Academic literature on the topic 'Gesar (Buriat version)'

This article is dedicated to the analysis of Buddhist motifs in one of the Buryat versions of the Epic of King Gesar. The object of this research is the text of the Ehirit-Bulagat Uliger “Abai Geser Hubun” by M. Imegenov, which is considered most archaic, and thus, least susceptible to Buddhist influence. The subject of this research is the Buddhist motifs reflected in the epic narrative. The article also employs the texts of other Buryat Uligers as a comparative material. Special attention is given to the semantic analysis of the motifs under review. The author provides the historical data and refers the comparative-typological method. It is determined that the Buddhist motifs ingrained into the texts of Western Buryat Geseriada function on a surface semantic level and do not affect the narrative framework of the epic. The conclusion is made that the Ehirit-Bulagat version of Geseriada, unlike Unging versions, is less susceptiple to Buddhist influence; therefore, the research in such context allows understanding the peculiarities of the Buryat Geseriada as a whole, and furthermore, the disclosure of the key mechanisms of plot transformation of the Central Asian epic tradition.

Introduction. The article aims to analyze Buryat versions of the epic Geser to identify their local features. It includes a detailed review not only of published texts, but also of manuscripts stored in the archives of Buryatia. For the first time, the regional versions of Geser are systematically examined as a necessary stage for further comparative studies of the genesis and transformation of epic traditions in Central Asia. Methods. The work uses comparative-historical and comparative methods of analysis. Of these, the latter was of key importance in comparing the versions of the epic that differ in terms of the place of their origin and temporal parameters. Results and discussion. The analysis began with a detailed discussion of published authentic texts of Geser represented by the Ekhirit-Bulagat and Ungin versions. Then, the features of archival versions of the epic are systematized and defined. The previous work on the plot composition and characters of each individual text is thoroughly compared to finally identify the features of the Buryat versions of the epic. Conclusion. The authors argue that the Ungin versions are quite close to the Mongolian ones, while the Ekhirit-Bulagat version, in their opinion, stands apart both in terms of their composition and themes. The introductory part of the uliger, a mythological prologue with a shamanic pantheon of deities, is characteristic only of the Buryat versions of Geser. Also, as far as the Western Buryat version is concerned, it may be pointed out that the influence of Buddhist teachings, which were not widespread in the heyday of the epic, was minimum. Of relevance are also the contaminations of the common Mongolian storytelling traditions with the characteristic motifs of the Central Asian epic. The identification of specific features of the local versions of Geser may expand our understanding of the specifics of the national epic as one of the main manifestations of traditional culture.

To establish the genesis and transformation of motives in different versions of the Buryat epic texts about Geser, for the first time in a comparative typological aspect, a plot about a heroic battle is analyzed. The similarities and differences in the motive fund of one plot in different local traditions are determined. From the perspective of the main goal of the study to identify the initial motive fund characteristic of the epic tradition of the Mongol peoples, it is relevant and significant to highlight the variation of motives in the local tradition. The static nature of the event series in the invariant of the motives of the fight and victory in the Ekhirit-Bulagat version shows the presence of one main variant of the motive for the fight with the enemy: the traditional fight. The use of variants of the motive of traditional types of wrestling and archery and new variants of the motive: battle and group battles, fighting with the “force of the point”, that is, with a dagger, a spear is revealed in the article. A comparative typological analysis of the motive fund in one plot in different versions establishes the preservation and transformation of the epic text, a feature of the regional variants of the national epic. The revealed discrepancies in the development of the plot about the heroic battle and the composition of the motivational fund show different stages in the addition of two versions of the heroic epic.

Introduction. The article examines the motif of heroic duel (combat) as an important segment of the epic plot, and our comparative analysis of the nuclear basis of the motif and its variation list proves instrumental in delineating a structural-meaningful model motif invariant inherent to the epic of Mongolic peoples and depicting military conflicts. The issue has never been dealt with in this perspective. Goals. The work seeks to determine a variation row of the invariant motif in national epic traditions of Buryats, Kalmyks, Mongols, and Oirats. Materials. The variation row to be extracted from Mongolic epic narratives, namely: Buryat uligers of Abai Geser (Ungin version of P. Petrov) and Abai Geser Khubun (Ekhirit-Bulagat version of M. Emegenov), Baga Dorbet and Eelyan Ovla’s cycles of the Kalmyk Epic of Jangar, Xinjiang Oirat version of the Jangar, Oirat Mongolian tuuli texts titled Daini Kyurel and Khan Kharangui, and a Khalkha tuuli titled Agiyin Ulan Khan. Methods. To identify the typology and variable interpretations of the motif, the study uses elements of the comparative-typological and comparative-historical methods. The ‘heroic duel (combat)’ motif model is viewed as an element that hypothetically can act as the most important lever within the plot development mechanism, e.g., evolving from a motif ― a ‘simplest narrative unit’ ― to a plot, and vice versa. When it comes to identify the motif, its dualistic nature, variety of its properties and features noted by Russian and foreign scientists are taken into account. Results. The comparative insight into the motif of heroic duel (combat) makes it possible to single out the motif as an essential constructive and meaningful element of the plot, examine the degree of productivity and mobility of the motif in genetically related though stadially differing epics, as well as in ones belonging to various taletelling traditions, observe heroic confrontation patterns in epics of Mongolic peoples. Conclusions. The study concludes that motif invariants tend to form a plot basis, while motif variants express certain features (stadial, national, local) of each epic tradition.

Рассматривается мотив уничтожения чудовища абаасы якутского олонхо в сравнительном анализе с бурятским улигером. Якутским материалом послужили тексты олонхо, опубликованные в «Образцах народной литературы якутов» Э. К. Пекарского (1907-1918). Бурятским источником были выбраны разные версии улигера «Гэсэр», изданные в 1960-1968 гг. Сюжет поединка героя со своим противником является кульминационным моментом в содержании обоих эпосов. Разумеется, главный герой всегда побеждает антагониста, ведь в этом и смысл героического эпоса. Мотивный фонд с описанием уничтожения врага является таким же кардинальным, как и мотив поединка. Смертельно опасный враг погибает от рук главного героя олонхо, но полностью не уничтоженное мертвое тело вновь оживает, продолжая творить зло и хаос. Известными исследователями тюрко-монгольского фольклора отмечены общие черты олонхо и улигера (В. М. Жирмунский, Е. М. Мелетинский, С. Ю. Неклюдов, И. В. Пухов, Г. У. Эргис, В. В. Илларионов и др.). Сравнительные работы в сфере тюрко-монгольской фольклористики продолжают вызывать интерес и требуют исследования с разных сторон. Сопоставительное изучение мотива уничтожения чудовищ якутского и бурятского эпосов еще не проводилось. Целью исследования является определение мотива уничтожения врагов героя якутского олонхо с описанием сходств и различий с бурятским эпосом. В работе использована методология текстологического анализа с применением описательного и сравнительного методов. Автором выявляется несколько общих моментов в исследуемом мотиве: способы сожжения трупа; воскрешение чудовища от останков тел; способ захоронения коня вместе с чудовищем. Победа главного героя и уничтожение чудовища показывает идею справедливости, превосходства добра над злом, светлой силы над темной. А в способности чудовища абаасы быть бессмертным заложена философская идея вечной борьбы добра и зла, которая остается неизменной и по сей день. Схожесть мотивов якутского и бурятского эпосов способствовала решению расширить исследовательский материал, привлечь эпические тексты других тюрко-монгольских народов. The motif of destruction of the monster-abaasy of Yakut olonkho in comparative analysis with Buryat uliger is considered. The Yakut material was the texts of olonkho, published in Samples of folk literature of Yakuts by E. K. Pekarsky (1907-1918). The Buryat source chose different versions of the street Geser, published in 1960-1968. The plot of the fight between the hero and his opponent is the culmination of the content of both olonkho. Of course, the main character always wins the antagonist, because this is the meaning of the heroic epic. The motif fund with the description of the enemy's destruction is as cardinal as the motif of the fight. The mortally dangerous enemy dies at the hands of the main character olonkho, and a completely undestroyed dead body comes to life, continuing to create evil and chaos. Famous researchers of Turkic-Mongolian folklore noted common features of olonkho and uliger (V. M. Zhirmunsky, E. M. Meletinsky, S. Yu. Neklyudov, I. V. Pukhov, G. U. Ergis, V. V. Illarionov, etc.). But comparative works in the field of Turkic-Mongolian folklore continue to arouse interest and require research from different sides. Study of the motif of destruction of monsters of the Yakut and Buryat epic has not yet been conducted. The aim of the research is to determine the motif of destruction of enemies of the Yakut olonkho hero, as well as to describe similarities and differences with the Buryat epic. The work uses the methodology of textological analysis using descriptive and comparative methods. The author reveals several general points in the studied motif: methods of burning the corpse; resurrection of the monster from the remains of bodies; method of burying the horse together with the monster. The victory of the main character and the destruction of the monster shows the idea of triumph of justice, the supremacy of good over evil, light power over dark. And in the beast's ability to be immortal is the philosophical idea of the eternal struggle of good and evil, which remains unchanged to this day. The similarity of motifs of Yakut and Buryat epics contributed to the decision to expand the research material and attract epic texts of other Turkic-Mongolian peoples.

В статье рассматриваются способы актуализации смысловой и поэтической экспрессии в улигерном тексте. Выявлены разные виды и функциональные особенности таких речевых средств эпической образности, как метафора, метонимия, синекдоха, эпитет, сравнение. Материалом для анализа послужили варианты бурятского эпоса о Гэсэре, записанные от известных сказителей (Альфора Васильева, Пеохона Петрова, Маншуда Имегенова, Елбона Шалбыкова), однако большая часть примеров приведена из эпоса «Абай Гэсэр Богдо хаан» (эхирит-булагатский вариант сказителя А. Васильева). Своеобразие и уникальность образной системы бурятского эпоса в целом и улигера «Абай Гэсэр Богдо хаан» в частности проявляются на всех уровнях содержательного и выразительного планов. Проведенный лингвостилистический анализ упомянутого улигерного текста позволяет утверждать, что поэтика эпоса – сложная и вместе с тем высокоорганизованная система, которая складывалась и отрабатывалась в течение длительного времени. Образные средства исследованных улигеров отличаются разнообразием форм и частотностью употребления.Основным в эпосе является смысловая природа иносказания как приема образного восприятия реальной действительности, которая передается, в т. ч. общефольклорными, общелитературными и разговорными метафорическими образными выражениями. Эпическим речевым средствам в целом и сравнениям в частности присущи компактность, ритмическая организованность, отшлифованность и формульность. Выявлены и проанализированы наиболее продуктивные в поэтике бурятских улигеров образные средства, обладающие большой художественной выразительностью и способствующие созданию ярких эпических образов и исторической стилизации. Все рассмотренные элементы выполняют смысловую, экспрессивно-эмоциональную функцию в эпическом произведении бурят. Их использование обусловлено внутренними потребностями героического сюжета, общими требованиями эпической изобразительности. Очевидно, что в ходе исторического развития эпос вырабатывал свою, присущую только ему систему изображения. Сказители пользовались традиционными формами, которые были закреплены за определенными реалиями изображаемых явлений и событий. В этноспецифических образных элементах (метафорах, метонимии, эпитетах, сравнениях и др.) поэтической системы прослеживаются эстетика и прагматизм бурятского эпоса о Гэсэре, его значительный аксиологический потенциал. The article considers some ways of actualization of semantic and poetic expressiveness in the uliger text. It studies different types and functional peculiarities of such means of epic expressiveness as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, epithet, and simile. The analysis is based on the versions of the Buryat epos about Geser recorded from well-known uligershins (Alfor Vasilyev, Peokhon Petrov, Manshud Imegenov, Elbon Shalbykov). However, most of the examples are taken from the epic «Abai Geser Bogdo Khaan» (the ekhirit-bulagat version of the narrator A. Vasiliev). The originality and uniqueness of the imagery system of the Buryat epic in general and uliger «Abai Geser Bogdo Khaan» in particular are revealed at all levels of content and expression plans. The lingvostylistic analysis of the mentioned uliger text suggests that the poetics of the epos is a sophisticated but yet a highly organized system, which had been developing and perfected for a long time. The imagery means of the researched uligers are remarkable for a variety of forms and frequency of their usage.The main epic feature is the semantic nature of allegory serving as a method of imaginative perception of reality and which is transmitted by general folklore and literature, colloquial metaphorical figurative expressions. The epic speech means in general and comparisons in particular are characterized by laconism, rhythmic organization, being refined and having some formula. The most productive in the poetics of the Buryat uligers imagery means, having high artistic expressiveness and contributing to the creation of vivid epic images and historic styling are identified and analyzed in the paper. All the revealed elements perform a semantic, expressive-emotional function in the Buryat epic. Their use is determined by the internal needs of the heroic story and the general requirements of the epic depiction. It is obvious that in the course of historical development the epos has developed its own unique imagery system. Narrators used the traditional forms that had been assigned to certain realities of the depicted phenomena and events. The aesthetics and pragmatism of the Buryat epic of Geser, its considerable axiological potential is revealed in the ethnospecific imagery elements (metaphors, metonymy, epithets, simile, etc.) of the poetic system.

Исследован аксиологический аспект малых фольклорных жанров в поэтической системе бурятского эпоса о Гэсэре. Выявлены их национальное своеобразие, функциональные особенности и ценностно-ориентированная направленность в бурятском эпосе «Абай Гэсэр Богдо хаан», записанном известным бурятским исследователем С. П. Балдаевым от талантливого сказителя Альфора Васильева, который более известен как альфоровский вариант (опубликован на бурятском языке в 1995 г.). Эпическое произведение отличается глубоким содержанием, своеобразной композицией, колоритным языком, яркой образностью и чертами «высокого стиля». В художественной канве бурятского героического эпоса встречаются разножанровые фольклорные произведения: восхваления (магталнүүд), благопожелания (үреэлнүүд), пословицы (оньhон үгэнүүд), поговорки (хошоо үгэнүүд), проклятия (харалнүүд) и др. Анализ показал, что они отличаются национальным своеобразием и по содержанию, и по тематике, и по структуре. Изученные малые поэтические формы органично входят в композиционное пространство эпического произведения, выполняя различные функции: характеризуют героя, служат в качестве завязки сюжета, используются в зачине повествования, в концовке некоторых его частей, выражают эмоциональное состояние персонажей. Актуальность рассматриваемой проблемы состоит в том, что изученные малые фольклорные жанры отражают специфику материальной и духовной культуры бурятского народа. С помощью изобразительных эпитетов и других поэтических средств в этих фольклорных формах создаются характерные для традиционного общества ценностные стереотипы. Можно заключить, что малые жанры поэтического фольклора бурят, наряду с крупными жанрами, активно участвуют в сохранении национальной идентичности. Установлено, что рассматриваемые формульные выражения способствуют движению эпических событий драматического характера, участвуют в героических ситуациях, полностью подчиняясь раскрытию жанрового эпического содержания. В условиях героического сказания малые фольклорные поэтические формы обретают эпическую окраску и характер, становятся неотъемлемым компонентом структурно-поэтической системы эпоса. Они не теряют познавательной, социальной, эстетической и воспитательной ценности и в настоящее время. The article studies the axiological aspect of small folklore genres used in the poetic system of the Buryat epos of Geser. It reveals their national identity, functional features and value-oriented focus in the Buryat epic Abai Geser Bogdo khaan written down by the famous Buryat researcher S. P. Baldaev from the talented narrator Alfor Vasilev, better known as Alforov’s version (the epos was published in the Buryat language in 1995). The epic is famous for its deep content, original composition, colorful language, vivid imagery and “high style” features. There are different-genre folklore elements in the artistic canvas of the Buryat heroic epic: praises (magtals), good wishes (urols), proverbs (onihon ugenud), sayings (khoshoo ugenud), curses (haral) and others. The analysis showed that their national originality reveals itself in the content, themes, and structure. The small poetic forms are organically integrated into the compositional structure of the epic, performing various functions: describing the characters, serving as strings of the plot, being used in the beginning of the narrative, in the end of some episodes, expressing the emotional state of the characters. The relevance of the issue studied in the article lies in the fact that the small folklore genres reflect the peculiarity of the material and spiritual culture of the Buryat people. With the help of expressive epithets and other poetic means in these forms of folklore culturally valuable for the traditional society stereotypes are created. We can conclude that the small genres of poetic folklore of the Buryat people, along with the major genres, actively participate in the preservation of national identity. It is established that the considered formulaic expressions contribute to the movement of the epic events of the dramatic character, they are involved in heroic situations, and are completely subordinated to the disclosure of the epic genre content. In the frame of heroic tales small folklore poetic forms gain epic coloring and character, thus becoming an integral part of the structural-poetic system of the epos. They do not lose their cognitive, social, aesthetic and educational value even at present.

Perhaps nothing in media culture today makes clearer the connection between people’s bodies and their homes than the Emmy-winning reality TV program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Home Edition is a spin-off from the original Extreme Makeover, and that fact provides in fundamental form the strong connection that the show demonstrates between bodies and houses. The first EM, initially popular for its focus on cosmetic surgery, laser skin and hair treatments, dental work, cosmetics and wardrobe for mainly middle-aged and self-described unattractive participants, lagged after two full seasons and was finally cancelled entirely, whereas EMHE has continued to accrue viewers and sponsors, as well as accolades (Paulsen, Poniewozik, EMHE Website, Wilhelm). That viewers and the ABC network shifted their attention to the reconstruction of houses over the original version’s direct intervention in problematic bodies indicates that sites of personal transformation are not necessarily within our own physical or emotional beings, but in the larger surround of our environments and in our cultural ideals of home and body. One effect of this shift in the Extreme Makeover format is that a seemingly wider range of narrative problems can be solved relating to houses than to the particular bodies featured on the original show. Although Extreme Makeover featured a few people who’d had previously botched cleft palate surgeries or mastectomies, as Cressida Heyes points out, “the only kind of disability that interests the show is one that can be corrected to conform to able-bodied norms” (22). Most of the recipients were simply middle-aged folks who were ordinary or aged in appearance; many of them seemed self-obsessed and vain, and their children often seemed disturbed by the transformation (Heyes 24). However, children are happy to have a brand new TV and a toy-filled room decorated like their latest fantasy, and they thereby can be drawn into the process of identity transformation in the Home Edition version; in fact, children are required of virtually all recipients of the show’s largess. Because EMHE can do “major surgery” or simply bulldoze an old structure and start with a new building, it is also able to incorporate more variety in its stories—floods, fires, hurricanes, propane explosions, war, crime, immigration, car accidents, unscrupulous contractors, insurance problems, terrorist attacks—the list of traumas is seemingly endless. Home Edition can solve any problem, small or large. Houses are much easier things to repair or reconstruct than bodies. Perhaps partly for this reason, EMHE uses disability as one of its major tropes. Until Season 4, Episode 22, 46.9 percent of the episodes have had some content related to disability or illness of a disabling sort, and this number rises to 76.4 percent if the count includes families that have been traumatised by the (usually recent) death of a family member in childhood or the prime of life by illness, accident or violence. Considering that the percentage of people living with disabilities in the U.S. is defined at 18.1 percent (Steinmetz), EMHE obviously favours them considerably in the selection process. Even the disproportionate numbers of people with disabilities living in poverty and who therefore might be more likely to need help—20.9 percent as opposed to 7.7 percent of the able-bodied population (Steinmetz)—does not fully explain their dominance on the program. In fact, the program seeks out people with new and different physical disabilities and illnesses, sending out emails to local news stations looking for “Extraordinary Mom / Dad recently diagnosed with ALS,” “Family who has a child with PROGERIA (aka ‘little old man’s disease’)” and other particular situations (Simonian). A total of sixty-five ill or disabled people have been featured on the show over the past four years, and, even if one considers its methods maudlin or exploitive, the presence of that much disability and illness is very unusual for reality TV and for TV in general. What the show purports to do is to radically transform multiple aspects of individuals’ lives—and especially lives marred by what are perceived as physical setbacks—via the provision of a luxurious new house, albeit sometimes with the addition of automobiles, mortgage payments or college scholarships. In some ways the assumptions underpinning EMHE fit with a social constructionist body theory that posits an almost infinitely flexible physical matter, of which the definitions and capabilities are largely determined by social concepts and institutions. The social model within the disability studies field has used this theoretical perspective to emphasise the distinction between an impairment, “the physical fact of lacking an arm or a leg,” and disability, “the social process that turns an impairment into a negative by creating barriers to access” (Davis, Bending 12). Accessible housing has certainly been one emphasis of disability rights activists, and many of them have focused on how “design conceptions, in relation to floor plans and allocation of functions to specific spaces, do not conceive of impairment, disease and illness as part of domestic habitation or being” (Imrie 91). In this regard, EMHE appears as a paragon. In one of its most challenging and dramatic Season 1 episodes, the “Design Team” worked on the home of the Ziteks, whose twenty-two-year-old son had been restricted to a sub-floor of the three-level structure since a car accident had paralyzed him. The show refitted the house with an elevator, roll-in bathroom and shower, and wheelchair-accessible doors. Robert Zitek was also provided with sophisticated computer equipment that would help him produce music, a life-long interest that had been halted by his upper-vertebra paralysis. Such examples abound in the new EMHE houses, which have been constructed for families featuring situations such as both blind and deaf members, a child prone to bone breaks due to osteogenesis imperfecta, legs lost in Iraq warfare, allergies that make mold life-threatening, sun sensitivity due to melanoma or polymorphic light eruption or migraines, fragile immune systems (often due to organ transplants or chemotherapy), cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, Krabbe disease and autism. EMHE tries to set these lives right via the latest in technology and treatment—computer communication software and hardware, lock systems, wheelchair-friendly design, ventilation and air purification set-ups, the latest in care and mental health approaches for various disabilities and occasional consultations with disabled celebrities like Marlee Matlin. Even when individuals or familes are “[d]iscriminated against on a daily basis by ignorance and physical challenges,” as the program website notes, they “deserve to have a home that doesn’t discriminate against them” (EMHE website, Season 3, Episode 4). The relief that they will be able to inhabit accessible and pleasant environments is evident on the faces of many of these recipients. That physical ease, that ability to move and perform the intimate acts of domestic life, seems according to the show’s narrative to be the most basic element of home. Nonetheless, as Robert Imrie has pointed out, superficial accessibility may still veil “a static, singular conception of the body” (201) that prevents broader change in attitudes about people with disabilities, their activities and their spaces. Starting with the story of the child singing in an attempt at self-comforting from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, J. MacGregor Wise defines home as a process of territorialisation through specific behaviours. “The markers of home … are not simply inanimate objects (a place with stuff),” he notes, “but the presence, habits, and effects of spouses, children, parents, and companions” (299). While Ty Pennington, EMHE’s boisterous host, implies changes for these families along the lines of access to higher education, creative possibilities provided by musical instruments and disability-appropriate art materials, help with home businesses in the way of equipment and licenses and so on, the families’ identity-producing habits are just as likely to be significantly changed by the structural and decorative arrangements made for them by the Design Team. The homes that are created for these families are highly conventional in their structure, layout, decoration, and expectations of use. More specifically, certain behavioural patterns are encouraged and others discouraged by the Design Team’s assumptions. Several themes run through the show’s episodes: Large dining rooms provide for the most common of Pennington’s comments: “You can finally sit down and eat meals together as a family.” A nostalgic value in an era where most families have schedules full of conflicts that prevent such Ozzie-and-Harriet scenarios, it nonetheless predominates. Large kitchens allow for cooking and eating at home, though featured food is usually frozen and instant. In addition, kitchens are not designed for the families’ disabled members; for wheelchair users, for instance, counters need to be lower than usual with open space underneath, so that a wheelchair can roll underneath the counter. Thus, all the wheelchair inhabitants depicted will still be dependent on family members, primarily mothers, to prepare food and clean up after them. (See Imrie, 95-96, for examples of adapted kitchens.) Pets, perhaps because they are inherently “dirty,” are downplayed or absent, even when the family has them when EMHE arrives (except one family that is featured for their animal rescue efforts); interestingly, there are no service dogs, which might obviate the need for some of the high-tech solutions for the disabled offered by the show. The previous example is one element of an emphasis on clutter-free cleanliness and tastefulness combined with a rampant consumerism. While “cultural” elements may be salvaged from exotic immigrant families, most of the houses are very similar and assume a certain kind of commodified style based on new furniture (not humble family hand-me-downs), appliances, toys and expensive, prefab yard gear. Sears is a sponsor of the program, and shopping trips for furniture and appliances form a regular part of the program. Most or all of the houses have large garages, and the families are often given large vehicles by Ford, maintaining a positive take on a reliance on private transportation and gas-guzzling vehicles, but rarely handicap-adapted vans. Living spaces are open, with high ceilings and arches rather than doorways, so that family members will have visual and aural contact. Bedrooms are by contrast presented as private domains of retreat, especially for parents who have demanding (often ill or disabled) children, from which they are considered to need an occasional break. All living and bedrooms are dominated by TVs and other electronica, sometimes presented as an aid to the disabled, but also dominating to the point of excluding other ways of being and interacting. As already mentioned, childless couples and elderly people without children are completely absent. Friends buying houses together and gay couples are also not represented. The ideal of the heterosexual nuclear family is thus perpetuated, even though some of the show’s craftspeople are gay. Likewise, even though “independence” is mentioned frequently in the context of families with disabled members, there are no recipients who are disabled adults living on their own without family caretakers. “Independence” is spoken of mostly in terms of bathing, dressing, using the bathroom and other bodily aspects of life, not in terms of work, friendship, community or self-concept. Perhaps most salient, the EMHE houses are usually created as though nothing about the family will ever again change. While a few of the projects have featured terminally ill parents seeking to leave their children secure after their death, for the most part the families are considered oddly in stasis. Single mothers will stay single mothers, even children with conditions with severe prognoses will continue to live, the five-year-old will sleep forever in a fire-truck bed or dollhouse room, the occasional grandparent installed in his or her own suite will never pass away, and teenagers and young adults (especially the disabled) will never grow up, marry, discover their homosexuality, have a falling out with their parents or leave home. A kind of timeless nostalgia, hearkening back to Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space, pervades the show. Like the body-modifying Extreme Makeover, the Home Edition version is haunted by the issue of normalisation. The word ‘normal’, in fact, floats through the program’s dialogue frequently, and it is made clear that the goal of the show is to restore, as much as possible, a somewhat glamourised, but status quo existence. The website, in describing the work of one deserving couple notes that “Camp Barnabas is a non-profit organisation that caters to the needs of critically and chronically ill children and gives them the opportunity to be ‘normal’ for one week” (EMHE website, Season 3, Episode 7). Someone at the network is sophisticated enough to put ‘normal’ in quotation marks, and the show demonstrates a relatively inclusive concept of ‘normal’, but the word dominates the show itself, and the concept remains largely unquestioned (See Canguilhem; Davis, Enforcing Normalcy; and Snyder and Mitchell, Narrative, for critiques of the process of normalization in regard to disability). In EMHE there is no sense that disability or illness ever produces anything positive, even though the show also notes repeatedly the inspirational attitudes that people have developed through their disability and illness experiences. Similarly, there is no sense that a little messiness can be creatively productive or even necessary. Wise makes a distinction between “home and the home, home and house, home and domus,” the latter of each pair being normative concepts, whereas the former “is a space of comfort (a never-ending process)” antithetical to oppressive norms, such as the association of the home with the enforced domesticity of women. In cases where the house or domus becomes a place of violence and discomfort, home becomes the process of coping with or resisting the negative aspects of the place (300). Certainly the disabled have experienced this in inaccessible homes, but they may also come to experience a different version in a new EMHE house. For, as Wise puts it, “home can also mean a process of rationalization or submission, a break with the reality of the situation, self-delusion, or falling under the delusion of others” (300). The show’s assumption that the construction of these new houses will to a great extent solve these families’ problems (and that disability itself is the problem, not the failure of our culture to accommodate its many forms) may in fact be a delusional spell under which the recipient families fall. In fact, the show demonstrates a triumphalist narrative prevalent today, in which individual happenstance and extreme circumstances are given responsibility for social ills. In this regard, EMHE acts out an ancient morality play, where the recipients of the show’s largesse are assessed and judged based on what they “deserve,” and the opening of each show, when the Design Team reviews the application video tape of the family, strongly emphasises what good people these are (they work with charities, they love each other, they help out their neighbours) and how their situation is caused by natural disaster, act of God or undeserved tragedy, not their own bad behaviour. Disabilities are viewed as terrible tragedies that befall the young and innocent—there is no lung cancer or emphysema from a former smoking habit, and the recipients paralyzed by gunshots have received them in drive-by shootings or in the line of duty as police officers and soldiers. In addition, one of the functions of large families is that the children veil any selfish motivation the adults may have—they are always seeking the show’s assistance on behalf of the children, not themselves. While the Design Team always notes that there are “so many other deserving people out there,” the implication is that some people’s poverty and need may be their own fault. (See Snyder and Mitchell, Locations 41-67; Blunt and Dowling 116-25; and Holliday.) In addition, the structure of the show—with the opening view of the family’s undeserved problems, their joyous greeting at the arrival of the Team, their departure for the first vacation they may ever have had and then the final exuberance when they return to the new house—creates a sense of complete, almost religious salvation. Such narratives fail to point out social support systems that fail large numbers of people who live in poverty and who struggle with issues of accessibility in terms of not only domestic spaces, but public buildings, educational opportunities and social acceptance. In this way, it echoes elements of the medical model, long criticised in disability studies, where each and every disabled body is conceptualised as a site of individual aberration in need of correction, not as something disabled by an ableist society. In fact, “the house does not shelter us from cosmic forces; at most it filters and selects them” (Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, qtd. in Frichot 61), and those outside forces will still apply to all these families. The normative assumptions inherent in the houses may also become oppressive in spite of their being accessible in a technical sense (a thing necessary but perhaps not sufficient for a sense of home). As Tobin Siebers points out, “[t]he debate in architecture has so far focused more on the fundamental problem of whether buildings and landscapes should be universally accessible than on the aesthetic symbolism by which the built environment mirrors its potential inhabitants” (“Culture” 183). Siebers argues that the Jamesonian “political unconscious” is a “social imaginary” based on a concept of perfection (186) that “enforces a mutual identification between forms of appearance, whether organic, aesthetic, or architectural, and ideal images of the body politic” (185). Able-bodied people are fearful of the disabled’s incurability and refusal of normalisation, and do not accept the statistical fact that, at least through the process of aging, most people will end up dependent, ill and/or disabled at some point in life. Mainstream society “prefers to think of people with disabilities as a small population, a stable population, that nevertheless makes enormous claims on the resources of everyone else” (“Theory” 742). Siebers notes that the use of euphemism and strategies of covering eventually harm efforts to create a society that is home to able-bodied and disabled alike (“Theory” 747) and calls for an exploration of “new modes of beauty that attack aesthetic and political standards that insist on uniformity, balance, hygiene, and formal integrity” (Culture 210). What such an architecture, particularly of an actually livable domestic nature, might look like is an open question, though there are already some examples of people trying to reframe many of the assumptions about housing design. For instance, cohousing, where families and individuals share communal space, yet have private accommodations, too, makes available a larger social group than the nuclear family for social and caretaking activities (Blunt and Dowling, 262-65). But how does one define a beauty-less aesthetic or a pleasant home that is not hygienic? Post-structuralist architects, working on different grounds and usually in a highly theoretical, imaginary framework, however, may offer another clue, as they have also tried to ‘liberate’ architecture from the nostalgic dictates of the aesthetic. Ironically, one of the most famous of these, Peter Eisenman, is well known for producing, in a strange reversal, buildings that render the able-bodied uncomfortable and even sometimes ill (see, in particular, Frank and Eisenman). Of several house designs he produced over the years, Eisenman notes that his intention was to dislocate the house from that comforting metaphysic and symbolism of shelter in order to initiate a search for those possibilities of dwelling that may have been repressed by that metaphysic. The house may once have been a true locus and symbol of nurturing shelter, but in a world of irresolvable anxiety, the meaning and form of shelter must be different. (Eisenman 172) Although Eisenman’s starting point is very different from that of Siebers, it nonetheless resonates with the latter’s desire for an aesthetic that incorporates the “ragged edge” of disabled bodies. Yet few would want to live in a home made less attractive or less comfortable, and the “illusion” of permanence is one of the things that provide rest within our homes. Could there be an architecture, or an aesthetic, of home that could create a new and different kind of comfort and beauty, one that is neither based on a denial of the importance of bodily comfort and pleasure nor based on an oppressively narrow and commercialised set of aesthetic values that implicitly value some people over others? For one thing, instead of viewing home as a place of (false) stasis and permanence, we might see it as a place of continual change and renewal, which any home always becomes in practice anyway. As architect Hélène Frichot suggests, “we must look toward the immanent conditions of architecture, the processes it employs, the serial deformations of its built forms, together with our quotidian spatio-temporal practices” (63) instead of settling into a deadening nostalgia like that seen on EMHE. If we define home as a process of continual territorialisation, if we understand that “[t]here is no fixed self, only the process of looking for one,” and likewise that “there is no home, only the process of forming one” (Wise 303), perhaps we can begin to imagine a different, yet lovely conception of “house” and its relation to the experience of “home.” Extreme Makeover: Home Edition should be lauded for its attempts to include families of a wide variety of ethnic and racial backgrounds, various religions, from different regions around the U.S., both rural and suburban, even occasionally urban, and especially for its bringing to the fore how, indeed, structures can be as disabling as any individual impairment. That it shows designers and builders working with the families of the disabled to create accessible homes may help to change wider attitudes and break down resistance to the building of inclusive housing. 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Macgregor. “Home: Territory and Identity.” Cultural Studies 14.2 (2000): 295-310. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Roney, Lisa. "The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/03-roney.php>. APA Style Roney, L. (Aug. 2007) "The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/03-roney.php>.