspend their real socio-political identities for the sake of role-play. It is in this sense that Trash Humpers is too enamoured with its own artifices – including its anonymous “boys club” mentality – to suggest anything other than the aesthetic distance that has come to mark the failings of the “alternative culture” category. In such instances, alternative taste appears as a rhetorical posture, with Korine asking us to gawk knowingly at the hedonistic and destructive pleasures pursued by the humpers while factoring in, and accepting, our likely disapproval.ReferencesArsel, Zeynep, and Craig J. Thompson. “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing Marketplace Myths.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.5 (2011): 791-806.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production Essays on Art and Literature. Edited by Randal Johnson. London: Polity Press, 1993.Carr, David. “Its Edge Intact, Vice Is Chasing Hard News.” New York Times 24 Aug. 2014. 12 Nov. 2016 <https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/25/business/media/its-edge-intact-vice-is-chasing-hard-news-.html>.Catsoulis, Jeannette. “Geriatric Delinquents, Rampaging through Suburbia.” New York Times 6 May 2010. 1` Nov. 2016 <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/movies/07trash.html>.Chaiken, Michael. “The Dream Life.” Film Comment (Mar./Apr. 2013): 30-33.D’Angelo, Mike. “Trash Humpers.” Not Coming 18 Sep. 2009. 12 Nov. 2016 <http://www.notcoming.com/reviews/trashhumpers>.Derrida, Jacques. Positions. London: Athlone, 1981.Diesel Sweeties. 1 Nov. 2016 <https://store.dieselsweeties.com/products/nothing-is-any-good-if-other-people-like-it-shirt>.Felski, Rita. The Limits of Critique. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.Greif, Mark. What Was the Hipster? A Sociological Investigation. New York: n+1 Foundation, 2010.Hawker, Philippa. “Telling Tales Out of School.” Sydney Morning Herald 4 May 2013. 12 Nov. 2016 <http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/telling-tales-out-of-school-20130503-2ixc3.html>.Hillis, Aaron. “Harmony Korine on Trash Humpers.” IFC 6 May 2009. 12 Nov. 2016 <http://www.ifc.com/2010/05/harmony-korine-2>.Jay Magill Jr., R. Chic Ironic Bitterness. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.Kipp, Jeremiah. “Clean Off the Dirt, Scrape Off the Blood: An Interview with Trash Humpers Director Harmony Korine.” Slant Magazine 18 Mar. 2011. 1 Nov. 2016 <http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/clean-off-the-dirt-scrape-off-the-blood-an-interview-with-trash-humpers-director-harmony-korine>.Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30.2 (2004): 225-248.Maly, Ico, and Varis, Piia. “The 21st-Century Hipster: On Micro-Populations in Times of Superdiversity.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 19.6 (2016): 637–653.McHugh, Gene. “Monday May 10th 2010.” Post Internet. New York: Lulu Press, 2010.Ouellette, Marc. “‘I Know It When I See It’: Style, Simulation and the ‘Short-Circuit Sign’.” Semiotic Review 3 (2013): 1–15.Reeve, Michael. “The Hipster as the Postmodern Dandy: Towards an Extensive Study.” 2013. 12 Nov. 2016. <http://www.academia.edu/3589528/The_hipster_as_the_postmodern_dandy_towards_an_extensive_study>.Schiermer, Bjørn. “Late-Modern Hipsters: New Tendencies in Popular Culture.” Acta Sociologica 57.2 (2014): 167–181.Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” Against Interpretation. New York: Octagon, 1964/1982. 275-92. Stahl, Geoff. “Mile-End Hipsters and the Unmasking of Montreal’s Proletaroid Intelligentsia; Or How a Bohemia Becomes BOHO.” Adam Art Gallery, Apr. 2010. 12 May 2015 <http://www.adamartgallery.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/adamartgallery_vuwsalecture_geoffstahl.pdf>.Williams, Alex. “Guerrilla Fashion: The Story of Supreme.” New York Times 21 Nov. 2012. 1 Nov. 2016 <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/22/fashion/guerrilla-fashion-the-story-of-supreme.html>.Žižek, Slavoj. “L’Etat d’Hipster.” Rhinocerotique. Trans. Henry Brulard. Sep. 2009. 3-10.

Introduction: From Classic Noir Parody to Aussie Comedy Noir However you choose to identify noir – as a genre, style, or cycle – over its 80 years from classic American film noir to neo-noir, neon-noir, national noirs, and television noir, it has undeniably seeped into popular culture. Exemplary of this is the way noir has hybridised with other genres and styles, true of comedy as much as its more serious pairings with science fiction, Western, and Gothic. This is not a new phenomenon: Sue Short points out that pastiche noir began appearing at the end of the classic cycle, citing Kiss Me Deadly (1955) as an example that noir has always had “a sense of exaggeration and self-consciousness” (185). Successful parody relies on a shared understanding of visual motifs, narratives, characters, and iconography. As Dahlia Schweitzer indicates, “we take the rules of genres so seriously that we even call attention to them for the sake of comedy … even when poking fun, the rules are still being followed” (117-118). With so many easily identifiable features, noir has enjoyed homage and parody in sketch comedy, films, animation, and the ‘noir episode’ in television over the years. There are also comedy-noir hybrids that don’t solely rely on parody but rather weave the style into the fabric of their narratives and visuals. Comedy-noir draws not only on classic film noir and neo-noir, but encompasses other noir iterations, such as Scandi Noir, its international adaptations, and the rise of distinctive national noirs, including the growing catalogue of Australian Noir. Audience understanding of the generic ‘rules’ of these ‘new noirs’ has also allowed for comedic parodies and hybridisations to emerge. Australian audiences are no strangers to comedy-infused crime, and Greg Dolgopolov’s work includes a great discussion of its distinct flavour in Australian features as well as defining the features of Outback Noir. Series such as Mr Inbetween (2018-2021), which Cath Moore notes was “billed as a black comedy crime drama” (127), have also been recognised as part of the growing Australian Noir oeuvre, with critic Andrew Nette describing the hitman drama as “so dark, so funny and so noir [and] also … so very Australian”. The SBS series Troppo (2022), based on the successful novels of Candice Fox (marketed under the publisher’s ‘Penguin Noir’ banner), also fits the Australian Noir mould. Its comic moments arise from the relationship between its two leads, a jaded American cop and a damaged local loner with a passion for sleuthing, employing the common crime trope of mismatched detectives. While these two shows are solid examples of how comic overtones inevitably bleed into Australian Noir, I would be hesitant to bill them as ‘comedy-noir’. There are others that fit this description more closely, combining noir conventions with comedy (and a touch of the Australian Gothic) for a more baked-in approach that pays homage to or takes inspiration from noir, as well as drawing on Australian comic-crime traditions. I’d like to explore this concept in a small selection of recent TV series: Thou Shalt Not Steal (2024), Deadloch (2023), and Bay of Fires (2023). Outback Comedy Noir: Thou Shalt Not Steal I believe Stan’s recent series Thou Shalt Not Steal (2024) is our first Outback Noir comedy, parodying identifiable aspects of Outback Noir, which itself shares generic lineage with the Western. Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road (2013) and its subsequent sequels and TV series “flipped the colour palette” of noir (Turnbull) to Outback red, and inverted the traditional noir iconography of shadowed night into bright day (Dolgopolov 80). That the visual language of Mystery Road is repeated in Thou Shalt is no accident: writer-director Dylan River also co-wrote and directed the prequel series Mystery Road: Origin. The Mystery Road film was shot in Queensland and its various series in Western Australia, showcasing iconic Outback Noir landscapes, with long stretches of red-dusted roads flanked by dry scrub. Thou Shalt is set and shot in South Australia and the Northern Territory, so immediately places the viewer in this familiar setting. To signify its comic turn, Thou Shalt amplifies the revisionist Western iconography of Outback Noir in the Mystery Road universe (Dolgopolov 79), with outward parody of classic Westerns, including in its music and titles design. When Robyn (Sherry-Lee Watson) escapes juvenile incarceration in the first episode, she jumps on a correctional officer's back as if riding a bucking bronco. After initiating her escape on foot, Robyn busts her ailing grandfather (Warren H. Williams) from hospital then proceeds to steal a taxi. After he reveals her father is still alive, she drives them to where her mother lives to find answers, eventually setting off to find him and evade recapture. The determination of cabbie Maxine (Miranda Otto) to retrieve her car, and the sizable bag of cash in its boot, sets an adventurous interstate pursuit in motion. She convinces outback preacher Robert (Noah Taylor) to drive her in his rattling station wagon and caravan, as his son Gidge (Will McDonald) has also absconded with Robyn. Thou Shalt first flips the Outback Noir genre by making the young Indigenous girl the protagonist rather than the victim. Thematically, “past and present are inextricably linked” in Outback Noir, as they are in other forms of noir (Dolgopolov 84), and the young Robyn’s journey is similarly concerned with reconciling elements of her past with her present. Just as Mystery Road’s Indigenous detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson) “negotiates a complex world between black and white” (Dolgopolov 82), Robyn is similarly caught between two worlds: in one, her estranged alcoholic black mother, in the other, the absent white father she's trying to find. Like classic noir detectives, Robyn is also given a narrational voiceover, but in her case, her expletive-laden inner voice adds to the comic effect while also establishing the series’ socio-cultural context: “I’m 17 and I’m a thief. Them missionaries reckon ‘thou shalt not steal’. A bit rich from the bible bashing bastards that stole our country” (ep. 1). As Short identifies in features such as Pulp Fiction (1994) and Fargo (1996), “accidental or inept criminality” and “comic mischance” (201; 202) can be used to subvert noir-style crime and violence. Thou Shalt employs such shockingly hilarious moments: Maxine is electrocuted by the caravan’s dodgy wiring, and a trucker accidently shoots himself in the head. Dolgopolov notes that dumb criminals often feature in Australian crime comedies (84), and to them Thou Shalt adds even dumber cops. Robyn easily fools a local uniformed cop to avoid arrest, and a mismatched duo of federal police officers, cheekily monikered Burke and Wills (Darren Gilshenen and Shari Sebbens), often seem as lost as their namesakes. The white male of the pair parodies male cop machismo, much to the eye-rolling chagrin of his Indigenous female partner. Although many scenes are played for laughs, the comedy does not detract from Robyn’s serious situation. She is certainly no angel and knows it, but the plucky teen refuses to remain a victim and fights back even in the face of hopelessness. Likewise, serious issues encountered by the Indigenous characters – racism, alcoholism, incarceration – are woven into the plot, but the characters are also allowed to have some fun, for example the Aboriginal men making fun (in their language) of Will’s clothing, and the cheeky aunties who make sexual comments about a young police officer. Creator Dylan River deliberately set out to educate with humour, saying “with comedy, hopefully people will watch this who usually wouldn’t watch an Aboriginal, Indigenous drama” (qtd. in Frater). Dark secrets and moral decay lurking beneath the surface in small communities is a common rural noir (and indeed, Australian Noir) trope that also appears in Thou Shalt. Preacher Robert has lied to his son Gidge about the boy’s parentage, is profiteering from selling alcohol to the local Aboriginal community, and, despite his self-proclaimed piety, is easily swayed by Maxine’s sexual advances, which barely conceal her own dark motives. Robyn and Gidge are betrayed by the morally corrupt adults they encounter, such as the road stop truckers who menace the teens with the threat of sexual assault, one of whom is likely a serial killer and kidnaps Gidge. Although Maxine initially purports to help Robyn, she later tries to force the girl into prostitution as payback for her theft. Robyn’s reunion with her dumb ocker father also proves a fizzer, with his wife summoning Burke and Wills to arrest them both. Ultimately, it’s up to Gidge and Robyn to save each other. Just as Outback Noir provides a glimmer of reconciliatory hope, shown through Mystery Road’s black and white detectives working together (Dolgopolov 84), Robyn’s unlikely allyship with Gidge blossoms into a sweet romance, making their story akin to the lovers-on-the-run noir trope. While the series’ ending sees Robyn back in juvenile detention, she and Gidge dance joyfully together from opposite sides of the chain-link fence, the smile never leaving her face even as she is dragged away by the guards. This scene comically embodies Alberto Garcia’s concept of ‘bright noir’, in which noir’s traditional narrative of futility is undermined by instead “embrac[ing] optimism” (42). Robyn’s voiceover intones, “I’m gonna take a new road. With this fella” (ep. 8), and audiences are left hopeful the couple will find a way (if not necessarily legal) to be together. Tassie Goth-Noir-Comedy: Deadloch Amazon’s Deadloch bills itself as “a feminist noir comedy set against a bucolic backdrop with a rising body count” (Guesswork TV), not only placing its homage to noir front and centre, but teasing an intriguing twist on generic conventions. When watching the series, it becomes clear that the ‘noir’ in its tagline refers to more recent television noir, and in particular Scandinavian (or Nordic) Noir, rather than the classic era. Crime scholar Sue Turnbull says the series “flips the Nordic Noir crime genre on its arse”, and the Hollywood Reporter states this Tasmanian Noir is an “irreverent send up of self-serious Nordic-noir/Scandi-noir shows like The Killing and The Bridge and their international imitators like the U.K.’s Broadchurch” (Rahman). In fact, creators Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan used the working title Funny Broadchurch while developing the show (Press). Like any parody, Deadloch’s success as a comedy-noir lies in the audience’s understanding of the original style. I would also argue that a further precedent to this understanding can be found in the dramatic Tassie Goth-Noir series The Kettering Incident (2016) and The Gloaming (2020), themselves self-consciously influenced by Scandi Noir (Brammer 125). Deadloch also makes use of its Tasmanian setting to visually reference Scandi (and Tassie) Noir. Just as the opening title sequences of The Gloaming and The Kettering Incident showcase Tasmania’s dangerous beauty and hint at their dark themes (Brammer 132), Deadloch’s opener consists of “a drone shot across an expanse of grey water under a leaden sky accompanied by eerie music and a sense of foreboding” (Turnbull), coding it as a noir-mystery without foregrounding its comic stylings. In a television interview, McLennan states, “we keep calling it Tassie Noir, I mean we're not the first person to say that, but it is”, emphasising that the creative team imagined what a northern hemisphere crime drama would look like in Australia, and in particular in Tasmania, where “it feels like that no matter where you are in Tasmania that you're in a small town” (qtd. in The Project). Deadloch’s first scene encapsulates McLennan’s and McCartney’s key aims of interrogating the tropes of television crime noir. It delightfully flips the naked, violated female corpse trope of endless crime dramas, by having two Indigenous teen girls discover the corpse of a white man on the shores of its titular lake. Miranda (Kartanya Maynard) and Tammy (Leonie Whyman) are sneaking a smoke on the beach in the early morning gloom, and as Vanity Fair’s reviewer observes, “if this were your standard thriller, they’d be the killer’s prey” (Press). When they encounter the body, the victim’s penis is foregrounded and centred in the frame – a shock for viewers and the characters alike – and then Tammy drops her smoke on the corpse, prompting her to beat the embers on the unfortunate man’s pubic hair with a cry of “shit, his dick’s on fire!” (ep. 1). McCartney says this choice of victim is a direct result of the creators being “sick of seeing cold white tits on a slab … with fully dressed men having a conversation over the top of them” (qtd. in Standard Issue). The black humour in this inversion of a typical TV noir scene is “inviting us to laugh at the expense of the unfortunate” (Short 183), and as a self-proclaimed feminist comedy the ‘unfortunate’ here is the man. Like Thou Shalt’s Robyn, Miranda and Tammy also reverse the Outback Noir roles of Indigenous women, a deliberate creative choice to “give a voice to people that would normally be portrayed as victims in these shows” (McLennan qtd. in Standard Issue). Deadloch includes the familiar trope of a pair of investigators forcibly buddied up to investigate a case, trading the “mismatched male and female cop from different cultural backgrounds” (Turnbull) for two women. Local detective Dulcie (Kate Box) is level-headed and meticulous, but rather than parodying the troubled female detective of Scandi noir, she aligns her more closely with the noir male cop with a troubled home life (Turnbull). The shadow of an affair she had when she and wife Cath (Alicia Gardner) lived in Sydney looms over their marriage. Her chalk-and-cheese partner Eddie (Madelaine Sami) is brought in from Darwin to help solve the crime, and this forced partnership cleverly drives both comic and more serious narratives in the show. Just as Steven Sanders noted that classic hybrid-noir series Twin Peaks (1990-1) contained “convoluted plot and subplots, grotesque minor characters, and a protagonist, … with a troubled past” (453), we observe all these aspects in Deadloch. Eddie’s past – the death of her former work partner – churns a hidden darkness within her. In another inversion of Scandi Noir, her darkness doesn’t manifest in the quiet moodiness of a Sarah Lund (The Killing) or the idiosyncrasies of a Saga Noren (The Bridge). Instead, Eddie is loud, rambunctious, and often inappropriately shooting her mouth off, manifesting a grotesque major character. For much of the series, Eddie’s vocal and physical characterisation serves as “the grotesque, unruly female … celebrated and utilised for comic effect” (Boyle 83). Actress Sami’s skills as a physical comedian embody the comic grotesque, and Eddie is constantly moving where Dulcie is more still and observant. Eddie’s hilariously profane one-liners are countered by Dulcie’s calm and deadpan delivery of her comedic lines. Like the famous female Scandi detectives mentioned above, Dulcie and Eddie each have a distinctive look. Eddie stubbornly wears the incongruous outfit of shorts, singlet and tropical print shirt with sandals until the Tasmanian cold gets the better of her, when she adopts a new signature look of colourfully mismatched camping shop fleeces and cargo pants, all of which contrast the professionally-clad and well-groomed Dulcie. The actors skilfully navigate the comic-to-serious turn in the narrative, evidenced when Dulcie chases the drunken Eddie on the slippery deck of a boat (ep. 3), showcasing the physical comedy chops of both actors. Dulcie uncharacteristically raises her voice to Eddie and then savagely mimics her. This temporary swapping of their comic performance styles also marks the turning point in their working relationship, with the scene’s seamless switch to more serious tone as Eddie reveals her past trauma. While there are plenty of other laughs to be had in the town’s quirky inhabitants, it is the comedic interplay of the two leads which ultimately drives Deadloch as comedy and noir-crime procedural. Their relationship can be read both as a sophisticated feminine rendering of the ‘straight man/wiseguy’ trope of classic comic team-ups and a deliberate twist on the pairing of noir detectives. Aussie Noir in Tassie: Bay of Fires ABC’s Tasmanian-set series is the most slippery of the three to slot into the comedy-noir mould. It undoubtedly takes on aspects of the classic noir gangster/organised crime element, the ‘small town crime’ tropes of much of Australian Noir, and as ‘Tassie Noir’ it leverages the landscape and rural quirkiness. However, the comedy component doesn’t always hit the mark, and certainly isn’t as consistently present on screen as in Deadloch and Thou Shalt. In Bay of Fires, successful Melbourne CEO Anika (Marta Dusseldorp) has the rug pulled from under her when she is targeted by hitmen. All she knows is she has been betrayed by partner (in business and love) Johann (Nikolai Nikolaeff), and must flee to Tasmania with her children into witness protection. Renaming herself Stella, she tries her best to survive both the weirdness and danger in the fictional town of Mystery Bay. Producer and star Dusseldorp states that the backdrop for Bay of Fires, Tasmania’s west coast, “is really a character in this show, it’s a wild wild west” (ABC Radio National). Locations around Zeehan, Queenstown, and Strahan become Mystery Bay, a remote ‘wild west’ enclave harbouring criminals and informants. This area has previously been referred to as the ‘wild west’ in deference to the mining activities of the late nineteenth century which formed the unique moon-like appearance Mount Lyell (Bullock 89), and in Bay of Fires this poisoned landscape is reflective of its poisonous characters. Its opening title sequence follows the style of its comic and serious Tassie-Noir counterparts, with aerial shots over mist-covered mountains segueing to a dark green underwater shot, highlighting the gothic dread of the landscape. It is of course also extremely beautiful, and the picturesque is deliberately juxtaposed with the violent and strange. Mystery Bay sports a raft of eccentric small-town inhabitants, such as the pig-owning couple with a snobby eye for fashion, Magda and Heather (Pamela Rabe and Roz Hammond), a UFO-obsessed mechanic (Bob Franklin), and a shadowy cult-like family residing on the edge of town. This places viewers in the familiar, comfortable territories of Australian Noir and crime comedy with actors they recognise and love. As critic Mel Campbell notes, these “veteran actors … are having a tremendous amount of fun here as Colourful Locals from Central Casting”. Joining them is hapless local cop Jason (Andre DeVanny), who is clearly powerless against the town’s criminal element. His character is a benign comic example of the struggle figures of authority face in the “moral rottenness of small towns” in Outback Noir (Dolgopolov 80). The classic noir theme of organised crime is realised in the town’s microcosmic criminal underworld, led by ‘queenpin’ Frankie (Kerry Fox). Sanders notes that “violence is an inherent function of the mobster ethos” in television gangster noir such as The Sopranos (453), and Frankie doesn’t shy away from doling out violent retribution. This is evidenced in the dispatch of real estate agent Francis (Stephen Curry), who is chased through the dark woods, put on ‘trial’ by the townsfolk and later found dead in a stream by Stella and her kids, his face covered in a plastic bag (ep. 2). Frankie demands absolute loyalty, even slaying Magda and Heather’s beloved porcine pet when they dare to go against her. While Fox largely plays it straight as the quietly-terrifying matriarch, her crime ‘family’ sometimes subvert her aura of menace with criminal ineptitude. Stretch (Jalen Sutcliffe) sets off a classic gangland-style shootout when he accidently shoots a Russian mobster, his sweet face intoning “Shit. Sorry!” before all hell breaks loose (ep. 8). While much Australian crime comedy has favoured lower-class underdogs (Dolgopolov 85), Bay of Fires flips the protagonist to the upper-class Stella, with many of the series’ initial comic moments arising from her fish-out-of-water adjustment to her new home, including trading her designer clothes for local op shop finds and moving into a barely-standing house. Stella’s classist view of the criminals she meets also plays on the critique of white Anglo privilege that Dolgopolov observes in other Australian crime comedies (86). However, it doesn’t take long for Stella to join the ranks of her new criminal neighbours, albeit inadvertently. Francis’s brutal gang-style killing is contrasted by Stella’s panicked disposal of a public servant she runs over (eps. 3-4), demonstrative of the neo-noir comic trope involving accidental killers and troublesome corpses (Short 187). She also uses her business acumen to bring white-collar crime to the town, with a plan to avoid becoming another of Frankie’s gruesome victims by generating cash through embezzlement. Dusseldorp describes the series as a “drama, comedy, thriller” which aims for a tone “like Ozark meets Fargo meets Schitt’s Creek” (qtd. in ABC Radio National). Some critics believe the show struggles to balance this tone, with Mel Campbell stating it “reels between comedy and drama in a stressful and frustrating way”, with lead Dusseldorp “simultaneously the most dramatic onscreen and the most unrealistically clownish”. Any style of comedy is subjective, and as such audiences will respond differently to the show’s tonal inflections; personally, I laughed out loud several times. Overall, the series draws on the landscape aesthetic of Tassie Noir, the classic noir tropes of organised crime and shady underworlds, and neo-noir’s darkly comic use of violence. Underpinning this are Australian Noir/comic-crime’s quirky rural sensibilities and penchant for skilful ensemble casting. Conclusion While we have produced a spate of excellent Australian Noir drama on screens big and small, we just cannot help laughing at ourselves, so the appearance of Australian comedy-noir is no surprise. Reading Thou Shalt Not Steal using Greg Dolgopolov’s comprehensive analysis of Outback Noir’s features reveals that the series redeploys these to hilarious effect, while maintaining its own narrative integrity and originality. Shows such as Deadloch prove that we can walk the comic-noir tightrope, and turn an even newer niche sub-genre (Tassie Noir, itself borne of Scandi Noir) into a slick and entertaining crime comedy with a surprisingly heartfelt buddy-cop twist. Bay of Fires, whilst not quite as successfully hitting its comic targets, nonetheless imbues the Australian Noir tropes of small-town secrets and colourful crooks with a few dark laughs. As Jonathan Rayner notes, Australian Gothic cinema embraced the “subversive impact [of] incongruities and startling juxtapositions of horror and humour” (31). Deadloch, and Bay of Fires, as hybrid comedy-gothic-noirs, delight in such juxtapositions and push the incongruity further by punctuating Tasmania’s picture-postcard landscapes with horrific violence. Sue Short points out that other black comedy TV noirs such as Twin Peaks and Fargo (2014-2024) present an “idyllic town with a dark underside” (207). This is inherent in Deadloch, which embeds the rural crime trope where everyone is a suspect (Turnbull), and in Bay of Fires, with its (somewhat less idyllic) town of mysterious misfits. The outback landscape and rural settings are another hallmark of the Australian Gothic (Rayner 83) and have organically bled into small-screen crime settings. Thou Shalt Not Steal consciously takes its visual lead from “noir/Gothic Westerns” like Mystery Road (Rayner 117), then adds its own comic subversions. Mel Campbell’s comment that “Deadloch [indulges in] the procedural pleasures of rural noir yet [is] ruthlessly willing to lampoon the genre’s clichés” mirrors Short’s assertion that “lampooning well-worn conventions is not an affirmation of noir’s demise [but reflects a] need to imaginatively reinvent the genre” (197). It is also refreshing to find all three series featuring female leads and prominent female supporting roles, with a combination of established actors and rising young Indigenous talent. What we are observing in these comic noirs is the imaginative reinvention not only of broader concepts of noir, but also of Australian Noir itself. Acknowledgment The author’s research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. References Bay of Fires. TV series. Exec. prods. A. Knight, B. Popplewell, and G. Sitch. ABC/Archipelago Productions, 2023-. Brammer, Rebekah. “From Scandi Noir to Tassie Noir: Victoria Madden’s Adapting Auteurship of Noir in Australian Television.” The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 13.2 (2024): 125-136. Boyle, Bridget. “Take Me Seriously. Now Laugh at Me! How Gender Influences the Creation of Contemporary Physical Comedy.” Comedy Studies 6.1 (2015): 78-90. Bullock, Emily. “Around the Bend: The Curious Power of the Hills around Queenstown, Tasmania.” Cultural Studies Review 18.1 (2012): 86-106. Campbell, Mel. “Bay of Fires on ABC Review: Excruciating Attempts at Comedy.” Screen Hub, 11 July 2023.<https://www.screenhub.com.au/news/reviews/bay-of-fires-on-abc-review-excruciating-attempts-at-comedy-2619952/>. Deadloch. TV series. Exec. prods. K. McCartney and K. McLennan. Amazon/Guesswork TV, 2023-. Dolgopolov, Greg. “New Australian Crime Drama.” Australian Genre Film. Ed. Kelly McWilliam. Routledge, 2021. 74-89. Frater, Patrick. “Dylan River’s Toronto Series ‘Thou Shalt Not Steal’ Explores Australia’s Dark History with Humor: ‘If You’re Preaching to the Converted, How Are You Educating?’”. Variety, 13 Sep. 2024. <https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/dylan-river-toronto-thou-shalt-not-steal-australia-dark-history-1236143083/>. Garcia, Alberto N. “The Rise of ‘Bright Noir’.” European Television Crime Drama and Beyond. Eds. Kim Toft Hansen, Steven Peacock, and Sue Turnbull. Cham: Springer, 2018. Guesswork Television. Deadloch Press Kit. 2023. <https://guessworktv.com.au/show/deadloch/>. Moore, Cath. “Shadows under the Sun: Situating Nordic Noir within an Australian Audiovisual Landscape.” The Scandinavian Invasion: Nordic Noir and Beyond. Eds. Richard McCulloch and William Proctor. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2023. 123-44. Mystery Road. Movie. Dir. I. Sen. Bunya Productions/Mystery Road Films, 2013. Mystery Road. TV series. Exec. prods. R. Anderson, K. Goldsworthy, S. Riley, and I. Sen. Bunya Productions, 2018-. Mystery Road: Origin. TV series. Exec. prods. B. Ayshford, A. Gregory, S. Riley, and I. Sen. Bunya Productions, 2022-. Nette, Andrew. “Mr. Inbetween: It's Time to Appreciate the Genius of This Very Australian Noir.” Crime Reads, 4 Jan. 2023. <https://crimereads.com/mr-inbetween/>. Press, Joy. “'Deadloch' Is the Feminist Crime Parody You Didn’t Know You Needed.” Vanity Fair, 6 July 2023.<https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/deadloch-tv-review>. Project, The. “Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan on How to Make a Murder Mystery with a Comedy Twist.” 30 May 2023. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXEswj-gR-0>. Rahman, Abid. “‘Deadloch’ Creators on How Olivia Colman Inspired Aussie Noir Comedy and How a C-Word Manifesto Convinced Producers to Keep the Swear.” The Hollywood Reporter, 24 Nov. 2024. <https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/deadloch-creators-kate-mclennan-kate-mccartney-interview-season-2-1236068343/>. Rayner, Jonathan. Australian Gothic: A Cinema of Horrors. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2022. Sanders, Steven. “Television Noir.” A Companion to Film Noir. Ed. Andre Spicer and Helen Hanson. Oxford: Blackwell, 2013. 440-57. Schweitzer, Dahlia. Cindy Sherman's Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster. UK: Intellect, 2014. “Secrets Unravel in New Tassie-Noir Thriller 'Bay of Fires'.” ABC Radio National Breakfast, 11 July 2023. <https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/radionational-breakfast/abc-rn-breakfast-patricia-karvelas-podcast-guest-name/102585948>. Short, Sue. Darkness Calls: A Critical Investigation of Neo-Noir. Palgrave MacMillan, 2019. Standard Issue. “Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney on Deadloch.” Podcast. 27 July 2023. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uuBfOaL9OM>. Thou Shalt Not Steal. TV series. Exec. prods. D. Chang and T. Glynn-Maloney. Stan/Ludo Studio, 2024. Turnbull, Sue. “How 'Deadloch' Flips the Nordic Noir Crime Genre on Its Arse and Makes It Funny.” The Conversation, 30 June 2023. <https://theconversation.com/how-deadloch-flips-the-nordic-noir-crime-genre-on-its-arse-and-makes-it-funny-208478>.

The brand began, quite literally, as a method for ranchers to identify their cattle. By burning a distinct symbol into the hide of a baby calf, the owner could insure that if it one day wandered off his property or was stolen by a competitor, he’d be able to point to that logo and claim the animal as his rightful property. When the manufacturers of products adopted the brand as a way of guaranteeing the quality of their goods, its function remained pretty much the same. Buying a package of oats with the Quaker label meant the customer could trace back these otherwise generic oats to their source. If there was a problem, he knew where he could turn. More important, if the oats were of satisfactory or superior quality, he knew where he could get them again. Trademarking a brand meant that no one else could call his oats Quaker. Advertising in this innocent age simply meant publicizing the existence of one’s brand. The sole objective was to increase consumers awareness of the product or company that made it. Those who even thought to employ specialists for the exclusive purpose of writing ad copy hired newspaper reporters and travelling salesmen, who knew how to explain the attributes of an item in words that people tended to remember. It wasn’t until 1922 that a preacher and travelling “medicine show” salesman-turned-copywriter named Claude Hopkins decided that advertising should be systematized into a science. His short but groundbreaking book Scientific Advertising proposed that the advertisement is merely a printed extension of the salesman¹s pitch and should follow the same rules. Hopkins believed in using hard descriptions over hype, and text over image: “The more you tell, the more you sell” and “White space is wasted space” were his mantras. Hopkins believed that any illustrations used in an ad should be directly relevant to the product itself, not just a loose or emotional association. He insisted on avoiding “frivolity” at all costs, arguing that “no one ever bought from a clown.” Although some images did appear in advertisements and on packaging as early as the 1800s - the Quaker Oats man showed up in 1877 - these weren¹t consciously crafted to induce psychological states in customers. They were meant just to help people remember one brand over another. How better to recall the brand Quaker than to see a picture of one? It wasn’t until the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as Americans turned toward movies and television and away from newspapers and radio, that advertisers’ focus shifted away from describing their brands and to creating images for them. During these decades, Midwestern adman Leo Burnett concocted what is often called the Chicago school of advertising, in which lovable characters are used to represent products. Green Giant, which was originally just the Minnesota Valley Canning Company’s code name for an experimental pea, became the Jolly Green Giant in young Burnett’s world of animated characters. He understood that the figure would make a perfect and enticing brand image for an otherwise boring product and could also serve as a mnemonic device for consumers. As he watched his character grow in popularity, Burnett discovered that the mythical figure of a green giant had resonance in many different cultures around the world. It became a kind of archetype and managed to penetrate the psyche in more ways than one. Burnett was responsible for dozens of character-based brand images, including Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, and the Marlboro Man. In each case, the character creates a sense of drama, which engages the audience in the pitch. This was Burnett’s great insight. He still wanted to sell a product based on its attributes, but he knew he had to draw in his audience using characters. Brand images were also based on places, like Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, or on recognizable situations, such as the significant childhood memories labelled “Kodak moments” or a mother nurturing her son on a cold day, a defining image for Campbell’s soup. In all these cases, however, the moment, location, or character went only so far as to draw the audience into the ad, after which they would be subjected to a standard pitch: ‘Soup is good food’, or ‘Sorry, Charlie, only the best tuna get to be Starkist’. Burnett saw himself as a homespun Midwesterner who was contributing to American folklore while speaking in the plain language of the people. He took pride in the fact that his ads used words like “ain’t”; not because they had some calculated psychological effect on the audience, but because they communicated in a natural, plainspoken style. As these methods found their way to Madison Avenue and came to be practiced much more self-consciously, Burnett¹s love for American values and his focus on brand attributes were left behind. Branding became much more ethereal and image-based, and ads only occasionally nodded to a product’s attributes. In the 1960s, advertising gurus like David Ogilvy came up with rules about television advertising that would have made Claude Hopkins shudder. “Food in motion” dictated that food should always be shot by a moving camera. “Open with fire” meant that ads should start in a very exciting and captivating way. Ogilvy told his creatives to use supers - text superimposed on the screen to emphasize important phrases and taglines. All these techniques were devised to promote brand image, not the product. Ogilvy didn’t believe consumers could distinguish between products were it not for their images. In Ogilvy on Advertising, he explains that most people cannot tell the difference between their own “favourite” whiskey and the closest two competitors’: ‘Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don¹t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn¹t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is ninety percent of what the distiller has to sell.’ (Ogilvy, 1993). Thus, we learned to “trust our car to the man who wears the star” not because Texaco had better gasoline than Shell, but because the company’s advertisers had created a better brand image. While Burnett and his disciples were building brand myths, another school of advertisers was busy learning about its audience. Back in the 1920s, Raymond Rubicam, who eventually founded the agency Young and Rubicam, thought it might be interesting to hire a pollster named Dr. Gallup from Northwestern University to see what could be gleaned about consumers from a little market research. The advertising industry’s version of cultural anthropology, or demographics, was born. Like the public-relations experts who study their target populations in order to manipulate them later, marketers began conducting polls, market surveys, and focus groups on the segments of the population they hoped to influence. And to draw clear, clean lines between demographic groups, researchers must almost always base distinctions on four factors: race, age, sex, and wages. Demographic research is reductionist by design. I once consulted to an FM radio station whose station manager wanted to know, “Who is our listener?” Asking such a question reduces an entire listenership down to one fictional person. It’s possible that no single individual will ever match the “customer profile” meant to apply to all customers, which is why so much targeted marketing often borders on classist, racist, and sexist pandering. Billboards for most menthol cigarettes, for example, picture African-Americans because, according to demographic research, black people prefer them to regular cigarettes. Microsoft chose Rolling Stones songs to launch Windows 95, a product targeted at wealthy baby boomers. “The Women’s Global Challenge” was an advertising-industry-created Olympics for women, with no purpose other than to market to active females. By the 1970s, the two strands of advertising theory - demographic research and brand image - were combined to develop campaigns that work on both levels. To this day, we know to associate Volvos with safety, Dr. Pepper with individuality, and Harley-Davidson with American heritage. Each of these brand images is crafted to appeal to the target consumer’s underlying psychological needs: Volvo ads are aimed at upper-middle-class white parents who fear for their children’s health and security, Dr. Pepper is directed to young nonconformists, and the Harley-Davidson image supports its riders’ self-perception as renegades. Today’s modern (or perhaps postmodern) brands don’t invent a corporate image on their own; they appropriate one from the media itself, such as MetLife did with Snoopy, Butterfinger did with Bart Simpson, or Kmart did by hiring Penny Marshall and Rosie O’Donnell. These mascots were selected because their perceived characteristics match the values of their target consumers - not the products themselves. In the language of today’s marketers, brand images do not reflect on products but on advertisers’ perceptions of their audiences’ psychology. This focus on audience composition and values has become the standard operating procedure in all of broadcasting. When Fox TV executives learned that their animated series “King of the Hill”, about a Texan propane distributor, was not faring well with certain demographics, for example, they took a targeted approach to their character’s rehabilitation. The Brandweek piece on Fox’s ethnic campaign uncomfortably dances around the issue. Hank Hill is the proverbial everyman, and Fox wants viewers to get comfortable with him; especially viewers in New York, where “King of the Hill”’s homespun humor hasn’t quite caught on with the young urbanites. So far this season, the show has pulled in a 10.1 rating/15 share in households nationally, while garnering a 7.9 rating/12 share in New York (Brandweek, 1997) As far as Fox was concerned, while regular people could identify with the network’s new “everyman” character, New Yorkers weren’t buying his middle-American patter. The television show’s ratings proved what TV executives had known all along: that New York City’s Jewish demographic doesn’t see itself as part of the rest of America. Fox’s strategy for “humanizing” the character to those irascible urbanites was to target the group’s ethnographic self-image. Fox put ads for the show on the panels of sidewalk coffee wagons throughout Manhattan, with the tagline “Have a bagel with Hank”. In an appeal to the target market’s well-developed (and well-researched) cynicism, Hank himself is shown saying, “May I suggest you have that with a schmear”. The disarmingly ethnic humor here is meant to underscore the absurdity of a Texas propane salesman using a Jewish insider’s word like “schmear.” In another Upper West Side billboard, Hank’s son appeals to the passing traffic: “Hey yo! Somebody toss me up a knish!” As far as the New York demographic is concerned, these jokes transform the characters from potentially threatening Southern rednecks into loveable hicks bending over backward to appeal to Jewish sensibilities, and doing so with a comic and, most important, nonthreatening inadequacy. Today, the most intensely targeted demographic is the baby - the future consumer. Before an average American child is twenty months old, he can recognize the McDonald’s logo and many other branded icons. Nearly everything a toddler encounters - from Band-Aids to underpants - features the trademarked characters of Disney or other marketing empires. Although this target market may not be in a position to exercise its preferences for many years, it pays for marketers to imprint their brands early. General Motors bought a two-page ad in Sports Illustrated for Kids for its Chevy Venture minivan. Their brand manager rationalized that the eight-to-fourteen-year-old demographic consists of “back-seat consumers” (Leonhardt, 1997). The real intention of target marketing to children and babies, however, goes deeper. The fresh neurons of young brains are valuable mental real estate to admen. By seeding their products and images early, the marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition; they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed. A nine-year-old child who can recognize the Budweiser frogs and recite their slogan (Bud-weis-er) is more likely to start drinking beer than one who can remember only Tony the Tiger yelling, “They¹re great!” (Currently, more children recognize the frogs than Tony.) This indicates a long-term coercive strategy. The abstraction of brand images from the products they represent, combined with an increasing assault on our demographically targeted psychological profiles, led to some justifiable consumer paranoia by the 1970s. Advertising was working on us in ways we couldn’t fully understand, and people began to look for an explanation. In 1973, Wilson Bryan Key, a communications researcher, wrote the first of four books about “subliminal advertising,” in which he accused advertisers of hiding sexual imagery in ice cubes, and psychoactive words like “sex” onto the airbrushed surfaces of fashion photographs. Having worked on many advertising campaigns from start to finish, in close proximity to everyone from copywriters and art directors to printers, I can comfortably put to rest any rumours that major advertising agencies are engaging in subliminal campaigns. How do images that could be interpreted as “sexual” show up in ice cubes or elbows? The final photographs chosen for ads are selected by committee out of hundreds that are actually shot. After hours or days of consideration, the group eventually feels drawn to one or two photos out of the batch. Not surprising, these photos tend to have more evocative compositions and details, but no penises, breasts, or skulls are ever superimposed onto the images. In fact, the man who claims to have developed subliminal persuasion, James Vicary, admitted to Advertising Age in 1984 that he had fabricated his evidence that the technique worked in order to drum up business for his failing research company. But this confession has not assuaged Key and others who relentlessly, perhaps obsessively, continue to pursue those they feel are planting secret visual messages in advertisements. To be fair to Key, advertisers have left themselves open to suspicion by relegating their work to the abstract world of the image and then targeting consumer psychology so deliberately. According to research by the Roper Organization in 1992, fifty-seven percent of American consumers still believe that subliminal advertising is practiced on a regular basis, and only one in twelve think it “almost never” happens. To protect themselves from the techniques they believe are being used against them, the advertising audience has adopted a stance of cynical suspicion. To combat our increasing awareness and suspicion of demographic targeting, marketers have developed a more camouflaged form of categorization based on psychological profiles instead of race and age. Jim Schroer, the executive director of new marketing strategy at Ford explains his abandonment of broad-demographic targeting: ‘It’s smarter to think about emotions and attitudes, which all go under the term: psychographics - those things that can transcend demographic groups.’ (Schroer, 1997) Instead, he now appeals to what he calls “consumers’ images of themselves.” Unlike broad demographics, the psychographic is developed using more narrowly structured qualitative-analysis techniques, like focus groups, in-depth interviews, and even home surveillance. Marketing analysts observe the behaviors of volunteer subjects, ask questions, and try to draw causal links between feelings, self-image, and purchases. A company called Strategic Directions Group provides just such analysis of the human psyche. In their study of the car-buying habits of the forty-plus baby boomers and their elders, they sought to define the main psychological predilections that human beings in this age group have regarding car purchases. Although they began with a demographic subset of the overall population, their analysis led them to segment the group into psychographic types. For example, members of one psychographic segment, called the ³Reliables,² think of driving as a way to get from point A to point B. The “Everyday People” campaign for Toyota is aimed at this group and features people depending on their reliable and efficient little Toyotas. A convertible Saab, on the other hand, appeals to the ³Stylish Fun² category, who like trendy and fun-to-drive imports. One of the company’s commercials shows a woman at a boring party fantasizing herself into an oil painting, where she drives along the canvas in a sporty yellow Saab. Psychographic targeting is more effective than demographic targeting because it reaches for an individual customer more directly - like a fly fisherman who sets bait and jiggles his rod in a prescribed pattern for a particular kind of fish. It’s as if a marketing campaign has singled you out and recognizes your core values and aspirations, without having lumped you into a racial or economic stereotype. It amounts to a game of cat-and-mouse between advertisers and their target psychographic groups. The more effort we expend to escape categorization, the more ruthlessly the marketers pursue us. In some cases, in fact, our psychographic profiles are based more on the extent to which we try to avoid marketers than on our fundamental goals or values. The so-called “Generation X” adopted the anti-chic aesthetic of thrift-store grunge in an effort to find a style that could not be so easily identified and exploited. Grunge was so self-consciously lowbrow and nonaspirational that it seemed, at first, impervious to the hype and glamour normally applied swiftly to any emerging trend. But sure enough, grunge anthems found their way onto the soundtracks of television commercials, and Dodge Neons were hawked by kids in flannel shirts saying “Whatever.” The members of Generation X are putting up a good fight. Having already developed an awareness of how marketers attempt to target their hearts and wallets, they use their insight into programming to resist these attacks. Unlike the adult marketers pursuing them, young people have grown up immersed in the language of advertising and public relations. They speak it like natives. As a result, they are more than aware when a commercial or billboard is targeting them. In conscious defiance of demographic-based pandering, they adopt a stance of self-protective irony‹distancing themselves from the emotional ploys of the advertisers. Lorraine Ketch, the director of planning in charge of Levi¹s trendy Silvertab line, explained, “This audience hates marketing that’s in your face. It eyeballs it a mile away, chews it up and spits it out” (On Advertising, 1998). Chiat/Day, one of the world’s best-known and experimental advertising agencies, found the answer to the crisis was simply to break up the Gen-X demographic into separate “tribes” or subdemographics - and include subtle visual references to each one of them in the ads they produce for the brand. According to Levi’s director of consumer marketing, the campaign meant to communicate, “We really understand them, but we are not trying too hard” (On Advertising, 1998). Probably unintentionally, Ms. Ketch has revealed the new, even more highly abstract plane on which advertising is now being communicated. Instead of creating and marketing a brand image, advertisers are creating marketing campaigns about the advertising itself. Silvertab’s target market is supposed to feel good about being understood, but even better about understanding the way they are being marketed to. The “drama” invented by Leo Burnett and refined by David Ogilvy and others has become a play within a play. The scene itself has shifted. The dramatic action no longer occurs between the audience and the product, the brand, or the brand image, but between the audience and the brand marketers. As audiences gain even more control over the media in which these interactive stories unfold, advertising evolves ever closer to a theatre of the absurd. excerpted from Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say)? Works Cited Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Vintage, 1983. Brandweek Staff, "Number Crunching, Hollywood Style," Brandweek. October 6, 1997. Leonhardt, David, and Kathleen Kerwin, "Hey Kid, Buy This!" Business Week. June 30, 1997 Schroer, Jim. Quoted in "Why We Kick Tires," by Carol Morgan and Doron Levy. Brandweek. Sept 29, 1997. "On Advertising," The New York Times. August 14, 1998 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Rushkoff, Douglas. "Coercion " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>. APA Style Rushkoff, D. (2003, Jun 19). Coercion . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>