Academic literature on the topic 'Drone metal (Music)'

The increasingly popular and influential genre known as drone metal is characterized by the interaction of amplified drones with permutational rhythms. Scholarship in the field has, so far, concentrated on distinguishing the work of various drone metal artists through ethnographic analysis of the symbols and social bonds that accumulate around the drone; the ways in which drones are conceptualized have been paid more attention than the function of the drone itself. This article follows the drone form from the inception of Minimalist musical practice in the work of La Monte Young, to contemporary developments in works incorporating the drone by major artists operating in the experimental wings of popular music. To clarify the relationship or non-relation between the drone and musical meaning, three drone-related works by Joan La Barbara, Eleh and Keiji Haino are discussed with respect to their relative proximity to, or distance from, language and/or speech. Although only Haino here could be said to have even a tangential relation to metal, each exemplar extols a primary form that drone metal can be said to elaborate upon: a voice pushed to its limits (La Barbara), amplified sound as a physical force (Eleh), monolithic homogeneity at a crawling pace (Haino). Each piece of music is also considered in terms of the subject who listens, leading to some speculative thoughts on the uses made of the drone, an assessment of its potential to resist appropriation by the culture industry and reasons for the drone’s remarkable persistence and diversity.

Because of its marketing impact and key role in the definition of a band’s visual identity, the artwork of a metal album is carefully designed to reflect the music played by the band. Bearing in mind the historical association between colour and music, we performed a quantitative colorimetric analysis of 1150 metal album artworks (MAA) (and of 400 non-metal artworks for the purpose of comparison) in order to study the place of colours in metal artworks visual identity. In each artwork, we have extracted its five dominant colours (with a k-means clustering algorithm) and underwent a colour histogram analysis. We showed that MAA appear darker than their non-metal counterparts. We derived a colour palette of MAA and showed that black, (dark) grey and brown/orange tones are by far the most frequently used colours. The presence of these ‘metal colours’ is very consistent between metal subgenres. However, the visual identity of some metal subgenres encompasses specific artwork colorimetric rules. Black metal album covers are darker and mainly use black and dark grey. Groove metal artworks tend to display warmer and more saturated colours with an increased use of brownish and orange tones. Drone metal albums are lighter while crossover albums have a mottled appearance. Nevertheless, for most of the metal subgenres the artwork visual identity seems to rely on colour-independent elements. We suppose that this identity might rather be built on thematic elements and probably also on the logotypes’ style. A lot of work remains to be done to clearly understand what makes metal albums look so peculiar.

In popular discourse, and in some research on music and health, a vague but universal healing potential is sometimes attributed to music in general. An important counterpoint appears in heavy metal music, which is often assumed to have deleterious effects on listeners and on society. This article reviews debates in politics, news media and research on health and metal music from the 1970s to the present, with particular focus on the UK and US contexts. Showing that research has been influenced by moral panics and legal controversies, the article demonstrates how ideas about transgressive religiosity have often influenced debates about health and harm surrounding metal music. A disciplinary and methodological polarisation is noted between, on one hand, psychological and behavioural lab experiments, and on the other, social sciences and humanities research with more ethnographic or contextual approaches. Noting that some lab-based methods seem highly contrived and even unethical, this article argues for an approach to research in this field which studies real listening practices. A case study of violence, religion and health is then outlined concerning the extreme subgenre of drone metal. In this music culture, listener discourses touch on mysticism, ritual and the sacred; on health, healing and catharsis; and on different modes of abstract and physical violence, in highly interrelated and sometimes surprising ways. The article concludes that noise and extreme music may offer particularly powerful —yet under-appreciated, at least to critics outside metal cultures— resources for positively influencing listeners’ health.

ORIGINS We warmly welcome you to this special issue of Approaches. Spirituality is a shared area of interest for many disciplines that explore the role of music in human life, including music therapy, ethnomusicology, music education, music philosophy and theology. Interdisciplinary dialogue in this area, however, has been limited. Responding to this situation, and with an explicit focus on spirituality and music in relation to wellbeing and education, this special issue brings to the fore ideas, questions and debates that often remain hidden within the confines of each discipline. The vision underpinning this special issue originates in the 2017 conference ‘Exploring the Spiritual in Music: Interdisciplinary Dialogues in Music, Wellbeing and Education’ which took place at the Nordoff Robbins London Centre. Co-organised by the UK music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins and the international network Spirituality and Music Education (SAME), and according to the ethos of the Nordoff Robbins Plus Research Conference Series (Pavlicevic, 2014; Spiro, 2017; Spiro & Schober, 2014), this event offered a platform for interdisciplinary and cross-institutional thinking within, around and beyond music therapy.[1] Indeed, the conference attracted over a hundred scholars, researchers, practitioners and students from different disciplinary, geographical and spiritual spaces. It became a meeting point of diverse and, at times, contrasting spiritualities and musics fostering constructive debates and generating a ‘place’ alive with multiple meanings (Hendricks, 2018; Hendricks & Smith, 2019). The presentations were grouped into six main themes: i) Uncertainties and controversies, ii) Culture, politics and identity, iii) Learning and teaching, iv) Music, imagery and reflection, v) Musicians, thinkers and approaches, and vi) Living and dying. These themes offered a framework for critical and constructive dialogue regarding the multiple manifestations and understandings of the spiritual in music across different practices, settings and cultures. HYBRIDITY Building on the ethos and the themes of the 2017 conference, this special issue brings together and takes forward diverse theoretical perspectives, practices and methodological approaches. Our vision, as chairs of the conference and editors of this publication, has been to move beyond conceptual and methodological conventions, and to offer an open space for exploring the spiritual in music.[2] In this context, ‘the spiritual’ is intentionally used as a term reflecting our commitment to a hybrid spiritual discourse. ‘The spiritual’ implies our conceptualisation of spirituality as a ‘boundary object’ in music therapy and in related fields; “a hybrid construct which affords the co-existence of unfinished spiritualities as well as their multiple and heterogeneous translations” (Tsiris, 2018, p. i). Instead of applying an overarching definition of spirituality, this edition on the one hand recognises the plasticity of spirituality and its adaptations to local music practices, and on the other hand highlights how spirituality retains some commonly recognisable, even if fuzzy, patterns across intersecting disciplinary, professional and cultural contexts. As such, we are interested in the multiplicity of the spiritual in music and its heterogeneous translations and applications.[3] This has resulted in a rich edition embracing varying writing styles, perspectives, methodological approaches and perspectives. In each case, authors were asked to communicate openly their stance and intention of writing, and to position their arguments accordingly. Contents overview This special issue begins with Sara MacKian’s paper. Based on her keynote presentation in 2017 and drawing on her research experience as a human geographer (e.g., Bartolini, Chris, MacKian & Pile, 2017; MacKian, 2012), this paper explores how and where the spiritual might be encountered in unexpected ways. MacKian advocates for an openness towards the challenges of encountering and of articulating spirituality. Re-orientating our analytical lens to the everyday, she stresses the importance of mystery in our engagements with spirituality, music and wellbeing in everyday life. Responding to MacKian’s paper, Lars Ole Bonde offers his perspective as a music therapist with specific reference to Guided Imagery and Music (GIM). Moving beyond a static-content-oriented approach, Bonde proposes a more dynamic process and interpersonal understanding of spiritual/transpersonal experiences with music. The emerging interplay between the extraordinary and the ordinary, and the open-ended stance adopted by MacKian and Bonde, is equally characteristic of the other papers contained in this issue. Bolette Daniels Beck and Martin Lawes, both using case examples from their GIM work, explore the concepts of ‘sacred moments’ and of spiritual experiences. Kate Binnie explores the ‘thin place’ between life and death through a case study of compassion-focused relational approach to music therapy with a hospice patient and she outlines a feasibility study protocol. Some authors, such as Astrid Notarangelo and Adam Kishtainy, present personal accounts of integrating spirituality in their own music therapy work. Other authors consider spirituality in relation to emerging research findings and literature themes from diverse disciplinary spaces. Efrat Roginsky and Cochavit Elefant, for example, consider spirituality in relation to transformative experiences of music as emerged in their research with parents of children with cerebral palsy and multiple disabilities. Focusing on spirituality from a different disciplinary perspective, that of metal music, Owen Coggins reviews some of the controversies that have characterised public, political and research debates on health and metal music since the 1970s especially in the US and the UK. Drawing on his own ethnographic study of violence, religion and health within the music culture of drone metal, Coggins explores how noise and extreme music can be positive, yet under-appreciated, resources for listeners’ health. On the other hand, Giorgio Scalici’s ethnomusicological study of music among the Wana people of Morowali in Central Sulawesi explores how music connects the human world and the hidden world of spirits and emotion. More specifically, he explores the role of music as a ritual marker transforming ordinary time into mythical/ritual time and allowing the healing of the patient and the community through emotional catharsis. Lastly, Faith Halverson-Ramos’ opinion paper explores music in relation to gerotranscendence. With a focus on the US social context, Halverson-Ramos discusses how music can be vital to a culturally responsive approach to ageing and transpersonal growth. These articles are followed by three book reviews by Tia DeNora, Marilyn Clark and Leslie Bunt. Two of these reviews concern the books Mysticism, Ritual and Religion in Drone Metal by Coggins (2018) and Spirituality and Music Education: Perspectives from Three Continents by Boyce-Tillman (2017) which were launched at the 2017 conference. The special issue concludes with a report by Karin Hendricks and Tawnya Smith offering a reflective overview of the 2017 conference alongside some photographic material. For the readers who did not attend the conference, this report may serve as a useful introduction to this special edition. Filoxenia This special issue would not have been possible without the diligent work of the editorial board who also served on the scientific committee of the 2017 conference: Lars Ole Bonde, June Boyce-Tillman, Owen Coggins, John Habron, Frank Heuser, Koji Matsunobu, Simon Procter, Neta Spiro, and Liesl van der Merwe. We thank each and every one of them for fostering a dialogic and reflexive peer-review space where scientific rigour was balanced by a genuine spirit of curiosity and openness towards aspects of the spiritual in music which are perhaps located on the edge of existing theoretical frameworks and may be more slippery to the scientific eye. Moving beyond polarisations and a sense of ‘mutual suspicion’, which may be observed between different professional fields in the wider music, wellbeing and education arena (Tsiris, Derrington, Sparkes, Spiro & Wilson, 2016), the peer-review process was characterised by an awareness of the multiplicity of the spiritual in music and a willingness to enable diverse voices to enter the professional discourse and come together. We argue that this coming together of different voices is a key contribution of this special issue given that such papers would typically, and perhaps more comfortably, remain within the conceptual and methodological boundaries of their profession and discipline. This special issue fostered an epistemological culture of filoxenia (etymology from the Greek filo [= love] + xenos [= stranger]); a spirit of openness, trust and generosity betweenauthors and reviewers. Instead of being uninvited or misunderstood guests in each other’s disciplinary discourses (Frank, 2009; Tsiris, 2013, 2014), authors and reviewers collaborated as partners and equally important co-creators of this interdisciplinary environment. This seemingly romantic view was, of course, underpinned and shaped by the negotiations and controversies as well as the uncertainties and vulnerabilities which are inherent to each field’s professional and disciplinary advancements. Mercédès Pavlicevic, who sadly died a few months after the 2017 conference, has been a vital voice in music therapy articulating vividly some of these negotiations and controversies around our cultural constructions of music, health and healing (Stige, 2018). In her article with Cripps, she characteristically proposed a ‘messy hybridity’ to reflect the sociocultural and cosmological fusions required for contemporary music therapy practices: Straddling the South and the Global North, we propose that Western (and at times bio-medically informed) healing and health practices might well consider reclaiming and re-sourcing their own, and other, traditional and indigenous healing cosmologies, whatever their respective and situated ideologies and ontologies. Despite apparent (and possibly intellectual and ideological) segmentations and separations of disciplines by Western scholarship and economics, we propose that ‘the ancestors’ and ‘the aspirin’ need to embrace rather than view one another with suspicion. Just possibly, each might become enriched (and discomforted) by the silenced coincidences of one another’s desires to know and experience our common humanity through music. (Pavlicevic & Cripps, 2015) With the publication of this special issue, we pay tribute to Mercédès, a close colleague and dear friend to both of us. Mercédès was instrumental in the establishment of the Nordoff Robbins Plus Research Conference series and contributed to the scientific committee of the 2017 conference. Although Mercédès had become too unwell to contribute to the editorial board of this special issue, her commitment to exploring music and spirituality in-context and in-action informed our editorial work and indeed remains a passionately alive voice within us. We are grateful for everything that Mercédès brought and shared with us: The fruit of Mercédès’ endeavour is becoming clear and is our gift from her: an influential legacy of thinking and practice for music therapy and beyond music therapy… but also a life-lesson for us all:Stir it up… get moving… be bold… share your energy… be naughty sometimes and shake things up… but also… create beauty together, party, believe in people, cherish each other…And also… know when to leave, know how to let go – with dignity and grace. (Ansdell, 2018) We encourage readers to keep Mercédès’ endeavour and gift in their mind and in their heart as they turn the pages of this issue. LEAVING THE DOOR OPEN Looking ahead, we hope this special issue expands our horizons by generating new questions and directions in our explorations of the spiritual in music. We hope it becomes a springboard for further practice, theory and research developments questioning traditional assumptions and venturing beyond familiar knowledge and methods. Marking also the tenth anniversary of Approaches, this publication reflects the journal’s ongoing commitment to the advancement of music therapy through interdisciplinary dialogue bridging local and global aspects of music, health and wellbeing. As we close this editorial, we leave the door open… and we call for a critical engagement with the creative uncertainties characterising the evolving interdisciplinary landscape of the spiritual in music. References Ansdell, G. (2018). Mercédès’ endeavour. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 18(2). Retrieved from https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/2526 Bartolini, N., Chris, R., MacKian, S., & Pile, S. (2017). The place of spirit: Modernity and the geographies of spirituality. Progress in Human Geography, 41(3), 338-354. Boyce-Tillman, J. (Ed.). (2017). Spirituality and music education: Perspectives from three continents. Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd. Coggins, O. (2018). Mysticism, ritual and religion in drone metal. London: Bloomsbury Academic. DeNora, T., & Ansdell, G. (2014). What can’t music do? Psychology of Well-being, 4(1), 23. DeNora, T., & Ansdell, G. (2017). Music in action: Tinkering, testing and tracing over time. Qualitative Research, 17(2), 231-245. Frank, A. W. (2009). The renewal of generosity: Illness, medicine, and how to live. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hendricks, K.S. (2018). Compassionate music teaching. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Hendricks, K.S., & Smith, T.D. (2019). The 4th Nordoff Robbins Plus Research Conference and the 4th International Spirituality and Music Education (SAME) Conference ‘Exploring the spiritual in music: Interdisciplinary dialogues in music, wellbeing and education’. Approaches: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Music Therapy, Special Issue 11(1), 191-200. MacKian, S. (2012). Everyday spirituality: Social and spatial worlds of enchantment. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Pavlicevic, M. (2014). Afterword: Knock knock… Psychology of Music, 42(6), 894-896. Pavlicevic, M., & Cripps, C. (2015). Muti music – In search of suspicion. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 15(3). Retrieved from https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/2286 Spiro, N. (2017). The Nordoff Robbins Plus Research Conference Series. In G. Tsiris, G. Ansdell, N. Spiro, & O. Coggins (Eds.), Exploring the spiritual in music: Interdisciplinary dialogues in music, wellbeing and education (p. 11). London: Nordoff Robbins. Spiro, N., & Schober, M. F. (2014). Perspectives on music and communication: An introduction. Psychology of Music, 42(6), 771-775. Stige, B. (2018). Moments and open doors: A tribute to Mercédès Pavlicevic. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy, 18(2). Retrieved from https://voices.no/index.php/voices/article/view/2524 Tsiris, G. (2013). Voices from the ghetto: Music therapy perspectives on disability and music (a response to Joseph Straus’ book “Extraordinary measures: Disability in music”). International Journal of Community Music, 6(3), 333-343 Tsiris, G. (2014). Community music therapy: Controversies, synergies and ways forward. International Journal of Community Music, 7(1), 3-9. Tsiris, G. (2018). Performing spirituality in music therapy: Towards action, context and the everyday. Doctoral thesis, Nordoff Robbins / Goldsmith’s, University of London, London, UK. Retrieved from http://research.gold.ac.uk/23037/ Tsiris, G., Derrington, P., Sparkes, P., Spiro, N., & Wilson, G. (2016). Interdisciplinary dialogues in music, health and wellbeing: Difficulties, challenges and pitfalls. In M. Belgrave (Ed.), Proceedings of the ISME Commission on Special Music Education and Music Therapy(20-23 July 2016, Edinburgh, Scotland) (pp.58-70). Edinburgh: ISME. [1] Two years after the 2017 conference, and under the leadership of June Boyce-Tillman, SAME developed into the International Network for Music, Spirituality and Wellbeing, which aims to embrace the social, personal, spiritual and political aspects of wellbeing. [2] Pointing to a similar questioning of methodological conventions, Gary’s work with Tia DeNora (e.g., DeNora & Ansdell, 2014, 2017) opens a space where some of the unobservable processes by which music helps can be traced and become known. [3] Further details about the proposed hybrid spiritual discourse and the notion of spirituality as a ‘boundary object’ can be found in Giorgos’ ethnographic study which explores the performance of spirituality in everyday music therapy contexts (Tsiris, 2018).

Earlier experiments have established that a torsion pendulum consisting of a steel mesh hemisphere suspended by a nylon filament above a human subject is capable of detecting and collecting data that may represent human bioenergy. Among the effects observed are a wide range of subject-induced rotational frequencies of the pendulum and displacement of the pendulum from its natural center of oscillation. The nylon filament support confers the properties of a simple harmonic oscillator (sho) to the pendulum. The resulting sho swings of the pendulum obscure smaller swings that correspond to subject effects on the pendulum. For this work, it was desired to modify the pendulum to reduce or eliminate the sho oscillatory swings. A proposed modification was to replace the nylon filament with a length of chain. The idea was that the chain would confer properties of an ‘energy well’ to the pendulum. Rotational forces exerted on the chain-supported pendulum would cause the chain to twist and thus rise up the side of the energy well. Ideally, the only restoring force would be the tendency of the twisted links to untwist, so as to drop back down to the bottom of the energy well. This strategy was successful. Control experiments in which the chain-supported pendulum was stimulated to rotational motion by air puffs showed a rapid deflection of the pendulum, which represented traveling up the side of the energy well. The deflected pendulum then immediately returned to its original position and remained there, with no sho oscillations being evident. This is consistent with the chain-link pendulum conforming to the characteristics of an energy well. The chain-supported pendulum was used to assess subject effects on the pendulum. The basic pattern of the subject effects resembled those obtained with a nylon filament-supported pendulum, except the large sho swings that are a feature of the filament-supported pendulum, were absent from the effects observed by the chain-supported pendulum. Thus, for the first time, the pattern of subject-induced effects could be observed, measured, and analyzed without being obscured by sho oscillations. Soon after the subject was seated under the pendulum, its rotational motion drove the pendulum rotational position up one side of the energy well, where it stayed throughout the experiment. This establishes that the force is a spiral force, which conforms to our earlier observations. The now-visible underlying subject-induced oscillations are nuanced and sophisticated and are reminiscent of the complexity of music or speech. Moreover, these oscillations encompass a range of very low frequencies, from less than 0.01 Hz to 0.15 Hz. The frequency amplitudes rise dramatically at the lowest frequencies, suggesting the existence of additional even lower frequencies; but if they exist, the current pendulum cannot detect them. The frequency amplitudes toward the upper end do not fade away completely, suggesting that what is observed represents what there is. These frequencies are much lower than what is detected by electrodes attached to the scalps of subjects which measure minute voltage fluctuations called ‘brain waves.’ These voltage-related brain waves range from 0.5-42 Hz. Low frequency humpback whale sounds, often attributed to being a means of long-range communication, range from 30-8,000 Hz. As far as we know, the low frequencies observed with the chain-supported pendulum are unprecedented. As of now, the nature and origin of the subject effects measured by the nylon filament and chain-supported pendulums are not known. Accumulating evidence argues that they are not merely subject-induced thermal convection currents, but some other form of energy that originates from the subject. As an energy of very low frequency, it could be expected to propagate over long distances, reminiscent of low frequency whale sounds. This article addresses these and other issues.

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

Cultural sociologists (Bourdieu; DiMaggio, “Cultural Capital”, “Classification”; Gans; Lamont & Foumier; Halle; Erickson) wrote about high culture and popular culture in an attempt to explain the growing social and economic inequalities, to find consensus on culture hierarchies, and to analyze cultural complexities. Halle states that this categorisation of culture into “high culture” and “popular culture” underlined most of the debate on culture in the last fifty years. Gans contends that both high culture and popular culture are stereotypes, public forms of culture or taste cultures, each sharing “common aesthetic values and standards of tastes” (8). However, this article is not concerned with these categorisations, or macro analysis. Rather, it is a reflection piece that inquires if opera, which is usually considered high culture, has become more equal to popular culture, and why some directors change the time and place of opera plots, whereas others will stay true to the original setting of the story. I do not consider these productions “adaptations,” but “post-modern morphologies,” and I will refer to this later in the paper. In other words, the paper is seeking to explain a social phenomenon and explore the underlying motives by quoting interviews with directors. The word ‘opera’ is defined in Elson’s Music Dictionary as: “a form of musical composition evolved shortly before 1600, by some enthusiastic Florentine amateurs who sought to bring back the Greek plays to the modern stage” (189). Hence, it was an experimentation to revive Greek music and drama believed to be the ideal way to express emotions (Grout 186). It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when stage directors started changing the time and place of the original settings of operas. The practice became more common after World War II, and Peter Brook’s Covent Garden productions of Boris Godunov (1948) and Salome (1949) are considered the prototypes of this practice (Sutcliffe 19-20). Richard Wagner’s grandsons, the brothers Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner are cited in the music literature as using technology and modern innovations in staging and design beginning in the early 1950s. Brief Background into the History of Opera Grout contends that opera began as an attempt to heighten the dramatic expression of language by intensifying the natural accents of speech through melody supported by simple harmony. In the late 1590s, the Italian composer Jacopo Peri wrote what is considered to be the first opera, but most of it has been lost. The first surviving complete opera is Euridice, a version of the Orpheus myth that Peri and Giulio Caccini jointly set to music in 1600. The first composer to understand the possibilities inherent in this new musical form was Claudio Monteverdi, who in 1607 wrote Orfeo. Although it was based on the same story as Euridice, it was expanded to a full five acts. Early opera was meant for small, private audiences, usually at court; hence it began as an elitist genre. After thirty years of being private, in 1637, opera went public with the opening of the first public opera house, Teatro di San Cassiano, in Venice, and the genre quickly became popular. Indeed, Monteverdi wrote his last two operas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea for the Venetian public, thereby leading the transition from the Italian courts to the ‘public’. Both operas are still performed today. Poppea was the first opera to be based on a historical rather than a mythological or allegorical subject. Sutcliffe argues that opera became popular because it was a new mixture of means: new words, new music, new methods of performance. He states, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (65). By the end of the 17th century, Venice alone had ten opera houses that had produced more than 350 operas. Wealthy families purchased season boxes, but inexpensive tickets made the genre available to persons of lesser means. The genre spread quickly, and various styles of opera developed. In Naples, for example, music rather than the libretto dominated opera. The genre spread to Germany and France, each developing the genre to suit the demands of its audiences. For example, ballet became an essential component of French opera. Eventually, “opera became the profligate art as large casts and lavish settings made it the most expensive public entertainment. It was the only art that without embarrassment called itself ‘grand’” (Boorstin 467). Contemporary Opera Productions Opera continues to be popular. According to a 2002 report released by the National Endowment for the Arts, 6.6 million adults attended at least one live opera performance in 2002, and 37.6 million experienced opera on television, video, radio, audio recording or via the Internet. Some think that it is a dying art form, while others think to the contrary, that it is a living art form because of its complexity and “ability to probe deeper into the human experience than any other art form” (Berger 3). Some directors change the setting of operas with perhaps the most famous contemporary proponent of this approach being Peter Sellars, who made drastic changes to three of Mozart’s most famous operas. Le Nozze di Figaro, originally set in 18th-century Seville, was set by Sellars in a luxury apartment in the Trump Tower in New York City; Sellars set Don Giovanni in contemporary Spanish Harlem rather than 17th century Seville; and for Cosi Fan Tutte, Sellars chose a diner on Cape Cod rather than 18th century Naples. As one of the more than six million Americans who attend live opera each year, I have experienced several updated productions, which made me reflect on the convergence or cross-over between high culture and popular culture. In 2000, I attended a production of Don Giovanni at the Estates Theatre in Prague, the very theatre where Mozart conducted the world premiere in 1787. In this production, Don Giovanni was a fashion designer known as “Don G” and drove a BMW. During the 1999-2000 season, Los Angeles Opera engaged film director Bruce Beresford to direct Verdi’s Rigoletto. Beresford updated the original setting of 16th century Mantua to 20th century Hollywood. The lead tenor, rather than being the Duke of Mantua, was a Hollywood agent known as “Duke Mantua.” In the first act, just before Marullo announces to the Duke’s guests that the jester Rigoletto has taken a mistress, he gets the news via his cell phone. Director Ian Judge set the 2004 production of Le Nozze di Figaro in the 1950s. In one of the opening productions of the 2006-07 LA opera season, Vincent Patterson also chose the 1950s for Massenet’s Manon rather than France in the 1720s. This allowed the title character to appear in the fourth act dressed as Marilyn Monroe. Excerpts from the dress rehearsal can be seen on YouTube. Most recently, I attended a production of Ariane et Barbe-Bleu at the Paris Opera. The original setting of the Maeterlinck play is in Duke Bluebeard’s castle, but the time period is unclear. However, it is doubtful that the 1907 opera based on an 1899 play was meant to be set in what appeared to be a mental institution equipped with surveillance cameras whose screens were visible to the audience. The critical and audience consensus seemed to be that the opera was a musical success but a failure as a production. James Shore summed up the audience reaction: “the production team was vociferously booed and jeered by much of the house, and the enthusiastic applause that had greeted the singers and conductor, immediately went nearly silent when they came on stage”. It seems to me that a new class-related taste has emerged; the opera genre has shot out a subdivision which I shall call “post-modern morphologies,” that may appeal to a larger pool of people. Hence, class, age, gender, and race are becoming more important factors in conceptualising opera productions today than in the past. I do not consider these productions as new adaptations because the libretto and the music are originals. What changes is the fact that both text and sound are taken to a higher dimension by adding iconographic images that stimulate people’s brains. When asked in an interview why he often changes the setting of an opera, Ian Judge commented, “I try to find the best world for the story and characters to operate in, and I think you have to find a balance between the period the author set it in, the period he conceived it in and the nature of theatre and audiences at that time, and the world we live in.” Hence, the world today is complex, interconnected, borderless and timeless because of advanced technologies, and updated opera productions play with symbols that offer multiple meanings that reflect the world we live in. It may be that television and film have influenced opera production. Character tenor Graham Clark recently observed in an interview, “Now the situation has changed enormously. Television and film have made a lot of things totally accessible which they were not before and in an entirely different perception.” Director Ian Judge believes that television and film have affected audience expectations in opera. “I think audiences who are brought up on television, which is bad acting, and movies, which is not that good acting, perhaps require more of opera than stand and deliver, and I have never really been happy with someone who just stands and sings.” Sociologist Wendy Griswold states that culture reflects social reality and the meaning of a particular cultural object (such as opera), originates “in the social structures and social patterns it reflects” (22). Screens of various technologies are embedded in our lives and normalised as extensions of our bodies. In those opera productions in which directors change the time and place of opera plots, use technology, and are less concerned with what the composer or librettist intended (which we can only guess), the iconographic images create multi valances, textuality similar to Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of multiplicity of voices. Hence, a plurality of meanings. Plàcido Domingo, the Eli and Edyth Broad General Director of Los Angeles Opera, seeks to take advantage of the company’s proximity to the film industry. This is evidenced by his having engaged Bruce Beresford to direct Rigoletto and William Friedkin to direct Ariadne auf Naxos, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle and Gianni Schicchi. Perhaps the most daring example of Domingo’s approach was convincing Garry Marshall, creator of the television sitcom Happy Days and who directed the films Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries, to direct Jacques Offenbach’s The Grand Duchess of Gerolstein to open the company’s 20th anniversary season. When asked how Domingo convinced him to direct an opera for the first time, Marshall responded, “he was insistent that one, people think that opera is pretty elitist, and he knew without insulting me that I was not one of the elitists; two, he said that you gotta make a funny opera; we need more comedy in the operetta and opera world.” Marshall rewrote most of the dialogue and performed it in English, but left the “songs” untouched and in the original French. He also developed numerous sight gags and added characters including a dog named Morrie and the composer Jacques Offenbach himself. Did it work? Christie Grimstad wrote, “if you want an evening filled with witty music, kaleidoscopic colors and hilariously good singing, seek out The Grand Duchess. You will not be disappointed.” The FanFaire Website commented on Domingo’s approach of using television and film directors to direct opera: You’ve got to hand it to Plàcido Domingo for having the vision to draw on Hollywood’s vast pool of directorial talent. Certainly something can be gained from the cross-fertilization that could ensue from this sort of interaction between opera and the movies, two forms of entertainment (elitist and perennially struggling for funds vs. popular and, it seems, eternally rich) that in Los Angeles have traditionally lived separate lives on opposite sides of the tracks. A wider audience, for example, never a problem for the movies, can only mean good news for the future of opera. So, did the Marshall Plan work? Purists of course will always want their operas and operettas ‘pure and unadulterated’. But with an audience that seemed to have as much fun as the stellar cast on stage, it sure did. Critic Alan Rich disagrees, calling Marshall “a representative from an alien industry taking on an artistic product, not to create something innovative and interesting, but merely to insult.” Nevertheless, the combination of Hollywood and opera seems to work. The Los Angeles Opera reported that the 2005-2006 season was its best ever: “ticket revenues from the season, which ended in June, exceeded projected figures by nearly US$900,000. Seasonal attendance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion stood at more than 86% of the house’s capacity, the largest percentage in the opera’s history.” Domingo continues with the Hollywood connection in the upcoming 2008-2009 season. He has reengaged William Friedkin to direct two of Puccini’s three operas titled collectively as Il Trittico. Friedkin will direct the two tragedies, Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. Although Friedkin has already directed a production of the third opera in Il Trittico for Los Angeles, the comedy Gianni Schicchi, Domingo convinced Woody Allen to make his operatic directorial debut with this work. This can be viewed as another example of the desire to make opera and popular culture more equal. However, some, like Alan Rich, may see this attempt as merely insulting rather than interesting and innovative. With a top ticket price in Los Angeles of US$238 per seat, opera seems to continue to be elitist. Berger (2005) concurs with this idea and gives his rationale for elitism: there are rich people who support and attend the opera; it is an imported art from Europe that causes some marginalisation; opera is not associated with something being ‘moral,’ a concept engrained in American culture; it is expensive to produce and usually funded by kings, corporations, rich people; and the opera singers are rare –usually one in a million who will have the vocal quality to sing opera arias. Furthermore, Nicholas Kenyon commented in the early 1990s: “there is suspicion that audiences are now paying more and more money for their seats to see more and more money spent on stage” (Kenyon 3). Still, Garry Marshall commented that the budget for The Grand Duchess was US$2 million, while his budget for Runaway Bride was US$72 million. Kenyon warns, “Such popularity for opera may be illusory. The enjoyment of one striking aria does not guarantee the survival of an art form long regarded as over-elitist, over-recondite, and over-priced” (Kenyon 3). A recent development is the Metropolitan Opera’s decision to simulcast live opera performances from the Met stage to various cinemas around the world. These HD transmissions began with the 2006-2007 season when six performances were broadcast. In the 2007-2008 season, the schedule has expanded to eight live Saturday matinee broadcasts plus eight recorded encores broadcast the following day. According to The Los Angeles Times, “the Met’s experiment of merging film with live performance has created a new art form” (Aslup). Whether or not this is a “new art form,” it certainly makes world-class live opera available to countless persons who cannot travel to New York and pay the price for tickets, when they are available. In the US alone, more than 350 cinemas screen these live HD broadcasts from the Met. Top ticket price for these performances at the Met is US$375, while the lowest price is US$27 for seats with only a partial view. Top price for the HD transmissions in participating cinemas is US$22. This experiment with live simulcasts makes opera more affordable and may increase its popularity; combined with updated stagings, opera can engage a much larger audience and hope for even a mass consumption. Is opera moving closer and closer to popular culture? There still seems to be an aura of elitism and snobbery about opera. However, Plàcido Domingo’s attempt to join opera with Hollywood is meant to break the barriers between high and popular culture. The practice of updating opera settings is not confined to Los Angeles. As mentioned earlier, the idea can be traced to post World War II England, and is quite common in Europe. Examples include Erich Wonder’s approach to Wagner’s Ring, making Valhalla, the mythological home of the gods and typically a mountaintop, into the spaceship Valhalla, as well as my own experience with Don Giovanni in Prague and Ariane et Barbe-Bleu in Paris. Indeed, Sutcliffe maintains, “Great classics in all branches of the arts are repeatedly being repackaged for a consumerist world that is increasingly and neurotically self-obsessed” (61). Although new operas are being written and performed, most contemporary performances are of operas by Verdi, Mozart, and Puccini (www.operabase.com). This means that audiences see the same works repeated many times, but in different interpretations. Perhaps this is why Sutcliffe contends, “since the 1970s it is the actual productions that have had the novelty value grabbed by the headlines. Singing no longer predominates” (Sutcliffe 57). If then, as Sutcliffe argues, “operatic fashion through history may be a desire for novelty, new formulas displacing old” (Sutcliffe 65), then the contemporary practice of changing the original settings is simply the latest “new formula” that is replacing the old ones. If there are no new words or new music, then what remains are new methods of performance, hence the practice of changing time and place. Opera is a complex art form that has evolved over the past 400 years and continues to evolve, but will it survive? The underlining motives for directors changing the time and place of opera performances are at least three: for aesthetic/artistic purposes, financial purposes, and to reach an audience from many cultures, who speak different languages, and who have varied tastes. These three reasons are interrelated. In 1996, Sutcliffe wrote that there has been one constant in all the arguments about opera productions during the preceding two decades: “the producer’s wish to relate the works being staged to contemporary circumstances and passions.” Although that sounds like a purely aesthetic reason, making opera relevant to new, multicultural audiences and thereby increasing the bottom line seems very much a part of that aesthetic. It is as true today as it was when Sutcliffe made the observation twelve years ago (60-61). My own speculation is that opera needs to attract various audiences, and it can only do so by appealing to popular culture and engaging new forms of media and technology. Erickson concludes that the number of upper status people who are exclusively faithful to fine arts is declining; high status people consume a variety of culture while the lower status people are limited to what they like. Research in North America, Europe, and Australia, states Erickson, attest to these trends. My answer to the question can stage directors make opera and popular culture “equal” is yes, and they can do it successfully. Perhaps Stanley Sharpless summed it up best: After his Eden triumph, When the Devil played his ace, He wondered what he could do next To irk the human race, So he invented Opera, With many a fiendish grin, To mystify the lowbrows, And take the highbrows in. References The Grand Duchess. 2005. 3 Feb. 2008 < http://www.ffaire.com/Duchess/index.htm >.Aslup, Glenn. “Puccini’s La Boheme: A Live HD Broadcast from the Met.” Central City Blog Opera 7 Apr. 2008. 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.centralcityopera.org/blog/2008/04/07/puccini%E2%80%99s- la-boheme-a-live-hd-broadcast-from-the-met/ >.Berger, William. Puccini without Excuses. New York: Vintage, 2005.Boorstin, Daniel. The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination. New York: Random House, 1992.Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984.Clark, Graham. “Interview with Graham Clark.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 11 Aug. 2006.DiMaggio, Paul. “Cultural Capital and School Success.” American Sociological Review 47 (1982): 189-201.DiMaggio, Paul. “Classification in Art.”_ American Sociological Review_ 52 (1987): 440-55.Elson, C. Louis. “Opera.” Elson’s Music Dictionary. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1905.Erickson, H. Bonnie. “The Crisis in Culture and Inequality.” In W. Ivey and S. J. Tepper, eds. Engaging Art: The Next Great Transformation of America’s Cultural Life. New York: Routledge, 2007.Fanfaire.com. “At Its 20th Anniversary Celebration, the Los Angeles Opera Had a Ball with The Grand Duchess.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.fanfaire.com/Duchess/index.htm >.Gans, J. Herbert. Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books, 1977.Grimstad, Christie. Concerto Net.com. 2005. 12 Jan. 2008 < http://www.concertonet.com/scripts/review.php?ID_review=3091 >.Grisworld, Wendy. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1994.Grout, D. Jay. A History of Western Music. Shorter ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1964.Halle, David. “High and Low Culture.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. London: Blackwell, 2006.Judge, Ian. “Interview with Ian Judge.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 22 Mar. 2006.Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. 2001. 19 Nov. 2006 < http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=opera&searchmode=none >.Kenyon, Nicholas. “Introduction.” In A. Holden, N. Kenyon and S. Walsh, eds. The Viking Opera Guide. New York: Penguin, 1993.Lamont, Michele, and Marcel Fournier. Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.Lord, M.G. “Shlemiel! Shlemozzle! And Cue the Soprano.” The New York Times 4 Sep. 2005.Los Angeles Opera. “LA Opera General Director Placido Domingo Announces Results of Record-Breaking 20th Anniversary Season.” News release. 2006.Marshall, Garry. “Interview with Garry Marshall.” The KCSN Opera House, 88.5 FM. 31 Aug. 2005.National Endowment for the Arts. 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Research Division Report #45. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.nea.gov/pub/NEASurvey2004.pdf >.NCM Fanthom. “The Metropolitan Opera HD Live.” 2 Feb. 2008 < http://fathomevents.com/details.aspx?seriesid=622&gclid= CLa59NGuspECFQU6awodjiOafA >.Opera Today. James Sobre: Ariane et Barbe-Bleue and Capriccio in Paris – Name This Stage Piece If You Can. 5 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Rich, Alan. “High Notes, and Low.” LA Weekly 15 Sep. 2005. 6 May 2008 < http://www.laweekly.com/stage/a-lot-of-night-music/high-notes-and-low/8160/ >.Sharpless, Stanley. “A Song against Opera.” In E. O. Parrott, ed. How to Be Tremendously Tuned in to Opera. New York: Penguin, 1990.Shore, James. Opera Today. 2007. 4 Feb. 2008 < http://www.operatoday.com/content/2007/09/ariane_et_barbe_1.php >.Sutcliffe, Tom. Believing in Opera. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1996.YouTube. “Manon Sex and the Opera.” 24 Apr. 2008 < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiBQhr2Sy0k >.

There are three stages in internet dating: first, the emailing back and forth; second, the phone conversation; and third, the meeting for 'coffee'. But before we discuss the three stages, here are some hints about the preliminary work you have to do. At the outset, you have to trawl through the thousands of people who have placed their profiles on the site. This is aided by limiting your search to a certain age spread, and your city or region. Then you can narrow it down further by checking educational background, whether they have kids, whether they write in New Age jargon, etc You have to try to assess, from their self-descriptions, which ones are likely to be compatible. You also scrutinise their photos, of course, as they will yours — but don't trust these images entirely — more on that later. Self-description. Almost without exception, women and men who describe their main interests as 'romantic walks on the beach and candle-lit dinners' have no real interests and as much personality as a lettuce. Those who say what matters to them is "good food and wine with a classy guy/lady" have a personality, but it's a repugnant one. Here is a useful binary opposition that could provide a useful key to gauging compatibility: people vary in terms of their degree of interiority and exteriority. People with interiority have the ability to think a little abstractly, can discuss emotions, probably read books as well as watch films. They analyse life rather than just describing it. People mainly given to exteriority find their pleasure in doing things — like boating or nightclubs or golf. They see themselves in the world in a different way. Of course, we are all a mixture of the two — and perhaps the best bet is someone who isn't at one extreme end of the spectrum or the other. Useful tip 1. The 'spiritual woman': for reasons unclear, and despite the fact that Australia is one of the most pagan nations on Earth, a disproportionate number of women, rather than men, claim to be religious. Perhaps because in general, women are still more inclined to interiority than men. But most religious women don't expect a partner to be. Instead, the people to be very careful about are the New Agers — they are a large and growing sub-group and apparently spend much of their time devouring books on spirituality, personal growth and self-love. If you have any sort of intellect, or are just a middling humanist who occasionally ponders "Is this all there is? " these people will drive you nuts with their vague platitudes about knowing their inner child. On the other hand, if they seem terrific in all other respects, you can probably gain their respect by saying in a reflective manner, "Is this all there is?" If you can arrange to be gazing at the star-stained night sky while saying this, all the better. This may seem calculating, but we are all putting on a performance when courting. A lot of single people have self-esteem and loneliness issues, and a personal God, the universe, and astrology make them feel less lonely. Useful tip 2: say that although you don't subscribe to mainstream religion, you feel close to some kind of spirituality when gardening — and add how you love to plant herbs. Some okay herbs to mention are: Rosemary, Thyme, Sage. Chuck a couple of these weed-like green things in your garden just in case. Useful tip 3: no matter what else you do, at all costs avoid anyone who smacks of fundamentalism. This cohort takes the Bible literally, think dinosaurs roamed the planet only a few years before Shakespeare, want gay people to admit they are an abomination - and above all, fundos cannot be reasoned with — not in your lifetime. They are deeply insecure and frightened people — which is sad, so be sympathetic to their plight - but don't get drawn into the vortex. Besides, talking about the approach of Armageddon every date gets a bit tedious. Education: It is usually best to pick someone who has an approximately similar level of education to yourself. Having a tertiary education often gives a person a different way of seeing themselves, and of perceiving others. On the other hand, it is possible to do a five year degree in a narrow professional area and know nothing at all useful about human beings and how they operate. (Ref: engineers, dentists, gynaecologists). There are high school graduates who are better-read and more intelligent than most products of a university. So it is up to the individual case. It is a plus to be interested in your partner's work, but not essential. It can be a minus to be in the same field. Ask yourself this: if you were living with this person and you asked them at night how their day had been, would the answer send you to sleep in less than a minute? A lovely man or woman who is an accountant will likely wax lyrical about having just discovered a $245 error in a billing data base. Their face will be flushed with pride. Can your respond appropriately? How often? Or the love of your life may work in an oncology ward, and regale you with the daily triumph of removing sputum from the chests of the moribund. Are you strong enough for that? And worst of all, you may go out with a writer or poet, who regularly drones on about how their rival always gets friendly reviews from his/her newspaper mates, even though they write books full of derivative, precious crap. Sense of humour (SOH): Most men and women will claim in their profile to have a sense of humour — to love to laugh — and, surprisingly often, to have a 'wicked sense of humour'. This is a difficult personal quality to get a bearing on. You may yourself be the kind of person who tricks themselves into thinking their date has a great sense of humour simply because they laughed at your jokes. That is not having a SOH. Having a SOH is possessing the ability to make others laugh — it is active as well as passive. Do they make you laugh? Are their emails touched with wit and whimsy — or just shades of cute? Is one of their close friends, the one who actually possesses a SOH, helping write their emails? It has been known to happen. You will gain a better sense of the SOH situation during the phone call, and definitely during the coffee. Interests: Most internet websites give people the chance to describe themselves by jotting down their favourite music, books, movies, sport. Often this is pretty much all you will know about what interests them, and it is an imperfect instrument. Many internet dating women say they like all music except heavy metal. Why there is this pervasive, gut-wrenching female fear of the E, A and B chords played loudly is a mystery. Anyway, some of those bands even throw in a G or C#m. But who cares. If you are a bloke, hide your Acca Dacca CDs and buy some world music CDs. New Agers of either sex will have collections full of warbling pan pipes, waterfalls and bird calls. If they are a great person in other respects, then you'll just have to get used to the flock of magpies and whip birds in the dining or bedroom. Photographs: Now, the photo on the profile is only a vague guide. It is useful for confirming the person belongs to homo sapiens, but not a lot else. Some people get a professional pic taken, but most include happy snaps, and that is a blow struck for candidness. The more the photo looks like a "glamour" shot, the softer the focus, the less reliable it is. You can get some idea of whether someone is attractive, handsome, cute or weird from the photo. But — and this is really important — they will always look different in the flesh. They will have grown a beard, cut or streaked their hair, and you will for the first time notice they have a nose the size of the AMP building. Fortunately for men, though women are not oblivious to the looks factor, they tend to be more tolerant and less shallow about it. There is a recent trend for women and men with children to put he most attractive and least manic one in the profile photo with them. This signifies: a) love me, love my kid, because I'm proud of James/Jessica/Jade; b) family values; c) at least my kid only has one head. Stage One. The first stage is in some ways the most enjoyable. It is low risk, low stress, you have the pleasurable experience of a comfortable adventure. There is anticipation, getting to know someone, being complimented on your fascinating emails and witty humour (if it's going well), and all the while wearing an old t-shirt and dirty, checked shorts or fluffy slippers. There is the extreme luxury of re-inventing yourself, of telling your favourite story (your own life-story) again and again to a new audience, the little joys of self-disclosures, the discoveries of like-interests, the occasion when they add at the bottom of their letter "looking forward to hearing from you soon". The writing stage is where you try to establish whether you have intellectual, emotional and cultural compatibility — and whether the person is sincere and relatively well-balanced (I stress 'relatively' — no one is perfect). The discovery process is one of exchanging increasingly personal information — work history, enthusiasms and dislikes, family background. She will want to know whether you are 'over' your last girlfriend/partner/wife. Not surprisingly. A lot of internet men are still bitter about their ex — either that, or they rave on about the saintliness of their ex. If encouraged, women will also tell you about the bastard who refused to pay maintenance. There are clearly a lot of those bastards out there. Both of these practices are unwise on the first coffee if you don't want to scare your potential partner off. In reality, you probably are still seething with hurt and injustice as a result of your last dumping, and maybe even the one before that. You may lie in bed at night thinking nostalgically of your ex's face — but this is a dark secret which you must never reveal. People will ask you to be open, but they don't want that open. Involve your friends: without exception, your close friends will enjoy being part of the process when you are deciding which men or women to contact on the internet. You first make a long short list by browsing through the hundreds of profiles. Print off those profiles, then get your friends to sort through them with you. If you have experience in being on selection panels for jobs, this will help. It is a quite complex matter of weighing up a whole range of variables. For example, candidate A will be gorgeous and sexy, have compatible interests, bearable taste in music, be the right age, but have two small children and live on the other side of town. Candidate B will be less attractive, but still look pretty good, have no children, and a very interesting job. Candidate C will be attractive, have two teenage children with whom he/she shares custody, a worthy but dull job, but seems to have an especially self-aware and witty personality. It's tough work rating these profiles, and the best you can do is whittle them down to a top three, and write to all of them. In the emailing stage, you will get more data to either enhance or diminish their desirability. And remember, no one is perfect: if you find someone with a beautiful brain and body who loves Celine Dion — just put up with it. As Buddhists point out, suffering cannot be avoided if you are to live a full life. But let your friends help you with that selection process — they will remind you of important issues that somehow escape your attention; such as: you really don't like other people's children in reality, just in theory. The last time you went out with someone who was newly broken up or divorced he/she hadn't got over his/her girlfriend/husband. Anyone who describes themselves as a 'passionate playmate' is probably unbalanced and tries to find male/female acceptance through over-sexualising or infantalising themselves. It means nothing that someone describes their children as "beautiful" — all mothers/fathers think that, even of the most ghastly, moronic offspring. You really don't like nightclubs any more and you are an awkward dancer. The last time you fell in love with, and tried to rescue, someone with serious emotional 'issues', it led to unimaginable misery, and you swore in future to leave such rescues to the professionals. And so on. Listen to your friends — they know you. And your bad choices impinge on their lives too. Writing is a powerful means of constructing a 'self' to project to others. There is a Thomas Hardy story about a young man who meets a beautiful girl at a fair — but he must return to London. They agree to write to each other. Only the beautiful girl is illiterate, so she asks her employer, an older woman, to ghost-write her love letters to the young man, and the employer kindly agrees. The young man falls in love with the soul and mind of the sensitive and intelligent writer of the letters and assumes the beautiful young girl has authored them. The employer also falls in love with him through his letters. Only on the day he marries the girl does he discover that he has married the wrong woman. This tale tells us about the richness of the written word, but it omits an important point — you can be intrigued and drawn to someone through his or her e-mails, but find on meeting him or her that there is no chemistry at all. Works Cited This creative non-fiction article was based on primary research. The largest Australian internet dating service is RSVP (www.rsvp.com.au). I mainly used that for my research and ensuing coffees/participant observation. There are other sites I checked out, including: www.datenet.com.au www.AussieMatchMaker.com.au www.findsomeone.com.au www.VitalPartners.com.au www.personals.yahoo.com.au There are also internet dating site guides such as: www.shoptheweb.com.au/dating.shtml www.theinternetdatingguide.com www.moonlitwalks.com www.singlesites.com/Australian_Dating.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Neilsen, Philip. "An extract from 'The Internet of Love'" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/internet.php>. APA Style Neilsen, P., (2002, Nov 20). An extract from "The Internet of Love". M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/internet.html

Introduction “Unboxing the New Barbie” explores Barbie’s new image in Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film, Barbie, where Barbie appears initially in a perfect shape and enjoys her ideal life in Barbie Land. The film presents Barbie Land as a female-dominated space with Barbies at the centre of authority, with a utopic lifestyle of freedom and joy. However, the film immediately troubles this utopia through a set of cinematic devices. First, the stereotypical Barbie’s life appears as a series of monotonous routines within the pink plastic structures, and later, her utopic body image and Barbie Land are distorted due to the shortcomings and malfunctioning of the Real World. The Real World, with patriarchy at the core of it, contradicts Barbie Land’s female-oriented constitution. Presenting all the contradictions through Barbie Land and the Real World, hence, the film attempts to address Barbie’s entrapment, first by capturing her image within the pink plastic frames in Barbie Land, and later through her framed reputation as an ostentatious product of a consumerist culture in the Real World. In this article, I argue that Barbie unboxes a new Barbie who recognises her framed image in both Barbie Land and the Real World and breaks free from those frames to define a new and real role for herself. In so doing, I compare Barbie’s (Margot Robbie) image in Barbie Land inside the pink frames to Carol White’s (Julianne Moore) image in Californian Suburbs in Safe (1995), a melodrama by Todd Haynes where she is also trapped in the domestic spaces of her suburban house, experiencing mental and physical break down. The article, hence, concludes that Barbie relies on the aesthetics of melodrama to first refer to Barbie’s entrapped image in Barbie Land, and later to unbox her new image to the Real World. Melodrama in Barbie Land In “Tales of Sound and Fury,” Thomas Elsaesser defines melodrama: “considered as an expressive code, melodrama might … be described as a pictorial form of dramatic mise-en-scène, characterized by dynamic use of spatial and musical categories, as opposed to intellectual or literary one” (75). He further elaborates on the genre and writes that “this type of cinema depends on the ways 'Melos' is given to 'drama' utilizing lighting, montage, visual rhythm, decor, style of acting, music – that is, on the ways the mise-en-scène, translates character into action” (78). Elsaesser in his essay describes the mise-en-scène of the genre as “the middle-class home, filled with objects, [which surrounds] the heroine in a hierarchy of apparent order that becomes increasingly suffocating” (84). Jackie Byres refers to the rise of melodrama in the timeline of Hollywood films and writes that most of the women’s films of the 1930s and 1940s ended tragically, but in the 1950s, the (eventually unsuccessful) return to an emphasis on woman as wife-companion, exemplified by the suburban housewife, required a different ending, a “happy ending” that provided the female protagonist with a male companion, a husband, a strong and capable patriarch to whom she could submit. (112) These female-oriented melodramas, according to Jackie Byars, are “communities of women and children” in which “the absence of a patriarchal figure motivates the narratives” (106). Drawing attention to the female-centred plots, Byars also considers these films as long-awaited products of cinema where women eventually obtained space to be seen as independent entities with relative subjectivity. In this regard, she further elaborates: “the female-oriented melodrama cannot end with its female protagonist continuing a life independent and alone” (106). Douglas Sirk was one of the prominent Hollywood filmmakers whose films in the 1950s were the archetype of family melodramas where he centralised women’s images and consequently engaged the diegesis with their private and public affairs. In melodrama, there are always reflective surfaces and frames such as windows or mirrors where the characters, particularly women, are framed within these frames. Mercer and Shingler write: “in Sirk’s films we see characters looking in the mirrors when they are conforming to the society’s rules, when they are playing a role, when they are deluding themselves. Mirrors then, represent both illusion and delusion in his films and were to become such emblematic device” (54). These women are usually alone and staring at themselves or gazing out the windows, which is an additional emphasis on their loneliness and insecurities. “Mirrors then, represent both illusion and delusion in these films and were to become such emblematic device” (54). Mercer and Shingler refer to this technique as “frames within frames” where the characters are “contained within mirror frames, doorways, windows, pictures frames and decorative screens. These devices once again suggest that characters are isolated or confined in their lonely worlds, or oppressed by their environments” (54). Against this backdrop, Barbie refers to the conventions of melodrama to represent Barbie’s entrapped body inside the plastic frames of Barbie Land and her willful body that resists these frames. Barbie represents the dual – inside vs. outside – nature of melodrama through the duality in Barbie Land and the Real World. Barbie Land stands for the domestic space in melodrama and the Real World represents the emotionally and politically suppressive public. By the look of it, Barbie Land pictures a feminine utopia: women as the forerunners in politics, sports, and literary competitions; ever subjective, and never sexualised or objectified, with Kens in the background, living a peaceful life. Barbie Land hence adheres to the melodramatic style of filmmaking with communities of women, lack of patriarchal figures, and a female-dominated space. However, fifteen minutes into the film, Barbie problematises this utopia by constantly placing the stereotypical Barbie inside the pink frames of the dream houses, windows, or mirrors, performing a set of dollish routines; eating but not eating, drinking but not drinking, until she is infected with the malfunctioning and diseases of the Real World. She wakes up to the nightmare of flat feet, bad breath, a cold shower, and cellulite. The pink utopia hence stages the colorful wraps of the melodramatic suburbs with its corrupted domestic interiors. In other words, Barbie Land equals the domestic settings of the suburban houses where women appear to have a satisfying luxurious material life, whereas in truth they are overburdened with the expectations of their roles as wives and mothers. The Real World in this equation represents the patriarchal outside and its authority over women, and the temporary Kenland refers to the corruption that is the outcome of the patriarchal Real World. Similar to suburban houses with a glamorous façade and patriarchy at the centre, Barbie Land represents a marginalised female utopia in pink plastic, designed and sold by patriarchy in the Real World. “Mattel: We Sell Imagination!” Barbie hence strongly resembles Safe (1995) in form and content, with its pink utopian external image and unfulfilling conditions in the interiors. Todd Haynes’s Safe is also a family melodrama, set in the 1980s in the Californian suburbs where Carol White is a homemaker living in a spacious suburban house who develops puzzling allergies to common environmental chemicals contained in everyday-use materials. This leads her to abandon her household and live in a remote sanatorium located in a desert where she is immune from any contact with chemicals. In short, Carol’s allergy is triggered by the unnecessarily consumed products every time she is exposed to them. Her physical intimacy with her husband fades away every day due to her intolerance to all the unnatural and industrial products. Simultaneously, the disease signifies her inner desire to free her body from the suburban life and unfulfilling marriage. Safe addresses the industrial developments of the 1980s in the US through the conventions of melodrama to illustrate the emotionally and physically unhealthy environment contaminated by toxic chemicals. Carol White’s health deteriorates due to environmental toxicities and chemical attacks, and Barbie’s health is affected due to metaphorical toxicities such as toxic masculinities in the Real World. More importantly, Barbie’s notoriety for being unrealistically skinny and her responsibility for pervading eating disorders is another evident feature in Safe. Criticism around Barbie’s physical features has usually addressed her “unrealistic and unattainable bodily proportions [that] make women feel inadequate” (Toffoletti 59). The American Addiction Centers, in their article “Dying to Be Barbie: Eating Disorders in Pursuit of the Impossible”, hold Barbie accountable for girls’ eating disorders and write: the anxieties they experience are the product of a society and media culture that prizes a thin image for women above anything else, and devalues any woman who strays outside the false "norm" of a skinny body. In pursuit of that unattainable goal, they will literally starve themselves to death. They are dying to be like Barbie. (2013) Similar to Barbie, Carol appears with unrealistic and even unnatural physical features. First, she is presented as a skinny woman relying only on dairy (milk), and later she adopts the uncommon fruit diet. Moreover, in her regular aerobic classes, her body never sweats. By characterising Carol through her uncommon physical and mental features, Safe insists upon the female character’s resistance against the norms. “Haynes wanted Carol to evoke vulnerable, fractured nature of modern identity, an issue that American films have rarely addressed” (Levy 177). According to Glyn Davis, Haynes’s cinema “explores the tensions and discrepancies between pristine public surface and that which lies beneath: hidden emotions and passions, closeted identities and the truthful nature of relationships” (123). Both Safe and Barbie trouble the comfortable image of Barbie Land and the Suburbs and alternate it with discomfort and non-conformity. Unboxing the Real Barbie Mattel’s debut doll in 1950s America coincided with the after-war ideologies of the scared home which drove women into domesticity. “Beginning with the Second World War years of the 1940s and extending through the 1950s, 'home' stood for the utopian myth of a coherent, homogenous popular culture” (Cohen 143). Within this utopia, women were placed in domestic environments, and the interior spaces of the household where they were anchored to the bosom of the family. The bourgeois culture evolved the home as the temple of femininity. Domestic life was radically segregated from the public sphere. Although women obviously inhabited public space, they did so under the protection of a chaperon. Women who attempted to roam the metropolis freely struggled with deep male prejudices regarding sexuality and space. (Rojek and Urry 16) Therefore, Mattel’s launch of the first Barbie doll in 1959 and before the advent of second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s seems like an attempt to introduce a woman at the end of a decade when women were forced back into the domestic spaces of their homes and honoured by their roles as homemakers and devoted wives. Barbie hence became “the first feminist that pointed the way out of kitchen” (Stone 7). M.G. Lord, the author of Forever Barbie, credits Barbie as an icon who “taught us independence. Barbie was her own woman. She could invent herself with a costume change: sing a solo in the spotlight one minute, pilot a starship the next. … She was all that we could be [and] more than we could be. And certainly more than we were” (9). Barbie is a “happily unmarried woman. Ruth refused to give Barbie the trappings of postnuptial life; the doll would be forever independent, subservient to no one” (51). Barbie’s place in the history of popular culture marks her a controversial cultural icon who rises between the decades of women’s passivity and the following feminist decades. In other words, while in the 1950s, she is a pioneer feminist figure, in the 1960s and 70s, she is recognised “as an object of fascination, conflict and rancour for a generation of second-wave feminists” (Toffoletti 60). In Marilyn Ferris Motz’s view, “Barbie is a consumer. She demands product after product, and the packaging and advertising imply that Barbie, as well as her owner, can be made happy if only she wears the right clothes and owns the right products” (128). Accordingly, all the props that followed Barbie and her diverse roles as an affluent independent woman echoed “the idea that women in capitalist culture are themselves commodities to be purchased, consumed and manipulated” (Toffoletti 60). This oscillation in Barbie’s reputation makes her an everchanging cultural product and the interpretations of her subjective. According to M.G. Lord, “to study Barbie, one sometimes has to hold seemingly contradictory ideas in one’s head at the same time ... . People project wildly dissimilar and opposing fantasies on it. Barbie is a universally recognized image, but what she represents is as personal as fingerprints” (10). Taking Barbie’s dynamic identity and reputation into account, Greta Gerwig in her 2023 film summarises sixty-plus years of an ongoing renewal in Barbie’s image and the unstoppable criticism that follows her. While Barbara Handler introduced a strong female doll in the 1950s as a protest against the decade’s imposed standards on women, in 2023 Barbie is still stigmatised and forced back into the margins by remaining in the box of Barbie Land. “Mattel: No One Rests until This Doll Is Back in a Box.” Barbie’s journey to the Real World and her straying from Mattel’s laws pose a threat to the patriarchal establishment in the Real World. Similar to melodrama where women “seem trapped in an image of themselves as dangerous women, threatening to a patriarchy that strives to maintain their willful bodies in a patriarchal, dichotomous situation as gendered bodies” (Ceuterick 42), Barbie’s unboxed figure in the Real world disturbs its marginalising structures. The unboxed new Barbie refuses to go back to the perfect pink world; instead, she allies with the Real-World women to fix the corrupted Barbie Land and decides to become a Real-World woman, accepting its imperfections. Barbie breaks free from the box to recognise herself, Ken, Barbie Land, and the Real World. The unboxed new Barbie hence is an attempt to represent New/Real Barbie’s subjectivity in the Real World and not just in Barbie Land, which is an ostentatious design of the patriarchal Real World. Gerwig chronicles Barbie’s evolving image through her journey from Barbie Land to the Real World and back, and eventually her settlement in the Real World when she breaks free from the pre-determined literal and metaphorical frames of both worlds. While in Barbie Land she is framed within pink plastic frames, in the Real World, she is framed with stigma and criticism for withholding feminism. Conclusion In this article, I argued that Greta Gerwig’s 2023 film Barbie unboxes a New Barbie who eventually becomes a Real Barbie/Woman, rejecting all the stereotypical labels that have been attached to her. Decades after her first appearance in popular culture, Barbie remains a highly controversial cultural product, facing criticism for her unrealistic affluence, independence, and physique. Addressing all these arguments and controversies, the film unveils a new Barbie who breaks free from the margins of Barbie Land to raise her awareness and resist the stereotypical stigma around her image. Facing the harsh realities of the Real World that constantly force her, first, inside the plastic frames of Barbie Land, and later into Mattel’s box, Barbie learns about her entrapment and the patriarchal control over women’s bodies. Experiencing the discrepancies in Barbie Land and the flawed Real World, the Unboxed Barbie escapes Mattel’s box to reinvent herself in Barbie Land and the Real World. Boxing and framing Barbie is a cinematic device used in melodrama where the mise-en-scène is staged with luxurious furniture, costume design, and colour palette, but it suggests a sense of entanglement with domestic affairs for women. Barbie is comparable to Todd Haynes’s Safe due to the film’s pink undertone, the frames of suburban houses that entrap the female character in domesticity, and more importantly, her deteriorating mental and physical health. Similar to Barbie, the female character in Safe resists the frames of patriarchy to free her body and define a new identity for herself. Both Barbie and Safe deploy the conventions of melodrama to depict the entrapment and resistance of the female characters to submit to these frames. References Barbie. Dir. Greta Gerwig. Perf. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Warner Bros., 2023. Byars, Jackie. All That Hollywood Allows. London: Routledge, 1991. Ceuterick, Maud. Affirmative Aesthetics and Wilful Women: Gender, Space and Mobility in Contemporary Cinema. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Cohan, Steven. “Almost like Being at Home: Showbiz culture and Hollywood Road Trips in the 1940s and 1950s.” In The Road Movie Book. Eds. Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark. London: Routledge, 1997. 113–142. Davis, Glyn. Far from Heaven: American Indies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2011. “Dying to Be Barbie: Eating Disorders in Pursuit of the Impossible.” Drug Rehab Options, n.d. 12 Apr. 2024 <https://rehabs.com/explore/dying-to-be-barbie/>. Elsaesser, Thomas. “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observation on Family Melodrama.” In Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film & Television Melodrama. Ed. Marcia Landy. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1991. 68–91. Levy, Emanuel. Gay Directors, Gay Films? Pedro Almodóvar, Terence Davies, Todd Haynes, Gus Van Sant, John Waters. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Lord, M.G. Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll. Liveright, 1994. 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Resonances is a compelling collection of new essays by scholars, writers and musicians, all seeking to explore and enlighten this field of study. Noise seems to stand for a lack of aesthetic grace, to alienate or distract rather than enrapture. And yet the drones of psychedelia, the racket of garage rock and punk, the thudding of rave, the feedback of shoegaze and post-rock, the bombast of thrash and metal, the clatter of jungle and the stuttering of electronica, together with notable examples of avant-garde noise art, have all found a place in the history of contemporary musics, and are recognised as representing key evolutionary moments. Noise therefore is the untold story of contemporary popular music, and in a critical exploration of noise lies the possibility of a new narrative: one that is wide-ranging, connects the popular to the underground and avant-garde, fully posits the studio as a musical instrument, and demands new critical and theoretical paradigms of those seeking to write about music.

This article traces the transformations of individual, caused by informational interventions in his\her mental world, intensified by the development of print as a technological centre of the Industrial Era media system, followed the explosion of consumer psychology, replacing individuality by the “mass person” perplexed by “fashion epoch”. A humanistic ideal, self-sufficient, self-sustained individual appears in such worldview systems as a consumer. A set of individuals selected by specific criteria appears as the target audience, the mass consumer, chosen to buy everything from tastes and goods to ideologies, political doctrines, ways of life, fashion, government, friends, enemies and even war or peace. The production of such consumers started with the phenomena of scaling and unification, intensified by the books-bestsellers, mass media, tabloids, glossy and glamorous magazines, entertainment television, pop music, blockbusters and TV series. Based on the investigation of individual and mass subconscious psychological mechanisms and impact techniques, taste and critical thinking was consistently destroyed, which drove to imposing absolute consumerism as continuously stimulated insatiability of needs, leading to the consumption loop, where requirements are impossible to satisfy. Intellectually simplified, spiritually exhausted media signals, aimed at the instinctively emotional spheres of individuals, steadily lowered the horizon of personal expectations and the thresholds of information accessibility, weakened critical thinking, blurred ethical filters, levelled tastes and transformed the audience into a mass. Furthermore, despite the specific differences, this trend has penetrated all social and individual spheres. Under the pressure of aggressive reality and communication campaigns, a holistic, harmonious, self-aware, intentional personality lost its value for itself. The process, begun in the New Age, was a kind of denial of its foundations and prepared an individual for the transition to the information age.