Journal articles on the topic 'Dispatch towing'

This paper presents the analysis o f measures to reduce pollutant emissions o f taxiing aircraft at Belgrade Airport, motivated by one o f the Flighpath 2050 goals that aircraft movements should be emission-free when taxiing. Fuel burn and pollutant emissions are quantified for basic scenario for year 2019, and compared to three alternative scenarios: single engine taxiing, dispatch towing and electric taxiing. For a mid-size airport like Belgrade Airport the priority should be given to single engine taxi procedure because it is not associated with additional implementation costs, unlike the other two scenarios; and estimated benefit is only somewhat smaller compared to electric taxiing case and almost the same as in dispatch towing case.

AbstractIntroduction:Triage - the sorting of patients according to urgency of need for clinical care - is an essential part of delivering effective and efficient emergency care. But when frequent over- or under-triaging occurs, finite time and resources are diverted away from those in greatest need of care and the entire Emergency Medical Services (EMS) system is strained. In resource-constrained settings, such as South Africa, poor triage in EMS only serves to compound other contextual challenges. This study examined the accuracy of dispatcher triage over a one-year period in the Western Cape Government (WCG) EMS system in South Africa.Methods:A retrospective analysis of existing dispatch and EMS data to assess the accuracy of dispatch-assigned priorities was conducted. The mismatch between dispatcher-assigned call priority and triage levels determined by EMS personnel was analyzed via over- and under-triage rates, sensitivity and specificity, and positive and negative predictive values (PPVs and NPVs, respectively).Results:A total of 185,166 records from December 2016 through November 2017 were analyzed. Across all dispatch complaints, the over-triage rate was 67.6% (95% CI, 66.34-68.76) and the under-triage rate was 16.2% (95% CI, 15.44-16.90). Dispatch triage sensitivity for all included records was 49.2% (95% CI, 48.10-50.38), specificity 71.9% (95% CI, 71.00-72.92), PPV 32.5% (95% CI, 30.02-34.88), and NPV 83.8% (95% CI, 81.93-85.73).Conclusion:This study provides the first evaluation of dispatch triage accuracy in the WCG EMS system, identifying that the system is suffering from both under- and over-triage. Despite variance across dispatch complaints, both under- and over-triage remained higher than widely accepted norms, and all rates were significantly above acceptable target metrics described in similar studies. Results of this study will be used to motivate the development of more rigorous training programs and resources for WCG EMS dispatchers, including improved dispatch protocols for conditions suffering from high over- and under-triage.

IntroductionBetween February 2002 and January 2004, a total of 51 terrorism-related mass-casualty incidents (MCIs) occurred in Israel.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to analyze data provided in After Action Reports (AAR) held by Magen David Adom (MDA), after each MCI.MethodsInformation relating to the type of MCI, location, number of ambulances dispatched in five-minute intervals from time of notification, and number of casualties evacuated by urgency in five-minute intervals from the start of the incident was analyzed.ResultsThere were 34 MCIs in 2002, 15 in 2003, and two in 2004. More MCIs (24%) occurred on Wednesdays, and more MCIs occurred during the 05:30–08:59 (18%), 12:00–14:59 (20%), and 17.00–19.59 (24%) time slots. More MCIs occurred in the Jerusalem (24%) area, followed by Tel Aviv (16%). Twenty-six percent of the MCIs resulted from explosions in open areas, 22% in buses, 20% from shootings, and 28% from explosions in semi-closed and closed areas. The mean dispatch time of the first ambulance after notification was 48 seconds. An average of 14.25 ambulances were dispatched in the first five minutes, followed by eight, three, and three in the five-minute slots following. An ANOVA indicated a significant difference in dispatch times by towns/cities (p = 0.05). The average arrival of the first ambulance was 6.4 minutes, and evacuation of the first urgent casualty was 13.6 minutes, the last evacuation was 26.5 minutes after arrival. More urgent casualties (45%) compared to 20% non-urgent were evacuated in first 15 minutes; the majority of non-urgent victims (79%) were evacuated after 16 minutes. The mean number of dispatched ambulances ranged from 37.9 to 26 in urban versus rural areas, respectively. The number of ambulances actually used for evacuation in urban and rural areas was 55% and 44%, respectively.ConclusionsInformation analyzed from AAR is useful for improving Standard Operating Procedures and structuring continuing education interventions for MCIs.

In the mid 16th Century, the town of Albacete was immersed in a series of disputes that already came from long ago, although some were originated then and others would last longer. The fights with the neighboring towns of Chinchilla and La Gineta were constant, due to terms and meddling from one to another. The decrease in the public treasure was mainly motivated by the expenditures to afford the confrontations, along with those related to the conflict with the lands of Jorquera and Alcalá, manor of the marquis of Villena and duke of Escalona. The long lasting of the fighting led to cost overruns. The payout, at the Court and the Chancery of Granada, of lawyers, attorneys and solicitors, as well as the dispatch of local laborers and managers with specific messages and orders, largely undermined the funds of the Albacete council.

According to previous research, participation in exercise training (ET) by South Korean firefighters varies with shift type, and the effect of shift type is greater in large cities than in small towns. However, shift types differ among regions, depending on the number of dispatches. Therefore, the present study examined the impact of the number of fire dispatches and other situational factors on ET. A series of multilevel logistic regression analysis was applied to analyze the data collected from South Korean firefighters (N = 5219) in 2017. According to the firefighters, participation in ET is higher among those who have someone to instruct their ET (Coefficient (Coef) = 0.057, SE = 0.017, p < 0.001) and who can do ET while on duty (Coef = 0.048, SE = 0.014, p < 0.001). The number of fire dispatches had a significant effect on participation in ET (Coef = −0.000, SE = 0.000, p < 0.01), meaning that the firefighters’ participation in ET varies with the number of fire dispatches in each region. Our main findings indicate that the number of fire dispatches is a key factor affecting ET participation among firefighters, and the other situational factors also play a role. Therefore, ET programs that firefighters can participate in between calls should be established.

Background This study explored the emergency medical service (EMS) in rural mountain areas in Taiwan to establish the public health policies in rural mountain areas. Methods This was a retrospective study. Based on mission records available at 3 EMS branches in Ren-Ai and Sinyi townships of Nantou County, we evaluated dispatched status, patient characteristics, and pre-hospital emergency managements. Results From January to June 2011, a total of 765 EMS were dispatched from these 3 mountain branches. Each dispatched EMS team was consisted of one official emergency medical technician (EMT) with EMT II certificate (100%), and one (88.0%) or two (11.2%) volunteers as EMT I personnel. Most of missions were conducted in the daytime and peaked during 10am to 12pm. Patients were characterised with more men and elderly and predominant with non-traumatic medical complains (55.0%). Approximately 38.7% EMS patients required the advanced life support. Of these 3 mountain EMS branches, the mean response time was 15.3±16.9 minutes, the mean management time on site was 6.1±6.9 minutes and the mean transport time was 38.0±15.9 minutes. The response time and transportation time of EMS in rural mountain areas were relatively longer than that in urban towns in Taiwan. Conclusions The rural EMS is under the challenges of providing appropriate and adequate medical care. Each EMS team should be equipped with adequate emergency care facilities and well trained personnel. (Hong Kong j.emerg.med. 2014;21:373-381)

The aim: The aim of this study was to characterize the general characteristics of the completed interventions by the Voivodeship Rescue Service of Katowice in the time period from 1st January 2018 to 31 December 2018. Material and methods: Analysis of the characteristics of the trips was done based on the information contained in the dispatch order cards and medical emergency services cards. In the statistical analysis the Chi-Square (p<0.05) test was utilized. Results: The total number of interventions was 211,548 cases. It is also worth observing, that the general number of interventions out of town amounted to 20,344 interventions, whereas, in town, there were 191,204 interventions. It can be observed that the most common decision made by the Emergency Medical Team was the decision to directly transported and received by the emergency department (126,553 cases; p<0.05). The definite most common reason for symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified (ICD-10 code : R; p<0.05). Conclusion: The largest number of interventions completed by the Voivodeship Rescue Service in Katowice in 2018 was due to injuries and poisonings, symptoms, diseases features and incorrect results of diagnostic tests, and in third place were cardiovascular diseases.

This paper addresses the coordinative operation problem of multi-energy virtual power plant (ME-VPP) in the context of energy internet. A bi-objective dispatch model is established to optimize the performance of ME-VPP in terms of economic cost (EC) and power quality (PQ). Various realistic factors are considered, which include environmental governance, transmission ratings, output limits, etc. Long short-term memory (LSTM), a deep learning method, is applied to the promotion of the accuracy of wind prediction. An improved multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) is utilized as the solving algorithm. A practical case study is performed on Hongfeng Eco-town in Southwestern China. Simulation results of three scenarios verify the advantages of bi-objective optimization over solely saving EC and enhancing PQ. The Pareto frontier also provides a visible and flexible way for decision-making of ME-VPP operator. Two strategies, “improvisational” and “foresighted”, are compared by testing on the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 118-bus benchmark system. It is revealed that “foresighted” strategy, which incorporates LSTM prediction and bi-objective optimization over a 5-h receding horizon, takes 10 Pareto dominances in 24 h.

Women could be said to be ‘the second sex in town’ in colonial Africa in that men predominated in the urban centres spawned by the political economy of colonialism. An explanation has to consider both employment and family separation. Although colonial governments, missions, commercial firms, and mines recruited men, it is not clear to what extent this was a matter of preference on the part of the major employers rather than the response of peasant households. Not at issue are the reasons for the latter's integration into the cash economy and the rôle of coercion, whether in the form of forced labour or indirectly through the imposition of tax. But what considerations were borne in mind when households deliberated about which of their members to dispatch? Whatever the part played by both employers and suppliers in determining the composition of the labour supply – and this so far totally neglected topic demands research – the result was that in many, if not all, African colonies, almost as a rule, domestic servants, secretaries, and nurses were male.

In 1808, confronted with the latest in a lengthy series of legal challenges to its corporate landholdings, the municipal council of the Indian town of San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala, in the northeastern province of Coahuila in New Spain, dispatched a blistering note to its counterpart in the adjoining Spanish town of Saltillo. The question of the moment concerned the right of Saltillo residents José Miguel and Juan González to route water they claimed in one place to property San Esteban had earlier allowed them to farm in another. But to do so meant that the water would be directed across lands belonging to San Esteban. When the Indian town denied them this right, the brothers protested vigorously. They contended that agriculture was, after all, the mainstay of the local economy. It benefited the public, the king, the church, and particularly the families of the pueblo itself. To deny these two farmers access to their water was to jeopardize agricultural production in the area. Further, they argued, San Esteban possessed much uncultivated arid land; perhaps the pueblo should consider renting some of the Gonzálezes' water as it flowed across the town's properties. Implicit in this suggestion was the assumption that San Esteban residents could not deal with what they had, that they were wasteful in utilizing their resources, and that Spaniards, in this particular case the brothers González, were better equipped to exploit the resources of the community.

AbstractIntroduction:On 21 September, 1999, an earthquake measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, struck central Taiwan near the town of Chi-Chi. The event resulted in 2,405 deaths and 11,306 injuries. Ad hoc emergency medical assistance teams (EMATs) from Taiwan assumed the responsibility for initiating early assessments and providing medical care.Objective:To determine whether the EMATs served a key role in assisting critically injured patients through the assessment of number and level of hospitals responding, training background, timeliness of response, and acuity of patient encounters.Methods:Local and national health bureaus were contacted to identify hospitals that responded to the disaster. A comprehensive questionnaire was piloted and then, sent to those major medical centers that dispatched EMATs within the first 72 hours following the quake. In-depth interviews also were conducted with team leaders.Results:A total number of 104 hospitals/clinics responded to the disaster, including nine major medical centers and 12 regional hospitals. Each of the major medical centers/regional hospitals that dispatched EMATs during the first 72 hours following the quake were surveyed. Also, 20 individual team leaders were interviewed. Seventy-nine percent of the EMATs from the hospitals responded spontaneously to the scene, while only 21% were dispatched directly by national or local health authorities. Combining the phases of the disaster response, it is estimated that only 7% of EMATs were providing on-site care within the first 12 hours following the earthquake, 17% within <18 hours, and 20% within <24 hours. Thus, 80% of these EMATs required >24 hours to respond to the site. Based on a ED I-IV triage system (Level-I, highest acuity; Level-IV, lowest acuity), the vast majority of patient encounters consisted of Level-III and Level-IV patients. Fewer than 16% of teams encountered >10 Level-I patients, and <28% of teams evaluated >10 Level-II patients.Conclusions:1. The response from EMATs was impressive, but largely uncoordinated in the absence of a pre-existing dispatching mechanism.2. Most of the EMATs required >24 hours to reach the disaster sites, and generally, did not arrive in time to affect the outcome of victims with preventable deaths. Therefore, there is an urgent need to strengthen local prehospital care.3. A central governmental body that ensures better horizontal and vertical integration, and a comprehensive emergency management system is required in order to improve future disaster response and mitigation efforts.

In 1817, Russian authorities apprehended six Tatar brigands in the port town of Feodosiia in the Crimea. Convicted of murdering seventeen people and of stealing from and desecrating a Christian church, the six were sentenced in April by the local civil and criminal court to punishment by knout–the harshest instrument of corporal punishment used in Russia. The knout consisted of a stiff thong of rawhide fastened by a bronze ring to a braided leather whip of approximately three and a half feet in length; this apparatus was attached to a wooden stick of two and a half feet that the executioner wielded. Following the knouting, the court authorized the executioner to rip out the nostrils and brand the faces of the Tatars, who were then to be dispatched into eternal exile at hard labor in the mines of eastern Siberia. Because the local court deemed these criminals especially dangerous, and because their apprehension and conviction ostensibly reinforced Russian leadership in the province, the court decreed that the knouting of the criminals be carried out in a variety of locations across the province, rather than in a single place.

IntroductionIn the 2011 East Japan Great Earthquake over 200 DMAT immediately headed to the disaster stricken area.ProgressLand lines and all mobile telephones had interrupted service. Radio communication could only be used at a short distance in one area. Satellite phones were the only means of communication, but since there were limited number of devices, power shortages. DMAT used a management browser called EMIS (Emergency Medical Information System) to exchange information and coordinate activity, but the internet itself did not work. Without communication equipment, the victims could not send or receive information and even DMAT had trouble understanding the situation. There was rumor of many victims in a wide range of isolated evacuation shelters that were left behind. The land was flooded, vehicles were carried away, the town was buried under debris and mud, and fires occurred one after another. The wounded and sick could not access hospitals immediately. Because of the blackout, the suspension of the water supply, and prospect of restoring heating were not in sight, an immediate confirmation of medical needs and triage of the sick and wounded were required. Therefore, as the disaster front headquarters, the fire department, police department, self-defense force, Japan Red Cross medical care relief squad, the city, the prefecture, and the public health center, many organizations in collaboration held meetings every day at 5:30 and 18:30 aiming to gather information and establish strong collaboration. Four teams from the Japan Red Cross medical care squad and 4 teams from the Ground Self-Defense force were dispatched in replacement of the insufficient DMAT to manage the disaster front. They restored roads and headed to isolated shelters and hospitals. With the cooperation of the Air Self-Defense Force, DMAT was sent by helicopter to an isolated peninsula.ResultWe use helicopters, ambulances, and Self-Defense Force vehicles to transport as many patients to hospitals in other regions, because there was no place to return home. In one of the isolated hospitals, they had to use candlelight in a room temperature below zero, they were unable to use the aspirator, and four patients were already deceased. The remaining 38 inpatients were transported out of the disaster area and preventable death could be prevented.ConsiderationBecause the local staff suffered damage from the earthquake, all organizations consisted of groups dispatched from other regions. With a communications network not functioning in the disaster stricken area, it is necessary to exchange information and share the best plans. Taking this into perspective, having two disaster relief measures meetings in one day was very effective.

This study presents a new way to reconstruct the extent of medieval archaeological sites by using approaches from the field of geoinformatics. Hence, we propose a combined use of non-invasive methodologies which are used for the first time to study a medieval village in Romania. The focus here will be on ground-based and satellite remote-sensing techniques. The method relies on computing vegetation indices (proxies), which have been utilized for archaeological site detection in order to detect the layout of a deserted medieval town located in southwestern Romania. The data were produced by a group of small satellites (3U CubeSats) dispatched by Planet Labs which delivered high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface. The globe is encompassed by more than 150 satellites (dimensions: 10 × 10 × 30 cm) which catch different images for the same area at moderately short intervals at a spatial resolution of 3–4 m. The four-band Planet Scope satellite images were employed to calculate a number of vegetation indices such as NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), DVI (Difference Vegetation Index), SR (Simple Vegetation Ratio) and others. For better precision, structure from motion (SfM) techniques were applied to generate a high-resolution orthomosaic and a digital surface model in which the boundaries of the medieval village of “Șanțul Turcilor” in Mașloc, Romania, can be plainly observed. Additionally, this study contrasts the outcomes with a geophysical survey that was attempted inside the central part of the medieval settlement. The technical results of this study also provide strong evidence from an historical point of view: the first documented case of village systematization during the medieval period within Eastern Europe (particularly Romania) found through geoscientific methods.

Our starting point is a somewhat obscure incident which has lately attracted some attention. The year is 429 B.C., and the place is Athens in the third year of the Peloponnesian war. The plague, which had broken out only a year before, was still claiming its victims. Yet military operations were in full swing, and the general Phormio operating in the Corinthian gulf against a Peloponnesian fleet was able to score an impressive victory. The Lacedaemonians were deeply dissatisfied. This was the first sea-fight they had been engaged in, and they found it hard to believe that their fleet was so much inferior to that of the Athenians. They dispatched three advisers to Knemos, the admiral in charge, instructing them to make better preparations for another sea-fight. Additional ships were solicited from the allies, and those already at hand were prepared for battle. It is at this point that the incident in question occurred. Not to prejudge the issue, I quote the text in full leaving the controversial phrases untranslated:4. And Phormio on his part sent messengers to Athens to give information of the enemy's preparations and to tell about the battle which they had won, urging them also to send to him speedily (δι⋯ τ⋯χους) as many ships as possible, since there was always a prospect that a battle might be fought any day.5. So they sent him twenty ships, but gave τῷ δ⋯ κυμ⋯ξοντι special orders to sail first to Crete. Nικ⋯ας γ⋯ρ Kρ⋯ς Γορτ⋯νιος πρ⋯ξενος ⋯ν persuaded them (αὺτο⋯ς) to sail against Cydonia, a hostile town, promising to bring it over to the Athenians; but he was really asking them to intervene to gratify the people of Polichne, who are neighbours of the Cydonians.6. So ⋯ μ⋯ν λαβὼν τ⋯ς να⋯ς. went to Crete, and helped the Polichnitans to ravage the lands of the Cydonians, and by reason of winds and stress of weather wasted not a little time.

A lack of proper monitoring and supervision of clinics in the King William’s Town Health District (Eastern Cape) was highlighted by members of the public in the local newspaper, The Daily Dispatch, during 1999. A clinic audit conducted by the Health Information Unit of the King William’s Town Health District further revealed the inadequacies of clinic supervision in this district. This article describes the qualitative study that was conducted with the aim of optimising clinic supervision in this health district. The study brought to light two issues that appear to be paramount in ensuring optimal clinic supervision.

In this modern epoch Sustainable Energy Resources (SER) takes an upper hand in meeting the rise in power demand. Over the last few years, the increasing electrical power demand has prompted an incredible need for power from sustainable energy sources. The irradiation from solar, wind turbines are pondered as the main source of power generation since they supplement one another. For the general development of the economy, it is important that the agro-based economy would lead to the growth of the country. It is neither achievable nor affordable to dispatch power in the far away locales for a scarcely populated town. In this paper, the supplanting of energy sources with the sustainable power sources utilizing HOMER programming is performed. An independent sustainable power sources (ISPS) is used to meet the load and the cost is evaluated. The work is performed for real time data under different schemes like PV, wind and its combination. The optimization of operating cost under two scenario of using the ISPS (either PV or Wind) and using both PV & wind for real-time input taken from Sicud village in Philippines and Laboratory load data of SRMIST in India is performed. The comparison of the operating cost for the two region under two cases is executed and analyzed.

On 10 September 2012, a cat named Tuxedo Stan launched his campaign for mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia, Canada (“Tuxedo Stan for Mayor”). Backed by his human supporters in the Tuxedo Party, he ran on a platform of animal welfare: “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Because Neglect Isn’t Working.” Artwork Courtesy of Joe Popovitch As a feline activist, Tuxedo Stan joins an unexpected—if not entirely unprecedented—cohort of cats that advocate for animal welfare through their “cute” appeals for humane treatment. From Tuxedo Stan’s internet presence to his appearance on Anderson Cooper’s CNN segment “The RidicuList,” Tuxedo Stan’s cute campaign opens space for a cultural imaginary that differently envisions animals’ and humans’ political responsibilities. Who Can Be a Moral Agent? Iris Marion Young proposes “political responsibility” as a way to answer a question central to human and animal welfare: “How should moral agents—both individual and organizational—think about their responsibilities in relation to structural social injustice?” (7). In legal frameworks, responsibility is connected to liability: an individual acts, harm occurs, and the law decides how much liability the individual should assume. However, Young redefines responsibility in relation to structural injustices, which she conceptualizes as “harms” that result from “structural processes in which many people participate.” Young argues that “because it is therefore difficult for individuals to see a relationship between their own actions and structural outcomes, we have a tendency to distance ourselves from any responsibility for them” (7). Young presents political responsibility as a call to share the responsibility “to engage in actions directed at transforming the structures” and suggests that the less-advantaged might organize and propose “remedies for injustice, because their interests [are] the most acutely at stake” and because they are vulnerable to the actions of others “situated in more powerful and privileged positions” (15). Though Young does not address animals, her conception of responsible agency raises a question: who can be a moral agent? Arguably, the answer to this question changes as cultural imaginaries expand to accommodate difference, including gender- and species-difference. Corey Wrenn analyzes a selection of anti-suffragette postcards that equate granting votes to women as akin to granting votes to cats. Young shifts responsibility from a liability to a political frame, but Wrenn’s work suggests that a further shift is necessary where responsibility is gendered and tied to domestic, feminized roles: Cats and dogs are gendered in contemporary American culture…dogs are thought to be the proper pet for men and cats for women (especially lesbians). This, it turns out, is an old stereotype. In fact, cats were a common symbol in suffragette imagery. Cats represented the domestic sphere, and anti-suffrage postcards often used them to reference female activists. The intent was to portray suffragettes as silly, infantile, incompetent, and ill-suited to political engagement. (Wrenn) Dressing cats in women’s clothing and calling them suffragettes marks women as less-than-human and casts cats as the opposite of human. The frilly garments, worn by cats whose presence evoked the domestic sphere, suggest that women belong in the domestic sphere because they are too soft, or perhaps too cute, to contend with the demands of public life. In addition, the cards that feature domestic scenes suggest that women should account for their families’ welfare ahead of their own, and that women’s refusal to accept this arithmetic marks them as immoral—and irresponsible—subjects. Not Schrödinger's Cat In different ways, Jacques Derrida and Carey Wolfe explore the question Young’s work raises: who can be a moral agent? Derrida and Wolfe complicate the question by adding species difference: how should (human) moral agents think about their responsibilities (to animals)? Prompted by an encounter with his cat, Jacques Derrida follows the figure of the animal, through a variety of texts, in order to make sensible the trace of “the animal” as it has appeared in Western traditions. Derrida’s cat accompanies him as Derrida playfully, and attentively, deconstructs the rationalist, humanist discourses that structure Western philosophy. Discourses, whose tenets reflect the systems of beliefs embedded within a culture, are often both hegemonic and invisible; at least for those who enjoy privileged positions within the culture, discourses may simply appear as common sense or common knowledge. Derrida argues that Western, humanist thinking has created a discourse around “the human” and that this discourse deploys a reductive figure of “the animal” to justify human supremacy and facilitate human exceptionalism. Human exceptionalism is the doctrine that humans’ superiority to animals exempts humans from behaving humanely towards those deemed non-human, and it is the hegemony of the discourse of human exceptionalism that Derrida contravenes. Derrida interrupts by entering the discourse with “his” cat and creating a counter-narrative that troubles “the human” hegemony by redefining what it means to think. Derrida orients his intellectual work as surrender—he surrenders to the gaze of his cat and to his affectionate response to her presence: “the cat I am talking about is a real cat, truly, believe me, a little cat. The cat that looks at me naked and that is truly a little cat, this cat I am talking about…It comes to me as this irreplaceable living being that one day enters my space, into this place where it can encounter me, see me, even see me naked” (6-9, italics in original). The diminutive Derrida uses to describe his cat, she is little and truly a little cat, gestures toward affection, or affect, as the “thing…philosophy has, essentially, had to deprive itself of” (7). For Derrida, rationalist thinking hurries to “enclose and circumscribe the concept of the human as much as that of reason,” and it is through this movement toward enclosure that rationalist humanism fails to think (105). While Derrida questions the ethics of humanist philosophy, Carey Wolfe questions the ethics of humanism. Wolfe argues that “the operative theories and procedures we now have for articulating the social and legal relation between ethics and action are inadequate” because humanism imbues discourses about human and/or animal rights with utilitarian and contractarian logics that are inherently speciesist and therefore flawed (192). Utilitarian approaches attempt to determine the morality of a given action by weighing the act’s aggregate benefit against its aggregate harm. Contractarian approaches evaluate a given (human or animal) subject’s ability to understand and comply with a social contract that stipulates reciprocity; if a subject receives kindness, that subject must understand their implied, moral responsibility to return it. When opponents of animal rights designate animals as less capable of suffering than humans and decide that animals cannot enter moral contracts, animals are then seen as not only undeserving of rights but as incapable of bearing rights. As Wolfe argues, rights discourse—like rationalist humanism—reaches an impasse, and Wolfe proposes posthumanist theory as the way through: “because the discourse of speciesism…anchored in this material, institutional base, can be used to mark any social other, we need to understand that the ethical and philosophical urgency of confronting the institution of speciesism and crafting a posthumanist theory of the subject has nothing to do with whether you like animals” (7, italics in original). Wolfe’s strategic statement marks the necessity of attending to injustice at a structural level; however, as Tuxedo Stan’s campaign demonstrates, at a tactical level, how much you “like” an animal might matter very much. Seriously Cute: Tuxedo Stan as a Moral Agent Tuxedo Stan’s 2012-13 campaign pressed for improved protections for stray and feral cats in the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM). While “cute” is a subjective, aesthetic judgment, numerous internet sites make claims like: “These 30 Animals With Their Adorable Miniature Versions Are The Cutest Thing Ever. Awwww” (“These 30 Animals”). From Tuxedo Stan’s kitten pictures to the plush versions of Tuxedo Stan, available for purchase on his website, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign positioned him within this cute culture (Chisolm “Official Tuxedo Stan Minion”). Photo Courtesy of Hugh Chisolm, Tuxedo Party The difference between Tuxedo Stan’s cute and the kind of cute invoked by pictures of animals with miniature animals—the difference that connects Tuxedo Stan’s cute to a moral or ethical position—is the narrative of political responsibility attached to his campaign. While existing animal protection laws in Halifax’s Animal Protection Act outlined some protections for animals, “there was a clear oversight in that issues related to cats are not included” (Chisolm TuxedoStan.com). Hugh Chisholm, co-founder of the Tuxedo Party, further notes: There are literally thousands of homeless cats — feral and abandoned— who live by their willpower in the back alleys and streets and bushes in HRM…But there is very little people can do if they want to help, because there is no pound. If there’s a lost or injured dog, you can call the pound and they will come and take the dog and give it a place to stay, and some food and care. But if you do the same thing with a cat, you get nothing, because there’s nothing in place. (Mombourquette) Tuxedo Stan’s campaign mobilizes cute images that reveal the connection between unnoticed and unrelieved suffering. Proceeds from Tuxedo Party merchandise go toward Spay Day HRM, a charity dedicated to “assisting students and low-income families” whose financial situations may prevent them from paying for spay and neuter surgeries (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). According to his e-book ME: The Tuxedo Stan Story, Stan “wanted to make a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of homeless, unneutered cats in [Halifax Regional Municipality]. We needed a low-cost spay/neuter clinic. We needed a Trap-Neuter-Return and Care program. We needed a sanctuary for homeless, unwanted strays to live out their lives in comfort” (Tuxedo Stanley and Chisholm 14). As does “his” memoir, Tuxedo Stan’s Pledge of Compassion and Action follows Young’s logic of political responsibility. Although his participation is mediated by human organizers, Tuxedo Stan is a cat pressing legislators to “pledge to help the cats” by supporting “a comprehensive feline population control program to humanely control the feline population and prevent suffering” and by creating “an affordable and accessible spay/neuter program” (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). While framing the feral cat population as a “problem” that must be “fixed” upholds discourses around controlling subjected populations’ reproduction, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign also opens space for a counternarrative that destabilizes the human exceptionalism that encompasses his campaign. A Different ‘Logic’, a Different Cultural Imaginary As Tuxedo Stan launched his campaign in 2012, fellow feline Hank ran for the United States senate seat in Virginia – he received approximately 7,000 votes and placed third (Wyatt) – and “Mayor” Stubbs celebrated his 15th year as the honorary mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, also in the United States: Fifteen years ago, the citizens of Talkeetna (pop. 800) didn’t like the looks of their candidates for mayor. Around that same time resident Lauri Stec, manager of Nagley’s General Store, saw a box of kittens and decided to adopt one. She named him Stubbs because he didn’t have a tail and soon the whole town was in love with him. So smitten were they with this kitten, in fact, that they wrote him in for mayor instead of deciding on one of the two lesser candidates. (Friedman) Though only Stan and Hank connect their candidacy to animal welfare activism, all three cats’ stories contribute to building a cultural imaginary that has drawn responses across social and news media. Tuxedo Stan’s Facebook page has 19,000+ “likes,” and Stan supporters submit photographs of Tuxedo Stan “minions” spreading Tuxedo Stan’s message. The Tuxedo Party’s website maintains a photo gallery that documents “Tuxedo Stan’s World Tour”: “Tuxedo Stan’s Minions are currently on their world tour spreading his message of hope and compassion for felines around the globe" (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). Each minion’s photo in the gallery represents humans’ ideological and financial support for Tuxedo Stan. News media supported Tuxedo Stan, Hank for Senate, and Mayor Stubbs’s candidacies in a more ambiguous fashion. While Craig Medred argues that “Silly 'Alaska cat mayor' saga spotlights how easily the media can be scammed” (Medred), a CBC News video announced that Tuxedo Stan was “interested in sinking his claws into the top seat at City Hall” and ready to “mark his territory around the mayor's seat” (“Tuxedo Stan the cat chases Halifax mayor chair”), and Lauren Strapagiel reported on Halifax’s “cuddliest would-be mayor.” In an unexpected echo of Derrida’s language, as Derrida repeats that he is truly talking about a cat, truly a little cat, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper endorses Tuxedo Stan for mayor and follows his endorsement with this statement: If he’s serious about a career in politics, maybe he should come to the United States. Just look at the mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska. That’s Stubbs the cat, and he’s been the mayor for 15 years. I’m not kidding…Not only that, but right now, as we speak, there is a cat running for Senate from Virginia. (Cooper) As he introduces a “Hank for Senate” campaign video, again Cooper mentions that he is “not kidding.” While Cooper’s “not kidding” echoes Derrida’s “truly,” the difference in meanings is différance. For Derrida, his encounter with his cat is “a matter of developing another ‘logic’ of decision, of the response and of the event…a matter of reinscribing the différance between reaction and response, and hence this historicity of ethical, juridical, or political responsibility, within another thinking of life, of the living, within another relation of the living, to their own…reactional automaticity” (126). Derrida proceeds through the impasse, the limit he identifies within philosophical engagements with animals, by tracing the ways his little cat’s presence affects him. Derrida finds another logic, which is not logic but surrender, to accommodate what he, like Young, terms “political responsibility.” Cooper, however, applies the hegemonic logic of human exceptionalism to his engagement with feline interlocutors, Tuxedo Stan, Hank for Senate, and Mayor Stubbs. Although Cooper’s segment, called “The RidicuList,” makes a pretense of political responsibility, it is different in kind from the pretense made in Tuxedo Stan’s campaign. As Derrida argues, a “pretense…even a simple pretense, consists in rendering a sensible trace illegible or imperceptible” (135). Tuxedo Stan’s campaign pretends that Tuxedo Stan fits within humanist, hegemonic notions of mayoral candidacy and then mobilizes this cute pretense in aid of political responsibility; the pretense—the pretense in which Tuxedo Stan’s human fans and supporters engage—renders the “sensible” trace of human exceptionalism illegible, if not imperceptible. Cooper’s pretense, however, works to make legible the trace of human exceptionalism and so to reinscribe its discursive hegemony. Discursively, the political potential of cute in Tuxedo Stan’s campaign is that Tuxedo Stan’s activism complicates humanist and posthumanist thinking about agency, about ethics, and about political responsibility. Thinking about animals may not change animals’ lives, but it may change (post)humans’ responses to these questions: Who can be a moral agent? How should moral agents—both individual and organizational, both human and animal—“think” about how they respond to structural social injustice? Epilogue: A Political Response Tuxedo Stan died of kidney cancer on 8 September 2013. Before he died, Tuxedo Stan’s campaign yielded improved cat protection legislation as well as a $40,000 endowment to create a spay-and-neuter facility accessible to low-income families. Tuxedo Stan’s litter mate, Earl Grey, carries on Tuxedo Stan’s work. Earl Grey’s campaign platform expands the Tuxedo Party’s appeals for animal welfare, and Earl Grey maintains the Tuxedo Party’s presence on Facebook, on Twitter (@TuxedoParty and @TuxedoEarlGrey), and at TuxedoStan.com (Chisholm TuxedoStan.com). On 27 February 2014, Agriculture Minister Keith Colwell of Nova Scotia released draft legislation whose standards of care aim to prevent distress and cruelty to pets and to strengthen their protection. They…include proposals on companion animal restraints, outdoor care, shelters, companion animal pens and enclosures, abandonment of companion animals, as well as the transportation and sale of companion animals…The standards also include cats, and the hope is to have legislation ready to introduce in the spring and enacted by the fall. (“Nova Scotia cracks down”) References Chisolm, Hugh. “Tuxedo Stan Kitten.” Tuxedo Party Facebook Page, 20 Oct. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisholm, Hugh. “Official Tuxedo Stan Minion.” TuxedoStan.com. Tuxedo Stanley and the Tuxedo Party. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisolm, Hugh. “You're Voting for Fred? Not at MY Polling Station!” Tuxedo Party Facebook Page, 20 Oct. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Chisholm, Hugh, and Kathy Chisholm. TuxedoStan.com. Tuxedo Stanley and the Tuxedo Party. 2 Mar. 2014. Cooper, Anderson. “The RidicuList.” CNN Anderson Cooper 360, 24 Sep. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989: 139–67. 2 Mar. 2014. Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Trans. David Willis. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Friedman, Amy. “Cat Marks 15 Years as Mayor of Alaska Town.” Newsfeed.time.com, 17 July 2012. 2 March 2014. Medred, Craig. “Silly ‘Alaska Cat Mayor’ Saga Spotlights How Easily the Media Can Be Scammed.” Alaska Dispatch, 11 Sep. 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. Mombourquette, Angela. “Candidate’s Ethics Are as Finely Honed as His Claws.” The Chronicle Herald, 27 Aug. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. “Nova Scotia Cracks Down on Tethering of Dogs.” The Chronicle Herald 27 Feb. 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. Pace, Natasha. “Halifax City Council Doles Out Cash to Help Control the Feral Cat Population.” Global News 14 May 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. Popovitch, Joe. “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Because Neglect Isn’t Working.” RefuseToBeBoring.com. 2 Mar. 2014. Strapagiel, Lauren. “Tuxedo Stan, Beloved Halifax Cat Politician, Dead at 3.” OCanada.com, 9 Sep. 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. “These 30 Animals with Their Adorable Miniatures Are the Cutest Thing Ever. Awwww.” WorthyToShare.com, n.d. 2 Mar. 2014. “Tuxedo Stan for Mayor Dinner Highlights.” Vimeo.com, 2 Mar. 2014. Tuxedo Stanley, and Kathy Chisholm. ME: The Tuxedo Stan Story. Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia: Ailurophile Publishing, 2014. 2 Mar. 2014. “Tuxedo Stan the Cat Chases Halifax Mayor Chair.” CBC News, 13 Aug. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Wolfe, Cary. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Wrenn, Corey. “Suffragette Cats Are the Original Cat Ladies.” Jezebel.com, 6 Dec. 2013. 2 Mar. 2014. Wyatt, Susan. “Hank, the Cat Who Ran for Virginia Senate, Gets MMore than 7,000 Votes.” King5.com The Pet Dish, 7 Nov. 2012. 2 Mar. 2014. Young, Iris Marion. “Political Responsibility and Structural Injustice.” Lindley Lecture. Department of Philosophy, University of Kansas. 5 May 2003.

Postmodernism is supposed to identify the conditions of contemporary cultural production when human affairs in general, and the dissemination of prevailing ideas in particular, have become fully enmeshed in relations of commodity exchange. (Martin 2002, p. 30) The accumulation of capital within industrial economies keyed on the surplus value derived from the production of raw materials into mass manufactured products, and their subsequent exchange in the capitalist marketplace. Within what Poster (1990) described as the contemporary mode of information , surplus capital is generated from the manufacturing of product’s symbolic values, which in turn substantiate their use and ultimately exchange values within the consumer market. This, in essence, is the centrifugal process undermining the brand (Klein 1999), promotional (Wernick 1991), or commodity sign (Goldman and Papson 1996), culture that characterizes contemporary capitalism: Through the creative outpourings of “cultural intermediaries” (Bourdieu 1984) working within the advertising, marketing, public relations, and media industries, commodities—routinely produced within low wage industrializing economies—are symbolically constituted to global consuming publics. This postmodern regime of cultural production is graphically illustrated within the sporting goods industry (Miles 1998) where, in regard to their use value, highly non-differentiated material products such as sport shoes are differentiated in symbolic terms through innovative advertising and marketing initiatives. In this way, oftentimes gaudy concoctions of leather, nylon, and rubber become transformed into prized cultural commodities possessing an inflated economic value within today’s informational-symbolic order (Castells 1996). Arguably, the globally ubiquitous Nike Inc. is the sporting brand that has most aggressively and effectively capitalized upon what Rowe described as the “culturalization of economics” in the latter twentieth century (1999, p. 70). Indeed, as Nike Chairman and CEO Phil Knight enthusiastically declared: For years, we thought of ourselves as a production-oriented company, meaning we put all our emphasis on designing and manufacturing the product. But now we understand that the most important thing we do is market the product. We’ve come around to saying that Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool. What I mean is that marketing knits the whole organization together. The design elements and functional characteristics of the product itself are just part of the overall marketing process. (Quoted in (Willigan 1992, p. 92) This commercial culturalization of Nike has certainly sparked considerable academic interest, as evidenced by the voluminous literature pertaining to the various dimensions of its practices of cultural production (Donaghu and Barff 1990; Ind 1993; Korzeniewicz 1994; Cole and Hribar 1995; Boje 1998; Goldman and Papson 1998; Lafrance 1998; Armstrong 1999; Denzin 1999; Penaloza 1999; Sage 1999; Lucas 2000; Stabile 2000). Rather than contribute to this body of work, our aim is to engage a sporting shoe company attempting to establish itself within the brand universe defined and dominated by Nike. For this reason we turn to German-based Puma AG: a dynamic brand-in-process, seeking to differentiate itself within the cluttered sporting landscape, through the assertion of a consciously fractured brand identity designed to address a diverse range of clearly-defined consumer subjectivities. Puma’s history can be traced to post-war Germany when, in 1948, a fraternal dispute compelled Rudolf Dassler to leave Adidas (the company he founded with his brother Adi) and set up a rival sports shoe business on the opposite bank of the Moselle river in Herzogenaurach. Over the next three decades the two companies vied for the leadership in the global sports shoe industry. However, the emergence of Nike and Reebok in the 1980s, and particularly their adoption of aggressive marketing strategies, saw both Adidas and Puma succumbing to what was a new world sneaker order (Strasser and Becklund 1991). Of the two, Puma’s plight was the more chronic, with expenditures regularly exceeding moribund revenues. For instance, in 1993, Puma lost US$32 million on sales of just US$190 million (Saddleton 2002, p. 2). At this time, Puma’s brand presence and identity was negligible quite simply because it failed to operate according to the rhythms and regimes of the commodity sign economy that the sport shoe industry had become (Goldman and Papson 1994; 1996; 1998). Remarkably, from this position of seemingly terminal decline, in recent years, Puma has “successfully turned its image around” (Saddleton 2002, p. 2) through the adoption of a branding strategy perhaps even more radical than that of Nike’s. Led by the company’s global director of brand management, Antonio Bertone, Puma positioned itself as “the brand that mixes the influence of sport, lifestyle and fashion” (quoted in (Davis 2002, p. 41). Hence, Puma eschewed the sport performance mantra which defined the company (and indeed its rivals) for so long, in favour of a strategy centered on the aestheticization of the sport shoe as an important component of the commodity based lifestyle assemblages, through which individuals are encouraged to constitute their very being (Featherstone 1991; Lury 1996). According to Bertone, Puma is now “targeting the sneaker enthusiast, not the guy who buys shoes for running” (quoted in (Davis 2002, p. 41). While its efforts to “blur the lines between sport and lifestyle” (Anon 2002, p. 30) may explain part of Puma’s recent success, at the core of the company’s turnaround was its move to diversify the brand into a plethora of lifestyle and fashion options. Puma has essentially splintered into a range of seemingly disparate sub-brands each directed at a very definite target consumer (or perceptions thereof). Amongst other options, Puma can presently be consumed in, and through: the upscale pseudo-Prada Platinum range; collections by fashion designers such as Jil Sander and Yasuhiro Mihara; Pumaville, a range clearly directed at the “alternative sport” market, and endorsed by athletes such as motocross rider Travis Pastrana; and, the H Street range designed to capture “the carefree spirit of athletics” (http://www.puma.com). However, Puma’s attempts to interpellate (Althusser 1971) a diverse array of sporting subjectivies is perhaps best illustrated in the “Nuala” collection, a yoga-inspired “lifestyle” collection resulting from a collaboration with supermodel Christy Turlington, the inspiration for which is expressed in suitably flowery terms: What is Nuala? NUALA is an acronym representing: Natural-Universal-Altruistic-Limitless-Authentic. Often defined as "meditation in motion", Nuala is the product of an organic partnership that reflects Christy Turlington's passion for the ancient discipline of Yoga and PUMA's commitment to create a superior mix of sport and lifestyle products. Having studied comparative religion and philosophy at New York University, model turned entrepreneur Christy Turlington sought to merge her interest in eastern practices with her real-life experience in the fashion industry and create an elegant, concise, fashion collection to complement her busy work, travel, and exercise schedule. The goal of Nuala is to create a symbiosis between the outer and inner being, the individual and collective experience, using yoga as a metaphor to make this balance possible. At Nuala, we believe that everything in life should serve more than one purpose. Nuala is more than a line of yoga-inspired activewear; it is a building block for limitless living aimed at providing fashion-conscious, independant women comfort for everyday life. The line allows flexibility and transition, from technical yoga pieces to fashionable apparel one can live in. Celebrating women for their intuition, intelligence, and individuality, Nuala bridges the spacious gap between one's public and private life. Thus, Puma seeks to hail the female subject of consumption (Andrews 1998), through design and marketing rhetorics (couched in a spurious Eastern mysticism) which contemporary manifestations of what are traditionally feminine experiences and sensibilities. In seeking to engage, at one at the same time, a variety of class, ethnic, and gender based constituencies through the symbolic advancement of a range of lifestyle niches (hi-fashion, sports, casual, organic, retro etc.) Puma evokes Toffler’s prophetic vision regarding the rise of a “de-massified society” and “a profusion of life-styles and more highly individualized personalities” (Toffler 1980, pp. 231, 255-256). In this manner, Puma identified how the nurturing of an ever-expanding array of consumer subjectivities has become perhaps the most pertinent feature of present-day market relations. Such an approach to sub-branding is, of course, hardly anything new (Gartman 1998). Indeed, even the sports shoe giants have long-since diversified into a range of product lines. Yet it is our contention that even in the process of sub-branding, companies such as Nike nonetheless retain a tangible sense of a core brand identity. So, for instance, Nike imbues a sentiment of performative authenticity, cultural irreverence and personal empowerment throughout all its sub-brands, from its running shoes to its outdoor wear (arguably, Nike commercials have a distinctive “look” or “feel”) (Cole and Hribar 1995). By contrast, Puma’s sub-branding suggests a greater polyvalence: the brand engages divergent consumer subjectivities in much more definite and explicit ways. As Davis (2002, p. 41) emphasis added) suggested, Puma “has done a good job of effectively meeting the demands of disparate groups of consumers.” Perhaps more accurately, it could be asserted that Puma has been effective in constituting the market as an aggregate of disparate consumer groups (Solomon and Englis 1997). Goldman and Papson have suggested the decline of Reebok in the early 1990s owed much to the “inconsistency in the image they projected” (1996, p. 38). Following the logic of this assertion, the Puma brand’s lack of coherence or consistency would seem to foretell and impending decline. Yet, recent evidence suggests such a prediction as being wholly erroneous: Puma is a company, and (sub)brand system, on the rise. Recent market performance would certainly suggest so. For instance, in the first quarter of 2003 (a period in which many of its competitors experienced meager growth rates), Puma’s consolidated sales increased 47% resulting in a share price jump from ?1.43 to ?3.08 (Puma.com 2003). Moreover, as one trade magazine suggested: “Puma is one brand that has successfully turned its image around in recent years…and if analysts predictions are accurate, Puma’s sales will almost double by 2005” (Saddleton 2002, p. 2). So, within a postmodern cultural economy characterized by fragmentation and instability (Jameson 1991; Firat and Venkatesh 1995; Gartman 1998), brand flexibility and eclecticism has proven to be an effective stratagem for, however temporally, engaging the consciousness of decentered consuming subjects. Perhaps it’s a Puma culture, as opposed to a Nike one (Goldman and Papson 1998) that best characterizes the contemporary condition after all? Works Cited Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other essays. London: New Left Books. Andrews, D. L. (1998). Feminizing Olympic reality: Preliminary dispatches from Baudrillard's Atlanta. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 33(1), 5-18. Anon. (2002, December 9). The Midas touch. Business and Industry, 30. Armstrong, K. L. (1999). Nike's communication with black audiences: A sociological analysis of advertising effectiveness via symbolic interactionism. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 23(3), 266-286. Boje, D. M. (1998). 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In early 1888, Miss Margaret Pearson arrived in Melbourne under engagement to the Working Men’s College there to give cookery lessons to young women. The College committee had applied to the National School of Cookery in London—an establishment effusively praised in the colonial press—for a suitable culinary educator, and Pearson, a graduate of that institute, was dispatched. After six months or so spent educating her antipodean pupils she published a cookbook, Cookery Recipes For The People, which she described in the preface as a handbook of “plain wholesome cookery” (Pearson 3). The book ran to three editions and sold more than 13,000 copies. A decade later, Hanna Maclurcan, co-proprietor of the popular Queen’s Hotel in Townsville, published Mrs Maclurcan’s Cookery Book: A Collection of Practical Recipes, Specially Suitable for Australia. A review of this work in the Brisbane Courier described it, positively, as a book of “good plain cooking”. Maclurcan had gained some renown as a cook after the Governor of Queensland, Lord Lamington, publicly praised the meals he had eaten at the Queen’s as “exceptionally good and above the average of Australian hotels” (Morning Bulletin 5). The first print run of Mrs Maclurcan’s Cookery Book sold out in weeks, and a second edition was swiftly produced. By 1903 there were 26,000 copies of Maclurcan’s book in print—one of which was deposited in the library of Queen Victoria. While the existence of any particular cookbook does not constitute evidence that any person ever reproduced a recipe from it, the not immodest sales enjoyed by Pearson and Maclurcan can, at the least, be taken to indicate a popular interest in the style of cookery, that is “plain cookery”, delineated in their respective works. If those who bought these books never actually turned them into working copies—that is, cooked from them—they likely aspired to do so. Practical classes in plain cookery were also popular in Australia in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The adjectival coupling of the word “plain” to “cookery” in colonial Australia can be seen then to have formed an appealing duet at that time If a modern author or reviewer described the body of recipes encapsulated in a cookbook as “plain cookery”, it would not serve to recommend it to the contemporary market—indeed it would likely condemn such a publication to pulping, rather than sales of many thousands—as the term would be understood by most modern cooks, and eaters, to describe food that was dull and lacking in flavour and cosmopolitan appeal. We now prefer cookery books that offer instruction on the preparation of dishes that are described as “exotic”, “global”, “ethnic”, “seasonal”, “local”, and “full of flavour”, and that lend those that prepare and consume the dishes they contain the “glamour of culinary ethnicity” (Appadurai 10). It would seem to be stating the obvious then to say that “plain cookery” meant something entirely different to colonial Australians, except that modern Australians commonly believe that their nineteenth century brethren ate an “abominable”, “monotonous”, “low standard” diet (Santich, The High and The Low 37), and therefore if they preferred their meals to be plain cooked, that these would have been exactly as our present-day interpretation would have them. Yet Pearson describes plain cookery as an “art” (3), arguably a rhetorical epithet, but she was a zealous educator and would not have used such a term to describe a style of cookery that she expected to turn out low quality dishes that were vile and dull. What Pearson and Maclurcan actually present in their respective books is English cookery: which was also known as plain cookery. The Anglo-Celtic population of Australia in the nineteenth century held varied opinions—ranging from obsequious to hateful—about England, depending on their background. The majority, however, considered it their natural home—including many who were colonial born—and the cultural model they reproduced, with local modifications, was that of the “mother country” (Abbott 10) some 10,000 long miles away. English political, legal, economic, and social systems were the foundation of white Australian society. In keeping with this, colonial cooks “perpetuated an English style of cookery, English food values, [and] an English meal structure” (Santich, Looking for Flavour 6) and English cookbooks were the models that colonial cooks and cookery writers drew upon. When Polly, the heroine of Henry Handel Richardson’s novel The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney, teaches herself to make pastry from a cookbook in her rudimentary kitchen on the Victorian goldfields circa 1853, historical accuracy requires her to have employed an imported publication to guide her. It was another decade before the first Australian cookbook, Edward Abbott’s The English And Australian Cookery Book, was published in 1864. Prior to the appearance of Abbott’s work, colonial cooks wanting the guidance of a culinary manual were reliant on the imported English titles stocked by Australian booksellers, such as Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families, Beeton’s Book of Household Management and William Kitchiner’s The Cook’s Oracle. These three particular cookbooks were amongst the most successful and influential works in the nineteenth century Anglo-sphere and were commonly considered as manuals of plain cookery: Acton’s particular work is also the source of the most commonly quoted definition of “plain cookery” as “the principles of roasting, boiling, stewing and baking” (Acton 167) and I am going let it stand as the model of such in this piece. If a curt literary catalogue, such as that used by Acton to delineate plain cookery, were used to describe any cuisine it would serve to make it seem austere, and the reputation of English food and cookery has likely suffered from a face value acceptance of it (and by association so has its Australian culinary doppelganger). A considered inspection of Acton’s work shows that her instructions for the plain methods of roasting, boiling, and stewing of food, cover 13 pages, followed by more than 100 pages of recipes for 19 different varieties of meat, poultry, and game that are further divided into numerous variant cuts. Three pages were dedicated to instruction for boiling potatoes properly. When preparing any of these dishes she enjoins her readers to follow the “slow methods of cooking recommended” (167) to ensure a superior end product. The principles of baking were elucidated across several chapters, taking under this classification the preparation of various types of pastry and a multitude of baked puddings, cakes and biscuits: all prepared from base ingredients—not a packet harmed in their production. We now venerate the taste of so-called “slow cooked” food, so to discover that this was the method prescribed for producing plain cooked dishes suggests that plain cookery potentially had more flavour than we imagine. Acton’s work also challenges the charge that the product of plain cookery was monotonous. We have developed a view that we must have a multitudinous array of different types of food available, all year round, for it to be satisfactory to us. Acton demonstrates that variety in cookery can be achieved in other ways such as in types and cuts of meat, and that “plain” was not necessarily synonymous with sameness. The celebrated twentieth century English food writer Elizabeth David says that Modern Cookery was the “most admired and copied English cookery book of the nineteenth century” (305). As the aspiration of most colonial cooks was the reproduction of English cookery it is not unreasonable to expect that Acton’s work might have had some influence on those that wrote cookery manuals for them. We know that Edward Abbott borrowed from her as he writes in his introduction that he has combined “the advantages of Acton’s work” (5) into this own. Neither Pearson or Maclurcan acknowledge any influence at all upon their works but their respective manuals are not particularly original in content—with the exception of some unique regional recipes in Maclurcan—and they must have drawn upon other cookery manuals of the same style to develop their repertoire. By the time they were writing, “large portions [of Acton’s] volume [had] been appropriated [by] contemporary [cookbook] authors [such as Abbott] without the slightest acknowledgment” (Acton 4): the famous Mrs. Beeton is generally considered to have borrowed heavily from Acton for the cookery section of her successful tome Household Management. If Pearson and Maclurcan did not draw directly on Acton—and they well might have—then they likely used culinary sources that had subsumed her influence as their inspiration. What was considered to constitute plain cookery was not as straightforward as Acton’s definition; it was also “generally understood” to be free of any French influence (David 35). It was a commonly held suspicion amongst nineteenth century English men and women that Gallic cooks employed sauces and strong flavourings such as garlic and other “low and treacherous devices” (Saunders 4), to disguise the fact that they had such poor quality ingredients to work with. On the other hand, the English “had such faith” in the superior quality of their native produce that they considered it only required treatment with plain cookery techniques to be rendered toothsome: this culinary Francophobia persisted in the colonies. In the novel, The Three Miss Kings, set in Melbourne in 1880, the trio of the title take lodgings with a landlady, who informs them from the outset that she is “only a plain cook, and can’t make them French things which spile [sic] the stomach” (Cambridge 36). While a good plain cook might have defined herself by the absence of any Gallic, or indeed any other “foreign”, influence in the meals she created, there had been a significant absorption of elements of both of these in the plain cookery she practised, but these had become so far embedded in English cookery that she was unaware of it. A telling example of this is the unremarked inclusion of curry in the plain cookery cannon. While the name and homogenised form of this dish is of British invention, it retained the varied spices, including pungent chillies, of the Indian cuisine it simulated. Pearson and Maclurcan, and Abbott, all included recipes for curries and curried dishes in their respective cookery books. Over time, plain cookery seems to have become conflated with “plain food”, but the latter was not necessarily the result of the former. There was little of Pearson’s “art” involved in creating plain food, except perhaps an ability to keep this style of food so flavourless and dull that it offered neither pleasure nor temptation to eat any more than that required to sustain life. This very real plainness was actively sought by some as “plain food was synonymous with moral rectitude […] and the plainer the food the more virtuous the eater” (Santich, Looking 28). A common societal appreciation of moral virtue is barely perceptible in modern Australian society but it was an attribute that was greatly valued in the nineteenth century Anglo-world and the consumption of plain food a necessary practice in the achievement of good character. (Our modern habit of labelling of foods “good” or “bad” shows that we continue to imbue food with moral overtones.) The list of “gustatory temptations” “proscribed by the plain food lobby” included “salt, spices, sauces and any flavourings that might have cheered the senses” (Santich, Looking 28). If this were the case then both Pearson and Maclurcan’s cookbooks would have dramatically failed to qualify as manuals of plain food. The recipes contained in their respective works feature a much greater use of components associated with flavour enhancement than we imagine to have been employed in plain cookery, particularly if we erroneously believe it to be analogous to plain food. Spices are used extensively in sweet and savoury dishes, as are various fresh green herbs and lemon juice and rind; homemade condiments such as mushroom ketchup (a type of essence pressed from a seasonal abundance of fungi), and a liberal employment of sherry, port, Madeira, and brandy that a “virtuous” plain food advocate would have considered most intemperate. Pearson and Maclurcan both give instructions for preparing rich stocks and gravies drawn from meat, bones and aromatic vegetables, and prescribe the end product of this process as the foundation for a variety of soups, sauces, and stews. Recipes are given for a greater diversity of vegetables than the stereotyped cabbage and potatoes of colonial culinary legend. Maclurcan displays a distinct tropical regionalism in her book providing recipes that use green bananas and pawpaw as vegetables, alongside other exotic species—for that time—such as eggplant, choko, mango, granadilla, passionfruit, rosella, prickly pear, and guava. Her distinct location, the coastal city of Townsville, is also reflected in the extensive selection of recipes for local species of fish and seafood such as beche-de-mer, prawns, and barramundi, which won Maclurcan a reputation as an expert on seafood. Ultimately, to gain a respectably informed understanding as to the taste, aroma, and texture of the plain cookery presented in the respective works of Pearson and Maclurcan one needs to prepare their recipes: I have done so, reproducing a wide selection of dishes from both books. Admittedly, I am a professionally trained cook with the skills to execute recipes to a high standard, but my practice is to scrupulously maintain the original listing of ingredients in the reproduction and follow the method as best I can. Through this practice I have made some delicious discoveries, which have helped inform my opinion that some colonial Australians, and perhaps significant numbers of them, must have been eating meals that were a long way from dull, flavourless and monotonous. It has been said that we employ our tongues for the “twin offices of rhetoric and taste” (Jaine 61). Words can exercise a significant influence on how we value the taste of—or actually taste—any particular food or indeed a cuisine. In the case of the popularly held opinion about the unappetizing state of colonial meals, it might be that the absence of rhetoric has contributed to this. Colonial food writers such as Pearson and Maclurcan did not “mince words” (Bannerman 166) and chose to use “plain titling” (David 306) and language that lacked the excessive adjectives and laudatory hyperbole typically employed by modern food writers. Perhaps if Pearson or Maclurcan had indulged in anointing their own works with enthusiastic recommendation and reference to international influences in their recipes, this might have contributed to a more positive impression of the food of our Anglo-Celtic ancestors. As an experiment with this idea I have taken a recipe from Cookery Recipes For The People and reframed its title and description in a modern food writing style. The recipe in question is titled “White Sauce” and Pearson writes that “this sauce will answer well for boiled fowl” (48): hardly language to make the dish sound appealing to the modern cook, and likely to confirm an expectation of plain cookery as tasteless and boring. But what if the recipe remained the same but the words used to describe it were changed, for example: the title to “Salsa Blanca” and the introductory remark to “this luxurious silky sauce infused with eschalot, mace, lemon, and sherry wine is perfect for perking up poached free-range chicken”. How much better might it then taste? References Abbott, Edward. The English And Australian Cookery Book: Cookery For The Many, As Well As The Upper Ten Thousand. London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, 1864. Acton, Eliza. Modern Cookery for Private Families. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1858. Appadurai, Arjun. “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1988): 3–24. Bannerman, Colin. A Friend In The Kitchen. Kenthurst NSW: Kangaroo Press, 1996. Brisbane Courier. “Mrs Maclurcan’s Cookery Book: A Collection of Practical Recipes, Specially Suitable for Australia [review].” Brisbane Courier c.1898. [Author’s manuscript collection.] Cambridge, Ada. The Three Miss Kings. London: Virago Press, 1987 (1st pub. Melbourne, 1891). David, Elizabeth. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. London: Penguin, 1986. Freeman, Sarah. Mutton and Oysters: The Victorians and their Food. London: Victor Golllancz, 1989. Humble, Nicola. Culinary Pleasures. London, Faber & Faber, 2005. Jaine, Tom. “Banquets and Meals”. Pleasures of the Table: Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium of Australian Gastronomy (1991): 61–4. Jones, Shar, and Otto, Kirsten. Colonial Food and Drink 1788-1901. Sydney: Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, 1985. Hartley, Dorothy. Food in England. London: Macdonald General, 1979. Hughes, Kathryn. The Short Life & Long Times of Mrs Beeton. London: Harper Perennial, 2006. Maclurcah, Hannah. Mrs Maclurcan’s Cookery Book: A Collection of Practical Recipes, Specially Suitable for Australia. Melbourne: George Robertson, 1905 (1st pub. Townsville, 1898). Morning Bulletin. “Gossip.” Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) 10 May 1898: 5. Pearson, Margaret. Cookery Recipes for the People. Melbourne: Hutchinson, 1888. Richardson, Henry Handel. The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. London: Heinemann, 1954. Santich, Barbara. What the Doctors Ordered: 150 Years of Dietary Advice in Australia. Melbourne: Hyland House, 1995. ---. “The High and the Low: Australian Cuisine in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries”. Journal of Australian Studies 30 (2006): 37–49. ---. Looking For Flavour. Kent Town: Wakefield, 1996 Saunders, Alan. “Why Do We Want An Australian Cuisine?”. Journal of Australian Studies 30 (2006): 1-17. Young, Linda. Middle-Class Culture in the Nineteenth Century: America, Australia and Britain. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmilian, 2002.

J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is appalled to learn that his lover is a victim of incest in Robert Towne and Roman Polanski’s definitive, yet subversive film Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974). Similarly, Ethan Mars (Pascale Langdale), the hero of the electronic game Heavy Rain (David Cage, 2010), is equally devastated to find his child has been abducted. One a cinema classic of the detective genre, the other a sophisticated electronic game: both ground-breaking, both compelling, but delivered in contrasting media. So, what do Chinatown and Heavy Rain have in common from the writer’s point of view? Can the writer of games learn from the legacy of film storytelling yet find alternative rules for new media? This article attempts to answer these questions making reference to the two works above to illuminate the gap between games writing and traditional screenwriting scholarship.Western commercial cinema has evolved to place story centrally and Chinatown is an example of a story’s potential as film art and entertainment concurrently. Media convention derives from the lessons of previous relatable art forms such as pictorial art, literature and architecture in the case of film; board games and centuries of physical gaming in the case of games design. Therefore, the invention of new media such as online and electronic gaming relies, in part, on the rules of film. However, game play has reassessed screenwriting and its applicability to this new media rendering many of these rules redundant. If Marshall McLuhan’s adage “the medium is the message” is correct, then despite the reliance of one medium on the traditions of its predecessor, gaming is simply not cinema. This article considers writing for games as axiomatically unconventional and calls for radical reinventions of storytelling within the new media.In order to investigate games writing, I will first revisit some of the rules of cinematic construction as inherited from an original Aristotelian source (Cleary). These rules require: a single focussed protagonist driving the plot; a consistent story form with narrative drive or story engine; the writer to avoid the repeated dramatic beat and; a reassessment of thematic concerns for the new technology. We should also investigate game-centric terminology such as “immersion” and “agency” to see how electronic gaming as an essentially postmodern phenomenon reciprocates, yet contrasts to, its cinematic predecessor (Murray, Hamlet 98/126). Must the maker of games subscribe to the filmmaker’s toolbox when the field is so very different? In order to answer this question, I will consider some concepts unique to games technology, firstly, the enduring debate known as ludology versus narratology. Gaming rhetoric since the late 1990s has questioned the efficacy of the traditional film narrative when adapted to game play. Players are still divided between the narratologists’ view, which holds that story within games is inevitable and the ludologists’ opinion, which suggests that traditional narrative has no place within the spatially orientated freedom of game play. Originally espousing the benefits of ludology, Janet H Murray argues that the essential formalism of gaming separates it from narrative, which Aarseth describes as representing “'colonialist' intrusions” on game play (46). Mimetic aspects inherited from narrative principles should remain incidental rather than forming an overarching hegemony within the game (Murray, "Last Word"). In this way, the ludologists suggest that game development has been undermined by the persistence of the narrative debate and Murray describes game studies as a “multi-dimensional, open-ended puzzle” worth solving on its own terms (indeed, cinema of attractions compelled viewers for thirty years before narrative cinema became dominant in the early twentieth century.Gaming history has proved this argument overblown and Murray herself questions the validity of this spurious debate within game play. She now includes the disclaimer that, ironically, most ludologists are trained in narratology and thus debate a “phantom of their own creation” (Murray, "Last Word"). This implies a contemporary opposition to ludology’s original meaning and impacts upon screenwriting principles in game making. Two further key concepts, which divide the medium of game entirely from the art of cinema are “immersion” and “agency” (Murray, Hamlet 98/126). Murray likens immersion to the physical sensation of being “submerged in water” pointing out that players enjoy the psychologically immersive phenomenon of delving into an undiscovered reality (Murray, Hamlet 98). Although distinct from the passive experience of cinema viewing, this immersion is like the experience of leaving the ordinary world and diving into the special world as Christopher Vogler’s screenwriting theory suggests. The cinema audience is encouraged to immerse themselves in the new world of Gittes’s Chinatown from the comfort of their familiar one. Similarly, the light-hearted world of the summer home contrasts Heavy Rain’s decent into urban, neo-noir corruption. Contrary to its cinematic cousin, the immediacy and subjectivity of the new media experience is more tangible and controllable, which renders immersion in games more significant and brings us to the next gaming concept, agency.To describe agency, Murray uses the complex metaphor of participatory dance, with its predetermined structures, “social formulas” and limited opportunities to change the overall “plot” of the dance: “The slender story is designed to unfold in the same way no matter what individual audience members may do to join the fun” (Hamlet 126-27). In electronic gaming, time-honoured gaming traditions from chess and board games serve as worthy predecessors. In this way, sophisticated permutations of outcome based on the player’s choice create agency, which is “the satisfying power to take meaningful action and see the results of our decisions and choices” (Murray, Hamlet 126). Bearing this in mind, when narrative enters game play, a world of possibility opens up (Murray, Hamlet).So where do the old rules of cinema apply within gaming and where is the maker of games able to find alternatives based on their understanding of agency and immersion? McLuhan’s unconventional scholarship leads the way, by pointing out the alternativity of the newer media. I consider that the rules of cinematic construction are also often disregarded by the casual viewer/player, but of utmost importance to the professional screenwriter.Amongst these rules is the screenwriting convention of having a single protagonist. This is a being fuelled with desire and a clear, visually rendered, actively negotiated goal. This principle persists in cinema according to Aristotle’s precepts (Cleary). The protagonist is a single entity making decisions and taking actions, even if that entity is a collection of individuals acting as one (Dethridge). The exploits of this main character (facing an opposing force of antagonism) determine the path of the story and for that reason a clear, single-minded narrative line is echoed in a single story form (McKee). For example, the baffling depth of meaning in Chinatown still emanates from protagonist J.J. Gittes’s central determination: to solve the crime suggested by the Los Angeles water shortage. The audience’s ability to identify and empathise with Gittes is paramount when he discovers the awful perversion his love interest, Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway), has been subjected to. However, the world of Chinatown remains intriguing as a string of corruption is revealed though a detective plot fuelled by our hero’s steadfast need to know the truth. In this way, a single protagonist’s desire line creates a solid story form. Conversely, in computer games (and despite the insistence of Draconian screenwriting lecturers who insist on replicating cinematic rules) the effect of a multiple protagonist plot still allows for the essential immersion in an imaginative world. In Heavy Rain, for example, the search for clues through the eyes of several related characters including a hapless father, a hangdog, ageing detective and a hyper-athletic single mother still allows for immersion. The player/interactor’s actions still create agency even as they change avatars from scene to scene. The player also negotiates for mastery of their character’s actions in order to investigate their situation, facts and world. However, each time the player switches their character allegiance, they revert to square one of their potential identification with that character. Indeed, in Heavy Rain, the player keenly aware of the chilling effect generated by the father losing his child in a busy shopping mall, but then another avatar steps forward, then another and the player must learn about new and unfamiliar characters on a scene-by-scene basis. The accumulative identification with a hero like Chinatown’s Gittes, begins with an admiration for his streetwise charm, then strengthens through his unfolding disillusionment and is cemented with Polanski’s brilliant invention: the death of Evelyn Mulwray replete with its politico-sexual implications (Polanski). However, does this mean cinematic identification is superior to game play’s immersion and agency? McLuhan might argue it is not and that the question is meaningless given that the “message” of games is axiomatically different. Traditional screenwriting scholarship therefore falters in the new medium. Further, Heavy Rain’s multi-protagonist miasma conforms to a new breed of structure: the mosaic plot, which according to Murray mirrors the internet’s click and drag mentality. In this sense, a kaleidoscopic world opens in pockets of revelation before the player. This satisfies the interactor in a postmodernist sense: an essential equality of incoming information in random, nonlinear connections. Indeed electronic games of this nature are a triumph of postmodernism and of ludology’s influence on the narratologist’s perspective. Although a story form including clues and detection still drives the narrative, the mosaic realisation of character and situation (which in a film’s plot might seem meandering and nonsensical) is given life by the agency and immersion provided by gaming (Truby).Back in traditional screenwriting principles, there is still the need for a consistent and singular story form providing a constant narrative drive (McKee). As mentioned, this arises from the protagonist’s need. For example a revenge plot relies on the hero’s need for vengeance; a revelation plot like Chinatown hinges on detection. However, first time screenwriting students’ tendency to visualise a story based unconsciously on films they have previously seen (as a bricolage of character moments arranged loosely around a collection of received ideas) tends to undermine the potential effectiveness of their story form. This lack of singularity in filmic writing indicates a misunderstanding of story logic. This propensity in young screenwriters derives from a belief that if the rendered filmic experience means something to them, it will necessarily mean something to an audience. Not so: an abandoned story drive or replaced central character diminishes the audience’s enjoyment and even destroys suspension of disbelief. Consequently, the story becomes bland and confusing. On investigation, it appears the young screenwriter does not realise that they are playing out an idea in their head, which is essentially a bricolage in the postmodern sense. Although this might lead to some titillating visual displays it fails to engage the audience as the result of their participation in an emotional continuum (Hayward). In contradistinction to film, games thrive on such irregularities in story, assuming radically different effects. For example, in cinema, the emotional response of a mass audience is a major draw card: if the filmic story is an accumulation of cause and effect responses, which steadily drive the stakes up until resolution, then it is the emotional “cathexis” as by-product of conflict that the audience resonates with (Freud 75; Chekhov). Does this transfer to games? Do notions such as feeling and empathy actually figure in game play at all? Or is this simply an activity rewarding the interactor with agency in lieu of deeper, emotive experiences? This final question could be perceived as anti-gaming sentiment given that games such as Heavy Rain suggest just such an emotional by-product. Indeed, the mechanics of gaming have the ability to push the stakes even higher than their cinematic counterparts, creating more complex emotionality in the player. In this way, the intentional psychological malaise of Heavy Rain solicits even greater emotion from players due to their inherent act of will. Where cinema renders the audience emotional by virtue of its passivity, no such claim is possible in the game. For example, where in Chinatown, Gittes tortures his lover by repeatedly slapping her, in Heavy Rain the character must actively perform torture on themself in order to solve the mystery. Further, the potential for engagement is extended given there are fourteen possible endings to Heavy Rain. In this way, although the film viewer’s emotional response is tempered by guessing the singular outcome, the multiple endings of this electronic game prevent such prescience (films can have multiple endings, but game mechanics lend the new media more readily to this function, therefore, game books with dice-rolling options are a stronger precedent then cinema).Also effective for the construction of cinema is Aristotle’s warning that the repetition of story and expositional information without rising stakes or any qualification of meaning creates a sense of “dramatic stall” for the audience (Aristotle). This is known as a repeated dramatic story beat and it is the stumbling block of many first time screenwriters. The screenplay should be an inventive effort to overcome escalating obstacles and an accumulative cause and effect chain on the part of the protagonist (Truby). The modern screenwriter for film needs to recognise any repeated beat in their early drafting and delete or alter the repetitive material. What then are the implications of repeated dramatic beats for the game writer? The game form known as “first person shooter” (FPS) depends on the appearance of an eternally regenerating (indeed re-spawning) enemy. In an apocalyptic zombie shooter game, for example, many hordes of zombies die unequivocally without threatening the interactor’s intrigue. Presumably, the antagonists are not intended to pose intellectual opposition for the gamer. Rather, the putrefying zombies present themselves for the gamer’s pugilistic satisfaction, again and again. For the game, therefore, the repeated beat is a distinct advantage. They may come harder and faster, but they are still zombies to be dispatched and the stakes have not necessarily risen. Who cares if this is a succession of repeated beats? It is just good clean fun, right? This is where the ludologists hold sway: to impose principles such as non-repeated beats and rising stakes on the emergence of a world based on pure game play offers no consequence for the FPS game. Nevertheless, the problem is exacerbated in “role play games” (RPG) of which Heavy Rain is an example. Admittedly, the gamer derives effective horror as our hero negotiates his way amongst a sea of disassociated shoppers searching for his lost child. The very fact of gamer agency should abnegate the problem, but does not, it merely heightens the sense of existential hopelessness: turning face after face not finding the child he is searching for is a devastating experience exacerbated by active agency (as opposed to the accepting passivity of cinema spectatorship). The rising panic in the game and the repetition of the faces of impassive shoppers also supports the player’s ongoing disorientation. The iconic appearance of the gruff clown handing out balloons further heightens the panic the gamer/protagonist experiences here. These are examples of repeated beats, yet effective due to player agency. The shoppers only persist until the gamer masters the situation and is able to locate the missing child. Thus, it is the capacity of the gamer to circumvent such repetition, which actually propels the game forward. If the gamer is adept, they will overcome the situation easily; if they are inexperienced, the repetition will continue. So, why apply traditional narrative constrictions on game play within a narrative game?Another crucial aspect of story is theme, which in the young writer reflects a postmodernist fetishisation of plot over story. In fact, theme is one of the first concepts to be ignored when a film student puts pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) when designing their game. In this way, the themes students choose to ignore resurface despite their lack of conscious application of them. They write plot, and plot in abundance (imperative for the modern writer (Truby)), which the mosaic structure of games accommodates for seamlessly. However, plot is causative and postmodern interpretations do not necessarily require the work of art to “say” anything beyond the “message” trapped in the clichés of their chosen genre (McLuhan). In concentrating on plot, therefore, the young writer says what they are unaware they are saying. At its most innocuous level this creates cliché. At its worst, it erases history and celebrates an attitude of unexamined ignorance toward the written material (Hayward). In extreme cases, student writers of both media support fascism, celebrate female masochism, justify rape (with or without awareness), or create nihilistic and derivative art, which sensationalises violence to a degree not possible within film technology. This is ironic given that postmodernism is defined, in part, by a canny reaction to modernist generation of meaning and cynicism toward the technology of violence. In all this postmodernism, that illusive chestnut known as “originality” (a questionable imperative still haunting the conventional screenplay despite the postmodernist declamation that there is no such thing) should also be considered. Although the game writer can learn from the lessons of the screenwriter, the problems of game structure and expression are unique to the new medium and therefore alternative to film. Adhering to traditional understandings of screenwriting in games is counterproductive to the development of the form and demands new assessment. If gaming students are liberated from narratologist impositions of cinematic story structures, will this result in better or more thoughtful games? Further to the ludologists’ original protestation against the ““colonialist” intrusions” of narrative on game play, film writing must recede where appropriate (Aarseth). Then again, if a ludologist approach to game creation renders the student writer free of filmic dogma, why do they impose the same stories repetitively? What gain comes from ignoring the Aristotelian traditions of storytelling–especially as derived from screen culture? I suggest that storytelling, to echo McLuhan’s statement, must necessarily change with the new medium: the differences are illuminating. The younger, nonlinear form embodies the player as protagonist and therefore should not need to impose the single protagonist regime from film. Story engine has been replaced by player agency and game mechanics, which also allows for inventive usage of the repeated beat. Indeed, postmodern and ludological concerns embedded within mosaic plots almost entirely replace the need for any consistency of story form while still subverting the expectations of modernism? Genre rules are partly reinvented by the form and therefore genre conventions in gaming are still in their infancy. Indeed, the very amorality of nihilistic game designers opens a space for burgeoning post-postmodernist concerns regarding ethics and faith within art. In any case, the game designer may choose the lessons of film writing’s modernist legacy if story is to be effective within the new medium. However, as meaning derives from traditional form, it might be wiser to allow the new medium its own reinvention of writing rules. Given Heavy Rain’s considerable contribution to detective genre in game play by virtue of its applying story within new media, I anticipate further developments that might build on Chinatown’s legacy in the future of gaming, but on the game play’s own terms.ReferencesAarseth, Espen. Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation. First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 2004. Aristotle. Poetics. Australia: Penguin Classics, 1997.Chekhov, Michael. Lessons for the Professional Actor. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1985.Chinatown. Roman Polanski. Paramount Golden Classics, 2011.Cleary, Stephen. “'What Would Aristotle Do?' Ancient Wisdom for Modern Screenwriters.” Stephen Cleary Lecture Series, 1 May 2011. Melbourne, Vic.: Victorian College of the Arts.Dethridge, Lisa. Writing Your Screenplay. Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2003.Freud, Sigmund. “On Narcissism: An Introduction.” On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Middlesex: Pelican, 1984. 65-97.Hayward, Susan. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge, 2006.Heavy Rain. David Cage. Quantic Dream, 2010.McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting. UK: Methuen, 1999. McLuhan, Marshall. “The Medium Is the Message.” Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1994. 1-18.Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: Simon and Schuster / Free Press, 1997.Murray, Janet H. “The Last Word on Ludology v Narratology in Game Studies.” Keynote Address. DiGRA, Vancouver, 17 June 2005.Polanski, Roman, dir. DVD Commentary. Chinatown. Paramount Golden Classics, 2011.Truby, John. The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters. London: Boxtree, 1996.

The Walt Disney Company has been creating magical fairy tales since the early 1900s and is a trusted brand synonymous with wholesome, family entertainment (Wasko). Over time, this reputation has resulted in the Disney brand’s huge financial growth and influence on audiences worldwide. (Wohlwend). As the largest global media powerhouse in the Western world (Beattie), Disney uses its power and influence to shape the perceptions and ideologies of its audience. In the twenty-first century there has been a proliferation of retellings of Disney fairy tales, and Kilmer suggests that although the mainstream perception is that these new iterations promote gender equity, new cultural awareness around gender stereotypes, and cultural insensitivity, this is illusory. Tangled, for example, was a popular film selling over 10 million DVD copies and positioned as a bold new female fairy tale character; however, academics took issue with this position, writing articles entitled “Race, Gender and the Politics of Hair: Disney’s Tangled Feminist Messages”, “Tangled: A Celebration of White Femininity”, and “Disney’s Tangled: Fun, But Not Feminist”, berating the film for its lack of any true feminist examples or progressiveness (Kilmer). One way to assess the impact of Disney is to look at the use of shape shifting and transformation in the narratives – particularly those that include women and young girls. Research shows that girls and women are often stereotyped and sexualised in the mass media (Smith et al.; Collins), and Disney regularly utilises body modification and metamorphosis within its narratives to emphasise what good and evil ‘look’ like. These magical transformations evoke what Marina Warner refers to as part of the necessary surprise element of the fairy tale, while creating suspense and identity with storylines and characters. In early Disney films such as the 1937 version of Snow White, the queen becomes the witch who brings a poison apple to the princess; and in the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty the ‘bad’ fairy Maleficent shapeshifts into a malevolent dragon. Whilst these ‘good to evil’ (and vice versa) tropes are easily recognised, there are additional transformations that are arguably more problematic than those of the increasingly terrifying monsters or villains. Disney has created what we have coined the ‘princess bubble’, where the physique and behaviour of the leading women in the tales has become a predictor of success and good fortune, and the impression is created of a link between their possession of beauty and the ‘happily-ever-after’ outcome received by the female character. The value, or worth, of a princess is shown within these stories to often increase according to her ability to attract men. For example, in Brave, Queen Elinor showcases the extreme measures taken to ‘present’ her daughter Merida to male suitors. Merida is preened, dressed, and shown how to behave to increase her value to her family, and whilst she manages to persuade them to set aside their patriarchal ideologies in the end, it is clear what is expected from Merida in order to gain male attention. Similarly, Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow White are found to be of high ‘worth’ by the princes on account of their beauty and form. We contend, therefore, that the impression often cast on audiences by Disney princesses emphasises that beauty = worth, no matter how transgressive Disney appears to be on the surface. These princesses are flawlessly beautiful, capable of winning the heart of the prince by triumphing over their less attractive rivals – who are often sisters or other family members. This creates the illusion among young audiences that physical attractiveness is enough to achieve success, and emphasises beauty as the priority above all else. Therefore, the Disney ‘princess bubble’ is highly problematic. It presents a narrow range of acceptability for female characters, offers a distorted view of gender, and serves to further engrain into popular culture a flawed stereotype on how to look and behave that negates a fuller representation of female characters. In addition, Armando Maggi argues that since fairy tales have been passed down through generations, they have become an intrinsic part of many people’s upbringing and are part of a kind of universal imaginary and repository of cultural values. This means that these iconic cultural stories are “unlikely to ever be discarded because they possess both a sentimental value and a moral ‘soundness’” (Rutherford 33), albeit that the lessons to be learnt are at times antiquated and exclusionary in contemporary society. The marketing and promotion of the Disney princess line has resulted in these characters becoming an extremely popular form of media and merchandise for young girls (Coyne et al. 2), and Disney has received great financial benefit from the success of its long history of popular films and merchandise. As a global corporation with influence across multiple entertainment platforms, from its streaming channel to merchandise and theme parks, the gender portrayals therefore impact on culture and, in particular, on how young audiences view gender representation. Therefore, it could be argued that Disney has a social responsibility to ensure that its messages and characters do not skew or become damaging to the psyche of its young audiences who are highly impressionable. When the representation of gender is examined, however, Disney tends to create highly gendered performances in both the early and modern iterations of fairy tales, and the princess characters remain within a narrow range of physical portrayals and agency. The Princess Bubble Although there are twelve official characters within the Disney princess umbrella, plus Elsa and Anna from the Disney Frozen franchise, this article examines the eleven characters who are either born or become royalty through marriage, and exhibit characteristics that could be argued to be the epitome of feminine representation in fairy tales. The characters within this ‘princess bubble’ are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Elsa, and Anna. The physical appearance of those in the princess bubble also connects to displays around the physical aspects of ethnicity. Nine out of eleven are white skinned, with Jasmine having lightened in skin tone over time, and Tiana now having a tanned look rather than the original dark African American complexion seen in 2009 (Brucculieri). This reinforces an ideology that being white is superior. Every princess in our sample has thick and healthy long hair, the predominant colour being blonde. Their eyes are mostly blue, with only three possessing a dark colour, a factor which reinforces the characteristics and representation of white ethnic groups. Their eyes are also big and bulbous in shape, with large irises and pupils, and extraordinarily long eyelashes that create an almost child-like look of innocence that matches their young age. These princesses have an average age of sixteen years and are always naïve, most without formal education or worldly experience, and they have additional distinctive traits which include poise, elegance and other desired feminine characteristics – like kindness and purity. Ehrenreich and Orenstein note that the physical attributes of the Disney princesses are so evident that the creators have drawn criticism for over-glamorising them, and for their general passiveness and reliance on men for their happiness. Essentially, these women are created in the image of the ultimate male fantasy, where an increased value is placed on the virginal look, followed by a perfect tiny body and an ability to follow basic instructions. The slim bodies of these princesses are disproportionate, and include long necks, demure shoulders, medium- to large-sized perky breasts, with tiny waists, wrists, ankles and feet. Thus, it can be argued that the main theme for those within the princess bubble is their physical body and beauty, and the importance of being attractive to achieve success. The importance of the physical form is so valued that the first blessing given by the fairies to Aurora from Sleeping Beauty is the gift of physical beauty (Rutherford). Furthermore, Tanner et al. argue that the "images of love at first sight in the films encourage the belief that physical appearance is the most important thing", and these fairy tales often reflect a pattern that the prince cannot help but to instantly fall in love with these women because they are so striking. In some instances, like the stories of Cinderella and Snow White, these princesses have not uttered a single word to their prince before these men fall unconditionally and hopelessly in love. Cinderella need only to turn up at the ball as the best dressed (Parks), while Snow White must merely “wait prettily, because someday her prince will come" (Inge) to reestablish her as royalty. Disney emphasises that these princesses win their man solely on the basis that they are the most beautiful girls in the land. In Sleeping Beauty, the prince overhears Aurora’s singing and that sets his heart aflame to the point of refusing to wed the woman chosen for him at birth by the king. Fortunately, she is one and the same person, so the patriarchy survives, but this idea of beauty, and of 'love at first sight', continues to be a central part of Disney movies today, and shows that “Disney Films are vehicles of powerful gender ideologies” (Hairianto). These princesses within the bubble of perfection have priority placed on their physical and sexual beauty (Dietz), formulating a kind of ‘beauty contest motif’. Examples include Gaston, who does not love Belle in Beauty and the Beast, but simply wants her as his trophy wife because he deems her to be the most beautiful girl in the town. Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, looks as if she "was modeled after a slightly anorexic Barbie doll with thin waist and prominent bust. This representation portrays a dangerous model for young women" (Zarranz). The sexualisation of the characters continues as Jasmine has “a delicate nose and small mouth" (Lacroix), with a dress that can be considered as highly sexualised and unsuitable for a girl of sixteen (Lacroix). In Tangled, Rapunzel is held hostage in the tower by Mother Gothel because she is ‘as fragile as a flower’ and needs to be ‘kept safe’ from the harms in the world. But it is her beauty that scares the witch the most, because losing Rapunzel would leave the old woman without her magical anti-aging hair. She uses scare tactics to ensure that Rapunzel remains unseen to the world. These examples are all variations of the beauty theme, as the princesses all fall within narrow and predictable tropes of love at first sight where the woman is rescued and initiated into womanhood by being chosen by a man. Disney’s Progressive Representation? At times Disney’s portrayal of princesses appears illusively progressive, by introducing new and different variations of princesses into the fold – such as Merida in the 2012 film Brave. Unfortunately, this is merely an illusion as the ‘body-perfect’ image remains an all-important ideal to snare a prince. Merida, the young and spirited teenage princess, begins her tale determined not to conform to the desired standards set for a woman of her standing; however, when the time comes for her to be married, there is no negotiating with her mother, the queen, on dress compliance. Merida is clothed against her will to re-identify her in the manner which her parents deem appropriate. Her ability to express her identity and individuality removed, now replaced by a masked version, and thus with the true Merida lost in this transformation, her parents consider Merida to be of renewed merit and benefit to the family. This shows that Disney remains unchanged in its depiction of who may ‘fit’ within the princess bubble, because the rubric is unchanged on how to win the heart of the man. In fact, this film is possibly more troublesome than the rest because it clearly depicts her parents to deem her to be of more value only after her mother has altered her physical appearance. It is only after the total collapse of the royal family that King Fergus has a change of patriarchal heart, and in fact Disney does not portray this rumpled, ripped-sleeved version of the princess in its merchandising campaign. While the fantasy of fairy tales provides enthralling adventures that always end in happiness for the pretty princesses that encounter them, consideration must be given to all those women who have not met the standard and are left in their wake. If women do not conform to the standards of representation, they are presented as outcasts, and happiness eludes them. Cinderella, for example, has two ugly stepsisters, who, no matter how hard they might try, are unable to match her in attractiveness, kindness, or grace. Disney has embraced and not shunned Perrault’s original retelling of the tale, by ensuring that these stepsisters are ugly. They have not been blessed with any attributes whatsoever, and cannot sing, dance, or play music; nor can they sew, cook, clean, or behave respectably. These girls will never find a suitor, let alone a prince, no matter how eager they are to do so. On the physical comparison, Anastasia and Drizella have bodies that are far more rounded and voluptuous, with feet, for example, that are more than double the size of Cinderella’s magical slipper. These women clearly miss the parameters of our princess bubble, emphasising that Disney is continuing to promote dangerous narratives that could potentially harm young audience conceptions of femininity at an important period in their development. Therefore, despite the ‘progressive’ strides made by Disney in response to the vast criticism of their earlier films, the agency afforded to their new generation of princesses does not alter the fact that success comes to those who are beautiful. These beautiful people continue to win every time. Furthermore, Hairianto has found that it is not uncommon for the media to directly or indirectly promote “mental models of how a woman should look, speak and interact with others”, and that Disney uses its pervasive princess influence “to shape perceptions of female identity and desirability. Females are made to measure themselves against the set of values that are meted out by the films” (Hairianto). In the 2017 film Beauty and the Beast, those outside of the princess bubble are seen in the characters of the three maidens from the village who are always trying to look their very best in the hope of attracting Gaston (Rutherford). Gaston is not only disinterested but shows borderline contempt at their glances by permitting his horse to spray mud and dirt all over their fine clothing. They do not meet the beauty standard set, and instead of questioning his cruelty, the audience is left laughing at the horse’s antics. Interestingly, the earlier version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast portrays these maidens as blonde, slim, and sexy, closely fitting the model of beauty displayed in our princess bubble; however, none match the beauty of Belle, and are therefore deemed inferior. In this manner, Disney is being irresponsible, placing little interest in the psychological ‘safety’ or affect the messages have upon young girls who will never meet these expectations (Ehrenreich; Best and Lowney; Orenstein). Furthermore, bodies are shaped and created by culture. They are central to self-identity, becoming a projection of how we see ourselves. Grosz (xii) argues that our notions of our bodies begin in physicality but are forever shaped by our interactions with social realities and cultural norms. The media are constantly filled with images that “glorify and highlight some kinds of bodies (for example, the young, able-bodied and beautiful) while ignoring or condemning others” (Jones 193), and these influences on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and religion within popular culture therefore play a huge part in identity creation. In Disney films, the princess bubble constantly sings the same song, and “children view these stereotypical roles as the right and only way to behave” (Ewert). In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana’s friend Charlotte is so desperate to ‘catch’ a prince that "she humorously over-applies her makeup and adjusts her ball gown to emphasize her cleavage" (Breaux), but the point is not lost. Additionally, “making sure that girls become worthy of love seems central to Disney’s fairy tale films” (Rutherford 76), and because their fairy tales are so pervasive and popular, young viewers receive a consistent message that being beautiful and having a tiny doll-like body type is paramount. “This can be destructive for developing girls’ views and images of their own bodies, which are not proportioned the way that they see on screen” (Cordwell 21). “The strongly gendered messages present in the resolutions of the movies help to reinforce the desirability of traditional gender conformity” (England et al. 565). Conclusion The princess bubble is a phenomenon that has been seen in Disney’s representation of female characters for decades. Within this bubble there is a narrow range of representation permitted, and attempts to make the characters more progressive have instead resulted in narrow and restrictive constraints, reinforcing dangerous female stereotypes. Kilmer suggests that ultimately these representations fail to break away from “hegemonic assumptions about gender norms, class boundaries, and Caucasian privileging”. Ultimately this presents audiences with strong and persuasive messages about gender performance. Audiences conform their bodies to societal ‘rules’: “as to how we ‘wear’ and ‘use’ our bodies” (Richardson and Locks x), including for example how we should dress, what we should weigh, and how to become popular. In our global hypermediated society, viewers are constantly exposed to princesses and other appropriate bodies. These become internalised ideals and aid in positive and negative thoughts and self-identity, which in turn creates additional pressure on the female body in particular. The seemingly innocent stories with happy outcomes are therefore unrealistic and ultimately excluding of those who cannot or will not ‘fit into the princess bubble’. 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