Academic literature on the topic 'Great Britain. Ml9'

The Anglo-American summit at Nassau in December 1962 did not strictly separate Britain's deterrent from the proposed Multilateral Force (MLF). As a result, Conservative governments in the 1960s tried to safeguard maximum British independence in nuclear relations with the United States. The British tried to thwart American initiatives on the mixed-manned MLF; some British officials even hoped to preserve an “independent British deterrent” through nuclear cooperation with France. For the United States, the British deterrent had political value in an intra-alliance or East-West context, but no military or political significance in itself. The MLF idea of bilateral nuclear cooperation with Britain and France was a means to contain French and German nuclear ambitions and to settle Cold War disputes with the Soviet Union. In London, however, leading officials believed that Britain's future as a great power was inextricably linked to the possession of an independent nuclear deterrent. When nuclear independence was lost, the appearance of independence became more important.

Two topics in the front burner of contact linguistics are bilingualism and code switching. Code switching between an indigenous language and the English language is pervasive where outer circle Englishes are spoken. Nigeria and other former colonies of Great Britain belong to this circle of Englishes. This study discusses nouns functioning as lexical heads in Urhobo/ English code switches. The switches include code switched NP[Z1] with determiner[Z2] s from Urhobo and head word[Z3] s from English; Urhobo –English complex Code switched NP with an adjective; complex CS NP with an adjective[Z4] prepositional phrase as complement. The study is premised on two theories. First is Noam Chomsky’s (1981) principles and parameters theory of transformational grammar which has been used for the analysis of the sentences. The second is Myers-Scotton’s (2002) Matrix Language Frame (MLF), which is used for distinguishing between the matrix and the embedded languages in the nominal phrasal constituents within the code switched sentences. In this study, Urhobo is the matrix language while English is the embedded[Z5] language based on matrix language frame (MLF) parameters. The study concludes that nouns functioning as lexical heads constitute part of the structural basis of Urhobo English code-switching. [Z1]NPs [Z2]determiners [Z3]words [Z4]adjective [Z5]embedded language

1. Implementation of the EC meat hygiene standards (Proposal COM (89/673)) by the British abattoir industry post 1992 is likely to have a major impact on its structure. Against the background of low operating margins, many abattoirs are faced with the necessity of making substantial investment in order to conform with the standards.2. The term ‘post 1992’ is used advisedly because there could be temporary derogations beyond the 1 January 1993 deadline. The possibility and current lack of definition of these is a major cause of uncertainty and anxiety over investment in the industry, and makes forecasts of industry structure difficult.3. A survey was carried out during June to September 1990 to examine the projected future size and structure of the industry. Data were obtained from three sources:(a) a telephone survey to the managers of 80 non-EC approved abattoirs stratified by size and geographical region (carried out in August 1990),(b) a survey by MLC regional staff in close day-to-day contact with the industry (approximately 450 abattoirs), and(c) information obtained by MLC in the course of operating its Meat Plant Advisory Service (advice was provided to 150 abattoirs in 1989/90).The data included a Judgement as to whether the abattoir would continue to operate post 1992 and an estimate of anticipated slaughtering capacity based on chiller capacity. Numbers of cattle, sheep and pigs slaughtered in each abattoir in Great Britain are available from MLC's levy records. The database is being updated regularly as new information becomes available.

With the emergence and expansion of post-manufacturing knowledge economies, formerly industrial inner cities in the West have become intensified staging grounds for a range of spatial claims. Among these are processes of residential gentrification, the cultural politics of heritage preservation, the struggles for community development, and the growth of creative industries, such as art, design, architecture, publishing and film, which I focus on here.1 Throughout the last two decades in the UK, inner cities and central city fringe districts have been subject to an assortment of strategies that have endeavored to revitalize them economically and socially. Prominent among these attempts has been the encouragement of new, and the incubation of existing, small-scale creative enterprises. Regeneration executives choose these enterprises for a range of reasons. Creative activities are associated with popular culture that disaffected, unemployed youth find appealing; they are able to occupy and rehabilitate underused existing building stock and to sensitively recycle historic buildings, thereby preserving urban scales; and, as a number of scholars have pointed out, they exhibit transaction-rich, network-intensive organization (Castells 1992; Lash and Urry 1994; Scott 2000). As a result, concerted efforts to design creative industry quarters have sprung up across the UK, including Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, and Birmingham. In London, a whole band of formerly industrial, inner-city districts from King's Cross, down through Clerkenwell, Hoxton, Shoreditch and Spitalfields, and along the wharves of the Thames's South Bank, are being or have been revitalized in part through the strategic deployment of creative industries. Certainly, how creative industries and economies develop varies. At King's Cross, nonprofit and commercial creative companies have emerged quietly in a context of protracted struggle over the future of the Railway Lands, which will be reshaped by the coming terminus of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. At Spitalfields, high-profile conversions of Truman Brewery and the Spitalfields Market site into artisanal stalls, creative businesses, and leisure (café, restaurant, and sport) facilities are generating a new local creative economy, bringing in visitors and creating new customer bases for Spitalfields' Bangladeshi restaurant keepers and garment entrepreneurs.2 Whatever the conditions for growth, creative industries have been aided by the rhetoric of Cool Britannia and New Labour's cultural -- or more accurately --creative industrial policy. I would even put forth that, in the form of the creative quarter, the creative industries represent the urbanist logic of Cool Britannia, threatening to elaborate, following the other logics of BritArt and BritPop, a BritSpace. Now, according to some of Britain's foremost cultural critics, Cool Britannia was born sometime in 1996 in the Sunday Times, and died two years later, soon after a piece in the New Musical Express that showcased young musician discontent with New Labour creative industrial policy (Hewison 1996; McRobbie 1999, 4). Yet, before we close the casket, I want to suggest that Cool Britannia be understood as a symptom of a range of 'causes' that have been transforming the idioms of politics, governance, culture, citizenship, social organization; and, as the creative quarter evokes, the city. An itinerary of these causes would include: the expansion of a consumer-driven service/knowledge economy; the growth and globalization of communication and information technologies; the 'flexibilization' of regimes of production; the mutation of the function of the welfare state and corresponding meaning of citizenship; and, the dominance of intellectual property notions of culture. While these shifts are transforming societies around the world, in the UK, they became closely identified with New Labour and its attempts to institutionalize the rhetoric of the Third Way during the late 1990s (e.g., Blair 1998; Giddens 1998). In imagining itself as a force of change, New Labour capitalized on two events that gave birth to Cool Britannia: (1) the glamorization of British art and young British artists in the mid-1990s; and (2) the emergence of a discourse of 'rebranding' Britain, disseminating from reports from brand specialists Wolff Olins and think tank Demos (Bobby 1999).3 The first, producing the nBA (new British Art) and the yBAs (young British Artists) are media events with their own genealogies that have received copious critical attention (e.g., Ford 1996; McRobbie 1999; Roberts 1996, 1998; Stallabrass 1999; Suchin 1998). This glamorization involved the discovery of the artists by the mainstream media and a focus on artistic entrepreneurship in creating, shaping and responding to an enlarged market for cultural products. In the process, some of these artists effectively became brands, authoring, legitimating and licensing a certain kind of ironic, post-political art that was palatable to the international art market.4 The second cause stems from responses to anxiety over post-imperial Britain's future in a post-manufacturing, globalized, knowledge economy. For both the Demos thinkers and Wolff Olins consultants, these were centered on the need to re-imagine British national subjectivity as if it were a commercial brand. The discourse of branding is tangential to that of intellectual property, in which brands are value codings managed through networks of trademarks, patents, copyrights and royalties. Rosemary Coombe (1998) has written, albeit in a different political context, on the increasing dominance of notions of culture defined through intellectual property, and adjudicated by international trade experts. Indeed, New Labour creative industrial policies, as demonstrated in former Culture Secretary, Chris Smith's, essays that linked creativity, entrepreneurship and economic growth (Smith 1998) and initiatives under the Creative Industries Mapping Document (DCMS 2001) reveal how the relationship between the state and national culture is being renegotiated. Less meaningful is the state that served as sponsor or patron of cultural activities for its citizens. Rather, under New Labour, as Nikolas Rose argues (1999), and critics of New Labour cultural policy interrogate (Greenhalgh 1998; Littler 2000), the state is an enabler, partnering with entrepreneurs, small-scale firms, and multinational enterprises to promote the traffic in cultural property. How such a shift affects the production of urban space, and the future meanings attached to the British city remain to be explored. In the context of the American city, M. Christine Boyer (1995), elaborates how an iterative regime of architectural styles and planning ethics functions as a late capitalist cultural logic of urbanism that discards elements, often in decaying and abandoned sections, that cannot be easily incorporated. Borrowing on Kevin Lynch's (1960) notion of the imageable city, she writes: physically, these spaces are linked imaginatively to each other, to other cities, and to a common history of cultural interpretations (82). Within this scenario, the elements of the creative quarter copy, print, art supply and film developing stores, hip cafes and restaurants, galleries, studios, loft conversions and street furniture are gradually linked together to form a recognizable and potentially iterative matrix, overlaid on the disused former industrial district. Moreover, as a prominent, coordinated technique in the revitalization strategies of British cities, and given the aftermath of Cool Britannia, the creative quarter must be seen also as a symptom of a symptom. For, if Cool Britannia is itself produced through the application of branding discourse to the level of national subjectivity, and to the glamorization of the artist, then it is only a short step to contemplate the urbanist logic of the creative quarter as BritSpaceâ„¢. Notes 1. A creative industry is one that has its origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which [has] a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. I am following the definition of creative industries used by the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport. It was first used in the Creative Industries Mapping Document, released in November 1998 and was maintained in the second, more extensive mapping exercise in February 2001. The list of activities designated as creative are: advertising, architecture, art and antiques, crafts, design, designer fashion, film and video, interactive leisure software, music, the performing arts, publishing, software and computer services, television and radio. 2. I discuss the emergence of creative enterprises at King's Cross and Spitalfields at length in my doctoral dissertation (Deckha 2000). 3. As Bobby (1999) reports, the Wolff Olins consultants commented that looking at business attitudes towards national identity and UK industry found that 72% of the world's leading companies believe a national image is important when making purchase decisions. In light of this, and worryingly for British business, only 36% of our respondents felt that a 'made in the UK' label would influence their decision positively. 4. Lash and Urry describe this process of branding in the creative or cultural industries: What (all) the culture industries produce becomes increasingly, not like commodities but advertisements. As with advertising firms, the culture industries sell not themselves but something else and they achieve this through 'packaging'. Also like advertising firms, they sell 'brands' of something else. And they do this through the transfer of value through images (1994, 138). References Blair T. (1998) The Third Way: New Politics for a New Century. The Fabian Society, London. Bobby D. (1999) Original Britain' could succeed where 'Cool Britannia' failed Brand Strategy November 22: 6. Boyer M C. (1995) The Great Frame-Up: Fantastic appearances in contemporary spatial politics, Liggett H., Perry D. C., eds. Spatial Practices. Sage, New York. 81-109. Castells M. (1992) The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell, Oxford. Coombe R. (1998) The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Deckha N. (2000) Repackaging the Inner City: Historic Preservation, Community Development, and the Emergent Cultural Quarter in London. Unpublished MS, Rice University. Department of Culture, Media and Sport [DCMS]. (2001) Creative industries mapping document [http://www.culture.gov.uk/creative/pdf/p...] Ford S. (1996) Myth Making Art Monthly March: 194. Giddens A. (1998) The Third Way. Polity, Cambridge. Greenhalgh L. (1998) From Arts Policy to Creative Economy Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, 87, May: 84-94. Hewison R. (1996) Cool Britannia Sunday Times, 19 May. Lash S. and Urry J. (1994) Economies of Signs and Space. Sage, London. Littler J. (2000) Creative Accounting: Consumer Culture, The 'Creative Economy' and the Cultural Policies of New Labour in Bewes T. and Gilbert J. eds. Cultural Capitalism. Lawrence & Wishart, London. 203-222. Lynch K. (1960) The Image of the City. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. McRobbie A. (1999) In the Culture Society. Routledge, London. Roberts J. (1996) Mad for it!: Philistinism, the everyday and new British art Third Text, 35 (Summer): 29-42. Roberts J. (1998) Pop Art, the Popular and British Art of the 1990s in McCorquodale D. et al, eds. Occupational Hazard. Black Dog, London. 53-78. Rose N. (1999) Inventiveness in politics: review of Anthony Giddens, The Third Way Economy and Society, 28.3: 467-493. Scott A.J. (2000) The Cultural Economy of Cities. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Smith C. (1998) Creative Britain. Faber and Faber, London. Stallabrass J. (1999) High Art Lite. Verso, London. Suchin P. (1998) After a Fashion: Regress as Progress in Contemporary British Art in McCorquodale D. et al, eds. Occupational Hazard. Black Dog, London. 95-110. Links http://www.culture.gov.uk/creative/pdf/part1.pdf Citation reference for this article MLA Style Deckha, Nityanand. "Britspaceâ„¢?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/britspace.php>. Chicago Style Deckha, Nityanand, "Britspaceâ„¢?" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/britspace.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Deckha, Nityanand. (2002) Britspaceâ„¢?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/britspace.php> ([your date of access]).

Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham has shown to delighted audiences around the world. Released during the soccer World Cup (and just before it in Britain in case the Brits did poorly), the film capitalised on interest in the game with its good-humoured look at a young 18 year old’s passion for playing soccer. Where the film would seem to break new ground is that the 18 year old is not only a girl, but also of Indian Sikh background. In allowing Jess (Jasminder) to follow her sporting dreams to professionalism rather than the path her parents initially expect of her (university then marriage), the film stretches the boundaries of race, gender, and generation, allowing audiences the opportunity to identify with an atypical protagonist. The film won almost universal goodwill from critics and audiences alike, however Jess’ success seems to be predicated on the assumption that the audience will only accept a British Indian girl’s love of soccer if any taint of lesbianism is expelled from the film. Girls’ team sport has not much of a public following, yet Beckham topped the British charts for weeks, was voted viewers’ favourite in the Sydney Film Festival, and screened for months in Australian cinemas and elsewhere around the world. While Beckham’s name may have helped draw the crowds, a summary of the subject matter might be expected to have turned them away, rather than dragged them in. When Chandra was attempting to raise finance for the film, the response was invariably, “Soccer? Girl Soccer? Indian girl soccer? – no way!” (Urban) While it is true that positioning an audience to side with a protagonist can result in the most unexpected identifications, women’s sport often attracts either uneasiness or indifference rather than delight and acceptance. By having one set of fears allayed, an audience can often be induced to identify with a cause they might otherwise feel ambivalent about. If Jess is shown to conventionally love a man, then her love of soccer is rendered so much more acceptable. While the reception of women’s sport in the West has come a long way from the alarm which greeted its inception in the late nineteenth century, it still poses something of a conundrum in the public sphere. The first women’s professional soccer match, played in London in 1895, was treated with scorn by the press. In the early 1920s in Britain, men’s clubs stalled the development of women’s soccer (which consisted of about 150 clubs) when they refused to let women use their pitches. Currently women’s soccer is on the rise, especially in the US, but the press in particular often find it, and other non-traditional female games, difficult to report without resorting to tactics designed to allay readers’ (and possibly reporters’) fears. These fears revolve around the contradictions between the public role of sport and dominant cultural constructions of femininity. Such contradictions have been summarised as being between “femininity or ‘musculinity’” (Hargreaves 145). Ultimately, traditional femininity is seen to be in opposition to athleticism and the sportswoman is often involved in a complex negotiation between the two conflicting requirements. When the sportswoman’s appearance, behaviour, and especially her relationships uphold traditional femininity, her athleticism is not seen as problematic. On the other hand, when she fails to sufficiently ‘feminise’ herself, or even if she plays a sport considered ‘masculine’, her credentials as a woman may be called into question. The most devastating allegation to be levelled at the sportswoman is still that sport has made her butch. To be butch is to have failed to adequately perform femininity, and is generally also taken to indicate lesbianism. Even women who do little to conform to traditional measures of femininity may be redeemed in the press and in commentary by reference to their husbands, boyfriends and children. Lesbians present a different problem for sports writers and commentators; while many sportswomen are in fact lesbian, the public is generally shielded from this. Despite the fact that gay issues are being represented more and more in popular culture, in sport it is still a taboo for both men and women. In Bend It Like Beckham, the whole plot of the film depends on negotiating that taboo in as convincing a way as possible. In order to make possible a narrative of a girl’s self-fulfilment through soccer for mainstream audiences, it is necessary for the film to make the lesbian in soccer invisible at the same time. The filmmaker goes to great lengths to do this. The most obvious device is the romance plot, staple of popular film in almost any genre. Joe is the love interest of both girls in the heterosexual plot as, conversely, he is the plot device which separates them, in a potential lesbian plot. As the coach of the girls’ team, he does not detract in any way from either girl’s goal of playing professional sport. In order to satisfy parental characters and audience alike, he is necessary as the affirmation of Jess’ (and Jules’) heterosexuality. But the film goes further than simply making the central female characters straight. In order to expunge the image of the lesbian sportswoman, every scene depicting the team in conversation or relaxing features a performance of heterosexuality. This is done either through their locker room conversations about who is shagging whom and who fancies whom, or by their dress and demeanour at the club in Germany. There is such an underlying anxiety about lesbianism in the film that not a single representation of it is allowed to occur, despite how unrealistic this might be in women’s sport. It is not that Chadha is not prepared to deal with the issue; her last film, What’s Cooking, positively featured a lesbian couple among other couplings and family groups. However, obviously, the spectre of the lesbian is so great in women’s sport that it is necessary to omit it entirely in order to represent women’s participation in sport as a positive thing. This is done, above all, by affirming the girls’ femininity, and most of all their heterosexuality. Although Jules’ mother Paula is the butt of much of the film’s humour – the extraordinary variations in her cleavage provide a running sight gag throughout the film – she is also the voice of the audience’s fears about the direction of the girls’ relationship: “There’s a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one of them without a fella”. Despite the audience being let in on the truth about the girls’ apparent heterosexuality much earlier than Paula is, they are similarly set up to anticipate that these soccer-mad girls, with their posters of either Beckham or butch sportswomen on their walls, will gradually fall in love with each other over the course of the film. But as Jules tells her mother: “Just because I wear trackies and play sport, doesn’t make me a lesbian”. Paula’s response – “I’ve got nothing against it. I was cheering for Martina Navratilova as much as the next person” – hides the fact that she does have something against lesbianism. Finally her joy at the revelation that the girls are both keen on Joe rather than each other is mirrored in the audience’s laughter at her, laughter which to some extent could be interpreted as reflecting their own relief. While Paula is almost as self-conscious about Jess’ Indian heritage as she is about lesbianism, the film is more comfortable about racial diversity than it is about lesbianism. It’s not even gayness as such that is troubling. Jess’ friend Tony tells her of his attraction to men – “no, Jess, I really like Beckham” – and this is portrayed affectionately, despite the viewer’s knowledge that life for him may involve more difficult negotiations than Jess will have to make. The real focus of the film is on choices for women and establishing sport as a valid one of these. Jess’ soccer final is given equal footing with Pinky’s wedding, and the cuts between both occasions construct them as similarly fulfilling events for both sisters. The film is not concerned with undermining Pinky’s choices of marriage and motherhood either, although both Jess’ and Jules’ mothers are represented as conservative and limiting forces in their lives, much more so than their fathers. Bend It Like Beckham cannot, in the end, be ‘bent’ because it is so busy exorcising the spectre of the lesbian in sport. Establishing an Indian sporting female subjectivity comes at the cost of rejecting any potential lesbian subjectivity, let alone lesbian love. If Jess is to love sport, then she must love her man as well. In order to present a palatable narrative of female fulfilment in sport, Jess and Jules have to be pretty and feminine as well as athletic, and most of all, they have to be straight. Works Cited Hargreaves, Jennifer. Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sports. London: Routledge, 1994. Urban, Andrew L. “Bending Forward.” Urbancinefile October 3, 2002. http://www.urbancinefile.com 04/10/02. Links http://www.urbancinefile.com Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Treagus, Mandy. "Not Bent At All" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/beckham.php>. APA Style Treagus, M., (2002, Nov 20). Not Bent At All. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/beckham.html

‘Now if you take the ugly,’ he continued, ‘or the deformed, or the old, and transcend your natural revulsion by uniting with it aesthetically – sometimes even physically – a rare ecstasy results which generates great magical potential.’ – John Scott, ‘Preface’ In our editorial call for submissions we set the parameters for a discourse of ‘filth’ based in the creative work of Australian poet and novelist John Scott and the psychoanalytic theoretical frame of Julia Kristeva’s work on the aesthetics of abjection, as set out in Powers of Horror. Following Scott’s alchemical imperative, we cast ‘filth’ as the creative product of aesthetic union with the abject, often repudiated by the cultural mainstream. Thus we embarked on a journey down crooked alleyways to places of alterity, where we found our editorial electronic mailbox clogged with more detritus than an urban sewage viaduct, bursting and bubbling up through the foramina magna at the bases of our skulls to pickle our brains in abject ‘filth’. By panning alluvially amongst the faecal dross of pornographic spam that sprayed at us each time we logged in, we managed to a sift a little gold from it all—the papers and artwork we selected from the scree—as well as lumps of crystalline feldspar, two sets of false teeth, a whalebone corset, and a small battery-operated device with a studded rubber collar. Filth, it seems, continues to be confronting and contentious as is evidenced by our articles; as well the sheer volume of filth we received and the ensuing debates around what should make the final cut. In our feature article Donna Lee Brien bravely and eruditely reassesses An American Psycho fifteen years after its original publication. Bret Eastern Ellis endured years of vilification and threats due to this novel. Dr Brien reminds us that it is precisely that which we most stridently attempt to repudiate is that which most clearly mirrors the parts of ourselves and our society that we wish to ignore. As Julia Kristeva famously declared, ‘the abject, and abjection are my safeguards. The primers of my culture.’ (Kristeva 4) By declaring American Psycho depraved filth borne out of a depraved mind, mainstream society was able to ignore the urgent warnings for western culture implicit in the text. Fifteen years after its publication it remains relevant, and a terrible prophecy of the situation we find ourselves. A society that laments murder and violence but consistently fails to recognise its complicity. A society which continues to champion individualism but refuses to take responsibility for the consequences of such a manifesto. Filth—in all its incarnations—reminds us of our humanity, in all its messy, frightening, stinking glory. Our work is further anchored and framed in a carnal discourse of ‘filth’ by this issue’s cover image—Julie Firth’s ‘Always Already (Not) There’, from the corpus of her recent video installation exhibition Stain. Julie’s accompanying paper ‘Ineradicable Stain’ elucidates the theoretical background to this artwork, and the nature of its process of creation—one of carnal union with the abject, involving transcendence of revulsion in a process sacred to the artist, but likely to be considered blasphemous in the context of her religious and cultural frame. Firth tells us that ‘Stain is about forgiveness’. She cites the work as ‘a protest against any beliefs that position individual, cultures, religions into polarised extremes of hatred’ and as ‘an appeal for reintegration, self-acceptance, and a plea to bear the unbearable’. Well known cult writer and academic Jack Sargeant explores the increasing prevalence of anal sex in heterosexual pornography, and its various scatological implications in his article ‘Filth and Sexual Excess: Some Brief Reflections on Popular Scatology’. Sargeant reminds us that ‘shit is the part of us that both defies and defines humanity’, and the combining of shit and sex symbolises one of the final taboos in human relationships. This is an especially confronting article, but it lucidly and poignantly unpacks our revulsion and our fascination with bodily waste; and the carnal union represented in scatology. Vivienne Muller’s paper discusses the aesthetic displays of plastinated human cadavers, in The Amazing Human Body exhibition currently touring Australia and in the art of showman anatomist Gunther von Hagens, in the context of Kristeva’s illustration of the abject, that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order’ (4), in corporeal terms. The display of the sculpted human corpse—in both it’s external and internal organicity—as objet d’art constitutes a abject breach of boundaries and conventions that shows us something of what Kristeva has described as ‘what I permanently thrust aside in order to live’. Although she does not address John Scott’s work directly, Muller’s discourse of the mortician’s art raises to mind Scott’s narrative ‘Elegy’ in which his loathsome Pogliani sneers, referring to the dead poet’s sister: “You’ll find her in the galleries. She has requested les embaumers.” He breathed forcefully through the nose. “It is ridiculous, when there’s so little left to be preserved! At least the stench will make her easier to find.” (Translation 60) Patrick West offers us a careful and concise critical piece, based in his knowledge of the literary discourse generated by Kristeva’s work, and applied to Janet Frame’s The Carpathians. West argues the case that ‘Abjection is the … discovery by the subject that what lies without also lies within, that to be one is also to be an other. Not that one necessarily lives on the edge, but that the edge is what makes us live.’ In the context of Frame’s work, he politicises corporeal abjection and declares to us that the ‘body is abjectly ripe with language.’ By comparing urinary and faecal incontinence with the concept of a nation’s ‘leaky borders’, Farida Tilbury also invokes a discourse of corporeal abjection, of the loss of control of the boundary between what is inside and what is outside, the me and the not-me. Within our discourse of ‘filth’, her work advances from the ground that Patrick West has taken with respect to the political implications of bodily metaphors and that of Vivienne Muller’s paper on breaches of physical boundaries and conventions. The infamous Bondi ‘rubbish house’ has been presented by tabloid television time and again as an assault on the aspirations of home-owners in John Howard’s Australia. In her article ‘Location, Location: Situating Bondi’s “Rubbish House”’, Kirsten Seale uses the media coverage of the Bondi home, and it’s owner, as a metaphor for Australian mainstream society’s distaste for ‘matter out of place’ and it’s transgressive qualities in the capitalist social space. The impact on young people of violent video games has, and continues to be, an important aspect in the argument for censorship. Scott Beattie in ‘Extremity, Video Games and the Censors’ takes up the argument that ‘the trend toward censorship of games in Australia would seem to bear the hallmarks of a moral panic’. Beattie proposes that more critical academic engagement in the booming video game industry is necessary to change the prevalent disparaging attitude toward gaming and gamers. As does Kirsten Seale’s article, Beattie’s explores the sociological and political dimensions of labelling ‘filth’. Imogen Tyler guides us through the filthy territory of class politics in her article ‘Chav Scum: The Filthy Politics of Social Class in Contemporary Britain.’ The trope of the chav has become a highly emotive symbol and reviled figure in contemporary Britain. Imogen Tyler unpacks the role of the chav in British society using theories of the despised Other. In ‘Matter Out of Place: Reading Dirty Women’ Carol Wical reads the role of dirt and women in the film Alien to illuminate the disruptive role of mess – particularly when the mess is attached to women. When women are represented as literally dirty in film it is often to signal their status as unfeminine; in direct contrast to the role of dirt as a signifier of courage and effort on male characters. To conclude the issue, Jason Bainbridge sticks a fork into the turf of suburbia and turns it over to reveal its underbelly, teeming with ‘filth’. He applies the critical writings of John Hartley and Mary Douglas to the cinematic work of David Lynch and Todd Solondz on the soiling of suburban life. He describes the way in which Lynch’s character in Blue Velvet, college student Jeffrey Beaumont, is traumatised by his voyeuristic adventures. John Scott’s Carl, from ‘Preface’, who follows the magician’s advice given in our introductory epigraph, also is corrupted and comes to a bad end. We editors, now baptised in the cesspool of our filthy investigations, turn to our suburban lives, fearful lest you buttonhole us sternly in the street, like Sandy in Blue Velvet saying: ‘I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert!” References Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Scott, John. St Clair. Sydney: Pan MacMillan, 1990. ———. Translation. Sydney: Pan MacMillan, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Leggett, Andrew, and Donna Hancox. "filth." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/00-editorial.php>. APA Style Leggett, A., and D. Hancox. (Nov. 2006) "filth," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/00-editorial.php>.

Does the arrival of the network society mean we are now a culture of collectors, a society of sharers? We mused about these questions while assembling this M/C Journal issue, which has its genesis in a past event of ‘shared’ confusion. Alex Burns booked into Axel Bruns’s hotel room at the 1998 National Young Writer’s Festival (NYWF) in Newcastle. This ‘identity theft’ soon extended to discussion panels and sessions, where some audience members wondered if the NYWF program had typographical errors. We planned, over café latte at Haddon’s Café, to do a co-session at next year’s festival. By then the ‘identity theft’ had spread to online media. We both shared some common interests: the music of Robert Fripp and King Crimson, underground electronica and experimental turntablism, the Internet sites Slashdot and MediaChannel.org, and the creative possibilities of Open Publishing. “If you’re going to use a pseudonym,” a prominent publisher wrote to Alex Burns in 2001, “you could have created a better one than Axel Bruns.” We haven’t yet done our doppelgänger double-act at NYWF but this online collaboration is a beginning. What became clear during the editorial process was that some people and communities were better at sharing than others. Is sharing the answer or the problem: does it open new possibilities for a better, fairer future, or does it destroy existing structures to leave nothing but an uncontrollable mess? The feature article by Graham Meikle elaborates on several themes explored in his insightful book Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet (New York: Routledge, London: Pluto Press, 2002). Meikle’s study of the influential IndyMedia network dissects three ‘compelling founder’s stories’: the Sydney-based Active software team, the tradition of alternative media, and the frenetic energy of ‘DiY culture’. Meikle remarks that each of these ur-myths “highlights an emphasis on access and participation; each stresses new avenues and methods for new people to create news; each shifts the boundary of who gets to speak.” As the IndyMedia movement goes truly global, its autonomous teams are confronting how to be an international brand for Open Publishing, underpinned by a viable Open Source platform. IndyMedia’s encounter with the Founder’s Trap may have its roots in paradigms of intellectual property. What drives Open Source platforms like IndyMedia and Linux, Tom Graves proposes, are collaborative synergies and ‘win-win’ outcomes on a vast and unpredictable scale. Graves outlines how projects like Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation’s ‘GNU Public License’ challenge the Western paradigm of property rights. He believes that Open Source platforms are “a more equitable and sustainable means to manage the tangible and intangible resources of this world we share.” The ‘clash’ between the Western paradigm of property rights and emerging Open Source platforms became manifest in the 1990s through a series of file-sharing wars. Andy Deck surveys how the ‘browser war’ between Microsoft and Netscape escalated into a long-running Department of Justice anti-trust lawsuit. The Motion Picture Association of America targeted DVD hackers, Napster’s attempt to make the ‘Digital Jukebox in the Sky’ a reality was soon derailed by malicious lawsuits, and Time-Warner CEO Gerald Levin depicted pre-merger broadband as ‘the final battleground’ for global media. Whilst Linux and Mozilla hold out promise for a more altruistic future, Deck contemplates, with a reference to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938), that Internet producers “must conform to the distribution technologies and content formats favoured by the entertainment and marketing sectors, or else resign themselves to occupying the margins of media activity.” File-sharing, as an innovative way of sharing access to new media, has had social repercussions. Marjorie Kibby reports that “global music sales fell from $41.5 billion in 1995 to $38.5 billion in 1999.” Peer-to-Peer networks like KaZaA, Grokster and Morpheus have surged in consumer popularity while commercial music file subscription services have largely fallen by the wayside. File-sharing has forever changed the norms of music consumption, Kibby argues: it offers consumers “cheap or free, flexibility of formats, immediacy, breadth of choice, connections with artists and other fans, and access to related commodities.” The fragmentation of Australian families into new diversities has co-evolved with the proliferation of digital media. Donell Holloway suggests that the arrival of pay television in Australia has resurrected the ‘house and hearth’ tradition of 1940s radio broadcasts. Internet-based media and games shifted the access of media to individual bedrooms, and changed their spatial and temporal natures. However pay television’s artificial limit of one television set per household reinstated the living room as a family space. It remains to be seen whether or not this ‘bounded’ control will revive family battles, dominance hierarchies and power games. This issue closes with a series of reflections on how the September 11 terrorist attacks transfixed our collective gaze: the ‘sharing’ of media connects to shared responses to media coverage. For Tara Brabazon the intrusive media coverage of September 11 had its precursor in how Great Britain’s media documented the Welsh mining disaster at Aberfan on 20 October 1966. “In the stark grey iconography of September 11,” Brabazon writes, “there was an odd photocopy of Aberfan, but in the negative.” By capturing the death and grief at Aberfan, Brabazon observes, the cameras mounted a scathing critique of industrialisation and the searing legacy of preventable accidents. This verité coverage forces the audience to actively engage with the trauma unfolding on the television screen, and to connect with their own emotions. Or at least that was the promise never explored, because the “Welsh working class community seemed out of time and space in 1960s Britain,” and because political pundits quickly harnessed the disaster for their own electioneering purposes. In the early 1990s a series of ‘humanitarian’ interventions and televised conflicts popularized the ‘CNN Effect’ in media studies circles as a model of how captivated audiences and global media vectors could influence government policies. However the U.S. Government, echoing the coverage of Aberfan, used the ‘CNN Effect’ for counterintelligence and consensus-making purposes. Alex Burns reviews three books on how media coverage of the September 11 carnage re-mapped our ‘virtual geographies’ with disturbing consequences, and how editors and news values were instrumental in this process. U.S. President George W. Bush’s post-September 11 speeches used ‘shared’ meanings and symbols, news values morphed into the language of strategic geography, and risk reportage obliterated the ideal of journalistic objectivity. The deployment of ‘embedded’ journalists during the Second Gulf War (March-April 2003) is the latest development of this unfolding trend. September 11 imagery also revitalized the Holocaust aesthetic and portrayal of J.G. Ballard-style ‘institutionalised disaster areas’. Royce Smith examines why, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, macabre photo-manipulations of the last moments became the latest Internet urban legend. Drawing upon the theoretical contributions of Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes and others, Smith suggests that these photo-manipulations were a kitsch form of post-traumatic visualisation for some viewers. Others seized on Associated Press wire photos, whose visuals suggested the ‘face of Satan’ in the smoke of the World Trade Center (WTC) ruins, as moral explanations of disruptive events. Imagery of people jumping from the WTC’s North Tower, mostly censored in North America’s press, restored the humanness of the catastrophe and the reality of the viewer’s own mortality. The discovery of surviving artwork in the WTC ruins, notably Rodin’s The Thinker and Fritz Koenig’s The Sphere, have prompted art scholars to resurrect this ‘dead art’ as a memorial to September 11’s victims. Perhaps art has always best outlined the contradictions that are inherent in the sharing of cultural artefacts. Art is part of our, of humanity’s, shared cultural heritage, and is celebrated as speaking to the most fundamental of human qualities, connecting us regardless of the markers of individual identity that may divide us – yet art is also itself dividing us along lines of skill and talent, on the side of art production, and of tastes and interests, on the side of art consumption. Though perhaps intending to share the artist’s vision, some art also commands exorbitant sums of money which buy the privilege of not having to share that vision with others, or (in the case of museums and galleries) to set the parameters – and entry fees – for that sharing. Digital networks have long been promoted as providing the environment for unlimited sharing of art and other content, and for shared, collaborative approaches to the production of that content. It is no surprise that the Internet features prominently in almost all of the articles in this ‘share’ issue of M/C Journal. It has disrupted the existing systems of exchange, but how the pieces will fall remains to be seen. For now, we share with you these reports from the many nodes of the network society – no doubt, more connections will continue to emerge. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Burns, Alex and Bruns, Axel. ""Share" Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/01-editorial.php>. APA Style Burns, A. & Bruns, A. (2003, Apr 23). "Share" Editorial. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/01-editorial.php>

The return of Jesus Christ, the end of the world, war, devastating earthquakes, invading space ships, asteroid strikes, the Y2K bug, what do they all have in common? Little if anything really, except that they have all been associated with the coming of the year 2000. To many in Australia the year 2000 may well be an end, if not the End. To some of those, however, it may also be the beginning of something else most significant. That expectation will now be examined. You will have a conducted tour through war and peace, demonic activity, and aeroplanes crashing and people flying. The subject is how a significant number of Australian Christians understand the end of the world ("The End Times"), most particularly the return of Jesus Christ. Those who hold this view we will call "EndTimers". That Jesus Christ will return has been the expectation of the church from its conception. The day of Pentecost is usually regarded as the birthday of the church, and a few days before that Jesus ascended into heaven and the astonished disciples who witnessed it were told by two angels that Jesus would return (Acts 1:9-11). An expectation of the literal return of Jesus Christ has been with the church ever since. It being commonly featured in its creeds both ancient and modern. However, some individual Christians do not hold to a literal, physical return, though they would be in the minority. But amongst those who do expect a literal return, there has not always been agreement about its nature. EndTimers are one group among many, but scattered throughout the Protestant churches. They predict that Jesus Christ will return very soon, indeed, he will return in "this generation". This phrase and many of the ideas commonly associated with it are to be found in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 24. In this chapter Jesus predicts some cataclysmic events, and towards the end of his address, in verse 34, says that they will happen in "this generation". The most natural understanding of this phrase in context is that those events would happen in the life time of his hearers. Indeed, events very much like those described by Jesus did happen in the Fall of Jerusalem about forty years later. Such are the similarities between the two, many Christians with a more liberal view of the Bible see Christ's words as a later construct of the church placed on his lips, and thus as prophecy after the event. For reasons that are more complex than logical EndTimers regard the phrase "this generation" as referring to the generation beginning at the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. From that, the events predicted by Jesus are regarded not specifically about a fall of Jerusalem, but about his return and the end of the world. Therefore those who hold this view believe that the End Times will begin within a generation of 1948. If these EndTimers, then, believe that Jesus Christ will return within a generation of 1948, the first question one has to ask is, "How long is a generation?" In the 1960s and 1970s, even into the 1980s, the common answer to that was "Forty years!". Consequently, a glut of books and videos appeared predicting that the End would begin in the 1980s, and they included such titles as: Will Christ Return by 1988: 101 Reasons Why; 88 Reasons Why Christ Will Return in 1988; and Decade of the 80's: A World in Spasm. But the most prominent and influential of them was Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970. That book is said to be the third largest selling Christian book of all time, with over 20 million copies in print (weep your heart out Bryce Courtney). Most books of this type have been published in America, but were frequently available in Australia. Though this system of belief seems to have had its origins in nineteenth century Britain, American fundamentalists have been its main advocates and developers. As so often happens with American ideas and practices, many Australians have enthusiastically adopted it. In Australia one of the leading teachers in the EndTimers' camp is Brisbane's Ray Yerbury, though New Zealander Barry Smith through lecture tours and books has probably had more influence here. The books of Hal Lindsey, Ray Yerbury, Barry Smith and a few other sources will now be used to detail the beliefs of these Australian EndTimers. Lindsey is included because though he is American, Late Great Planet Earth has been a major, perhaps the major, factor in many Australian Christians adopting these beliefs. The starting point must be the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. To EndTimers this is fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Lindsey says that the "paramount prophetic sign" concerning the return of Jesus Christ is that "Israel had to be a nation again in the land of its forefathers". As has already been noted, within this scheme the return of Christ must happen within a generation of that occurrence. Lindsey writing in 1970 was bold enough to say a generation was "something like forty years" (Late, 43, 54), and is said to believe that Christ will definitely return before the year 2000. Yerbury, writing twenty years later, had to have other options, and he stated that a generation could be either 40, 70-80, 100 or 120 years (Vital, 11). Now 1988 is well in the past, many EndTimers seem to expect Christ's return in or around the year 2000. However, this belief is not usually held with great dogmatism or precision. Indeed, End Times expectations in Australia have been quieter in 1999 than many would have expected. There has been little banner-waving or overt demonstration. In addition the sale of books about the End Times through Australian Christian bookshops has also been slower this year than expected. EndTimers commonly believe that further "signs" of Jesus Christ's return include widespread wars, earthquakes and famines. This is based on a particular understanding of Matthew chapter 24. In addition, a decline in Christian moral values (2 Timothy 3:1-4) and a worldwide control of the money markets (Revelation 13:11-18) are also seen as signs that Christ's return is not far away. To what level wars, earthquakes and famines have to rise or moral values decline before they can be considered authentic signs is not usually discussed, but is clearly a difficulty. Another "sign" of the approaching End is the emergence of a demonic political leader, the Antichrist, also known as "the Beast" (Revelation 13:1-18). With the time scale involved it is necessary to believe that this man, and it always seems to be a man, is alive today, so Antichrist candidates have included the present Pope, the President of a rapidly emerging United States of Europe, Bill Gates, and Prince Charles. Australian leaders do not seem to be considered sufficiently important or frightening to feature as Anichrist candidates. The Bible gives the identification of this "Beast": the number 666. Barry Smith, with neat numerics (a = 6, b = 12, etc.), favoured Henry Kissinger for this role, his surname totalling 666 on Smith's method. Yerbury, with characteristic caution, says that we cannot know his identity at this stage. Another figure that must appear is the Antichrist's henchman, "the False Prophet", a religious leader (Smith, Warning, 22-56; Second Warning, 57-66; better, 170-173; Yerbury, Ultimate, 99-112; Vital, 53-4). Central to EndTimers' beliefs is the Great Tribulation, a time of terrible war and suffering. The duration of this cataclysm is variously described as being seven years (Lindsey, Late, 42, 137-8; Yerbury, Vital, 42-4) or three and a half years (Smith, Warning, 102-112). Where does the return of Jesus Christ fit into this? Commonly EndTimers believe that he will return twice, the first time will be immediately prior to the Great Tribulation, the second time will be seven years later. This first return is for a particular purpose: to remove all the "true" Christians from Earth and take them to heaven, in what is usually known as "the Rapture". This is sometimes referred to as "His coming for the saints". On this occasion he does not actually visit Earth; he only appears above it, and "the saints" will literally rise up to meet him in the sky (Matthew 24:37-41; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). But for those remaining on Earth this will all be hidden, that is they will know that their Christian friends and neighbours have disappeared, but will have no idea where they have gone or what has happened (Lindsey, Late, 135-142; Smith, Warning, 150-157; Yerbury, Ultimate, 119-122; Vital, 33-6). This belief conjures up some extraordinary expectations. A Christian doctor operating on a patient will be whisked away, mid operation. Car drivers will disappear, causing their vehicles to crash. Airline pilots will suddenly vanish with terrible consequences. Indeed, it is rumoured that some American airlines do not allow Christians to be both pilot and co-pilot of the one aircraft. Christians must be teamed with non-Christians, in case the Christian is suddenly "raptured". Though this specific belief may not have as much significance in Australia as it does in America, there is no doubt that it is still held tenaciously by its Australian advocates. After the Great Tribulation Jesus Christ will return once more, this time actually to Earth. This return is sometimes referred to as Christ's coming "with the saints", for he will bring back the previously taken Christians with him. This will be followed by the fearsome battle of Armageddon, which Christ will win. He will then establish his reign over the whole world, ruling from Jerusalem, in peace, with equity. This reign will last for 1000 years, the millennium of chapter 20 of the book of Revelation. It is normal for EndTimers to perceive this as literally 1000 years, whereas many other Christians, often with very different understandings of End Times events, would see it as symbolic for a long period (Lindsey, Late, 169-178; Smith, Warning, 158-160; Yerbury, Ultimate, 137-149; Vital, 78-101). Following the Millennium there will be a Satan-led rebellion, but this will be short lived, possibly once more of a seven year duration (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Vital, 105-7). God, however, will then triumph over Satan, and wrap up the events of this world and this age, judge its inhabitants, and create a new Heaven and a new Earth, upon which the saved will live with Christ forever (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Ultimate, 150-154; Vital, 108-117). Who in Australia holds the views outlined above? They are held by most Australian Christian fundamentalists and some Christian evangelicals. Who are these fundamentalists and evangelicals and what else do they believe? Both groups hold to the core traditional Protestant beliefs (the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, etc), and are to be found in most, if not all, Protestant denominations in Australia, from the Anglican Church to the more recently formed charismatic churches. Fundamentalists and evangelicals are not always clearly distinguishable from each other, for there is much overlapping in beliefs between them. But there are, however, some basic differences between the two. Fundamentalists have a very strong emphasis on a literal interpretation of the Bible, frequently interpreting in an unnatural way, often taking metaphors, symbols, and other figures literally. They are also frequently anti-intellectual. Evangelicals, on the other hand, would take a more rational approach to the Bible, giving due regard to the form of the specific writing, and are usually prepared to engage in intellectual debate. Both groups believe that Jesus Christ will literally return, though there is disagreement about the details between and within the two groups. How many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are there in Australia? A survey published in 1994 was conducted amongst the attenders of numerous Protestant congregations, and discovered that 48% of those people believed that "the Bible is the Word of God which needs to be read in the context of the times". These, most of them at any rate, would be what have here been termed "evangelicals". Another 21% believed that "the Bible is the Word of God, to be taken literally word for word", and thus would be "fundamentalists" (Kaldor, 45-7). If the survey was anything like accurate, approaching 70% of those attending Australian Protestant churches are either evangelicals or fundamentalists. As it would also seem that there are over 1 million attenders at Protestant churches in Australia (Kaldor, 344), it is probable that there are more than seven hundred thousand evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in Australia. The specific beliefs outlined in this article are widespread amongst fundamentalist Christians, but also seem to be held by some evangelicals. These Christians can be found in probably all Protestant denominations, though are much more common in charismatic and Baptist churches than in, say, Anglican and Uniting churches. These beliefs are also found in some of the sects outside the mainstream Christian church. The number of EndTimers in Australia is almost certainly well in excess of one hundred thousand, and may be above two hundred thousand. How do these beliefs manifest themselves in current Australian life? First, one would expect EndTimers to be less concerned about certain issues of social concern than other Christians, and this often seems to be the case. For example, one does not often find them championing the protection of the environment. If Christ's Kingdom on Earth is not many years away, then why worry about such things now? They can be attended to when Christ returns. The important issue is to prepare people for that return. Another manifestation is the setting of dates for that return, which is probably more common than many realise. Those writers consulted for this study do not predict exact dates for these events. They rely on the more elastic concept of the "this generation" idea. But other people do predict precise dates and times. It is not uncommon to hear individuals, and it is usually individuals rather than movements, predicting that Christ will return on this date or another. They each have their own schemes of interpreting the numerics of such biblical books as Daniel and Revelation. One of the most famous of these predictions was in 1992 when posters began appearing in various Australian towns declaring: THE FINAL WARNING OF GOD JESUS is COMING IN 1am 29th OCT 1992 IN THE AIR (It's the Rapture) Remember the days of Noah and Lot Reject the 666 of computer bar code Repent your sins to God Ready the 7 years Great Tribulation This particular prediction originated in a movement in Korea, and, indeed, its leader in Australia was a Korean on temporary residence here. Several of the teachings discussed in this article are indicated in the poster, with the addition of a very precise prediction of Jesus Christ's return. When the day approached, the leader of the Australian wing of the movement was interviewed in newspapers and on TV, and he politely but boldly confirmed his conviction to the Australian public. The Current Affair interview with him the day after the prediction was proved false was especially touching. He apologised with great sincerity to those he had misled, and soon after returned to his homeland. Ironically, the organisation of which this man was part seems to have left open the possibility of future predictions. It is one of the astonishing facts of this type of endeavour throughout history, that those who predict the end of the world are not discouraged by failure. They just try again. Why? The answers may vary, but central is a strong belief in the certainty of biblical prophecy and the confidence that some have that they know best how to interpret it. It would seem that it would take more than failure to dent that confidence. References Kaldor, Peter (ed.) Winds of Change: The Experience of Church in a Changing Australia. Sydney: Anzea, 1994. Lindsey, Hal. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970. Smith, Barry R. "... better than Nostradamus." Marlborough: Smith Family, 1996. ---. Second Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1985. ---. Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1980. Yerbury, Ray W. The Ultimate Event. Brisbane: Cross, 1988. ---. Vital Signs of Christ's Coming. Brisbane: Cross, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Bennett. "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php>. Chicago style: David Bennett, "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Bennett. (1999) That year 2000: the end or a beginning?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]).

Most of the existing research on Paul Wittgenstein (1887–1961) focuses on his performing career in central Europe as a left-hand pianist and his commissions from the most prominent composers of the 20th century such as Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel, and his favourite composer, Franz Schmidt. His British performing career and the compositions Ernest Walker, Norman Demuth and Benjamin Britten composed for and dedicated to him, however, remain relatively unexplored. By examining a variety of primary sources that are disclosed here for the first time, this thesis offers the first scholarly research into Wittgenstein’s performing activities in Great Britain in the 1920s–50s and his British commissions in order to fill a major research gap in Wittgenstein studies. Chapter 1 explores Wittgenstein’s self-recognition as a member of the Viennese aristocracy and the shaping of his musical identity, conception and taste, followed by an overview of the related primary sources that are currently located in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, a detailed summary of his performing activities in Great Britain and a discussion of the British reception of him as a left-hand pianist. Chapter 2 focuses on Walker and the three compositions he wrote for piano left-hand, two of which he composed before meeting Wittgenstein and one after, and the pianist’s attitude towards them. Chapter 3 brings to light the much-neglected composer Demuth and the two works he composed for Wittgenstein and discusses possible reasons why the pianist never performed them. Chapter 4 examines Wittgenstein’s first and only official British commission, the Diversions, Op. 21 by Britten, and investigates the interaction between composer and pianist in the compositional process and their differing conceptions of the work.

The history of the inter-war labour movement in Britain had an endless, eclectic musical accompaniment. There were sentimental and comic ballads at social events, socialist hymns at meetings and services, massed choirs and full orchestras, soloists with voice and with instruments, dance bands, jazz bands, brass bands and serious composers. Alongside the performance and enjoyment of music there was a great deal of theorising on the subject. Why was music important? What was the source of its power? What was the difference between 'good' and 'bad' music? To whom did music belong? Did it have special usefulness for the labour movement or was it just 'a pleasant change from politics'? This thesis concerns itself with the practical use labour activists made of music in entertaining the comrades, propagating the socialist message and raising funds as well as the formation of musical organisations and societies within the movement and the special place given to music and song during times of struggle. In so doing it attempts to sketch both a national picture and a more detailed look at the musicality of selected local areas. It also examines the intellectual development of labour theories of music. As this period was one of great upheaval and change in both the worlds of labour politics and popular music alike, so important changes in labour music and labour approaches to music are identified. The developments in musical thought, fed by changes in international socialist ideas about music on the one hand and the experience of seeing music used as a 'weapon' in specific struggles on the other, led to changes in the form and nature of labour music as well as its intended function. It is the assertion of this thesis that such changes had cultural consequences stretching far beyond the inter-war British labour movement.

This thesis considers the pervasive and multifaceted influence of Richard Wagner’s music, aesthetics, and politics on British composers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on music analysis, hermeneutics, and various archival sources (composers’ writings, contemporary reviews, and unpublished music), each chapter of the thesis focusses on case studies that bring British musical Wagnerism into dialogue with a number of other prominent artistic and cultural currents during the period under consideration: notably, Celticism, Pre-Raphaelitism, Arthurianism, nationalisms, mysticism, pantheism, eroticism, and ideas relating to the integration of or translatability of the arts. Despite the sometimes widely divergent aesthetic, political, and social ends for which these composers called on Wagnerian ideas and techniques, this thesis argues that all these manifestations of Wagnerism were united by their composers’ desire to regenerate or re-enchant a world that was perceived to be in a state of crisis or decay. Ultimately, by viewing these composers and works through the lens of British Wagnerism, this study enriches our understanding of British music of the period and situates it the context of a wider European phenomenon.

Bagpipes and pipers, as cultural identifiers, are embedded within their national culture, charged with symbolisms. British authors have often viewed bagpipes as cultural icons, endowing them with connotations from devilish to virtuous, from rural to military. By analysing literary and artistic references one can perceive how the attitude towards the bagpipe changes with the evolution of Britain’s internal dynamics. Jacobitism contributed in casting a particular light on the bagpipe: it was the ‘voice of the rebellion’. In Scotland this constituted a reason for national pride, while in England the ‘common denominator’ of the Scot-enemy charged the bagpipe with the worst connotations. After Jacobitism stopped being seen as a threat, authors and artists came to view the bagpipe in a different light: the once negative icon was now imbued with ancestral values. The Scot – and the bagpipe by synecdoche – was romanticised: as James Boswell wrote, “The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood, and fill me with [...] a crowd of sensations with which sober rationality has nothing to do” (1785). The words of many Romantic authors contributed in characterising the instrument, endowing it with implications the influence of which is still relevant today.