Journal articles on the topic 'Selection process of fiction for bibliotherapy'

The United States is facing an epidemic of mental illness, affecting nearly 60 million Americans annually (http://www.nami.org/ ). The World Health Organization describes mental health as “a long neglected problem” and has established an action plan for 2013-2020 (http://www.who.int/mental_health/action_plan_2013/en/). One way to combat mental illness is through bibliotherapy, which is the use of written materials including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to support emotional and psychiatric healing.Bibliotherapy has been in existence since ancient times, but began in earnest in the United States in the 1850’s during the “Great Awakening.” At that time, mental illness began to be seen as a medical condition rather than a supernatural phenomenon. Since then, due to the changing nature of our institutions, interest in bibliotherapy waned until the 1950’s when there was a slight resurgence in its practice. However, in the last 20 years, bibliotherapy has gained a stronghold in the United Kingdom. To relieve the stress of an overcrowded mental health system, public policy in the UK has supported the use of bibliotherapy in a variety of its institutions. There are many ways to conduct bibliotherapy, but studies show that when the process is interactive, such as in a support group setting, the results are better. Also, bibliotherapy can be conducted by many sorts of professionals, including doctors, therapists, social workers, teachers, and librarians. Studies also show that when the bibliotherapists are trained in the best practices of bibliotherapy, results improve. Bibliotherapy is an effective, low-cost alternative for people in need of therapeutic assistance. The UK model should be studied and implemented in the United States and in other nations to help solve the mental health crisis.

Bibliotherapy is consisted of a combination of the Greek “biblion (book)” and “therapeia (therapy-healing)” which have become popular since the 20th century as one of the alternative therapy methods. It is used to make individuals identify themselves with the works they read through works of high literary and aesthetic value and make them powerful individuals in the spiritual direction by producing solutions to the problems they experience in this way. In other words, bibliotherapy can also be defined as bringing the right books to the individual at the right time. That is, the history of accepting the idea that books are good for man is very old. In this study, the importance of using biographies will be explained in one of the important alternative therapy methods, bibliotherapy. There are some criteria in the selection of books because they are the most important materials that form the basis of bibliotherapy. As it is known, the process is three dimensions as the advisee, book preference and consultant. However, it is not possible to use every work in bibliotherapy. It is important to use the works that are high in reality dimension and keeping a mirror on the problems of the individual in bibliotherapy. This process includes the works that will develop the imaginary world of the individual, as well as the works suitable for real life. As is known, the common point in biographies is not only the success that the person who wrote the biography has achieved, but also this person's struggle for reaching his goal is his patience and perseverance. As a result, in the process of bibliotherapy, reading the biographies that will increase the morale and motivation of the individual and develop self-confidence will contribute positively to the person. Moreover, the preference of the biographies of the positive role-model in the society will be the example for the individual.

The relevance of the research is based on more than a year-long restrictions experienced by people of Lithuania and worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical part presents a concept for bibliotherapic recommendations for reading. From an interdisciplinary point of view, the research integrates insights from the domains of psychology, public health, information and communication and literary criticism. Individuals experiencing psychological problems, by delving into literature which encourages reflection of humanistic values, during their in-depth reading process, can not only distract themselves from stressful everyday life but also, while identifying themselves with personages of literary works, better conceive themselves and their environment as well as find new ways to solve their problems. This justifies the applicability of bibliotherapy for those who experience social exclusion during the pandemic. The open survey collected data from 17 experts (12 members of the Lithuanian Bibliotherapy Association and 5 practitioners involved in bibliotherapy projects; 4 study participants from the health service sector (psychotherapists); 6 representatives from the education sector; and 7, from the cultural sector). A recommendatory list of books for passive bibliotherapy sessions was drawn. The list comprises 2 topics: (1) recommendations for general bibliotherapy and (2) fiction for health practitioners (81 books in total, 43% of which are accessible online). Every entry in the list includes metadata required for the identification of the work (AUTHOR and title), a brief substantiation of bibliotherapic aspects formulated by experts and the information about the accessibility of the book on the portal ibiblioteka.lt. The list of bibliotherapic literature can be also useful for health practitioners, social activities professionals, organisers of local community activities, librarians and those who wish to provide help by reading.

<p>ABSTRACTSelection Policies generally is guidelines for library that contains the design and activities that will be increase quality and quantity of collections. This written activity has capability to guide library vision, mission, and goal. He purpose of this research are to review selection process of fiction collection, selection authority, and selection principle in Kanaan Global School Jambi Library. This research using case study approach and research data obtained from interviews and documentation. The result shows: (a) on selection process, selection plot already on point but there is no written policy; the librarian also have know how to use selection tools such as publisher catalogue and bookstore website (b) dualism of authority in fiction book selection policy were librarian and chief director. Librarian just as Indonesian fiction collection selector and the chief director as foreign language fiction collection. (c) Principle differences on fiction collection, librarian more focus on collection popularity and the chief director more focus on quality and vision mission and curriculum relevance.</p>

Prompted by the attention received in recent years by the collateral benefits of reading and the growing prominence of bibliotherapy in the literary marketplace, this paper aims to investigate the therapeutic effects of books as they emerge from the experience of fictional characters, a perhaps less scientifically sound endeavour than empirical studies and clinical trials targeting real-life readers but one likely to occasion interesting perspectives on reading as a coping mechanism in the face of trauma. By focusing on a variety of reading experiences gleaned from a selection of novels ranging from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, Graham Swift’s Waterland, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and targeting acts of solitary communion with narrative as well as illicit seminars, informal book clubs and impromptu public readings, the analysis intends to highlight the extent to which literature can provide more than a mere pastime or intellectual challenge to its most vulnerable readers. Whether such benefits entail a sense of community, a temporary shelter from the hardships of war, a reprieve from the abuses of a totalitarian government or sanctuary from the less brutal but nevertheless haunting scars of broken relationships, parental disapproval or social rejection, the ultimate goal is to identify and assess the various survival strategies employed within these fictional universes. The

The purpose of this study was to describe the selection of the collections in the library Al Izzah LPMI Batu, East Java. With the benefit of providing research solutions to do the selection collection in the library Al Izzah LPMI Batu City in East Java in overcoming obstacles faced about the selection of the collection. The type of research used in this study is a qualitative research technique of observation and interviews.Based on observations and interviews direct to the Library Manager Al Izzah LPMI stone town, East Java can be summed up as follows. First, the selection process for the collection activities (fiction) does not do any procurement of collection. This selection process was conducted using three tools of seletion i.e. using Catalog for publishers, Indonesia’s national bibliography, and reviews books. Second, the obstacles faced in the activity of a selection of fiction in the library Al Izzah LPMI batu City, East Java, is the lack of human resources, the difficulty of finding fiction collection shades of Islam, and is still limited to the choice of the equipment used

Abstract The serious non-fiction paperback was one of the principal vehicles for the distribution of expert knowledge in the mid 20th century. This paper examines the market for serious non-fiction in both the US and the UK between the 1930s and the 1960s, by looking at the market leaders in the two countries, Pelican and Mentor Books, published by Penguin and New American Library respectively. It argues that novel modes of distribution and acts of selection by authors, publishers and readers constituted a process of the co-production of knowledge that problematizes views of mid-century expertise as expressions of governmentality. Different patterns of distribution and market demand in the two countries shed further light on who read, what they read and for what purpose.

Despite a long-standing acknowledgment of the evolutionary chracter of George Meredith's poetry and fiction, and a more recent delineation of the specifically Darwinian elements of The Egoist (1879), the relationship between that novel and Darwin's The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) has been overlooked. Both works focus on the evolutionary development of the human moral sense and on the process of courtship between the sexes, but Meredith's novel links these issues while Darwin's book keeps them separate. Through his characterization of Sir Willoughby Patterne, Meredith shows that "civilized" egoism is a sign of moral reversion most likely to occur during courtship, and he critiques Darwin's discussion of sexual selection in humans, exposing its inconsistencies and in particular challenging its portrayal of female choice. While modern feminist critics have rightly identified problems with the novel and the theory of comedy that governs it, Meredith's attack on Darwin's culturally powerful view of the sexes endorses a postion on "the woman question" close to John Stuart Mill's, and the novel's problems are best seen as part of this attack rather than as naive self-contradictions of Meredith's feminism.

Abstract The Cord Blood Banks (CBB) wishing to be affiliated to NETCORD must demonstrate that they adopted the Fact-Netcord standards for collection, processing, quality control testing, storage, selection and release for their cord blood units (CBU). The best way to provide these assurances is to obtain FACT accreditation label. The Besancon Cord Blood Bank initiated this quality approach in January 2004 and was inspected on-site in June 2004.Initial internal audits revealed major deficiencies in specific Quality Management areas and the lack of an efficient documentation system together with adequate standard operating procedures and documented validation studies for each step of the process. Adequate labelling, conformity with good transport practices and post-transplantation clinical data recovery were also areas to be improved. Moreover, in order to clarify the different pathways of material, cell products, staff, or wastes, several building works modifications had to be undertaken. Several major improvements were performed during those six months of Fact accreditation project. The Assurance Quality Information System was significantly upgraded to control all the major elements of assurance quality (staff formation, material, premises, alarms, cleaning, records, and quality control testing) by implementing a computerised Oracle-based application. Morover, all documentation was implemented on an intranet network and is now easily accessible to all the staff wherever in the facility. In order to improve the volume of CBU, a weigh-and-mix machine used for blood donor harvesting procedure was tailored for specific CBU collection. To improve the conditions of transport we set up special containers with controlled temperature continuously monitored. Finally, major validation study was performed on a short period, aiming at demonstrating efficiency and reproducibility of the overall CBU process. In brief, eligible mothers, who give their informed consent, are accepted for CB donation after a medical interview. Collection is performed with the placenta in utero. The delay between collection and processing must not exceed 24hrs. CBU volumes are reduced using Sepax© (Biosafe, Switzerland) technology for long-term storage in a Bioarchive© (Thermogenesis, CA, USA). Quality controls include testing maternal blood samples for infectious markers (HIV, HCV, HBV, HTLV, syphilis) and the presence of IGg- and IgM-antibodies against toxoplasmosis, EBV and CMV on the day of birth and after a quarantine period of at least 60 days. No active infectious disease is mandatory. A baby’s clinical examination is performed at the same time point. Microbiological tests on the CBU must be negative. In addition, our CBB requires a minimal collection volume of 80 ml and a minimum of 2 x 106 CD34 cells for CBU qualification. We implemented a systematic cord blood haemoglobin analysis and tested systematically cord blood plasma for viral infection by genomic detection. Finally, our bank obtained its FACT accreditation on May 2nd 2005, validating our strategy. This achievement had a great impact on CBB staff, desiring to maintain and improve their know how. On June 30th 2005, 5045 CBU were registered at French marrow registry and 273 (5%) were transplanted, 142 (52%) in France and 131 (48%) in other countries. This high 5% transplantation rate may be due to the stringent initial quality controls requirements.

While the importance of the translation process remains recognized as a worthwhile activity in both Literary/Cultural Studies and in fiction, it is frequently overlooked in larger discussions of Canadian literature, including comparative studies. Such activities aim to blur the lines between Us and Them, between Other and Self, or between the Rest of Canada (the Roc) and Quebec, in other words, to align or combine the frequently cited legendary two staircases of Château de Chambord. However, in the process, they have obscured other boundaries, such as those between Comparative Literature and Translation. Studies in Comparative Canadian Literature, for example, frequently overlook, or at least downplay, the importance of translation, neglecting to consider, for example, the translation strategy used and the selection of translated works available for comparison.

Abstract This paper posits that the circulation of the earliest items of Chinese fiction in early modern Europe was indebted to the popularity of certain titles within the Qing-dynasty book market on the one hand and to the participation of educated Chinese in the process of purchase, selection, and translation on the other. It further argues that European translations deployed specific features of Chinese imprints in order to differentiate translations from the hugely popular pseudo-Chinese transcreations, thereby seeking to establish textual authority for a philologically grounded Chinese voice. The paper terms this convergence of conceptual, material, and social factors in producing transculturally mediated texts “biblioglossia,” in order to capture aspects of textuality neglected or obscured in standard discussions of “orientalism.”

Abstract The authorial preface to works of fiction provides a unique space for exploration of authorial self-fashioning and author-reader mediation. This article argues that, when works of fiction are translated and new prefaces written for a new readership, these prefaces can provide extra insights into the perceptions, expectations, and constrictions of both producing and consuming literature in a global era. Recent debates on world literature have centered mainly on issues of reception and circulation, preferring to define its scope in terms of the reader and the reading context rather than by the author or production process. This study considers the changing role of authors who consciously attempt to locate themselves within this contested and reconfigured field and how they construct a persona to address a newly defined world readership. This article explores the changes throughout the twentieth century by analyzing a selection of authorial prefaces to translated editions of three influential authors: Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881–1936), Ba Jin 巴金 (1906–2005), and Yu Hua 余華 (1960–). All prolific preface writers, they each have, in different ways, in different periods, engaged with the concept of a global literary readership and marketplace and negotiated their respective places within it.

This article is embedded in discourses surrounding the new mobility of people as well as scientific, technological and socio-cultural changes in a late-colonial setting. It investigates how a number of prominent and less-known male authors from the centre and margins of the twentieth-century Hindi literary canon, including Rishabhcharan Jain, Shriyut ‘Arun’ and Durgadas Bhaskar, depict unconventional family constellations and human relationships that challenge normative conceptions of family, fatherhood, conjugality and blood bonds as well as gender roles and responsibilities. The short stories under investigation suggest that human relationships require constant negotiation and investigation of the meaning of kinship, caste, class and the human. In the process, we encounter adulterous husbands, strong wives and nurturing fathers’ life struggles and tribulations. These short stories centre on husband–wife, man–mistress, wife–mistress and father–son relationships. Their male protagonists are authoritative towards their wives, caring towards their mistresses and nurturing towards children. At times, their self-sacrifice goes as far as to complete self-annihilation for the sake of the offspring, and, at other times, they lead double lives. Mothers are absent in these short stories. Instead, male protagonists claim parenthood and are ready to go as far as to abduct infants in order to perform fatherhood. I argue that parenting constellations and conjugality became negotiable for a number of factors that are addressed in my selection of Hindi short stories: (a) parenthood was not contingent upon biology (as stories on adoption and abduction suggest), (b) contraception was readily available to women and men (as promoted in periodicals of the time) and in the process also changing attitudes towards sexuality and conjugality, (c) abortion emerged as a medical option to undo a pregnancy emerging from an illicit love affair and (d) the new mobility enabled people to get around easily and frequently and even lead double lives. In addressing these factors, fiction published and circulated in periodicals offered novel imaginative and innovative spaces for the negotiation of family models once projected as normative in social reformist and nationalist discourses.

Statement of the problem. The article supports the educational and cognitive potential of modern children’s literature devoted to certain topics of Russian history, and provides methodological recommendations for including such works in the circle of adolescent reading. The problem raised in the article follows an active discussion (initiated by methodological circles) of historical topics that are important for discussion with teenagers, the selection of literary texts for extracurricular reading. The purpose of the article is to present content-wise and methodological approaches to the study of modern historical prose in the process of extracurricular reading among teenagers (on the example of two topics – Ancient Russia and Stalin’s repressions). The research methodology is based on the analysis of literary works devoted to the concept of historical prose, as well as scientific and methodological sources describing the basics of extracurricular and adolescent reading (methods of theoretical research). In addition, the work is based on the method of empirical research – a survey conducted among students. Description is given to the first stage of the search experiment related with the development of a system of lessons on extracurricular reading of contemporary works on historical themes (the selection of relevant fiction for reading and its distribution among classes, basic content aspects and teaching methods that promote efficient study of historical works specifics). Research results. Based on modern approaches to the educational process, a system of lessons has been developed that focuses on the inclusion of historical works in reading for adolescents. The functional significance of such texts is justified, methodological techniques and central content aspects that are important for discussion with students are identified. Conclusion. The proposed author’s concept of studying modern historical works addressed to the adolescent reader can be implemented in school literature teaching as a way to solve important educational and cognitive tasks and develop meta-subject educational results.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the use of sophisticated talent selection processes such as gamification and training and development interventions designed to ensure that candidates can successfully navigate the talent assessment process. Gamification is the application of game elements to non-game activities through the adoption of gaming tools, and little is known about how candidates (“talent”) struggle to learn about the structural mechanics of gamification as they engage with the hidden rules of talent selection, such as goals, rules, “levelling up”, feedback and engagement in competitive – collaborative activities. The term “talent development gamification” is coined and used as an analytical tool to consider how young talent are supported by development interventions in their inter-subjectivity as they learn how to survive and win in talent selection games. Design/methodology/approach Studying hidden dynamics in development processes inherent in gamified talent selection is challenging, so a cult work of fiction, “Ender’s Game”, is examined to address the questions: “How do candidates in talent selection programmes learn to make sense of the structural mechanics of gamification”, “How does this make the hidden rules of talent selection explicit to them?” and “What does this mean for talent development?” Findings Talent development in selection gamification processes is illustrated through nuanced theoretical accounts of how a multiplicity of shifting and competing developmental learning opportunities are played out as a form of “double-consciousness” by potential organizational talent for them to “win the selection game”. Research limitations/implications Using novels as an aid to understanding management and the organization of work is ontologically and epistemologically problematic. But analysing novels which are “good reads” also has educational value and can produce new knowledge from its analysis. In exploring how “Characters are made to live dangerously, to face predicaments that, as readers, we experience as vicarious pleasure. We imagine, for example, how a particular character may react or, more importantly, what we would do in similar circumstances” (Knights and Willmott, 1999, p. 5). This future-oriented fictional narrative is both illustrative and provides an analogy to illuminate current organisational development challenges. Originality/value The term “talent development gamification in selection processes” is coined to allow analysis and provide lessons for talent development practice in a little studied area. Our case study analysis identifies a number of areas for consideration by talent management/talent development specialists involved in developing talent assessment centres incorporating gamification. These include the importance of understanding and taking account of rites of passage through the assessment centre, in particular the role of liminal space, what talent development interventions might be of benefit and the necessity of appreciating and managing talent in developing the skill of double consciousness in game simulations.

The article is devoted to the study of supertexts phenomenon in contemporary Russian drama. Famous philologists’ points of view are compared, definitions of super-text are suggested, and its features are highlighted. The author of the article distinguishes macro components of the supertexts in fiction, among which there are motifs, images, plots, types and forms of intertextuality and biographical myth. The overtext in literature is understood as a supra-textual formation, a set of meanings that arise in the process of interaction between texts distanced from each other, as well as different receptions of the writer's personality and his/her literary heritage. The article analyzes problems of the supertexts typology in modern Russian drama and the selection criteria. Based on a set of features that determine the precedent personality and the «strong» text among them, the Shakespeare’s, Chekhov’s and Gogol’s supertexts are distinguished in Russian drama at the turn of the XXth–XXIst centuries. The perspective «personal» texts are also marked: Pushkin’s, Lermontov’s, Goncharov’s and Dostoevsky's ones. The remake is considered as a genre under the influence of the meanings of the «personal» text. The remake in drama is proposed to be considered as a work that is most representatively involved in the formation of «personal» supertexts. The writer's biography and his/her works cease to be a fact of literary history and leave the literary field, they turn into a myth and overgrow with meanings due to the authors’ reception, critics and literary critics of subsequent generations. «Personal» supertexts are expanded due to the parodic interpretation of classical prototexts, the destruction of the biographical myth and its reception.

Objective. The paper presents a psycholinguistic perspective of the memory-time linkage problem extensively discussed by cognitive psychologists. Accepting the concept of personal memory as a linguocognitive system including the processes of encoding, storing, retrieval, and forgetting, the authors aim to examine how these processes are verbalized in regard to their temporal orientation. The present study is specifically focused on analyzing the morphological component of the verbal code (namely, tense forms) used by English speakers to represent their mnemonic experiences at each stage of cognitive processing. Methods. Research procedures consisted in content analysis of each empirical item, distribution of sample fragments in accordance with the mnemonic situation type, structural and morphological analysis of mnemonic utterances and finding correlation between the type of a mnemonic utterance and the organization of its temporal structure. Materials. The empirical database used in the research counts 7.500 communicative contexts selected from publicly available English sources and contains fragments of fiction, mass media and computer-mediated communication. The primary selection principle required that each research item should meet the criteria of the mnemonic situation, that is, include 1) the subject of the mnemonic experience, 2) the memory process being verbalized, 3) the mnemonic utterance as a verbal representation of the mnemonic content. Results. The yielded results demonstrate the role of present, past and future tense forms in shaping the temporal structure of mnemonic utterances in English, suggest correlations between the temporal type of a mnemonic utterance and the cognitive-communicative conditions under which it was produced, which allows concluding that memory association with the past is an empirically ungrounded stereotype while the temporal structure of a mnemonic utterance is a heterogeneous one.

TV viewers build relationships with the outside world, focusing on the news, which is a television interpretation of reality. Media reality is created on the basis of the information policy of TV channels and determines the agenda of the audience. This paper uses M. McCombs' agenda-setting theory, N. Luhmann's cognitive system communication, W. Lippmann's public opinion concept, J. Baudrillard's simulacrum, J. Fiske's code structure, G. Deborah's Performance Society to study television news of Russian TV channels. Based on the systemic, structural-functional, and semiotic approaches, the application of models of communication, information, the cognitive model of the impact of the media on the mass audience and the model of Russian journalism, a TV news projection model was developed in the context of a television channel's information policy. The model was tested on the basis of analysis of 130 news stories of the final weekly news releases of two federal and two regional Russian TV channels. As a result, we have seen that the media reality is constructed as a result of a selection of facts, modeling of meanings and forms of submission of news. The differences in the themes and forms of the news delivery are due to the territorial affiliation and technological development of the channels. In the production process, the journalist acts as an informer, communicator and manipulator, and the news represent a socially constructed and thoroughly edited reality. The media create a similar media reality, a different level of fiction, intended, albeit for the post-Soviet, but still society of centralized spectacle (according to G. Deborah). Translated meanings correspond to the symbolically-oriented mentality of Russians (according to M. Zagidullina). The media reality formed by the TV channels proves that the domestic journalists follow the special Russian way.

The article studies the functioning of the verbal hesitation marker ni / nei ‘whatchamacallit’ in Bashkir spontaneous speech. Goals. The research aims to analyze and identify the main functions of the investigated hesitation marker in the process of organizing spontaneous discourse. Materials and Methods. The study explores dialectal materials included in the text database of the dialectological cluster within the Digital Corpus (lit. ‘Machine Fund’) of the Bashkir Language (https://mfbl2.ru). The total of the studied materials is 209 dialectal texts. The database contains 718 tokens of the investigated hesitation marker. The selection of examples for analysis was carried out through the method of continuous sampling. The employed research methods are those of discourse and contextual analysis, as well as the statistical method. Results. Asemantization of the basic meaning of the interrogative pronoun in spontaneous speech results in the emergence of a pragmatic meaning, and the lexeme begins to function as a filler for hesitational pauses. The multifunctionality of this hesitation marker is confirmed by numerous examples of its use. In spontaneous speech, the verbal hesitation marker performs the hesitative (fills in pauses in speech production), discursive (as a means to organize speech) and search (temporary substitutions in search for a speech unit corresponding to the original intention) functions. The uniqueness of this hesitation marker is that in spontaneous speech it can replace any notional word that one has ‘on the tip of the tongue’ and, thus, help avoid the occurrence of long pauses or interruptions in utterances. The analysis of materials reveals the main methods of correcting problem areas in speech production. Being a characteristic attribute of spontaneous speech, the lexemes can also be stylistically used in fiction works as instruments to reveal the author’s intention — depicting a psychological portrait of the character through the latter’s speech features.

A Review of: Maynard, S., Mackay, S., & Smyth, F. (2008). A survey of young people's reading in England: Borrowing and choosing books. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 40(4), 239-253. Objective – To analyze factors affecting book choice: reading recommendations, reasons for choosing series books, book reviews, and school libraries. Design – This secondary analysis of data is based on a selection of findings from a larger 2005 survey that monitored trends in youth reading habits. The large scale 2005 study was designed as a follow up to a 1996 survey. The 2005 survey used online questionnaires and formal statistical analysis to compare gender and age groups. The data on factors affecting book choice were derived from the original questions, responses, and analyses. Setting – Questionnaires were administered in 22 primary and 24 secondary schools in the UK with access to computers and internet. Subjects – Almost 4,200 students from 4 to 16 years of age. Methods – Study authors invited approximately 150 schools to participate in the survey. Forty-six schools (31%) responded. A total of 22 primary and 24 secondary schools participated in the original study between April and June 2005. This study used comparative analysis to examine factors affecting book choice between gender and age groups. Statistical significance was defined as one percent. Other demographic information was collected, such as ethnicity, language spoken at home, and religion, but was deemed insufficient for any meaningful analysis. There were 4,182 responses to the survey, separated into three age groups: ages 4 to 7 (KS1), ages 7 to 11 (KS2), and ages 11 to 16 (KS3&4). Students were asked to describe themselves as readers by responding to multiple choice questions, and then to provide specific information on the places or people most frequently used as book borrowing sources. Participants were considered “enthusiastic” readers if they “read a lot with pleasure” and “average” readers if they “read an ordinary amount”. Participants responded to additional multiple choice questions on specific factors related to borrowing books and book choices, the process of choosing series, fiction, and nonfiction books. Main Results – Readers: The number of children who described themselves as “enthusiastic” readers decreased with age, and approximately half of the children between 7 and 16 years of age described themselves as “average” readers, average rating increasing slightly through this age group. Investigators found a marked difference in gender within the 4 to 7 year olds: 49.7% percent of girls in this age group considered themselves “enthusiastic,” compared to 37.3% of boys. Only 18.5% of girls considered themselves “reluctant” readers, compared to 28.1% of boys. The longitudinal comparison to the earlier 1996 study found that although the percentage of boys from ages 7 to 16 who described themselves as reluctant readers stayed about the same, the percentage of girls who described themselves as reluctant increased. There was also a dramatic drop in the number of girls who described themselves as enthusiastic; from 51% in 1996 to 17% in 2005. Borrowing Books: Libraries of all types (school, classroom and public) were the prime sources for borrowing books. Girls borrowed more books from schools than boys, and girls also borrowed more books from non-library sources (family members and friends) than boys. Both boys and girls increasingly reported borrowing more books from friends than from libraries as they grew older. Over half of each age group rated the school library or classroom book corner as having “enough” books. The perception of “too many books” decreased with age. The perception of quality of the classroom or school library also decreased with age. The number of students in the younger age groups who rated the quality of books in the classroom or school library as “very good” was significantly higher than students in the older age groups. The number of student who rated the quality as “okay” doubled from the lower to the higher age group. Choosing Books: Children were asked six questions related to whether the physical book itself provided motivation to read, and six questions related to other factors for book recommendation. Younger readers were more likely to choose a book for its visual appeal, although this factor (interesting cover or illustrations inside) was more consistent for boys of all age groups than girls. The author’s name and book blurb were stronger factors for girls in the 7 to 16 age group than for boys. The study authors sought to explore the idea of “shared reading” and asked children in the 7 to 11 and 11 to 16 age groups how often they chose a book based on a recommendation from a friend or family member, a public or school librarian, or other adults. Friends were the strongest recommendation source (43.2% for 7 to 11 year olds and 38.4% for 11to 16 year olds). Recommendations from school or public librarians rated only three to six percent for both age groups. All age groups were asked about choosing series books, and the questions were simplified for the younger age group. All students reported that appealing factors were the consistency of characters, familiar storylines, and familiar writing styles. Some students also noted that the availability of series books positively affected their choices. Print or online book reviews were used “hardly ever or never” by over 40% of the 7 to16 year old age groups, while television or magazine reviews or recommendations were highly rated by over 50% of respondents in the same age groups. Participants chose informational or non-fiction books because of personal interests, hobbies, or recommendations from friends, while they selected fiction or poetry for the blurb, title, or appearance and design of the cover. Celebrity recommendations and books about celebrities were popular reasons for choosing books. When asked who helped them choose books, 53.2% in the 7 to11 age group and 66.1% in the 11to 16 age group stated that no one ever helps them. Of the students who had help choosing books, “family members” was the most common response. Local librarians were not used as a source for recommendations.

Введение. Проведен анализ 475 современных фразеологических единиц, которые способствуют формированию фразеологической картины мира. Рассматривается взаимосвязь семантики и формы фразеологических единиц, обусловленной ситуацией общения. Фразеология языка как часть языковой картины мира входит в рамки исследования когнитивной лингвистики. Цель статьи – выявить и описать современные фразеологические единицы как пример иносказательного выражения в процессе коммуникации для достижения определенных когнитивных целей. Материал и методы. Материалом исследования послужили современные художественные тексты (Under My Skin, The Door That Led To Where, End Game, Liccle Bit, The Art of Being Normal, 2015 г.). Примеры были получены при прочтении художественной прозы современных британских авторов (J. Dawson, S. Gardner, A. Gibbons, A. Wheatle, L. Williamson) методом сплошной выборки. Результаты и обсуждение. Проведенный анализ позволил рассмотреть когнитивный аспект фразеологических единиц. Установлено, что широкий подход к изучению фразеологии расширяет границы фразеологического учения и позволяет рассмотреть больше структурно-семантических форм фразеологических единиц. Рассмотрены и проанализированы следующие современные фразеологические единицы: фразеологизмы, дериваты фразеологизмов и авторские образования. Семантические особенности дериватов фразеологизмов и авторских образований анализируются в рамках современной фразеологии английского языка. Показано, что структурная сложность фразеологизма основывается на когнитивном аспекте его семантической структуры. Заключение. Проведенный анализ позволил выявить структурный диапазон фразеологизмов и рассмотреть их преобразовательные процессы согласно семантики и ситуативного употребления. Исследование показывает, что модификация фразеологических структур и введение в употребление новых оборотов идиоматического характера (дериватов фразеологизмов и авторских образований) обусловлены лингвокультурными потребностями в выражении социума. Все анализируемые современные фразеологические единицы английского языка рассматриваются как оперативные единицы мышления настоящего времени и являются средством отражения языковой картины в целом. Языковая картина мира представляется отражением внешнего и внутреннего мира человека, его мышлением и речью. Современная фразеология английского языка отражает изменения человеческого осмысления, понимания и интерпретации внешнего мира. Фразеологическая единица имеет сложную структуру и относится к особой лингвистической категории, что обусловливает повышение интереса когнитивного исследования. Таким образом, изучение фразеологии на настоящем этапе следует фокусировать на соотношении: фразеологическая единица – значение – употребление. Introduction. The given analysis is about 475 modern phraseological units that contribute to the formation of the phraseological picture of the world. The study examines the relationship of semantics and the form of phraseological units, due to the situation of communication. The phraseology of a language as part of the linguistic picture of the world is included in the framework of the study of cognitive linguistics. Aim. This study is aimed at identifying and describing modern phraseological units, as an example of allegorical expression in the communication process to achieve certain cognitive goals. Material and methods. The presented empirical material in the article is an actual selection from a modern literary text (Under My Skin, The Door That Led To Where, End Game, Liccle Bit, The Art of Being Normal – 2015 publication). Examples were obtained by reading fiction of modern British authors (J. Dawson, S. Gardner, A. Gibbons, A. Wheatle, L. Williamson), by the method of continuous sampling. Results and discussion. The analysis allowed us to consider the cognitive aspect of phraseological units. It is established that a broad approach to the study of phraseology expands the boundaries of phraseological doctrine and allows you to consider more structural and semantic forms of phraseological units. The following modern phraseological units are considered and analyzed in the article: phraseological units, phraseological units derivatives and author formations. The semantic features of derivatives of phraseological units and copyright formations are analyzed in the framework of modern phraseology of the English language. It is shown that the structural complexity of phraseology is based on the cognitive aspect of its semantic structure. Conclusion. The analysis made it possible to identify the structural range of phraseological units and consider their transformative processes according to semantics and situational use. The study shows that the modification of phraseological structures and the introduction of new idiomatic phrases (derivatives of phraseological units and author’s idiomatic expressions) are due to linguistic and cultural needs in the expression of society. All analyzed modern phraseological units of the English language are considered as operational units of thinking of the present time and are a means of reflecting the linguistic picture as a whole. The linguistic picture of the world is a reflection of the external and internal world of a person, his thinking and speech. The modern phraseology of the English language reflects changes in human comprehension, understanding and interpretation of the outside world. The phraseological unit has a complex structure and belongs to a special linguistic category, which leads to an increase in the interest of cognitive research. Thus, the study of phraseology at this stage should be focused on the phraseological unit, its meaning and its usage.

Введение. Рассматриваются семантические группы полонизмов в русском художественном тексте XIX–XXI вв. Цель ‒ выявление и систематизация репрезентативных семантических групп полонизмов в художественном тексте XIX–XXI вв., а также анализ экстралингвистических и лингвистических причин их актуализации и ведущих функций. Материал и методы. На первом этапе рассмотрено блее 30 литературных произведений, отобранных по тематическому (о польских событиях), биографическому (авторы имеют польское происхождение) и языковому (тексты должны были быть написаны на русском языке, не являться переводами) критериям. На втором этапе для более детального изучения были взяты романы В. В. Крестовского «Кровавый пуф», З. Шишовой и С. Царевича «Приключения Каспера Берната в Польше и других странах» и В. Р. Мединского «Стена» как наиболее репрезентативные по объему заимствований из польского языка. Систематизация слов польского происхождения по семантическому принципу, дающая базу для изучения их функционирования в динамическом аспекте, подчинена концепции «Большого толкового словаря русских существительных» под ред. Л. Г. Бабенко (2005 г.), при которой общая типовая ситуация является основанием объединения имен существительных в семантическую группу слов. Результаты и обсуждение. Наиболее подробно описаны репрезентативные семантические группы полонизмов «религия», «питание», «социальные отношения», «военная служба». Выявлены как экстралингвистические, так и собственно языковые причины этого процесса: снижение в кругах читающей интеллигенции интереса к Польше в связи с дезактуализацией «польского вопроса», утрата значения религии, изменение жизненного уклада, нейтрализация социального неравенства, фонетическая и смысловая близость полонизмов и исконно русских слов. Показано, что ведущие функции полонизмов, а именно характерологическая, идентифицирующая, оценочная и уточняющая, в целом носят постоянный характер в литературе последних трех веков, их употребление отвечает традициям и задачам художественного повествования. В то же время меняется их количественный и качественный состав. Заключение. Анализ семантических групп польских элементов в русском языке показал устойчивую тенденцию к сокращению их количества в художественном тексте в исследуемом временном отрезке, кроме полонизмов военной тематики. Результаты работы могут быть востребованы в исследовании языковых контактов, динамических процессов русскоязычного художественного дискурса, в лексикографической практике. Introduction. The article deals with semantic groups of polonisms in the Russian literary text of the XIX‒XXI centuries. Aim and objectives. The article aims to identify, describe and systematize representative semantic groups of polonisms in the literary text of the XIX–XXI centuries, as well as to analyze the extralinguistic and linguistic reasons for their actualization and the leading functions. Material and methods. The material selection for this study was carried out in stages. At the first stage about 30 literary works selected by thematic (about Polish events), biographical (the authors are of Polish origin) and linguistic (the texts should have been written in Russian, not translations) criteria were considered. At the second stage for a detailed study the works by V. V. Krestovskii „The Bloody Pouf“, Z. Shishova and S. Tsarevich „The Adventures of Casper Bernat in Poland and Other Countries“ and V. R. Medinskii „The Wall“ were taken as the most representative in terms of borrowing from the Polish language. Systematization of Polish origin words on the semantic principle, which provides a basis for studying their functioning in a dynamic aspect, was subordinated to the concept of a „Large explanatory dictionary of Russian nouns“ edited by L. G. Babenko (2005), in which the general typical situation is the basis for combining nouns in a semantic group of words. Results and discussion. The article describes in detail the following representative semantic groups of polonisms: „religion“, „nutrition“, „social relations“, „military service“. The analysis of semantic groups of Polish elements in the Russian language showed a steady tendency to their number reduction in the literary text of the time period under study, except for polonisms of military subjects. The authors identify both extralinguistic and linguistic reasons for this process: the interest decline in Poland in reading circles due to the deactualization of the „Polish issue“, the loss of religion significance, changes in the way of life, the social inequality neutralization, the phonetic and semantic proximity of polonisms and native Russian words. The study also showed that the leading functions of polonisms, namely characterological, identifying, evaluating and clarifying, are generally permanent in the literature of the last three centuries. These functions of words of Polish origin are not directly related to their semantics, the use of polonisms corresponds to the traditions and tasks of artistic storytelling. Conclusion. The analysis of semantic groups of Polish elements in Russian language showed a steady tendency to reduce their number in the literary text in the studied time period, except for polonisms of military thematic. The results of the work can be used in the study of language contacts, dynamic processes of Russian-language artistic discourse, in lexicographic practice. Funding: The reported study was funded by RFBR and FRLC, project number 21-512-23003, „One’s own“ and „somebody else’s“ in modern Russian and Hungarian fiction.

Despite substantial research into reality television and dystopian fiction, there are no studies that combine an examination of both, even though the two forms of media share a number of major themes. This research paper looks at the correlation between the shared themes of dystopian fiction and reality television. A quantitative selection process was used to determine the materials to be observed for this study, while a qualitative content analysis was used to gather data on both of the media that were being observed. The study found that each of the themes were used differently in the media, with dystopian fiction focusing on the use of control and surveillance while reality television mainly relied on conflict to entertain viewers. The data suggests that the producers of reality television play similar roles in shaping their dramas as the leaders of totalitarian governments do in the plots of dystopian fiction.

What began as a simple request for a book by one of my former students, at times, has not been so simple. The student, whom I refer to as Carla (name changed), hoped to read about characters similar to herself and her friends. As a teacher, I have often tried to hook my students on reading by presenting books with characters to which they can relate. These books can help increase their overall knowledge of the world, open their minds to multiple realities and variations of the human experience and provide scenarios in which they can live vicariously. Carla’s request was a bit more complicated than I had imagined. As a “Deaf” student who attended a state school for the Deaf and who viewed herself as a member of a linguistic cultural minority, she expected to read a book with characters who used American Sign Language and who participated as members within the Deaf Community. She did not want to read didactic books about deafness but wanted books with unpredictable plots and believable characters. Having graduated from a teacher-preparation program in Deaf Education, I had read numerous books about deafness. While memoirs and biographical selections had been relatively easy to acquire and were on my bookshelf, I had not once read any fictional books for adolescents that included a deaf character. (I refer to ‘Deaf’ as representing individuals who identify in a linguistic, cultural minority group. The term ‘deaf’ is used as a more generic term given to individuals with some degree of hearing loss. In other articles, ‘deaf’ has been used pejoratively or in connection to a view by those who believe one without the sense of hearing is inferior or lacking. I do not believe or wish to imply that. ) As a High School teacher with so many additional work responsibilities outside of classroom teaching, finding fictional books with deaf characters was somewhat of a challenge. Nevertheless, after some research I was able to recommend a book that I thought would be a good summer read. Nancy Butts’ Cheshire Moon (1992) is charming book about thirteen-year-old Miranda who is saddened by her cousin’s death and furious at her parents' insistence that she speak rather than sign. The plot turns slightly mystical when the teens begin having similar dreams under the “Cheshire moon”. Yet, the story is about Miranda, a deaf girl, who struggles with communication. Without her cousin, the only member of her family who was fluent in sign language, communication is difficult and embarrassing. Miranda feels isolated, alienated, and unsure of herself. Because of the main character’s age, the book was not the best recommendation for a high school student; however, when Carla finished Cheshire Moon, she asked for another book with Deaf characters. Problem & Purpose Historically, authors have used deafness as a literary device to relay various messages about the struggles of humankind and elicit sympathy from readers (Batson & Bergman; Bergman; Burns; Krentz; Panara; Taylor, "Deaf Characters" I, II, III; Schwartz; Wilding-Diaz). In recent decades, however, the general public’s awareness of and perhaps interest in deaf people has risen along with that of our increasingly multicultural world. Educational legislation has increased awareness of the deaf as has news coverage of Gallaudet University protests. In addition, Deaf people have benefited from advances in communicative technology, such as Video Relay (VRS) and instant messaging pagers, more coordinated interpreting services and an increase in awareness of American Sign Language. Authors are incorporating more deaf characters than they did in the past. However, this increase does not necessarily translate to an increase in understanding of the deaf, nor does it translate to the most accurate, respectably, well-rounded characterization of the deaf (Pajka-West, "Perceptions"). Acquiring fictional books that include deaf characters can be time-consuming and challenging for teachers and librarians. The research examining deaf characters in fiction is extremely limited (Burns; Guella; Krentz; Wilding-Diaz). The most recent articles predominately focus on children’s literature — specifically picture books (Bailes; Brittain). Despite decades of research affirming culturally authentic children’s literature and the merits of multicultural literature, a coexisting body of research reveals the lack of culturally authentic texts (Applebee; Campbell & Wirtenberg; Ernest; Larrick; Sherriff; Taxel). Moreover, children’s books with deaf characters are used as informational depictions of deaf individuals (Bockmiller, 1980). Readers of such resource books, typically parents, teachers and their students, gain information about deafness and individuals with “disabilities” (Bockmiller, 1980; Civiletto & Schirmer, 2000). If an important purpose for deaf characters in fiction is educational and informational, then there is a need for the characters to be presented as realistic models of deaf people. If not, the readers of such fiction gain inaccurate information about deafness including reinforced negative stereotypes, as can occur in any other literature portraying cultural minorities (Pajka-West, "Perceptions"). Similar to authors’ informational depictions, writers also reveal societal understanding of groups of people through their fiction (Banfield & Wilson; Panara; Rudman). Literature has often stigmatized minority culture individuals based upon race, ethnicity, disability, gender and/or sexual orientation. While readers might recognize the negative depictions and dismiss them as harmless stereotypes, these portrayals could become a part of the unconscious of members of our society. If books continually reinforce stereotypical depictions of deaf people, individuals belonging to the group might be typecast and discouraged into a limited way of being. As an educator, I want all of my students to have unlimited opportunities for the future, not disadvantaged by stereotypes. The Study For my doctoral dissertation, I examined six contemporary adolescent literature books with deaf characters. The research methodology for this study required book selection, reader sample selection, instrument creation, book analysis, questionnaire creation, and data analysis. My research questions included: 1) Are deaf characters being presented as culturally Deaf characters or as pathologically deaf and disabled; 2) Do these readers favor deaf authors over hearing ones? If so, why; and, 3) How do deaf and hearing adult readers perceive deaf characters in adolescent literature? The Sample The book sample included 102 possible books for the study ranging from adolescent to adult selections. I selected books that were recognized as suitable for middle school or high school readers based upon the reading and interest levels established by publishers. The books also had to include main characters who are deaf and deaf characters who are human. The books selected were all realistic fiction, available to the public, and published or reissued for publication within the last fifteen years. The six books that were selected included: Nick’s Secret by C. Blatchford; A Maiden’s Grave by J. Deaver; Of Sound Mind by J. Ferris; Deaf Child Crossing by M. Matlin; Apple Is My Sign by M. Riskind; and Finding Abby by V. Scott. For the first part of my study, I analyzed these texts using the Adolescent Literature Content Analysis Check-off Form (ALCAC) which includes both pathological and cultural perspective statements derived from Deaf Studies, Disability Studies and Queer Theory. The participant sample included adult readers who fit within three categories: those who identified as deaf, those who were familiar with or had been acquaintances with deaf individuals, and those who were unfamiliar having never associated with deaf individuals. Each participant completed a Reader-Response Survey which included ten main questions derived from Deaf Studies and Schwartz’ ‘Criteria for Analyzing Books about Deafness’. The survey included both dichotomous and open-ended questions. Research Questions & Methodology Are deaf characters being presented as culturally Deaf or as pathologically deaf and disabled? In previous articles, scholars have stated that most books with deaf characters include a pathological perspective; yet, few studies actually exist to conclude this assertion. In my study, I analyzed six books to determine whether they supported the cultural or the pathological perspective of deafness. The goal was not to exclusively label a text either/or but to highlight the distinct perspectives to illuminate a discussion regarding a deaf character. As before mentioned, the ALCAC instrument incorporates relevant theories and prior research findings in reference to the portrayals of deaf characters and was developed to specifically analyze adolescent literature with deaf characters. Despite the historical research regarding deaf characters and due to the increased awareness of deaf people and American Sign Language, my initial assumption was that the authors of the six adolescent books would present their deaf characters as more culturally ‘Deaf’. This was confirmed for the majority of the books. I believed that an outsider, such as a hearing writer, could carry out an adequate portrayal of a culture other than his own. In the past, scholars did not believe this was the case; however, the results from my study demonstrated that the majority of the hearing authors presented the cultural perspective model. Initially shocking, the majority of deaf authors incorporated the pathological perspective model. I offer three possible reasons why these deaf authors included more pathological perspective statements while the hearing authors include more cultural perspective statements: First, the deaf authors have grown up deaf and perhaps experienced more scenarios similar to those presented from the pathological perspective model. Even if the deaf authors live more culturally Deaf lifestyles today, authors include their experiences growing up in their writing. Second, there are less deaf characters in the books written by deaf authors and more characters and more character variety in the books written by the hearing authors. When there are fewer deaf characters interacting with other deaf characters, these characters tend to interact with more hearing characters who are less likely to be aware of the cultural perspective. And third, with decreased populations of culturally Deaf born to culturally Deaf individuals, it seems consistent that it may be more difficult to obtain a book from a Deaf of Deaf author. Similarly, if we consider the Deaf person’s first language is American Sign Language, Deaf authors may be spending more time composing stories and poetry in American Sign Language and less time focusing upon English. This possible lack of interest may make the number of ‘Deaf of Deaf’ authors, or culturally Deaf individuals raised by culturally Deaf parents, who pursue and are successful publishing a book in adolescent literature low. At least in adolescent literature, deaf characters, as many other minority group characters, are being included in texts to show young people our increasingly multicultural world. Adolescent literature readers can now become aware of a range of deaf characters, including characters who use American Sign Language, who attend residential schools for the Deaf, and even who have Deaf families. Do the readers favor deaf authors over hearing ones? A significant part of my research was based upon the perceptions of adult readers of adolescent literature with deaf characters. I selected participants from a criterion sampling and divided them into three groups: 1. Adults who had attended either a special program for the deaf or a residential school for the deaf, used American Sign Language, and identified themselves as deaf were considered for the deaf category of the study; 2. Adults who were friends, family members, co-workers or professionals in fields connected with individuals who identify themselves as deaf were considered for the familiar category of the study; and, 3. hearing adults who were not aware of the everyday experiences of deaf people and who had not taken a sign language class, worked with or lived with a deaf person were considered for the unfamiliar category of the study. Nine participants were selected for each group totaling 27 participants (one participant from each of the groups withdrew before completion, leaving eight participants from each of the groups to complete the study). To elicit the perspectives of the participants, I developed a Reader Response survey which was modeled after Schwartz’s ‘Criteria for Analyzing Books about Deafness’. I assumed that the participants from Deaf and Familiar groups would prefer the books written by the deaf authors while the unfamiliar participants would act more as a control group. This was not confirmed through the data. In fact, the Deaf participants along with the participants as a whole preferred the books written by the hearing authors as better describing their perceptions of realistic deaf people, for presenting deaf characters adequately and realistically, and for the hearing authors’ portrayals of deaf characters matching with their perceptions of deaf people. In general, the Deaf participants were more critical of the deaf authors while the familiar participants, although as a group preferred the books by the hearing authors, were more critical of the hearing authors. Participants throughout all three groups mentioned their preference for a spectrum of deaf characters. The books used in this study that were written by hearing authors included a variety of characters. For example, Riskind’s Apple Is My Sign includes numerous deaf students at a school for the deaf and the main character living within a deaf family; Deaver’s A Maiden’s Grave includes deaf characters from a variety of backgrounds attending a residential school for the deaf and only a few hearing characters; and Ferris’ Of Sound Mind includes two deaf families with two CODA or hearing teens. The books written by the deaf authors in this study include only a few deaf characters. For example, Matlin’s Deaf Child Crossing includes two deaf girls surrounded by hearing characters; Scott’s Finding Abby includes more minor deaf characters but readers learn about these characters from the hearing character’s perspective. For instance, the character Jared uses sign language and attends a residential school for the deaf but readers learn this information from his hearing mother talking about him, not from the deaf character’s words. Readers know that he communicates through sign language because we are told that he does; however, the only communication readers are shown is a wave from the child; and, Blatchford’s Nick’s Secret includes only one deaf character. With the fewer deaf characters it is nearly impossible for the various ways of being deaf to be included in the book. Thus, the preference for the books by the hearing authors is more likely connected to the preference for a variety of deaf people represented. How do readers perceive deaf characters? Participants commented on fourteen main and secondary characters. Their perceptions of these characters fall into six categories: the “normal” curious kid such as the characters Harry (Apple Is My Sign), Jeremy (Of Sound Mind) and Jared (Finding Abby); the egocentric spoiled brat such as Palma (Of Sound Mind) and Megan (Deaf Child Crossing); the advocate such as Harry’s mother (Apple Is My Sign) and Susan (A Maiden’s Grave); those dependent upon the majority culture such as Palma (Of Sound Mind) and Lizzie (Deaf Child Crossing); those isolated such as Melissa (Finding Abby), Ben (Of Sound Mind), Nick (Nick’s Secret) and Thomas (Of Sound Mind); and, those searching for their identities such as Melanie (A Maiden’s Grave) and Abby (Finding Abby). Overall, participants commented more frequently about the deaf characters in the books by the hearing authors (A Maiden’s Grave; Of Sound Mind; Apple Is My Sign) and made more positive comments about the culturally Deaf male characters, particularly Ben Roper, Jeremy and Thomas of Of Sound Mind, and Harry of Apple Is My Sign. Themes such as the characters being dependent and isolated from others did arise. For example, Palma in Of Sound Mind insists that her hearing son act as her personal interpreter so that she can avoid other hearing people. Examples to demonstrate the isolation some of the deaf characters experience include Nick of Nick’s Secret being the only deaf character in his story and Ben Roper of Of Sound Mind being the only deaf employee in his workplace. While these can certainly be read as negative situations the characters experience, isolation is a reality that resonates in some deaf people’s experiences. With communicative technology and more individuals fluent in American Sign Language, some deaf individuals may decide to associate more with individuals in the larger culture. One must interpret purposeful isolation such as Ben Roper’s (Of Sound Mind) case, working in a location that provides him with the best employment opportunities, differently than Melissa Black’s (Finding Abby) isolating feelings of being left out of family dinner discussions. Similarly, variations in characterization including the egocentric, spoiled brat and those searching for their identities are common themes in adolescent literature with or without deaf characters being included. Positive examples of deaf characters including the roles of the advocate such as Susan (A Maiden’s Grave) and Harry’s mother (Apple Is My Sign), along with descriptions of regular everyday deaf kids increases the varieties of deaf characters. As previously stated, my study included an analysis based on literary theory and prior research. At that time, unless the author explicitly told readers in a foreword or a letter to readers, I had no way of truly knowing why the deaf character was included and why the author made such decisions. This uncertainty of the author’s decisions changed for me in 2007 with the establishment of my educational blog. Beginning to Blog When I started my educational blog Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature in February 2007, I did not plan to become a blogger nor did I have any plans for my blog. I simply opened a Blogger account and added a list of 106 books with deaf characters that was connected to my research. Once I started blogging on a regular basis, I discovered an active audience who not only read what I wrote but who truly cared about my research. Blogging had become a way for me to keep my research current; since my blog was about deaf characters in adolescent literature, it became an advocacy tool that called attention to authors and books that were not widely publicized; and, it enabled me to become part of a cyber community made up of other bloggers and readers. After a few months of blogging on a weekly basis, I began to feel a sense of obligation to research and post my findings. While continuing to post to my blog, I have acquired more information about my research topic and even received advance reader copies prior to the books’ publication dates. This enables me to discuss the most current books. It also enables my readers to learn about such books. My blog acts as free advertisement for the publishing companies and authors. I currently have 195 contemporary books with deaf characters and over 36 author and professional interviews. While the most rewarding aspect of blogging is connecting with readers, there have been some major highlights in the process. As I stated, I had no way of knowing why the deaf character was included in the books until I began interviewing the authors. I had hoped that the hearing authors of books with deaf characters would portray their characters realistically but I had not realized the authors’ personal connections to actual deaf people. For instance, Delia Ray, Singing Hands, wrote about a Deaf preacher and his family. Her book was based on her grandfather who was a Deaf preacher and leading pioneer in the Deaf Community. Ray is not the only hearing author who has a personal connection to deaf people. Other examples include: Jean Ferris, Of Sound Mind, who earned a degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology. Ferris’ book includes only two hearing characters, the majority are Deaf. All of her characters are also fluent in American Sign Language; Jodi Cutler Del Dottore, Rally Caps, who includes a deaf character named Luca who uses a cochlear implant. Luca is based on Cutler Del Dottore’s son, Jordan, who also has a cochlear implant; finally, Jacqueline Woodson, Feathers, grew up in a community that included deaf people who did not use sign language. As an adult, she met members of the Deaf Community and began learning American Sign Language herself. Woodson introduces readers to Sean who is attractive, funny, and intelligent. In my study, I noted that all of the deaf characters where not diverse based upon race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status (Pajka-West, "Perceptions"). Sean is the first Deaf American-African character in adolescent literature who uses sign language to communicate. Another main highlight is finding Deaf authors who do not receive the mainstream press that other authors might receive. For example, Ann Clare LeZotte, T4, introduces readers to main character Paula Becker, a thirteen year old deaf girl who uses sign language and lipreading to communicate. Through verse, we learn of Paula’s life in Germany during Hitler’s time as she goes into hiding since individuals with physical and mental disabilities were being executed under the orders of Hitler’s Tiergartenstrasse 4 (T4). One additional highlight is that I learn about insider tips and am then able to share this information with my blog readers. In one instance I began corresponding with Marvel Comic’s David Mack, the creator of Echo, a multilingual, biracial, Deaf comic book character who debuted in Daredevil and later The New Avengers. In comics, it is Marvel who owns the character; while Echo was created for Daredevil by Mack, she later appears in The New Avengers. In March 2008, discussion boards were buzzing since issue #39 would include original creator, Mack, among other artists. To make it less complicated for those who do not follow comics, the issue was about whether or not Echo had become a skrull, an alien who takes over the body of the character. This was frightening news since potentially Echo could become a hearing skrull. I just did not believe that Mack would let that happen. My students and I held numerous discussions about the implications of Marvel’s decisions and finally I sent Mack an email. While he could not reveal the details of the issue, he did assure me that my students and I would be pleased. I’m sure there was a collective sigh from readers once his email was published on the blog. Final Thoughts While there have been pejorative depictions of the deaf in literature, the portrayals of deaf characters in adolescent literature have become much more realistic in the last decade. Authors have personal connections with actual deaf individuals which lend to the descriptions of their deaf characters; they are conducting more detailed research to develop their deaf characters; and, they appear to be much more aware of the Deaf Community than they were in the past. A unique benefit of the genre is that authors of adolescent literature often give the impression of being more available to the readers of their books. Authors often participate in open dialogues with their fans through social networking sites or discussion boards on their own websites. After posting interviews with the authors on my blog, I refer readers to the author’s on site whether it through personal blogs, websites, Facebook or Twitter pages. While hearing authors’ portrayals now include a spectrum of deaf characters, we must encourage Deaf and Hard of Hearing writers to include more deaf characters in their works. Consider again my student Carla and her longing to find books with deaf characters. Deaf characters in fiction act as role models for young adults. A positive portrayal of deaf characters benefits deaf adolescents whether or not they see themselves as biologically deaf or culturally deaf. Only through on-going publishing, more realistic and positive representations of the deaf will occur. References Bailes, C.N. "Mandy: A Critical Look at the Portrayal of a Deaf Character in Children’s Literature." Multicultural Perspectives 4.4 (2002): 3-9. Batson, T. "The Deaf Person in Fiction: From Sainthood to Rorschach Blot." Interracial Books for Children Bulletin 11.1-2 (1980): 16-18. Batson, T., and E. Bergman. Angels and Outcasts: An Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press (1985). Bergman, E. "Literature, Fictional characters in." In J.V. Van Cleve (ed.), Gallaudet Encyclopedia of Deaf People & Deafness. Vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: McGraw Hill, 1987. 172-176. Brittain, I. "An Examination into the Portrayal of Deaf Characters and Deaf Issues in Picture Books for Children." Disability Studies Quarterly 24.1 (Winter 2004). 24 Apr. 2005 < http://www.dsq-sds.org >. Burns, D.J. An Annotated Checklist of Fictional Works Which Contain Deaf Characters. Unpublished master’s thesis. Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University,1950. Campbell, P., and J. Wirtenberg. How Books Influence Children: What the Research Shows. Interracial Books for Children Bulletin 11.6 (1980): 3-6. Civiletto, C.L., and B.R. Schirmer. "Literature with Characters Who Are Deaf." The Dragon Lode 19.1 (Fall 2000): 46-49. Guella, B. "Short Stories with Deaf Fictional Characters." American Annals of the Deaf 128.1 (1983): 25-33. Krentz, C. "Exploring the 'Hearing Line': Deafness, Laughter, and Mark Twain." In S. L. Snyder, B. J. Brueggemann, and R. Garland-Thomson, eds., Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2002. 234-247. Larrick, N. "The All-White World of Children's Books. Saturday Review 11 (1965): 63-85. Pajka-West, S. “The Perceptions of Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature”. The ALAN Review 34.3 (Summer 2007): 39-45. ———. "The Portrayals and Perceptions of Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Virginia, 2007. ———. "Interview with Deaf Author Ann Clare LeZotte about T4, Her Forthcoming Book Told in Verse." Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature, 5 Aug. 2008. < http://pajka.blogspot.com/ 2008/08/interview-with-deaf-author-ann-clare.html >.———. "Interview with Delia Ray, Author of Singing Hands." Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature, 23 Aug. 2007. < http://pajka.blogspot.com/ 2007/08/interview-with-delia-ray-author-of.html >.———. "Interview with Jacqueline Woodson, author of Feathers." Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature, 29 Sep. 2007. < http://pajka.blogspot.com/ 2007/09/interview-with-jacqueline-woodson.html >. ———. "Interview with Jodi Cutler Del Dottore, author of Rally Caps." Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature, 13 Aug. 2007. < http://pajka.blogspot.com/ 2007/08/interview-with-jodi-cutler-del-dottore.html >. Panara, R. "Deaf Characters in Fiction and Drama." The Deaf American 24.5 (1972): 3-8. Schwartz, A.V. "Books Mirror Society: A Study of Children’s Materials." Interracial Books for Children Bulletin 11.1-2 (1980): 19-24. Sherriff, A. The Portrayal of Mexican American Females in Realistic Picture Books (1998-2004). University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: 2005. Taxel, J. "The Black Experience in Children's Fiction: Controversies Surrounding Award Winning Books." Curriculum Inquiry 16 (1986): 245-281. Taylor, G.M. "Deaf Characters in Short Stories: A Selective Bibliography. The Deaf American 26.9 (1974): 6-8. ———. "Deaf Characters in Short Stories: A Selective Bibliography II." The Deaf American 28.11 (1976): 13-16.———. "Deaf Characters in Short Stories: A Selective Bibliography III." The Deaf American 29.2 (1976): 27-28. Wilding-Diaz, M.M. Deaf Characters in Children’s Books: How Are They Portrayed? Unpublished master’s thesis. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 1993.———. "Deaf Characters in Children’s Books: How Are They Perceived?" In Gallaudet University College for Continuing Education and B.D. Snider (eds.), Journal: Post Milan ASL & English Literacy: Issues, Trends & Research Conference Proceedings, 20-22 Oct. 1993.Adolescent Fiction Books Blatchford, C. Nick’s Secret. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner, 2000. Deaver, J. A Maiden’s Grave. New York: Signet, 1996. Ferris, J. Of Sound Mind. New York: Sunburst, 2004. Matlin, M. Deaf Child Crossing. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2004. Riskind, M. Apple Is My Sign. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. Scott, V. Finding Abby. Hillsboro, OR: Butte, 2000.

The article examines the synthesis of literature and choreographic art. The literary work is considered in the context of the libretto of a ballet performance, special importance is given to such a literary genre as a fairy tale, the plots of which served as a source of inspiration for choreographers of different eras, different countries. The role of literature in choreographic art is determined, the literary basis in a choreographic work from the origin of ballet art to the present is investigated. A historical excursion on the interpenetration of literature and choreography, from the XIII century. to date. Literary plots and literary images have been actively used in choreographic art at all times. However, the complete "fusion" of literary work and choreographic vocabulary took place only in the XX century, with the emergence of drama. It is believed that the drama flourished in the works of J. Neumayer, a choreographer with a flair and knowledge of philology. He created a unique author's genre of literary ballet. The specificity of depicting the events of a literary work by means of expression in choreography is studied. Ballet drama, features of construction of a choreographic work on a literary plot are analyzed. The essence of the concepts plot and plot and composition is determined. In fiction, the plot is a system of events. The plot and the plot are inseparable from each other and are the basis of the composition. Composition is the structure of a work of art due to its content. As for the disclosure of the content in the choreographic work, this process occurs through the means of expression. The specifics of the choreographer's work on creating a one-act choreographic performance are revealed; the main stages of the director's work are listed, namely: the choice of a literary work and its ideological and thematic analysis; own interpretation and director's concept of the work; writing a compositional plan; selection and analysis of musical material; staging and rehearsal work. The work of modern directors, who take a fairy tale as the main idea of their choreographic work, is studied.

News and AnnouncementsAs we move into the so-called “summer reading” mode (although reading is obviously not a seasonal thing for many people), here is a “summery” (pardon the pun) of some recent Canadian book awards and shortlists.To see the plethora of Forest of Reading ® tree awards from the Ontario Library Association, go to https://www.accessola.org/WEB/OLAWEB/Forest_of_Reading/About_the_Forest.aspx. IBBY Canada (the Canadian national section of the International Board on Books for Young People) announced that the Claude Aubry Award for distinguished service in the field of children’s literature will be presented to Judith Saltman and Jacques Payette. Both winners will receive their awards in conjunction with a special event for children's literature in the coming year. http://www.ibby-canada.org/ibby-canadas-aubry-award-presented-2015/IBBY Canada also awarded the 2015 Elizabeth Mrazik-Cleaver Picture Book Award to Pierre Pratt, illustrator of Stop, Thief!. http://www.ibby-canada.org/awards/elizabeth-mrazik-cleaver-award/The annual reading programme known as First Nation Communities Read (FNCR) and the Periodical Marketers of Canada (PMC) jointly announced Peace Pipe Dreams: The Truth about Lies about Indians by Darrell Dennis (Douglas & McIntyre) as the FNCR 2015-2016 title as well as winner of PMC’s $5000 Aboriginal Literature Award. A jury of librarians from First Nations public libraries in Ontario, with coordination support from Southern Ontario Library Service, selected Peace Pipe Dreams from more than 19 titles submitted by Canadian publishers. “In arriving at its selection decision, the jury agreed that the book is an important one that dispels myths and untruths about Aboriginal people in Canada today and sets the record straight. The author tackles such complicated issues such as religion, treaties, and residential schools with knowledge, tact and humour, leaving readers with a greater understanding of our complex Canadian history.” http://www.sols.org/index.php/links/fn-communities-readCharis Cotter, author of The Swallow: A Ghost Story, has been awarded The National Chapter of Canada IODE Violet Downey Book Award for 2015. Published by Tundra Books, the novel is suggested for children ages nine to 12. http://www.iode.ca/2015-iode-violet-downey-book-award.htmlThe 2015 winners of the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards were selected by two juries of young readers from Toronto’s Alexander Muir / Gladstone Avenue Junior and Senior Public School. A jury of grade 3 and 4 students selected the recipient of the Children’s Picture Book Award, and a jury of grade 7 and 8 students selected the recipient of the Young Adult / Middle Reader Award. Each student read the books individually and then worked together with their group to reach consensus and decide on a winner. This process makes it a unique literary award in Canada.The Magician of Auschwitz by Kathy Kacer and illustrated by Gillian Newland (Second Story Press) won the Children’s Picture Book Category.The winner for the Young Adult/Middle Reader Category was The Boundless by Kenneth Oppel (HarperCollins Publishers).http://www.ontarioartsfoundation.on.ca/pages/ruth-sylvia-schwartz-awardsFrom the Canadian Library Association:The Night Gardener by Jonathan Auxier (Penguin Canada) was awarded CLA’s 2015 Book of the Year for Children Award.Any Questions?, written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay (Groundwood Books) won the 2015 Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award.This One Summer by Mariko & Jillian Tamaki (Groundwood) was awarded the 2015 Young Adult Book Award.http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Book_Awards&Template=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=16132The 2015 Winner of the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Juvenile/YA Book was Sigmund Brouwer’s Dead Man's Switch (Harvest House). http://crimewriterscanada.com/Regional awards:Alberta’s Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature 2015:Little You by Richard Van Camp (Orca Book Publishers) http://www.bookcentre.ca/awards/r_ross_annett_award_childrens_literatureRocky Mountain Book Award 2015:Last Train: A Holocaust Story by Rona Arato. (Owl Kids, 2013) http://www.rmba.info/last-train-holocaust-storyAtlantic Book Awards 2015 from the Atlantic Book Awards SocietyAnn Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature: The End of the Line by Sharon E. McKay (Annick Press).Lillian Shepherd Award for Excellence in Illustration: Music is for Everyone illustrated by Sydney Smith and written by Jill Barber (Nimbus Publishing) http://atlanticbookawards.ca/awards/Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award 2015:English fiction: Scare Scape by Sam Fisher.English non-fiction: WeirdZone: Sports by Maria Birmingham.French fiction: Toxique by Amy Lachapelle.French non-fiction: Au labo, les Débrouillards! by Yannick Bergeron. http://hackmatack.ca/en/index.htmlFrom the 2015 BC Book Prizes for authors and/or illustrators living in British Columbia or the Yukon:The Christie Harris Illustrated Children's Literature Prize was awarded to Dolphin SOS by Roy Miki and Slavia Miki with illustrations by Julie Flett (Tradewind).The Sheila A. Egoff Children's Literature Prize for “novels, including chapter books, and non-fiction books, including biography, aimed at juveniles and young adults, which have not been highly illustrated” went to Maggie de Vries for Rabbit Ears (HarperCollins). http://www.bcbookprizes.ca/winners/2015The 2015 Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award (MYRCA) was awarded to Ultra by David Carroll. http://www.myrca.ca/Camp Outlook by Brenda Baker (Second Story Press) was the 2015 winner of the SaskEnergy Young Adult Literature Award. http://www.bookawards.sk.ca/awards/awards-nominees/2015-awards-and-nominees/category/saskenergy-young-adult-literature-awardFor more information on Canadian children’s book awards check out http://www.canadianauthors.net/awards/. Please note that not all regional awards are included in this list; if you are so inclined, perhaps send their webmaster a note regarding an award that you think should be included.Happy reading and exploring.Yours in stories (in all seasons and shapes and sizes)Gail de VosGail de Vos is an adjunct professor who teaches courses on Canadian children's literature, young adult literature, and commic books and graphic novels at the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) at the University of Alberta and is the author of nine books on storytelling and folklore. She is a professional storyteller and has taught the storytelling course at SLIS for over two decades.

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare “It’s Greek to me,” you are quoting Shakespeare.Bernard LevinPsoriatic arthritis, in its acute or “generalised” stage, is unbearably painful. Exacerbating the crippling of the joints, the entire surface of the skin is covered with lesions only moderately salved by anti-inflammatory ointment, the application of which is as painful as the ailment it seeks to relieve: NURSE MILLS: I’ll be as gentle as I can.Marlow’s face again fills the screen, intense concentration, comical strain, and a whispered urgency in the voice over—MARLOW: (Voice over) Think of something boring—For Christ’s sake think of something very very boring—Speech a speech by Ted Heath a sentence long sentence from Bernard Levin a quiz by Christopher Booker a—oh think think—! Really boring! A Welsh male-voice choir—Everything in Punch—Oh! Oh! — (Potter 17-18)Marlow’s collation of boring things as a frantic liturgy is an attempt to distract himself from a tumescence that is both unwanted and out of place. Although bed-ridden and in constant pain, he is still sensitive to erogenous stimulation, even when it is incidental. The act of recollection, of garnering lists of things that bore him, distracts him from his immediate situation as he struggles with the mental anguish of the prospect of a humiliating orgasm. Literary lists do many things. They provide richness of detail, assemble and corroborate the materiality of the world of which they are a part and provide insight into the psyche and motivation of the collator. The sheer desperation of Dennis Potter’s Marlow attests to the arbitrariness of the list, the simple requirement that discrete and unrelated items can be assembled in linear order, without any obligation for topical concatenation. In its interrogative form, the list can serve a more urgent and distressing purpose than distraction:GOLDBERG: What do you use for pyjamas?STANLEY: Nothing.GOLDBERG: You verminate the sheet of your birth.MCCANN: What about the Albigensenist heresy?GOLDBERG: Who watered the wicket in Melbourne?MCCANN: What about the blessed Oliver Plunkett?(Pinter 51)The interrogative non sequitur is an established feature of the art of intimidation. It is designed to exert maximum stress in the subject through the use of obscure asides and the endowing of trivial detail with profundity. Harold Pinter’s use of it in The Birthday Party reveals how central it was to his “theatre of menace.” The other tactic, which also draws on the logic of the inventory to be both sequential and discontinuous, is to break the subject’s will through a machine-like barrage of rhetorical questions that leave no time for answers.Pinter learned from Samuel Beckett the pitiless, unforgiving logic of trivial detail pushed to extremes. Think of Molloy’s dilemma of the sucking stones. In order for all sixteen stones that he carries with him to be sucked at least once to assuage his hunger, a reliable system has to be hit upon:Taking a stone from the right pocket of my greatcoat, and putting it in my mouth, I replaced it in the right pocket of my greatcoat by a stone from the right pocket of my trousers, which I replaced with a stone from the left pocket of my trousers, which I replaced by a stone from the left pocket of my greatcoat, which I replaced with the stone that was in my mouth, as soon as I had finished sucking it. Thus there were still four stones in each of my four pockets, but not quite the same stones. And when the desire to suck took hold of me again, I drew again on the right pocket of my greatcoat, certain of not taking the same stone as the last time. And while I sucked it I rearranged the other stones in the way I have just described. And so on. (Beckett, Molloy 69)And so on for six pages. Exhaustive permutation within a finite lexical set is common in Beckett. In the novel Watt the eponymous central character is charged with serving his unseen master’s dinner as well as tidying up afterwards. A simple and bucolic enough task it would seem. But Beckett’s characters are not satisfied with conjecture, the simple assumption that someone must be responsible for Mr. Knott’s dining arrangements. Like Molloy’s solution to the sucking stone problem, all possible scenarios must be considered to explain the conundrum of how and why Watt never saw Knott at mealtime. Twelve possibilities are offered, among them that1. Mr. Knott was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that he was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that such an arrangement existed, and was content.2. Mr. Knott was not responsible for the arrangement, but knew who was responsible for the arrangement, and knew that such an arrangement existed, and was content.(Beckett, Watt 86)This stringent adherence to detail, absurd and exasperating as it is, is the work of fiction, the persistence of a viable, believable thing called Watt who exists as long as his thought is made manifest on a page. All writers face this pernicious prospect of having to confront and satisfy “fiction’s gargantuan appetite for fact, for detail, for documentation” (Kenner 70). A writer’s writer (Philip Marlow) Dennis Potter’s singing detective struggles with the acute consciousness that words eventually will fail him. His struggle to overcome verbal entropy is a spectre that haunts the entire literary imagination, for when the words stop the world stops.Beckett made this struggle the very stuff of his work, declaring famously that all he wanted to do as a writer was to leave “a stain upon the silence” (quoted in Bair 681). His characters deteriorate from recognisable people (Hamm in Endgame, Winnie in Happy Days) to mere ciphers of speech acts (the bodiless head Listener in That Time, Mouth in Not I). During this process they provide us with the vocabulary of entropy, a horror most eloquently expressed at the end of The Unnamable: I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. (Beckett, Molloy 418)The importance Beckett accorded to pauses in his writing, from breaks in dialogue to punctuation, stresses the pacing of utterance that is in sync with the rhythm of human breath. This is acutely underlined in Jack MacGowran’s extraordinary gramophone recording of the above passage from The Unnamable. There is exhaustion in his voice, but it is inflected by an urgent push for the next words to forestall the last gasp. And what might appear to be parsimony is in fact the very commerce of writing itself. It is an economy of necessity, when any words will suffice to sustain presence in the face of imminent silence.Hugh Kenner has written eloquently on the relationship between writing and entropy, drawing on field and number theory to demonstrate how the business of fiction is forever in the process of generating variation within a finite set. The “stoic comedian,” as he figures the writer facing the blank page, self-consciously practices their art in the full cognisance that they select “elements from a closed set, and then (arrange) them inside a closed field” (Kenner 94). The nouveau roman (a genre conceived and practiced in Beckett’s lean shadow) is remembered in literary history as a rather austere, po-faced formalism that foregrounded things at the expense of human psychology or social interaction. But it is emblematic of Kenner’s portrait of stoicism as an attitude to writing that confronts the nature of fiction itself, on its own terms, as a practice “which is endlessly arranging things” (13):The bulge of the bank also begins to take effect starting from the fifth row: this row, as a matter of fact, also possesses only twenty-one trees, whereas it should have twenty-two for a true trapezoid and twenty-three for a rectangle (uneven row). (Robbe-Grillet 21)As a matter of fact. The nouveau roman made a fine if myopic art of isolating detail for detail’s sake. However, it shares with both Beckett’s minimalism and Joyce’s maximalism the obligation of fiction to fill its world with stuff (“maximalism” is a term coined by Michel Delville and Andrew Norris in relation to the musical scores of Frank Zappa that opposes the minimalism of John Cage’s work). Kenner asks, in The Stoic Comedians, where do the “thousands on thousands of things come from, that clutter Ulysses?” His answer is simple, from “a convention” and this prosaic response takes us to the heart of the matter with respect to the impact on writing of Isaac Newton’s unforgiving Second Law of Thermodynamics. In the law’s strictest physical sense of the dissipation of heat, of the loss of energy within any closed system that moves, the stipulation of the Second Law predicts that words will, of necessity, stop in any form governed by convention (be it of horror, comedy, tragedy, the Bildungsroman, etc.). Building upon and at the same time refining the early work on motion and mass theorised by Aristotle, Kepler, and Galileo, inter alia, Newton refined both the laws and language of classical mechanics. It was from Wiener’s literary reading of Newton that Kenner segued from the loss of energy within any closed system (entropy) to the running silent out of words within fiction.In the wake of Norbert Wiener’s cybernetic turn in thinking in the 1940s, which was highly influenced by Newton’s Second Law, fiction would never again be considered in the same way (metafiction was a term coined in part to recognise this shift; the nouveau roman another). Far from delivering a reassured and reassuring present-ness, an integrated and ongoing cosmos, fiction is an isometric exercise in the struggle against entropy, of a world in imminent danger of running out of energy, of not-being:“His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat…” Four nouns, and the book’s world is heavier by four things. One, the hat, “Plasto’s high grade,” will remain in play to the end. The hand we shall continue to take for granted: it is Bloom’s; it goes with his body, which we are not to stop imagining. The peg and the overcoat will fade. “On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off.” Four more things. (Kenner 87)This passage from The Stoic Comedians is a tour de force of the conjuror’s art, slowing down the subliminal process of the illusion for us to see the fragility of fiction’s precarious grip on the verge of silence, heroically “filling four hundred empty pages with combinations of twenty-six different letters” (xiii). Kenner situates Joyce in a comic tradition, preceded by Gustave Flaubert and followed by Beckett, of exhaustive fictive possibility. The stoic, he tells us, “is one who considers, with neither panic nor indifference, that the field of possibilities available to him is large perhaps, or small perhaps, but closed” (he is prompt in reminding us that among novelists, gamblers and ethical theorists, the stoic is also a proponent of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) (xiii). If Joyce is the comedian of the inventory, then it is Flaubert, comedian of the Enlightenment, who is his immediate ancestor. Bouvard and Pécuchet (1881) is an unfinished novel written in the shadow of the Encyclopaedia, an apparatus of the literate mind that sought complete knowledge. But like the Encyclopaedia particularly and the Enlightenment more generally, it is fragmentation that determines its approach to and categorisation of detail as information about the world. Bouvard and Pécuchet ends, appropriately, in a frayed list of details, pronouncements and ephemera.In the face of an unassailable impasse, all that is left Flaubert is the list. For more than thirty years he constructed the Dictionary of Received Ideas in the shadow of the truncated Bouvard and Pécuchet. And in doing so he created for the nineteenth century mind “a handbook for novelists” (Kenner 19), a breakdown of all we know “into little pieces so arranged that they can be found one at a time” (3): ACADEMY, FRENCH: Run it down but try to belong to it if you can.GREEK: Whatever one cannot understand is Greek.KORAN: Book about Mohammed, which is all about women.MACHIAVELLIAN: Word only to be spoken with a shudder.PHILOSOPHY: Always snigger at it.WAGNER: Snigger when you hear his name and joke about the music of the future. (Flaubert, Dictionary 293-330)This is a sample of the exhaustion that issues from the tireless pursuit of categorisation, classification, and the mania for ordered information. The Dictionary manifests the Enlightenment’s insatiable hunger for received ideas, an unwieldy background noise of popular opinion, general knowledge, expertise, and hearsay. In both Bouvard and Pécuchet and the Dictionary, exhaustion was the foundation of a comic art as it was for both Joyce and Beckett after him, for the simple reason that it includes everything and neglects nothing. It is comedy born of overwhelming competence, a sublime impertinence, though not of manners or social etiquette, but rather, with a nod to Oscar Wilde, the impertinence of being definitive (a droll epithet that, not surprisingly, was the title of Kenner’s 1982 Times Literary Supplement review of Richard Ellmann’s revised and augmented biography of Joyce).The inventory, then, is the underlining physio-semiotics of fictional mechanics, an elegiac resistance to the thread of fiction fraying into nothingness. The motif of thermodynamics is no mere literary conceit here. Consider the opening sentence in Borges:Of the many problems which exercised the reckless discernment of Lönnrot, none was so strange—so rigorously strange, shall we say—as the periodic series of bloody events which culminated at the villa of Triste-le-Roy, amid the ceaseless aroma of the eucalypti. (Borges 76)The subordinate clause, as a means of adjectival and adverbial augmentation, implies a potentially infinite sentence through the sheer force of grammatical convention, a machine-like resistance to running out of puff:Under the notable influence of Chesterton (contriver and embellisher of elegant mysteries) and the palace counsellor Leibniz (inventor of the pre-established harmony), in my idle afternoons I have imagined this story plot which I shall perhaps write someday and which already justifies me somehow. (72)In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” a single adjective charmed with emphasis will do to imply an unseen network:The visible work left by this novelist is easily and briefly enumerated. (Borges 36)The annotation of this network is the inexorable issue of the inflection: “I have said that Menard’s work can be easily enumerated. Having examined with care his personal files, I find that they contain the following items.” (37) This is a sample selection from nineteen entries:a) A Symbolist sonnet which appeared twice (with variants) in the review La conque (issues of March and October 1899).o) A transposition into alexandrines of Paul Valéry’s Le cimitière marin (N.R.F., January 1928).p) An invective against Paul Valéry, in the Papers for the Suppression of Reality of Jacques Reboul. (37-38)Lists, when we encounter them in Jorge Luis Borges, are always contextual, supplying necessary detail to expand upon character and situation. And they are always intertextual, anchoring this specific fictional world to others (imaginary, real, fabulatory or yet to come). The collation and annotation of the literary works of an imagined author (Pierre Menard) of an invented author (Edmond Teste) of an actual author (Paul Valéry) creates a recursive, yet generative, feedback loop of reference and literary progeny. As long as one of these authors continues to write, or write of the work of at least one of the others, a persistent fictional present tense is ensured.Consider Hillel Schwartz’s use of the list in his Making Noise (2011). It not only lists what can and is inevitably heard, in this instance the European 1700s, but what it, or local aural colour, is heard over:Earthy: criers of artichokes, asparagus, baskets, beans, beer, bells, biscuits, brooms, buttermilk, candles, six-pence-a-pound fair cherries, chickens, clothesline, cockles, combs, coal, crabs, cucumbers, death lists, door mats, eels, fresh eggs, firewood, flowers, garlic, hake, herring, ink, ivy, jokebooks, lace, lanterns, lemons, lettuce, mackeral, matches […]. (Schwartz 143)The extended list and the catalogue, when encountered as formalist set pieces in fiction or, as in Schwartz’s case, non-fiction, are the expansive equivalent of le mot juste, the self-conscious, painstaking selection of the right word, the specific detail. Of Ulysses, Kenner observes that it was perfectly natural that it “should have attracted the attention of a group of scholars who wanted practice in compiling a word-index to some extensive piece of prose (Miles Hanley, Word Index to Ulysses, 1937). More than any other work of fiction, it suggests by its texture, often by the very look of its pages, that it has been painstakingly assembled out of single words…” (31-32). In a book already crammed with detail, with persistent reference to itself, to other texts, other media, such formalist set pieces as the following from the oneiric “Circe” episode self-consciously perform for our scrutiny fiction’s insatiable hunger for more words, for invention, the Latin root of which also gives us the word inventory:The van of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor Dublin, the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the Presbyterian moderator, the heads of the Baptist, Anabaptist, Methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society of friends. (Joyce, Ulysses 602-604)Such examples demonstrate how Joycean inventories break from narrative as architectonic, stand-alone assemblages of information. They are Rabelaisian irruptions, like Philip Marlow’s lesions, that erupt in swollen bas-relief. The exaggerated, at times hysterical, quality of such lists, perform the hallucinatory work of displacement and condensation (the Homeric parallel here is the transformation of Odysseus’s men into swine by the witch Circe). Freudian, not to mention Stindberg-ian dream-work brings together and juxtaposes images and details that only make sense as non-sense (realistic but not real), such as the extraordinary explosive gathering of civic, commercial, political, chivalric representatives of Dublin in this foreshortened excerpt of Bloom’s regal campaign for his “new Bloomusalem” (606).The text’s formidable echolalia, whereby motifs recur and recapitulate into leitmotifs, ensures that the act of reading Ulysses is always cross-referential, suggesting the persistence of a conjured world that is always already still coming into being through reading. And it is of course this forestalling of Newton’s Second Law that Joyce brazenly conducts, in both the textual and physical sense, in Finnegans Wake. The Wake is an impossible book in that it infinitely sustains the circulation of words within a closed system, creating a weird feedback loop of cyclical return. It is a text that can run indefinitely through the force of its own momentum without coming to a conclusion. In a text in which the author’s alter ego is described in terms of the technology of inscription (Shem the Penman) and his craft as being a “punsil shapner,” (Joyce, Finnegans 98) Norbert Wiener’s descriptive example of feedback as the forestalling of entropy in the conscious act of picking up a pencil is apt: One we have determined this, our motion proceeds in such a way that we may say roughly that the amount by which the pencil is not yet picked up is decreased at each stage. (Wiener 7) The Wake overcomes the book’s, and indeed writing’s, struggle with entropy through the constant return of energy into its closed system as a cycle of endless return. Its generative algorithm can be represented thus: “… a long the riverrun …” (628-3). The Wake’s sense of unending confounds and contradicts, in advance, Frank Kermode’s averring to Newton’s Second Law in his insistence that the progression of all narrative fiction is defined in terms of the “sense of an ending,” the expectation of a conclusion, whereby the termination of words makes “possible a satisfying consonance with the origins and with the middle” (Kermode 17). It is the realisation of the novel imagined by Silas Flannery, the fictitious author in Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveller, an incipit that “maintains for its whole duration the potentiality of the beginning” (Calvino 140). Finnegans Wake is unique in terms of the history of the novel (if that is indeed what it is) in that it is never read, but (as Joseph Frank observed of Joyce generally) “can only be re-read” (Frank 19). With Wiener’s allegory of feedback no doubt in mind, Jacques Derrida’s cybernetic account of the act of reading Joyce comes, like a form of echolalia, on the heels of Calvino’s incipit, his perpetual sustaining of the beginning: you stay on the edge of reading Joyce—for me this has been going on for twenty-five or thirty years—and the endless plunge throws you back onto the river-bank, on the brink of another possible immersion, ad infinitum … In any case, I have the feeling that I haven’t yet begun to read Joyce, and this “not having begun to read” is sometimes the most singular and active relationship I have with his work. (Derrida 148) Derrida wonders if this process of ongoing immersion in the text is typical of all works of literature and not just the Wake. The question is rhetorical and resonates into silence. And it is silence, ultimately, that hovers as a mute herald of the end when words will simply run out.Post(script)It is in the nature of all writing that it is read in the absence of its author. Perhaps the most typical form of writing, then, is the suicide note. In an extraordinary essay, “Goodbye, Cruel Words,” Mark Dery wonders why it has been “so neglected as a literary genre” and promptly sets about reviewing its decisive characteristics. Curiously, the list features amongst its many forms: I’m done with lifeI’m no goodI’m dead. (Dery 262)And references to lists of types of suicide notes are among Dery’s own notes to the essay. With its implicit generic capacity to intransitively add more detail, the list becomes in the light of the terminal letter a condition of writing itself. The irony of this is not lost on Dery as he ponders the impotent stoicism of the scribbler setting about the mordant task of writing for the last time. Writing at the last gasp, as Dery portrays it, is a form of dogged, radical will. But his concluding remarks are reflective of his melancholy attitude to this most desperate act of writing at degree zero: “The awful truth (unthinkable to a writer) is that eloquent suicide notes are rarer than rare because suicide is the moment when language fails—fails to hoist us out of the pit, fails even to express the unbearable weight” (264) of someone on the precipice of the very last word they will ever think, let alone write. Ihab Hassan (1967) and George Steiner (1967), it would seem, were latecomers as proselytisers of the language of silence. But there is a queer, uncanny optimism at work at the terminal moment of writing when, contra Dery, words prevail on the verge of “endless, silent night.” (264) Perhaps when Newton’s Second Law no longer has carriage over mortal life, words take on a weird half-life of their own. Writing, after Socrates, does indeed circulate indiscriminately among its readers. There is a dark irony associated with last words. When life ceases, words continue to have the final say as long as they are read, and in so doing they sustain an unlikely, and in their own way, stoical sense of unending.ReferencesBair, Deirdre. Samuel Beckett: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape, 1978.Beckett, Samuel. Molloy Malone Dies. The Unnamable. London: John Calder, 1973.---. Watt. London: John Calder, 1976.Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths. Selected Stories & Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1964.Calvino, Italo. If On A Winter’s Night A Traveller. Trans. William Weaver, London: Picador, 1981.Delville, Michael, and Andrew Norris. “Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, and the Secret History of Maximalism.” Ed. Louis Armand. Contemporary Poetics: Redefining the Boundaries of Contemporary Poetics, in Theory & Practice, for the Twenty-First Century. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2007. 126-49.Derrida, Jacques. “Two Words for Joyce.” Post-Structuralist Joyce. Essays from the French. Ed. Derek Attridge and Daniel Ferrer. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. 145-59.Dery, Mark. I Must Not think Bad Thoughts: Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2012.Frank, Joseph, “Spatial Form in Modern Literature.” Sewanee Review, 53, 1945: 221-40, 433-56, 643-53.Flaubert, Gustave. Bouvard and Pécuchet. Trans. A. J. KrailSheimer. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.Flaubert, Gustave. Dictionary of Received Ideas. Trans. A. J. KrailSheimer. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.Hassan, Ihab. The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett. New York: Knopf, 1967.Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.---. Ulysses. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.Kenner, Hugh. The Stoic Comedians. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974.Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Narrative Fiction. New York: Oxford U P, 1966.‪Levin, Bernard. Enthusiasms. London: Jonathan Cape, 1983.MacGowran, Jack. MacGowran Speaking Beckett. Claddagh Records, 1966.Pinter, Harold. The Birthday Party. London: Methuen, 1968.Potter, Dennis. The Singing Detective. London, Faber and Faber, 1987.Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Jealousy. Trans. Richard Howard. London: John Calder, 1965.Schwartz, Hillel. Making Noise. From Babel to the Big Bang and Beyond. New York: Zone Books, 2011.Steiner, George. Language and Silence: New York: Atheneum, 1967.Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics, Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965.

Many theories address the material adaptations that organisms—including humans—make to their environments, and many address the adaptation of art to different forms. The film Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002) by Charlie Kaufman, ostensibly an adaptation of Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, addresses both kinds of adaptation, but also suggests how humans might psychically adapt to their emotional and mental environments, namely by doubling or multiplying their identities to create companions and helpmates who can help them cope with emotional and mental stresses. To expose some of Kaufman’s adaptive moves, I will draw on Wolfgang Iser’s literary anthropology, aimed at exploring “what literature may tell us about our anthropological makeup,” particularly “the human need for make-believe even when it is known to be what it is” (vii). Iser’s theory considers the use of imagination, particularly in the realm of fiction, as a way to “meet certain anthropological needs,” as a tool for human adaptation to social or cultural needs (264). Because of Iser’s emphasis on the importance of both the writer’s and reader’s roles, both may use performances of reading and writing to remake themselves in ways that allow them to function more effectively. Kaufman certainly does in his role as adapter: a type of reader who also writes. Kaufman uses imagination to adapt to his situation, just as humans have always needed their imaginations to adapt to their environments, a need as strong as biological adaptation, considering their psychic needs. Kaufman’s script addresses the major difficulty of how to match a book like The Orchid Thief with expectations for a Hollywood film, including a plot, dynamic characters, and a hook that drives the story. His film persona laments the lack of an overarching, coherent narrative, the relatively small portion of the book where the fascinating title character John LaRoche appears, and, in his conversation with the writing guru Robert McKee, the lack of any change in the people in the book, mainly Orlean and LaRoche. Seemingly promising parts of the book, like the court case, end in a few anti-climactic paragraphs about dropped charges and no-contest pleas, as LaRoche’s grand plan is judicially out-maneuvered. Interspersed with these lamentations are all the false starts and dead ends of Charlie’s composition, represented here in two ways: through watching Charlie type or speak his ideas, and through glimpses of these ideas actualized in film. These abortive attempts set up our expectations for his eventual solution, while showing us the films that never were and capturing some of The Orchid Thief’s non-narrative brilliance. Kaufman manages this, however, by creating the metanarrative of the screenplay’s composition, into which he writes the story of Orlean’s composition of her book. In other words, Kaufman adapts to the problem of adapting the book to a screenplay by thematizing adaptation itself, a concept that fits well with the book’s discussion of adaptation in the biological world. The contrast between Kaufman’s feverish, agonized composition process and Orlean’s placid, cool work creates a dramatic tension in the story, and Kaufman takes revenge on this fantasy of Orlean’s unflappable persona by forcing that persona to unravel more and more as the script progresses. Of course, neither in her book nor in her real life, it should be pointed out, does Orlean suffer from unbearable loneliness, fall in love with LaRoche, use drugs, or turn homicidal. Kaufman, combining selections from the extratextual world, from Orlean’s text, and from his imagination, doubles the real world and the world of the screenplay, distorting them both in the process, but also creating something new. When a new text combines parts of other texts, this doubling multiplies because of the complexity of the relationships involved, since the contexts of all these texts shift when put in new relations to one another. Iser remarks on how the selection of texts and their resulting recontextualization operates on other texts through the reader’s performance, namely by triggering a multiplication of voices, when all of the texts come together and are affected by each other in the recipient’s consciousness (Iser, 237-8). This explanation yields insight into how the performativity of the fictionalizing act and the act of representation merge, through the author’s selection and the recipient’s imagination, when all these different texts are finally placed in a medium where they can interact. The selections and combinations of Kaufman’s script come to fruition in the viewer’s mind, creating a potential for new ideas, new meaning: in other words, intellectual evolution, an adaptation specific to human beings. Iser emphasizes that representation does not merely mirror the existing, but instead creates something new (236). This power of imagination means that we can use make-believe to imagine ourselves in different ways in order to live successfully. This imagining brings together the performances of readers and writers not only to create something new but to cope with the world. For Iser, the creating is the coping, and it tells us something about human nature and how it adapts. Adaptation and The Orchid Thief both refer to Darwin’s The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects and The Origin of Species, outlining his theories of evolution, based on species’ adaptation to their environments. The film invokes Darwin’s words, ideas, and likeness several times: the sequence of film showing the evolution of life, Charlie’s description of this scene for his screenplay, LaRoche and Orlean’s conversation about Darwin, a shot of Darwin’s writings on tape in LaRoche’s van, an imagined scene of Darwin writing the words we hear in narration, a shot of a book of Darwin’s writing in Charlie’s room, and numerous mentions of adaptation and mutation throughout the film in dialogue. The selection of this particular idea, magnified in the film through all of these references, provides a framework for the viewer to understand Kaufman’s choices and the rationalization behind them. Not only do orchids evolve—through mutation—to adapt to their environments, but so do people and ideas, just like the character Charlie Kaufman and his fictional screenplay, as well as the real Charlie Kaufman and his real screenplay. When the elements selected from these extratextual sources are brought together in the text, they “mutually inscribe themselves into one another. Every word becomes dialogic, and every semantic field is doubled by another” (Iser, 238). When combined like this, each element is present in every other one, even if it is literally absent. Sometimes the awareness of what is not present is greater than at others; sometimes, “the present serv[es] only to spotlight the absent” (Iser, 238). Combination doubles meaning by creating an absence for every presence, so that everything said is twofold, the said and the not-said. This doubling is compounded by the text’s self-disclosed fictionality so that what is missing from the text is always already present there as well (Iser, 239). Charlie’s script brings together the elements of writing and Hollywood with the text of Orlean’s book, and his inclusion of these elements creates additional possibilities for the film, many of which are realized through elements that are absent from the book but made present in the film. For example, the romance in the film, which is not present and is even denied in Orlean’s text, only actualizes possibilities already extant in potential in the reader’s mind: for example, Orlean’s rebuttal of any attraction between her and LaRoche (in an interview published in post-film versions of the book and incorporated in the screenplay) introduces the idea to the reader/viewer even if it had not already occurred spontaneously, and this denied possibility explodes in the movie’s latter half, irresistibly demanding exploration, if only because Hollywood films demand romance. In the film, what is absent, yet always present, is a true adaptation of Orlean’s book into a film. It is the subject of the film, and thus always present in one way, but what results is not really an adaptation of the book in the more usual sense. Fictionality enacts one other doubling through the “text’s disclosure of itself as fiction” (Iser, 238). This disclosure happens through two means: “The attitude to be imposed on the reader, and … what the text is meant to represent” (Iser, 238). Including a representation of the writing process—mind you, not the actual writing process—exposes the fictionalizing act, which imposes an attitude on the viewer of taking what is seen as play, as “make-believe”; this is not to say that the play is not purposeful, but it is difficult to lose sight of the film as staged due to the recursiveness of hearing something being composed that we have already seen staged on the screen. Other examples include references to other films, using musical scenes to break tension, and lore about Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) being partly written by twins. These pointers move the viewer to adopt different attitudes to the represented world, and as the tropes are warped here—a musical scene becomes a poignant connection between Charlie and Donald, rather than a beach-blanket, road-trip romp—the viewer gains a different perspective on movie-making. Thus, the viewer is mutated by Adaptation too, becoming, through the process of watching, the kind of audience Kaufman desires. Iser addresses the results of “self-disclosed fictionality” on the recipient of such a fictionalizing act (238-9). As applied to film, if viewers are freed from having to take the film as real, the different attitude to reality the film imposes can be more easily accepted. Thus, new attitudes can be accepted in play, learned through performances of reading or viewing. These attitudes may (although do not necessarily) remain with viewers beyond the represented world’s boundaries, marking a permanent evolution. This possibility of change is important to the disclosure of what the text is meant to represent, which is adaptation, in all its many senses. The writer can, through the fictionalizing act, produce a text; but the text’s recipient must complete the performance of representation through bringing what is represented to fruition through imagination, as Iser explains. Things are made present through imagination that have no reality outside of the text, are made to exist as if they are real in the reader’s imagination. Thus, through the whole process of representation, the fictionalizing act and the reader’s performance, what is not accessible in the extratextual world can be held in the mind, which is the making of make-believe (Iser, 243). Even then, the inaccessible may not be achieved, but only approached through these means: “Aesthetic semblance … neither transcends a given reality nor mediates between idea and manifestation; it is an indication that the inaccessible can only be approached by being staged” (Iser, 243). However, inaccessibility does not reduce the desire for what we cannot possess, as Orlean repeatedly witnesses; we can try to get what we desire, but ultimately it must be inaccessible because we cannot hold onto it at all. The staging of something inaccessible may not be the same as having it, but the manner of staging can also reveal something about what is sought—in this case, passion for Orlean, and perfect adaptation to one’s environment for Kaufman. The inaccessible is often figured as a blank in literature and film; solidifying it into form robs it of its power because the actual can never be the same as that pure potential—think of Orlean’s astonished and disappointed line in the film when she finally sees the ghost orchid: “It’s a flower.” Fear of disappointment prevents her from attempting to see the orchid in the real world, as she explains in her book; she would rather leave the possibility of any fulfillment she might receive in its perfect state of imagination. Even a pure reproduction is impossible, since representation ever creates something new. Film adaptation, of course, falls into this category; that Kaufman’s film does not equal Orlean’s book is obvious to anyone who has experienced both, but Kaufman’s script increases the audience’s awareness of this non-equation of film adaptations to their primary texts, as well as the possibility of the adaptation creating something new. Because of the performative quality of the reader’s role, actualizing the potential of a text, making it tangible through his or her imagination, we must cast Charlie Kaufman’s writing as a performance of reading as well. Iser posits a triadic relationship of the real, the fictional, and the imaginary, in place of the traditional dyad of the real and the fictional. The imaginary is the blank space and formless material made concrete through the fictionalizing act. In Orlean’s book, Florida is the imaginary; she writes, “Florida was to Americans what America had always been to the rest of the world—a fresh, free, unspoiled start. Florida is a wet, warm, tropical place, essentially featureless, and infinitely transformable. … Its essential character can be repeatedly reimagined” (123). For the character Kaufman, the screenplay is the imaginary; it is “infinitely transformable,” and can be “repeatedly reimagined”. Through the unformed potential of the screenplay that he imagines, he can do anything, access anything, even the inaccessible. He can use the screenplay to create fifty movies in one, to create a documentary and a Hollywood action film, a romance, a thriller. He can also use this space of infinite possibility to solve the problem of writing the real screenplay, by writing himself a new self and a partner in the form of a twin brother. Brian McHale explains that the dominant mode of postmodernist fiction is ontological. While McHale’s concern is primarily with questions about the modes of being of the worlds constructed by postmodernist fiction, the construction of new worlds often coincides with attempts by ontologically confused characters to understand themselves and their places in the world—sometimes they solve these problems by creating new worlds to suit (McHale, 9-10). Dick Higgins’s provocative question, quoted by McHale, “Which of my selves is to do [‘what is to be done’]?” highlights the quandary of characters in postmodernist fiction and, we might add, in postmodernist films (McHale, 10). The priority becomes determining the quality of one’s own being, or, given the problem of a certain kind of external reality, determining which self can best adapt to the new world. Kaufman creates multiple ontological layers to approach one of his problems, namely how to adapt a plotless book with no character development into a film. The film’s worlds multiply as he writes the screenplay before our eyes—often after an event that Charlie’s dictations echo—then erases, rewrites, and erases and rewrites, over and over again. I extend McHale’s thesis, however, in that, along with creating new worlds within the text to solve their ontological problems, characters create new selves to solve the problem of who to be in order to live meaningfully. To solve his multitude of problems, Kaufman creates not only a representation of himself in his screenplay (and one might argue, many representations), but also a twin brother who can help him do what he cannot. Kaufman creates at least two other selves to do what needs to be done in the real world and in the film’s world: that is, solving the intractable problem of making a movie out of this book, and for both himself and the character of Susan Orlean, connecting to other people. Kaufman does include a glimpse of the book that is true to its character, but he can’t make a movie out of just this, and a perfect reproduction of the book is impossible anyway—it is inaccessible, which is part of what causes Charlie such agonies. The theme of adaptation introduced by the subject of orchids ultimately provides a way to transform the book into a movie. Consequently, Charlie adapts to the problem in his environment, this unwritten screenplay, by multiplying himself. The character Robert McKee (a real name coincidentally significant in true Dickensian style) presents Charlie with the key to solving the twin problems of the screenplay and his own life; McKee tells Charlie that if characters don’t change there is no story; Charlie is skeptical, at first, at there being people in the world who actually do things, but McKee convinces him it is true. So Charlie, with Donald’s help, changes the characters from The Orchid Thief who do not change, or at least whom we don’t see change because of Orlean’s presentation of them. LaRoche as represented by Orlean does not change; the objects of his passion change, but not his relationship to them. Orlean herself refuses to change, to accept connections to other living things—she gives away the gifts of orchids from the orchid people she interviews. She articulates her lack of connection in an interview after the book’s publication. Kaufman includes this statement in the film, when Donald interviews her while pretending to be Charlie. This statement exposes her detachment, and we certainly do not wonder any more at her dispassionateness, although she says she wishes she had a passion. She claims her passion is for her subjects, but it is hard to believe that when we hear her comments about the relationships of reporters with their subjects. Ultimately, the book is disappointing because the one person present throughout never changes—refuses change, in fact, even when given the opportunity to connect with extraordinary people who might help her to change. For example, she reports, but does not explore, the implications of LaRoche’s change of passion from orchids to computers after his family tragedy; he says, and Kaufman emphasizes this in the film, that he loves computers because they can’t die, unlike the living things he cherished before. He has psychically adapted himself to this painful reality, and even if Orlean doesn’t learn from him, Kaufman does. Unlike Orlean, Charlie succeeds in breaking through his inability to connect with other people; he writes himself as a character who changes, who grows. Donald catalyzes this change, first by introducing Charlie to McKee’s ideas and holding onto them despite Charlie’s scoffing, so that he eventually sways Charlie with his conviction (and his success); and then, in the swamp, when he explains to Charlie that he owns his love and attachments to other people, and their judgments of him cannot make him let them go or spoil them for him. This revelation provides the final impetus for Charlie’s transformation, and he is able to connect to, and ultimately to integrate himself with, Donald, allowing him to continue after Donald is killed. Such integration commonly appears in stories of doubling, and the integrated double must then leave the story somehow. Donald’s effect on the screenplay, then, is the creation of a narrative arc and of characters who change, for better or for worse. Donald invents the relationship between Orlean and LaRoche and their illicit activities. Because of Donald, the movie also metamorphoses into the typical Hollywood film, with drugs, sex, violence, car chases, and a guy getting the girl in the end. But it is also through Donald that the action moves outside of Charlie’s head and that his solitude changes into action in the world involving other people. Thus, the process that brings the movie to that point makes it impossible for us to see it the same way as before, and it lends a significance to the ending that such a “Hollywood” copout wouldn’t otherwise have, just like the reprise of the musical number “Happy Together” in the swamp, this time a demonstration of Charlie’s affection for his brother. In order to excuse this “copout” and the complete departure from The Orchid Thief, Charlie must write himself into the screenplay, to picture his agonizing for us so we will sympathize with his choices, and he must write a double, Donald, who can make these changes, not a copout, but significant evolution. Kaufman changes himself psychically and emotionally in order to do what needs to be done: to create something that can survive through its novelty, to create a self that can survive through adaptation. References Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. London: John Murray, 1859. ———. On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilized by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing. 2nd ed. London: John Murray, 1877. Iser, Wolfgang. Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989. McHale, Brian. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen, 1987. Orlean, Susan. The Orchid Thief. 1998. New York: Ballantine, 2000. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bartlett, Lexey A. "Who Do I Turn (in)to for Help?: Multiple Identity as Adaptation in Adaptation." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/04-bartlett.php>. APA Style Bartlett, L. (May 2007) "Who Do I Turn (in)to for Help?: Multiple Identity as Adaptation in Adaptation," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/04-bartlett.php>.

Introduction Documentary film has grown significantly in the past decade, with high profile films such as Fahrenheit 9/11, Supersize Me, and An Inconvenient Truth garnering increased attention both at the box office and in the news media. In addition, the rising prominence of web-based media has provided new opportunities for documentary to create social impact. Films are now typically released with websites, Facebook pages, twitter feeds, and web videos to increase both reach and impact. This combination of technology and broader audience appeal has given rise to a current landscape in which documentary films are imbedded within coordinated multi-media campaigns. New media have not only opened up new avenues for communicating with audiences, they have also created new opportunities for data collection and analysis of film impacts. A recent report by McKinsey and Company highlighted this potential, introducing and discussing the implications of increasing consumer information being recorded on the Internet as well as through networked sensors in the physical world. As they found: "Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy" (Manyika et al. iv). This data can be mined to learn a great deal about both individual and cultural response to documentary films and the issues they represent. Although film has a rich history in humanities research, this new set of tools enables an empirical approach grounded in the social sciences. However, several researchers across disciplines have noted that limited investigation has been conducted in this area. Although there has always been an emphasis on social impact in film and many filmmakers and scholars have made legitimate (and possibly illegitimate) claims of impact, few have attempted to empirically justify these claims. Over fifteen years ago, noted film scholar Brian Winston commented that "the underlying assumption of most social documentaries—that they shall act as agents of reform and change—is almost never demonstrated" (236). A decade later, Political Scientist David Whiteman repeated this sentiment, arguing that, "despite widespread speculation about the impact of documentaries, the topic has received relatively little systematic attention" ("Evolving"). And earlier this year, the introduction to a special issue of Mass Communication and Society on documentary film stated, "documentary film, despite its growing influence and many impacts, has mostly been overlooked by social scientists studying the media and communication" (Nisbet and Aufderheide 451). Film has been studied extensively as entertainment, as narrative, and as cultural event, but the study of film as an agent of social change is still in its infancy. This paper introduces a systematic approach to measuring the social impact of documentary film aiming to: (1) discuss the context of documentary film and its potential impact; and (2) argue for a social science approach, discussing key issues about conducting such research. Changes in Documentary Practice Documentary film has been used as a tool for promoting social change throughout its history. John Grierson, who coined the term "documentary" in 1926, believed it could be used to influence the ideas and actions of people in ways once reserved for church and school. He presented his thoughts on this emerging genre in his 1932 essay, First Principles of Documentary, saying, "We believe that the cinema's capacity for getting around, for observing and selecting from life itself, can be exploited in a new and vital art form" (97). Richard Barsam further specified the definition of documentary, distinguishing it from non-fiction film, such that all documentaries are non-fiction films but not all non-fiction films are documentaries. He distinguishes documentary from other forms of non-fiction film (i.e. travel films, educational films, newsreels) by its purpose; it is a film with an opinion and a specific message that aims to persuade or influence the audience. And Bill Nichols writes that the definition of documentary may even expand beyond the film itself, defining it as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception" (12). Documentary film has undergone many significant changes since its inception, from the heavily staged romanticism movement of the 1920s to the propagandist tradition of governments using film to persuade individuals to support national agendas to the introduction of cinéma vérité in the 1960s and historical documentary in the 1980s (cf. Barnouw). However, the recent upsurge in popularity of documentary media, combined with technological advances of internet and computers have opened up a whole new set of opportunities for film to serve as both art and agent for social change. One such opportunity is in the creation of film-based social action campaigns. Over the past decade, filmmakers have taken a more active role in promoting social change by coordinating film releases with action campaigns. Companies such as Participant Media (An Inconvenient Truth, Food Inc., etc.) now create "specific social action campaigns for each film and documentary designed to give a voice to issues that resonate in the films" (Participant Media). In addition, a new sector of "social media" consultants are now offering services, including "consultation, strategic planning for alternative distribution, website and social media development, and complete campaign management services to filmmakers to ensure the content of nonfiction media truly meets the intention for change" (Working Films). The emergence of new forms of media and technology are changing our conceptions of both documentary film and social action. Technologies such as podcasts, video blogs, internet radio, social media and network applications, and collaborative web editing "both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of 'documentary' as a practice and as an idea" (Ellsworth). In the past decade, we have seen new forms of documentary creation, distribution, marketing, and engagement. Likewise, film campaigns are utilizing a broad array of strategies to engage audience members, including "action kits, screening programs, educational curriculums and classes, house parties, seminars, panels" that often turn into "ongoing 'legacy' programs that are updated and revised to continue beyond the film's domestic and international theatrical, DVD and television windows" (Participant Media). This move towards multi-media documentary film is becoming not only commonplace, but expected as a part of filmmaking. NYU film professor and documentary film pioneer George Stoney recently noted, "50 percent of the documentary filmmaker's job is making the movie, and 50 percent is figuring out what its impact can be and how it can move audiences to action" (qtd. in Nisbet, "Gasland"). In his book Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins, coined the term "transmedia storytelling", which he later defined as "a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience" ("Transmedia"). When applied to documentary film, it is the elements of the "issue" raised by the film that get dispersed across these channels, coordinating, not just an entertainment experience, but a social action campaign. Dimensions of Evaluation It is not unreasonable to assume that such film campaigns, just like any policy or program, have the possibility to influence viewers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Measuring this impact has become increasingly important, as funders of documentary and issue-based films want look to understand the "return on investment" of films in terms of social impact so that they can compare them with other projects, including non-media, direct service projects. Although we "feel" like films make a difference to the individuals who also see them in the broader cultures in which they are embedded, measurement and empirical analysis of this impact are vitally important for both providing feedback to filmmakers and funders as well as informing future efforts attempting to leverage film for social change. This type of systematic assessment, or program evaluation, is often discussed in terms of two primary goals—formative (or process) and summative (or impact) evaluation (cf. Muraskin; Trochim and Donnelly). Formative evaluation studies program materials and activities to strengthen a program, and summative evaluation examines program outcomes. In terms of documentary film, these two goals can be described as follows: Formative Evaluation: Informing the Process As programs (broadly defined as an intentional set of activities with the aim of having some specific impact), the people who interact with them, and the cultures they are situated in are constantly changing, program development and evaluation is an ongoing learning cycle. Film campaigns, which are an intentional set of activities with the aim of impacting individual viewers and broader cultures, fit squarely within this purview. Without formulating hypotheses about the relationships between program activities and goals and then collecting and analyzing data during implementation to test them, it is difficult to learn ways to improve programs (or continue doing what works best in the most efficient manner). Attention to this process enables those involved to learn more about, not only what works, but how and why it works and even gain insights about how program outcomes may be affected by changes to resource availability, potential audiences, or infrastructure. Filmmakers are constantly learning and honing their craft and realizing the impact of their practice can help the artistic process. Often faced with tight budgets and timelines, they are forced to confront tradeoffs all the time, in the writing, production and post-production process. Understanding where they are having impact can improve their decision-making, which can help both the individual project and the overall field. Summative Evaluation: Quantifying Impacts Evaluation is used in many different fields to determine whether programs are achieving their intended goals and objectives. It became popular in the 1960s as a way of understanding the impact of the Great Society programs and has continued to grow since that time (Madaus and Stufflebeam). A recent White House memo stated that "rigorous, independent program evaluations can be a key resource in determining whether government programs are achieving their intended outcomes as well as possible and at the lowest possible cost" and the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) launched an initiative to increase the practice of "impact evaluations, or evaluations aimed at determining the causal effects of programs" (Orszag 1). Documentary films, like government programs, generally target a national audience, aim to serve a social purpose, and often do not provide a return on their investment. Participant Media, the most visible and arguably most successful documentary production company in the film industry, made recent headlines for its difficulty in making a profit during its seven-year history (Cieply). Owner and founder Jeff Skoll reported investing hundreds of millions of dollars into the company and CEO James Berk added that the company sometimes measures success, not by profit, but by "whether Mr. Skoll could have exerted more impact simply by spending his money philanthropically" (Cieply). Because of this, documentary projects often rely on grant funding, and are starting to approach funders beyond traditional arts and media sources. "Filmmakers are finding new fiscal and non-fiscal partners, in constituencies that would not traditionally be considered—or consider themselves—media funders or partners" (BRITDOC 6). And funders increasingly expect tangible data about their return on investment. Says Luis Ubiñas, president of Ford Foundation, which recently launched the Just Films Initiative: In these times of global economic uncertainty, with increasing demand for limited philanthropic dollars, assessing our effectiveness is more important than ever. Today, staying on the frontlines of social change means gauging, with thoughtfulness and rigor, the immediate and distant outcomes of our funding. Establishing the need for evaluation is not enough—attention to methodology is also critical. Valid research methodology is a critical component of understanding around the role entertainment can play in impacting social and environmental issues. The following issues are vital to measuring impact. Defining the Project Though this may seem like an obvious step, it is essential to determine the nature of the project so one can create research questions and hypotheses based on a complete understanding of the "treatment". One organization that provides a great example of the integration of documentary film imbedded into a larger campaign or movement is Invisible Children. Founded in 2005, Invisible Children is both a media-based organization as well as an economic development NGO with the goal of raising awareness and meeting the needs of child soldiers and other youth suffering as a result of the ongoing war in northern Uganda. Although Invisible Children began as a documentary film, it has grown into a large non-profit organization with an operating budget of over $8 million and a staff of over a hundred employees and interns throughout the year as well as volunteers in all 50 states and several countries. Invisible Children programming includes films, events, fundraising campaigns, contests, social media platforms, blogs, videos, two national "tours" per year, merchandise, and even a 650-person three-day youth summit in August 2011 called The Fourth Estate. Individually, each of these components might lead to specific outcomes; collectively, they might lead to others. In order to properly assess impacts of the film "project", it is important to take all of these components into consideration and think about who they may impact and how. This informs the research questions, hypotheses, and methods used in evaluation. Film campaigns may even include partnerships with existing social movements and non-profit organizations targeting social change. The American University Center for Social Media concluded in a case study of three issue-based documentary film campaigns: Digital technologies do not replace, but are closely entwined with, longstanding on-the-ground activities of stakeholders and citizens working for social change. Projects like these forge new tools, pipelines, and circuits of circulation in a multiplatform media environment. They help to create sustainable network infrastructures for participatory public media that extend from local communities to transnational circuits and from grassroots communities to policy makers. (Abrash) Expanding the Focus of Impact beyond the Individual A recent focus has shifted the dialogue on film impact. Whiteman ("Theaters") argues that traditional metrics of film "success" tend to focus on studio economic indicators that are far more relevant to large budget films. Current efforts focused on box office receipts and audience size, the author claims, are really measures of successful film marketing or promotion, missing the mark when it comes to understanding social impact. He instead stresses the importance of developing a more comprehensive model. His "coalition model" broadens the range and types of impact of film beyond traditional metrics to include the entire filmmaking process, from production to distribution. Whiteman (“Theaters”) argues that a narrow focus on the size of the audience for a film, its box office receipts, and viewers' attitudes does not incorporate the potential reach of a documentary film. Impacts within the coalition model include both individual and policy levels. Individual impacts (with an emphasis on activist groups) include educating members, mobilizing for action, and raising group status; policy includes altering both agenda for and the substance of policy deliberations. The Fledgling Fund (Barrett and Leddy) expanded on this concept and identified five distinct impacts of documentary film campaigns. These potential impacts expand from individual viewers to groups, movements, and eventually to what they call the "ultimate goal" of social change. Each is introduced briefly below. Quality Film. The film itself can be presented as a quality film or media project, creating enjoyment or evoking emotion in the part of audiences. "By this we mean a film that has a compelling narrative that draws viewers in and can engage them in the issue and illustrate complex problems in ways that statistics cannot" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Awareness. Film can increase public awareness by bringing light to issues and stories that may have otherwise been unknown or not often thought about. This is the level of impact that has received the most attention, as films are often discussed in terms of their "educational" value. "A project's ability to raise awareness around a particular issue, since awareness is a critical building block for both individual change and broader social change" (Barrett and Leddy, 6). Public Engagement. Impact, however, need not stop at simply raising public awareness. Engagement "indicates a shift from simply being aware of an issue to acting on this awareness. Were a film and its outreach campaign able to provide an answer to the question 'What can I do?' and more importantly mobilize that individual to act?" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This is where an associated film campaign becomes increasingly important, as transmedia outlets such as Facebook, websites, blogs, etc. can build off the interest and awareness developed through watching a film and provide outlets for viewers channel their constructive efforts. Social Movement. In addition to impacts on individuals, films can also serve to mobilize groups focused on a particular problem. The filmmaker can create a campaign around the film to promote its goals and/or work with existing groups focused on a particular issue, so that the film can be used as a tool for mobilization and collaboration. "Moving beyond measures of impact as they relate to individual awareness and engagement, we look at the project's impact as it relates to the broader social movement … if a project can strengthen the work of key advocacy organizations that have strong commitment to the issues raised in the film" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). Social Change. The final level of impact and "ultimate goal" of an issue-based film is long-term and systemic social change. "While we understand that realizing social change is often a long and complex process, we do believe it is possible and that for some projects and issues there are key indicators of success" (Barrett and Leddy, 7). This can take the form of policy or legislative change, passed through film-based lobbying efforts, or shifts in public dialogue and behavior. Legislative change typically takes place beyond the social movement stage, when there is enough support to pressure legislators to change or create policy. Film-inspired activism has been seen in issues ranging from environmental causes such as agriculture (Food Inc.) and toxic products (Blue Vinyl) to social causes such as foreign conflict (Invisible Children) and education (Waiting for Superman). Documentary films can also have a strong influence as media agenda-setters, as films provide dramatic "news pegs" for journalists seeking to either sustain or generation new coverage of an issue (Nisbet "Introduction" 5), such as the media coverage of climate change in conjunction with An Inconvenient Truth. Barrett and Leddy, however, note that not all films target all five impacts and that different films may lead to different impacts. "In some cases we could look to key legislative or policy changes that were driven by, or at least supported by the project... In other cases, we can point to shifts in public dialogue and how issues are framed and discussed" (7). It is possible that specific film and/or campaign characteristics may lead to different impacts; this is a nascent area for research and one with great promise for both practical and theoretical utility. Innovations in Tools and Methods Finally, the selection of tools is a vital component for assessing impact and the new media landscape is enabling innovations in the methods and strategies for program evaluation. Whereas the traditional domain of film impact measurement included box office statistics, focus groups, and exit surveys, innovations in data collection and analysis have expanded the reach of what questions we can ask and how we are able to answer them. For example, press coverage can assist in understanding and measuring the increase in awareness about an issue post-release. Looking directly at web-traffic changes "enables the creation of an information-seeking curve that can define the parameters of a teachable moment" (Hart and Leiserowitz 360). Audience reception can be measured, not only via interviews and focus groups, but also through content and sentiment analysis of web content and online analytics. "Sophisticated analytics can substantially improve decision making, minimize risks, and unearth valuable insights that would otherwise remain hidden" (Manyika et al. 5). These new tools are significantly changing evaluation, expanding what we can learn about the social impacts of film through triangulation of self-report data with measurement of actual behavior in virtual environments. Conclusion The changing media landscape both allows and impels evaluation of film impacts on individual viewers and the broader culture in which they are imbedded. Although such analysis may have previously been limited to box office numbers, critics' reviews, and theater exit surveys, the rise of new media provides both the ability to connect filmmakers, activists, and viewers in new ways and the data in which to study the process. This capability, combined with significant growth in the documentary landscape, suggests a great potential for documentary film to contribute to some of our most pressing social and environmental needs. A social scientific approach, that combines empirical analysis with theory applied from basic science, ensures that impact can be measured and leveraged in a way that is useful for both filmmakers as well as funders. In the end, this attention to impact ensures a continued thriving marketplace for issue-based documentary films in our social landscape. References Abrash, Barbara. "Social Issue Documentary: The Evolution of Public Engagement." American University Center for Social Media 21 Apr. 2010. 26 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/›. Aufderheide, Patricia. "The Changing Documentary Marketplace." Cineaste 30.3 (2005): 24-28. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford UP, 1993. Barrett, Diana and Sheila Leddy. 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A slash manip is a photo remix that montages visual signs from popular media with those from gay pornography, creating a new cultural artefact. Slash (see Russ) is a fannish practice that homoeroticises the bonds between male media characters and personalities—female pairings are categorised separately as ‘femslash’. Slash has been defined almost exclusively as a female practice. While fandom is indeed “women-centred” (Bury 2), such definitions have a tendency to exclude male contributions. Remix has been well acknowledged in discussions on slash, most notably video remix in relation to slash vids (Kreisinger). Non-written slash forms such as slash vids (see Russo) and slash fanart (see Dennis) have received increased attention in recent years. This article continues the tradition of moving beyond fiction by considering the non-written form of slash manips, yet to receive sustained scholarly attention. Speaking as a practitioner—my slash manips can be found here—I perform textual analysis from an aca–fan (academic and fan) position of two Merlin slash manips by male Tumblr artist wandsinhand. My textual analysis is influenced by Barthes’s use of image semiotics, which he applies to the advertising image. Barthes notes that “all images are polysemous”, that underlying their signifiers they imply “a ‘floating chain’ of signifieds, the reader able to choose some and ignore others” (274). That said, the advertising image, he argues, constructs an “undoubtedly intentional […] signification”, making it ideally suited for analysis (270). By supplementing my analysis with excerpts from two interviews I conducted with wandsinhand in February and April 2013 (quoted here with permission), I support my readings with respect to the artist’s stated ‘intentional reading’. I then contextualise these readings with respect to canon (Merlin) representations and gay pornography—via the chosen sexual acts/positions, bukkake and doggystyle, of the pornographic base models, as selected by the artist. This approach allows me to examine the photo remix qualities of slash manips with respect to the artist’s intentions as well as how artistic choices of inclusion function to anchor meaning in the works. I describe these choices as the ‘semiotic significance of selection’. Together the readings and interviews in this article help illustrate the value of this form and the new avenues it opens for slash scholars, such as consideration of photo remix and male production, and the importance of gay pornography to slash. My interviews also reveal, via the artist’s own assessment of the ‘value’ of his practice, a tendency to devalue or overlook the significance of this particular slash form, affirming a real need for further critical engagement with this under-examined practice. Slash Photo Remix: Famous Faces, Porny Bodies Lessig defines remix culture as based on an activity of “rip, mix and burn” (12–5); while Navas describes it as a “practice of cut/copy and paste” (159)—the latter being more applicable to photo remix. Whereas Lessig is concerned primarily with issues of copyright, Navas is interested in remix’s role in aesthetics and the political economy. Within fan studies, slash vids—a form of video remix—has been a topic of considerable academic interest in recent years. Slash manips—a form of photo or image remix—however, has not attracted the same degree of interest. Stasi’s description of slash as “a non-hierarchical, rich layering of genres” points to the usefulness of slash manips as an embodiment of the process of slash; whereby artists combine, blend and mutate graphic layers from popular media with those from gay pornography. Aesthetics and the slash manip process are central concerns of this article’s consideration of slash photo remix. Slash manips, or slash photo montage, use image manipulation software (Adobe Photoshop being the community standard, see wandsinhand’s tutorial) to layer the heads of male fictional characters from stills or promotional images with scenes—static or moving—from gay pornography. Once an artist has selected pornographic ‘base models’ anatomically suited to canon characters, these models are often then repositioned into the canon universe, which in the case of Merlin means a medieval setting. (Works not repositioned and without added details from canon are generally categorised as ‘male celebrity fakes’ rather than ‘slash manips’.) Stedman contends that while many fan studies scholars are interested in remix, “studies commonly focus on examples of remixed objects rather than the compositional strategies used by remix composers themselves” (107). He advocates moving beyond an exclusive consideration of “text-centred approaches” to also consider “practice-” and “composer-centred” approaches. Such approaches offer insight into “the detailed choices composers actually make when composing” (107). He refers to recognition of the skills required by a remix composer as “remix literacy” (108). This article’s consideration of the various choices and skills that go into the composition of slash manips—what I term the ‘semiotic significance of selection’—is explored with respect to wandsinhand’s practice, coupling my reading—informed by my experience as a practitioner—with the interpretations of the artist himself. Jenkins defines slash as “reaction against” constructions of male sexuality in both popular media and pornography (189). By their very nature, slash manips also make clear the oft-overlooked connections between slash and gay pornography, and in turn the contributions of gay male participants, who are well represented by the form. This contrasts with a tendency within scholarship to compare slash with heterosexual female forms, such as the romance genre (Salmon and Symons). Gay pornography plays a visible role in slash manips—and slash vids, which often remix scenes from popular media with gay cinema and pornography. Slash as Romance, Slash as Pornography Early scholarship on slash (see Russ; Lamb and Veith) defines it as a form of erotica or pornography, by and for women; a reductive definition that fails to take into account men’s contribution, yet one that many researchers continue to adopt today. As stated above, there has also been a tendency within scholarship to align the practice with heterosexual female forms such as the romance genre. Such a tendency is by and large due to theorisation of slash as heterosexual female fantasy—and concerned primarily with romance and intimacy rather than sex (see Woledge). Weinstein describes slash as more a “fascination with” than a “representation of” homosexual relationships (615); while MacDonald makes the point that homosexuality is not a major political motivator for slash (28–9). There is no refuting that slash—along with most fannish practice—is female dominated, ethnographic work and fandom surveys reveal that is the case. However there is great need for research into male production of slash, particularly how such practices might challenge reigning definitions and assumptions of the practice. In similar Japanese practices, for example, gay male opposition to girls’ comics (shōjo) depicting love between ‘pretty boys’ (bishōunen) has been well documented (see Hori)—Men’s Love (or bara) is a subgenre of Boys’ Love (or shōnen’ai) predominately created by gay men seeking a greater connection with the lived reality of gay life (Lunsing). Dennis finds male slash fanart producers more committed to muscular representations and depiction of graphic male/male sex when compared with female-identifying artists (14, 16). He also observes that male fanart artists have a tendency of “valuing same-sex desire without a heterosexual default and placing it within the context of realistic gay relationships” (11). I have observed similar differences between male and female-identifying slash manip artists. Female-identifying Nicci Mac, for example, will often add trousers to her donor bodies, recoding them for a more romantic context. By contrast, male-identifying mythagowood is known for digitally enlarging the penises and rectums of his base models, exaggerating his work’s connection to the pornographic and the macabre. Consider, for example, mythagowood’s rationale for digitally enlarging and importing ‘lips’ for Sam’s (Supernatural) rectum in his work Ass-milk: 2012, which marks the third anniversary of the original: Originally I wasn’t going to give Sammy’s cunt any treatment (before I determined the theme) but when assmilk became the theme I had to go find a good set of lips to slap on him and I figured, it’s been three years, his hole is going to be MUCH bigger. (personal correspondence, used with permission) While mythagowood himself cautions against gendered romance/pornography slash arguments—“I find it annoying that people attribute certain specific aspects of my work to something ‘only a man’ would make.” (ibid.)—gay pornography occupies an important place in the lives of gay men as a means for entertainment, community engagement and identity-construction (see McKee). As one of the only cultural representations available to gay men, Fejes argues that gay pornography plays a crucial role in defining gay male desire and identity. This is confirmed by an Internet survey conducted by Duggan and McCreary that finds 98% of gay participants reporting exposure to pornographic material in the 30-day period prior to the survey. Further, the underground nature of gay pornographic film (see Dyer) aligns it with slash as a subcultural practice. I now analyse two Merlin slash manips with respect to the sexual positions of the pornographic base models, illustrating how gay pornography genres and ideologies referenced through these works enforce their intended meaning, as defined by the artist. A sexual act such as bukkake, as wandsinhand astutely notes, acts as a universal sign and “automatically generates a narrative for the image without anything really needing to be detailed”. Barthes argues that such a “relation between thing signified and image signifying in analogical representation” is unlike language, which has a much more ‘arbitrary’ relationship between signifier and signified (272). Bukkake and the Assertion of Masculine Power in Merlin Merlin (2008–12) is a BBC reimagining of the Arthurian legend that focuses on the coming-of-age of Arthur and his close bond with his manservant Merlin, who keeps his magical identity secret until Arthur’s final stand in the iconic Battle of Camlann. The homosexual potential of Merlin and Arthur’s story—and of magic as a metaphor for homosexuality—is something slash fans were quick to recognise. During question time at the first Merlin cast appearance at the London MCM Expo in October 2008—just one month after the show’s pilot first aired—a fan asked Morgan and James, who portray Merlin and Arthur, is Merlin “meant to be a love story between Arthur and Merlin?” James nods in jest. Wandsinhand, who is most active in the Teen Wolf (2011–present) fandom, has produced two Merlin slash manips to date, a 2013 Merlin/Arthur and a 2012 Arthur/Percival, both untitled. The Merlin/Arthur manip (see Figure 1) depicts Merlin bound and on his knees, Arthur ejaculating across his face and on his chest. Merlin is naked while Arthur is partially clothed in chainmail and armour. They are both bruised and dirty, Arthur’s injuries suggesting battle given his overall appearance, while Merlin’s suggesting abuse, given his subordinate position. The setting appears to be the royal stables, where we know Merlin spends much of his time mucking out Arthur’s horses. I am left to wonder if perhaps Merlin did not carry out this duty to Arthur’s satisfaction, and is now being punished for it; or if Arthur has returned from battle in need of sexual gratification and the endorsement of power that comes from debasing his manservant. Figure 1: wandsinhand, Untitled (Merlin/Arthur), 2013, photo montage. Courtesy the artist. Both readings are supported by Arthur’s ‘spent’ expression of disinterest or mild curiosity, while Merlin’s face emotes pain: crying and squinting through the semen obscuring his vision. The artist confirms this reading in our interview: “Arthur is using his pet Merlin to relieve some stress; Merlin of course not being too pleased about the aftermath, but obedient all the same.” The noun ‘pet’ evokes the sexual connotations of Merlin’s role as Arthur’s personal manservant, while also demoting Merlin even further than usual. He is, in Arthur’s eyes, less than human, a sexual plaything to use and abuse at will. The artist’s statement also confirms that Arthur is acting against Merlin’s will. Violence is certainly represented here, the base models having been ‘marked up’ to depict sexualisation of an already physically and emotionally abusive relationship, their relative positioning and the importation of semen heightening the humiliation. Wandsinhand’s work engages characters in sadomasochistic play, with semen and urine frequently employed to degrade and arouse—“peen wolf”, a reference to watersports, is used within his Teen Wolf practice. The two wandsinhand works analysed in this present article come without words, thus lacking a “linguistic message” (Barthes 273–6). However even so, the artist’s statement and Arthur’s stance over “his pet Merlin” mean we are still able to “skim off” (270) the meanings the image contains. The base models, for example, invite comparison with the ‘gay bukkake’ genre of gay pornography—admittedly with a single dominant male rather than a group. Gay bukkake has become a popular niche in North American gay pornography—it originated in Japan as a male–female act in the 1980s. It describes a ritualistic sexual act where a group of dominant men—often identifying as heterosexual—fuck and debase a homosexual, submissive male, commonly bareback (Durkin et al. 600). The aggression on display in this act—much like the homosocial insistency of men who partake in a ‘circle jerk’ (Mosher 318)—enables the participating men to affirm their masculinity and dominance by degrading the gay male, who is there to service (often on his knees) and receive—in any orifice of the group’s choosing—the men’s semen, and often urine as well. The equivalencies I have made here are based on the ‘performance’ of the bukkake fantasy in gay niche hazing and gay-for-pay pornography genres. These genres are fuelled by antigay sentiment, aggression and debasement of effeminate males (see Kendall). I wish here to resist the temptation of labelling the acts described above as deviant. As is a common problem with anti-pornography arguments, to attempt to fix a practice such as bukkake as deviant and abject—by, for example, equating it to rape (Franklin 24)—is to negate a much more complex consideration of distinctions and ambiguities between force and consent; lived and fantasy; where pleasure is, where it is performed and where it is taken. I extend this desire not to label the manip in question, which by exploiting the masculine posturing of Arthur effectively sexualises canon debasement. This began with the pilot when Arthur says: “Tell me Merlin, do you know how to walk on your knees?” Of the imported imagery—semen, bruising, perspiration—the key signifier is Arthur’s armour which, while torn in places, still ensures the encoding of particular signifieds: masculinity, strength and power. Doggystyle and the Subversion of Arthur’s ‘Armoured Self’ Since the romanticism and chivalric tradition of the knight in shining armour (see Huizinga) men as armoured selves have become a stoic symbol of masculine power and the benchmark for aspirational masculinity. For the medieval knight, armour reflects in its shiny surface the mettle of the man enclosed, imparting a state of ‘bodilessness’ by containing any softness beneath its shielded exterior (Burns 140). Wandsinhand’s Arthur/Percival manip (see Figure 2) subverts Arthur and the symbolism of armour with the help of arguably the only man who can: Arthur’s largest knight Percival. While a minor character among the knights, Percival’s physical presence in the series looms large, and has endeared him to slash manip artists, particularly those with only a casual interest in the series, such as wandsinhand: Why Arthur and Percival were specifically chosen had really little to do with the show’s plot, and in point of fact, I don’t really follow Merlin that closely nor am I an avid fan. […] Choosing Arthur/Percival really was just a matter of taste rather than being contextually based on their characterisations in the television show. Figure 2: wandsinhand, Untitled (Arthur/Percival), 2012, photo montage. Courtesy the artist. Concerning motivation, the artist explains: “Sometimes one’s penis decides to pick the tv show Merlin, and specifically Arthur and Percival.” The popularity of Percival among manip artists illustrates the power of physicality as a visual sign, and the valorisation of size and muscle within the gay community (see Sánchez et al.). Having his armour modified to display his muscles, the implication is that Percival does not need armour, for his body is already hard, impenetrable. He is already suited up, simultaneously man and armoured. Wandsinhand uses the physicality of this character to strip Arthur of his symbolic, masculine power. The work depicts Arthur with a dishevelled expression, his armoured chest pressed against the ground, his chainmail hitched up at the back to expose his arse, Percival threading his unsheathed cock inside him, staring expressionless at the ‘viewer’. The artist explains he “was trying to show a shift of power”: I was also hinting at some sign of struggle, which is somewhat evident on Arthur’s face too. […] I think the expressions work in concert to suggest […] a power reversal that leaves Arthur on the bottom, a position he’s not entirely comfortable accepting. There is pleasure to be had in seeing the “cocky” Arthur forcefully penetrated, “cut down to size by a bigger man” (wandsinhand). The two assume the ‘doggystyle’ position, an impersonal sexual position, without eye contact and where the penetrator sets the rhythm and intensity of each thrust. Scholars have argued that the position is degrading to the passive party, who is dehumanised by the act, a ‘dog’ (Dworkin 27); and rapper Snoop ‘Doggy’ Dogg exploits the misogynistic connotations of the position on his record Doggystyle (see Armstrong). Wandsinhand is clear in his intent to depict forceful domination of Arthur. Struggle is signified through the addition of perspiration, a trademark device used by this artist to symbolise struggle. Domination in a sexual act involves the erasure of the wishes of the dominated partner (see Cowan and Dunn). To attune oneself to the pleasures of a sexual partner is to regard them as a subject. To ignore such pleasures is to degrade the other person. The artist’s choice of pairing embraces the physicality of the male/male bond and illustrates a tendency among manip producers to privilege conventional masculine identifiers—such as size and muscle—above symbolic, nonphysical identifiers, such as status and rank. It is worth noting that muscle is more readily available in the pornographic source material used in slash manips—muscularity being a recurrent component of gay pornography (see Duggan and McCreary). In my interview with manip artist simontheduck, he describes the difficulty he had sourcing a base image “that complimented the physicality of the [Merlin] characters. […] The actor that plays Merlin is fairly thin while Arthur is pretty built, it was difficult to find one. I even had to edit Merlin’s body down further in the end.” (personal correspondence, used with permission) As wandsinhand explains, “you’re basically limited by what’s available on the internet, and even then, only what you’re prepared to sift through or screencap yourself”. Wandsinhand’s Arthur/Percival pairing selection works in tandem with other artistic decisions and inclusions—sexual position, setting, expressions, effects (perspiration, lighting)—to ensure the intended reading of the work. Antithetical size and rank positions play out in the penetration/submission act of wandsinhand’s work, in which only the stronger of the two may come out ‘on top’. Percival subverts the symbolic power structures of prince/knight, asserting his physical, sexual dominance over the physically inferior Arthur. That such a construction of Percival is incongruent with the polite, impeded-by-my-size-and-muscle-density Percival of the series speaks to the circumstances of manip production, much of which is on a taste basis, as previously noted. There are of course exceptions to this, the Teen Wolf ‘Sterek’ (Stiles/Derek) pairing being wandsinhand’s, but even in this case, size tends to couple with penetration. Slash manips often privilege physicality of the characters in question—as well as the base models selected—above any particular canon-supported slash reading. (Of course, the ‘queering’ nature of slash practice means at times there is also a desire to see such identifiers subverted, however in this example, raw masculine power prevails.) This final point is in no way representative—my practice, for example, combines manips with ficlets to offer a clearer connection with canon, while LJ’s zdae69 integrates manips, fiction and comics. However, common across slash manip artists driven by taste—and requests—rather than connection with canon—the best known being LJ’s tw-31988, demon48180 and Tumblr’s lwoodsmalestarsfakes, all of whom work across many fandoms—is interest in the ‘aesthetics of canon’, the blue hues of Teen Wolf or the fluorescent greens of Arrow (2012–present), displayed in glossy magazine format using services such as ISSUU. In short, ‘the look’ of the work often takes precedent over canonical implications of any artistic decisions. “Nothing Too Serious”: Slash Manips as Objects Worth Studying It had long been believed that the popular was the transient, that of entertainment rather than enlightenment; that which is manufactured, “an appendage of the machinery”, consumed by the duped masses and a product not of culture but of a ‘culture industry’ (Adorno and Rabinbach 12). Scholars such as Radway, Ang pioneered a shift in scholarly practice, advancing the cultural studies project by challenging elitism and finding meaning in traditionally devalued cultural texts and practices. The most surprising outcome of my interviews with wandsinhand was hearing how he conceived of his practice, and the study of slash: If I knew I could get a PhD by writing a dissertation on Slash, I would probably drop out of my physics papers! […] I don’t really think too highly of faking/manip-making. I mean, it’s not like it’s high art, is it? … or is it? I guess if Duchamp’s toilet can be a masterpiece, then so can anything. But I mainly just do it to pass the time, materialise fantasies, and disperse my fantasies unto others. Nothing too serious. Wandsinhand erects various binaries—academic/fan, important/trivial, science/arts, high art/low art, profession/hobby, reality/fantasy, serious/frivolous—as justification to devalue his own artistic practice. Yet embracing the amateur, personal nature of his practice frees him to “materialise fantasies” that would perhaps not be possible without self-imposed, underground production. This is certainly supported by his body of work, which plays with taboos of the unseen, of bodily fluids and sadomasochism. My intention with this article is not to contravene views such as wandsinhand’s. Rather, it is to promote slash manips as a form of remix culture that encourages new perspectives on how slash has been defined, its connection with male producers and its symbiotic relationship with gay pornography. I have examined the ‘semiotic significance of selection’ that creates meaning in two contrary slash manips; how these works actualise and resist canon dominance, as it relates to the physical and the symbolic. This examination also offers insight into this form’s connection to and negotiation with certain ideologies of gay pornography, such as the valorisation of size and muscle. 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Always desiring, we create, enhance, and augment: never satiated, we experiment, refine and repeat. Somatic and spatial practices collide on the promise of something more. … In this issue of M/C Journal we called upon our colleagues to share their forays into multi-media landscapes as they considered augmentation through investigations/collaborations with humans, cyborgs, and nonhumans alike. From computer science to cultural theory, augmentation brings to the table a wide variety of researchers, artists, and practitioners—a wide range of practices and concepts. The pieces in this edition are a strong reflection of how the topic of “augment” can bring together a truly interdisciplinary group. Our goal was to facilitate a critical engagement, and we are thrilled that the call for papers resonated and generated this cluster of articles. Our call for papers was itself meant as a provocation to bring into discussion artists, practitioners, and critical theorists. We asked a series of generative questions to which the authors responded. What Is at Stake When One Engages in Augmentation? Although all the pieces are engaged in discussions about augmentation, some point directly to what is at stake in different fields. For example, Brandt presses together the science fiction novel Ender’s Game and current military practices of remote combatants that operate drone vessels. She argues that in this moment, and as we look to the future of this type of warfare and its associated trauma, that we might need to turn to post humanist stories and cyborg assemblages to better understand how agency is being distributed. Potts questions the hypocrisies of public perception and surveillance practices surrounding the augmented body. He traces the “copyrighting of digital augmentations (our data-flesh), their privatization and ownership by others from a vast distance,” and then examines the next step, the augmentation and rewriting of cellular bodies through hormonal and other supplements. Using recent cases, like athlete Lance Armstrong’s drug expose, and examples from the anti-aging industry, he shows how upgrading flesh is open to corporate hypocrisies, but also has the potential for “biopolitical rebellion.” Kenner’s piece considers augmentation through a discussion of health as she illustrates the ways in which asthma and the asthmatic are being reshaped through an “imagined healthy norm.” The transformative capacity of technology is critically taken up in the piece to highlight the ways in which the “new healthy is augmented living.” We received pieces that contemplate the contemporary moment, but also those that forecast. The authors in this issue deliberate on necessary questions about promise and limitation. They also engage with ethical challenges, placing these technologies within broader contexts and histories. Kerasidou, for example, offers a history of the contemporary investigation, in which she takes her reader back to the 1980s and 1990s to the promise of ubiquitous computing. She reminds the reader about the romance of the technology, and the roots of these ideas, as she discusses an imagined world in which no one would notice the presence of a computer or computing object. Who/What Pays the Price When It Falters, Miscarries, or Backfires? The challenge of new technology can include discussions of productive failures and unexpected success. In the case of Gerhard’s piece we are given a short history of the accelerometer and the ways in which technology is taken up at different times in different fields, and yet its potential remains largely unrealized—as various individuals, from artists to computer programmers, do not use this device to its full potential when they seek to augment through the interpretation of body/object movement. As we might expect, when thinking about augmentation, the user can lack the capacity to develop the technology to its utmost potential. We were interested in the ways in which “lack” might be taken up in the pieces and how mistakes and confusion with technology can itself be productive and drive innovation. For every innovation there is the tension between the developer’s vision of the technological capacity, the user’s ability, and the space in between. Loess draws out these tensions when he describes a live performance played over a film that threatened to snap. In so doing, he examines how augmentation in digital and analogue image-making approaches is shaped by the improvisatory impulse. As the musicians continued to improvise until they found an ending, Loess delivers to the reader a story—in which everything teetered on the brink of failure—that seizes our attention. Whether as user, viewer, audience, or inventor—failure, possible or realized, inspires action. Which Actors Are Engaged—or Enrolled—in the Practice? Hands critically examines the augmentation of cognition in social media. He explores how people become enrolled as collective participants in micro-blogging through Twitter. His work shows how the social media affordances of brevity, mobility, and speed affect how memory and culture operate, and interrogates the ongoing tensions in augmented media between agency and volition. Caines, Knowles, and Anderson take up the question of enrolment in their piece that focuses on the blending of traditional beading practices with augmenting technologies such as QR codes. In their work, the user/creator/participant is layered as the QR code is created through beading that is then use to hold stories or technological engagement. Beads, codes, storytelling, translation, success, and failure collide in the art installment. Artists Irwin and Morton examine the role of the public in the augmentation of symbolic objects. Through their technologically enhanced, site-specific piano installation, they engage participants in the process of building layers to the work, leaving behind remnants of audio and embodied practices to create rich collective histories and reimaginings of the piano as an historical object that is considered obsolete, yet draws in people to augmented play. Similarly, Jonathan Stewart traces the layers of augmentation in the history of enigmatic musician Robert Johnson; a figure that is continually enrolled in augmented myth-making. For Hunter, the question of enrolment is reversed, as he suggests humans have in fact become interfaces for their devices, rather than the other way around. Using examples from science fiction in advertising, popular culture, and film, he traces the ways humans fantasize about the potential for augmentation, highlighting the irony where we “depict ourselves as the medium, and it is our digital devices that bear the message.” In Foith’s piece, the user of a videogame can effectively test-drive augmented body parts in a virtual world that presumes augmentation is a baseline human condition. Foith includes an analysis of how diegetic prototypes are delivered and levels of authenticity become themselves aesthetics in the game to mobilize desire(s) for that which does exist–or may exist in the future. Which Subjects Are Left Vulnerable? There are arguably many vulnerable subjects moving around in all these pieces, just as there are also deeply empowered subjects. That said, what some of the pieces offered was a reminder about the potential for augmentation to captivate the user, startle, and surprise: Gibson’s robot answers a note from the audience, and in so doing asks us to think about robotic agency; Campbell’s machine bothers, and offers the opportunity to do the impossible—see one's self become stirred to consciousness. For both Gibson and Campbell we are left with the uneasy/fascinating question of machine consciousness. In these stories, in these projects of augmentation, objects are created in the world to coexist with humans and it is in the making of these technologies and these technological imaginaries that we find a critical space in which the subject and the object act upon each other. Questions about Layered Information Space, Power, and Statecraft In addition to these questions, we asked contributors to interrogate the layered information space of Augmented Reality (AR), as well as how augmented media intersects with power and statecraft. Michelle Stewart’s piece investigates the augmented map as a mechanism to examine statecraft. Focusing on a police-mapping project, she illustrates the work needed for augmented objects to come into being in the world. She interrogates the ways in which labour is erased in the process of producing the maps, and how this erasure can facilitate the production of expertise and authority. Avram and Fedorova examine augmentation in media art. Avram explores AR practices, with a focus on AR art. He traces the imperfections and flaws between digital and real spaces in AR, highlighting the unique reflexive strategies and reference to material reality, and showing the play between illusion and its subversion that marks this emerging practice. For Fedorova, augmented media art practices allow the senses themselves to become augmented. She asks, “ how [these art practices] serve as mechanisms of enhancing the feeling of presence” and sense of proprioception. Through reference to artworks that stimulate, reorient, sense input, and respond to biofeedback, she suggests that “media art practices offer particularly valuable scenarios of activating such mechanisms, as the employment of digital technology allows them to operate on a more subtle level of perception.” The feature article by Otuski delivers Japanese pop band Perfume, and explores the world of pop bands and their songs and images, to analyze the underlying contexts that inform prop selection and band promotion. Nothing is accidental in the creation of this pop brand as Otsuki describes their current incarnation of imagery that moves away from robotics towards information technologies and connectivity—the story of a nation is told through a band and its props. We thought Otsuki’s piece would be an excellent feature as it traces the ways in which power moves through popular culture through augmentation. His work also brings together many of the worlds our contributors are critically engaging, including new media art and science and technology. We thank each of the contributors, all of our reviewers, and all those that assisted with the production of this issue, with special thanks to Anna Dipple and John Campbell. — Rebecca Caines and Michelle Stewart.

Special Care Notice This paper discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the process of colonisation. Content within this paper may be distressing to some readers. Introduction The decimation of the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) was systematic and swift. First Contact was an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters for the Indigenous inhabitants. There were, according to some early records, a few examples of peaceful interactions (Morris 84). Yet, the inevitable competition over resources, and the intensity with which colonists pursued their “claims” for food, land, and water, quickly transformed amicable relationships into hostile rivalries. Jennifer Gall has written that, as “European settlement expanded in the late 1820s, violent exchanges between settlers and Aboriginal people were frequent, brutal and unchecked” (58). Indeed, the near-annihilation of the original custodians of the land was, if viewed through the lens of time, a process that could be described as one that was especially efficient. As John Morris notes: in 1803, when the first settlers arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, the Aborigines had already inhabited the island for some 25,000 years and the population has been estimated at 4,000. Seventy-three years later, Truganinni, [often cited as] the last Tasmanian of full Aboriginal descent, was dead. (84) Against a backdrop of extreme violence, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), there were some, admittedly dubious, efforts to contain the bloodshed. One such effort, in the late 1820s, was the production, and subsequent distribution, of a set of Proclamation Boards. Approximately 100 Proclamation Boards (the Board) were introduced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur (after whom Port Arthur on the Tasman Peninsula is named). The purpose of these Boards was to communicate, via a four-strip pictogram, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony that all people—black and white—were considered equal under the law. “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). This is reflected in the narrative of the Boards. The first image presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second, and central, image shows “a conciliatory handshake between the British governor and an Aboriginal ‘chief’, highly reminiscent of images found in North America on treaty medals and anti-slavery tokens” (Darian-Smith and Edmonds 4). The third and fourth images depict the repercussions for committing murder, with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man also hanged for shooting an Aborigine. Both men executed under “gubernatorial supervision” (Turnbull 53). Image 1: Governor Davey's [sic - actually Governor Arthur's] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic - actually c. 1828-30]. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Call Number: SAFE / R 247). The Board is an interesting re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of images on the bark of trees. Such trees, often referred to as scarred trees, are rare in modern-day Tasmania as “the expansion of settlements, and the impact of bush fires and other environmental factors” resulted in many of these trees being destroyed (Aboriginal Heritage Tasmania online). Similarly, only a few of the Boards, inspired by these trees, survive today. The Proclamation Board was, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of a different Governor: Lieutenant Governor Davey (after whom Port Davey, on the south-west coast of Tasmania is named). This re-imagining of the Board’s creator was so effective that the Board, today, is popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines. This paper outlines several other re-imaginings of this Board. In addition, this paper offers another, new, re-imagining of the Board, positing that this is an early “pamphlet” on crime, justice and punishment which actually presents as a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. In doing so this work connects the Proclamation Board to the larger genre of crime fiction. One Proclamation Board: Two Governors Labelled Van Diemen’s Land and settled as a colony of New South Wales in 1803, this island state would secede from the administration of mainland Australia in 1825. Another change would follow in 1856 when Van Diemen’s Land was, in another process of re-imagining, officially re-named Tasmania. This change in nomenclature was an initiative to, symbolically at least, separate the contemporary state from a criminal and violent past (Newman online). Tasmania’s violent history was, perhaps, inevitable. The island was claimed by Philip Gidley King, the Governor of New South Wales, in the name of His Majesty, not for the purpose of building a community, but to “prevent the French from gaining a footing on the east side of that island” and also to procure “timber and other natural products, as well as to raise grain and to promote the seal industry” (Clark 36). Another rationale for this land claim was to “divide the convicts” (Clark 36) which re-fashioned the island into a gaol. It was this penal element of the British colonisation of Australia that saw the worst of the British Empire forced upon the Aboriginal peoples. As historian Clive Turnbull explains: the brutish state of England was reproduced in the English colonies, and that in many ways its brutishness was increased, for now there came to Australia not the humanitarians or the indifferent, but the men who had vested interests in the systems of restraint; among those who suffered restraint were not only a vast number who were merely unfortunate and poverty-stricken—the victims of a ‘depression’—but brutalised persons, child-slaughterers and even potential cannibals. (Turnbull 25) As noted above the Black War of Tasmania saw unprecedented aggression against the rightful occupants of the land. Yet, the Aboriginal peoples were “promised the white man’s justice, the people [were] exhorted to live in amity with them, the wrongs which they suffer [were] deplored” (Turnbull 23). The administrators purported an egalitarian society, one of integration and peace but Van Diemen’s Land was colonised as a prison and as a place of profit. So, “like many apologists whose material benefit is bound up with the systems which they defend” (Turnbull 23), assertions of care for the health and welfare of the Aboriginal peoples were made but were not supported by sufficient policies, or sufficient will, and the Black War continued. Colonel Thomas Davey (1758-1823) was the second person to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land; a term of office that began in 1813 and concluded in 1817. The fourth Lieutenant Governor of the island was Colonel Sir George Arthur (1784-1854); his term of office, significantly longer than Davey’s, being from 1824 to 1836. The two men were very different but are connected through this intriguing artefact, the Proclamation Board. One of the efforts made to assert the principle of equality under the law in Van Diemen’s Land was an outcome of work undertaken by Surveyor General George Frankland (1800-1838). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 and suggested the Proclamation Board (Morris 84), sometimes referred to as a Picture Board or the Tasmanian Hieroglyphics, as a tool to support Arthur’s various Proclamations. The Proclamation, signed on 15 April 1828 and promulgated in the The Hobart Town Courier on 19 April 1828 (Arthur 1), was one of several notices attempting to reduce the increasing levels of violence between Indigenous peoples and colonists. The date on Frankland’s correspondence clearly situates the Proclamation Board within Arthur’s tenure as Lieutenant Governor. The Board was, however, in the 1860s, re-imagined as the output of Davey. The Clerk of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, Hugh M. Hull, asserted that the Board was the work of Davey and not Arthur. Hull’s rationale for this, despite archival evidence connecting the Board to Frankland and, by extension, to Arthur, is predominantly anecdotal. In a letter to the editor of The Hobart Mercury, published 26 November 1874, Hull wrote: this curiosity was shown by me to the late Mrs Bateman, neé Pitt, a lady who arrived here in 1804, and with whom I went to school in 1822. She at once recognised it as one of a number prepared in 1816, under Governor Davey’s orders; and said she had seen one hanging on a gum tree at Cottage Green—now Battery Point. (3) Hull went on to assert that “if any old gentleman will look at the picture and remember the style of military and civil dress of 1810-15, he will find that Mrs Bateman was right” (3). Interestingly, Hull relies upon the recollections of a deceased school friend and the dress codes depicted by the artist to date the Proclamation Board as a product of 1816, in lieu of documentary evidence dating the Board as a product of 1828-1830. Curiously, the citation of dress can serve to undermine Hull’s argument. An early 1840s watercolour by Thomas Bock, of Mathinna, an Aboriginal child of Flinders Island adopted by Lieutenant Governor John Franklin (Felton online), features the young girl wearing a brightly coloured, high-waisted dress. This dress is very similar to the dresses worn by the children on the Proclamation Board (the difference being that Mathinna wears a red dress with a contrasting waistband, the children on the Board wear plain yellow dresses) (Bock). Acknowledging the simplicity of children's clothing during the colonial era, it could still be argued that it would have been unlikely the Governor of the day would have placed a child, enjoying at that time a life of privilege, in a situation where she sat for a portrait wearing an old-fashioned garment. So effective was Hull’s re-imagining of the Board’s creator that the Board was, for many years, popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with even the date modified, to 1816, to fit Davey’s term of office. Further, it is worth noting that catalogue records acknowledge the error of attribution and list both Davey and Arthur as men connected to the creation of the Proclamation Board. A Surviving Board: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales One of the surviving Proclamation Boards is held by the Mitchell Library. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73). The work was mass produced (by the standards of mass production of the day) by pouncing, “a technique [of the Italian Renaissance] of pricking the contours of a drawing with a pin. Charcoal was then dusted on to the drawing” (Carroll 75-76). The images, once outlined, were painted in oil. Of approximately 100 Boards made, several survive today. There are seven known Boards within public collections (Gall 58): five in Australia (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, Sydney; Museum Victoria, Melbourne; National Library of Australia, Canberra; Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; and Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston); and two overseas (The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University and the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, University of Cambridge). The catalogue record, for the Board held by the Mitchell Library, offers the following details:Paintings: 1 oil painting on Huon pine board, rectangular in shape with rounded corners and hole at top centre for suspension ; 35.7 x 22.6 x 1 cm. 4 scenes are depicted:Aborigines and white settlers in European dress mingling harmoniouslyAboriginal men and women, and an Aboriginal child approach Governor Arthur to shake hands while peaceful soldiers look onA hostile Aboriginal man spears a male white settler and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks onA hostile white settler shoots an Aboriginal man and is hanged by the military as Governor Arthur looks on. (SAFE / R 247) The Mitchell Library Board was purchased from J.W. Beattie in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86), which is approximately $2,200 today. Importantly, the title of the record notes both the popular attribution of the Board and the man who actually instigated the Board’s production: “Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30].” The date of the Board is still a cause of some speculation. The earlier date, 1828, marks the declaration of martial law (Turnbull 94) and 1830 marks the Black Line (Edmonds 215); the attempt to form a human line of white men to force many Tasmanian Aboriginals, four of the nine nations, onto the Tasman Peninsula (Ryan 3). Frankland’s suggestion for the Board was put forward on 4 February 1829, with Arthur’s official Conciliator to the Aborigines, G.A. Robinson, recording his first sighting of a Board on 24 December 1829 (Morris 84-85). Thus, the conception of the Board may have been in 1828 but the Proclamation project was not fully realised until 1830. Indeed, a news item on the Proclamation Board did appear in the popular press, but not until 5 March 1830: We are informed that the Government have given directions for the painting of a large number of pictures to be placed in the bush for the contemplation of the Aboriginal Inhabitants. […] However […] the causes of their hostility must be more deeply probed, or their taste as connoisseurs in paintings more clearly established, ere we can look for any beneficial result from this measure. (Colonial Times 2) The remark made in relation to becoming a connoisseur of painting, though intended to be derogatory, makes some sense. There was an assumption that the Indigenous peoples could easily translate a European-styled execution by hanging, as a visual metaphor for all forms of punishment. It has long been understood that Indigenous “social organisation and religious and ceremonial life were often as complex as those of the white invaders” (McCulloch 261). However, the Proclamation Board was, in every sense, Eurocentric and made no attempt to acknowledge the complexities of Aboriginal culture. It was, quite simply, never going to be an effective tool of communication, nor achieve its socio-legal aims. The Board Re-imagined: Popular Media The re-imagining of the Proclamation Board as a construct of Governor Davey, instead of Governor Arthur, is just one of many re-imaginings of this curious object. There are, of course, the various imaginings of the purpose of the Board. On the surface these images are a tool for reconciliation but as “the story of these paintings unfolds […] it becomes clear that the proclamations were in effect envoys sent back to Britain to exhibit the ingenious attempts being applied to civilise Australia” (Carroll 76). In this way the Board was re-imagined by the Administration that funded the exercise, even before the project was completed, from a mechanism to assist in the bringing about of peace into an object that would impress colonial superiors. Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll has recently written about the Boards in the context of their “transnational circulation” and how “objects become subjects and speak of their past through the ventriloquism of contemporary art history” (75). Carroll argues the Board is an item that couples “military strategy with a fine arts propaganda campaign” (Carroll 78). Critically the Boards never achieved their advertised purpose for, as Carroll explains, there were “elaborate rituals Aboriginal Australians had for the dead” and, therefore, “the display of a dead, hanging body is unthinkable. […] being exposed to the sight of a hanged man must have been experienced as an unimaginable act of disrespect” (92). The Proclamation Board would, in sharp contrast to feelings of unimaginable disrespect, inspire feelings of pride across the colonial population. An example of this pride being revealed in the selection of the Board as an object worthy of reproduction, as a lithograph, for an Intercolonial Exhibition, held in Melbourne in 1866 (Morris 84). The lithograph, which identifies the Board as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines and dated 1816, was listed as item 572, of 738 items submitted by Tasmania, for the event (The Commissioners 69-85). This type of reproduction, or re-imagining, of the Board would not be an isolated event. Penelope Edmonds has described the Board as producing a “visual vernacular” through a range of derivatives including lantern slides, lithographs, and postcards. These types of tourist ephemera are in addition to efforts to produce unique re-workings of the Board as seen in Violet Mace’s Proclamation glazed earthernware, which includes a jug (1928) and a pottery cup (1934) (Edmonds online). The Board Re-imagined: A True Crime Tale The Proclamation Board offers numerous narratives. There is the story that the Board was designed and deployed to communicate. There is the story behind the Board. There is also the story of the credit for the initiative which was transferred from Governor Arthur to Governor Davey and subsequently returned to Arthur. There are, too, the provenance stories of individual Boards. There is another story the Proclamation Board offers. The story of true crime in colonial Australia. The Board, as noted, presents through a four-strip pictogram an idea that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Advocating for a society of equals was a duplicitous practice, for while Aborigines were hanged for allegedly murdering settlers, “there is no record of whites being charged, let alone punished, for murdering Aborigines” (Morris 84). It would not be until 1838 that white men would be punished for the murder of Aboriginal people (on the mainland) in the wake of the Myall Creek Massacre, in northern New South Wales. There were other examples of attempts to bring about a greater equity under the rule of law but, as Amanda Nettelbeck explains, there was wide-spread resistance to the investigation and charging of colonists for crimes against the Indigenous population with cases regularly not going to trial, or, if making a courtroom, resulting in an acquittal (355-59). That such cases rested on “legally inadmissible Aboriginal testimony” (Reece in Nettelbeck 358) propped up a justice system that was, inherently, unjust in the nineteenth century. It is important to note that commentators at the time did allude to the crime narrative of the Board: when in the most civilized country in the world it has been found ineffective as example to hang murderers in chains, it is not to be expected a savage race will be influenced by the milder exhibition of effigy and caricature. (Colonial Times 2) It is argued here that the Board was much more than an offering of effigy and caricature. The Proclamation Board presents, in striking detail, the formula for the modern true crime tale: a peace disturbed by the act of murder; and the ensuing search for, and delivery of, justice. Reinforcing this point, are the ideas of justice seen within crime fiction, a genre that focuses on the restoration of order out of chaos (James 174), are made visible here as aspirational. The true crime tale does not, consistently, offer the reassurances found within crime fiction. In the real world, particularly one as violent as colonial Australia, we are forced to acknowledge that, below the surface of the official rhetoric on justice and crime, the guilty often go free and the innocent are sometimes hanged. Another point of note is that, if the latter date offered here, of 1830, is taken as the official date of the production of these Boards, then the significance of the Proclamation Board as a true crime tale is even more pronounced through a connection to crime fiction (both genres sharing a common literary heritage). The year 1830 marks the release of Australia’s first novel, Quintus Servinton written by convicted forger Henry Savery, a crime novel (produced in three volumes) published by Henry Melville of Hobart Town. Thus, this paper suggests, 1830 can be posited as a year that witnessed the production of two significant cultural artefacts, the Proclamation Board and the nation’s first full-length literary work, as also being the year that established the, now indomitable, traditions of true crime and crime fiction in Australia. Conclusion During the late 1820s in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) a set of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards were produced by the Lieutenant Governor of the day, George Arthur. The official purpose of these items was to communicate, to the Indigenous peoples of the island colony, that all—black and white—were equal under the law. Murderers, be they Aboriginal or colonist, would be punished. The Board is a re-imagining of one of the traditional methods of communication for Indigenous peoples; the leaving of drawings on the bark of trees. The Board was, in the 1860s, in time for an Intercolonial Exhibition, re-imagined as the output of Lieutenant Governor Davey. This re-imagining of the Board was so effective that surviving artefacts, today, are popularly known as Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines with the date modified, to 1816, to fit the new narrative. The Proclamation Board was also reimagined, by its creators and consumers, in a variety of ways: as peace offering; military propaganda; exhibition object; tourism ephemera; and contemporary art. This paper has also, briefly, offered another re-imagining of the Board, positing that this early “pamphlet” on justice and punishment actually presents a pre-cursor to the modern Australian true crime tale. The Proclamation Board tells many stories but, at the core of this curious object, is a crime story: the story of mass murder. Acknowledgements The author acknowledges the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The author acknowledges, too, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation upon whose lands this paper was researched and written. The author extends thanks to Richard Neville, Margot Riley, Kirsten Thorpe, and Justine Wilson of the State Library of New South Wales for sharing their knowledge and offering their support. The author is also grateful to the reviewers for their careful reading of the manuscript and for making valuable suggestions. ReferencesAboriginal Heritage Tasmania. “Scarred Trees.” Aboriginal Cultural Heritage, 2012. 12 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.aboriginalheritage.tas.gov.au/aboriginal-cultural-heritage/archaeological-site-types/scarred-trees›.Arthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Governor Davey’s [sic – actually Governor Arthur’s] Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816 [sic – actually c. 1828-30]. Graphic Materials. Sydney: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW, c. 1828-30.Bock, Thomas. Mathinna. Watercolour and Gouache on Paper. 23 x 19 cm (oval), c. 1840.Carroll, Khadija von Zinnenburg. Art in the Time of Colony: Empires and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-2000. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.Clark, Manning. History of Australia. Abridged by Michael Cathcart. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1997 [1993]. Clements, Nicholas. The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania. St Lucia, Qld.: U of Queensland P, 2014.Colonial Times. “Hobart Town.” Colonial Times 5 Mar. 1830: 2.The Commissioners. Intercolonial Exhibition Official Catalogue. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Blundell & Ford, 1866.Darian-Smith, Kate, and Penelope Edmonds. “Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers.” Conciliation on Colonial Frontiers: Conflict, Performance and Commemoration in Australia and the Pacific Rim. Eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Penelope Edmonds. New York: Routledge, 2015. 1–14. Edmonds, Penelope. “‘Failing in Every Endeavour to Conciliate’: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation Boards to the Aborigines, Australian Conciliation Narratives and Their Transnational Connections.” Journal of Australian Studies 35.2 (2011): 201–18.———. “The Proclamation Cup: Tasmanian Potter Violet Mace and Colonial Quotations.” reCollections 5.2 (2010). 20 May 2015 ‹http://recollections.nma.gov.au/issues/vol_5_no_2/papers/the_proclamation_cup_›.Felton, Heather. “Mathinna.” Companion to Tasmanian History. Hobart: Centre for Tasmanian Historical Studies, University of Tasmania, 2006. 29 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/M/Mathinna.htm›.Gall, Jennifer. Library of Dreams: Treasures from the National Library of Australia. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2011.Hull, Hugh M. “Tasmanian Hieroglyphics.” The Hobart Mercury 26 Nov. 1874: 3.James, P.D. Talking about Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009.Mace, Violet. 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Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 1934.McCulloch, Samuel Clyde. “Sir George Gipps and Eastern Australia’s Policy toward the Aborigine, 1838-46.” The Journal of Modern History 33.3 (1961): 261–69.Morris, John. “Notes on a Message to the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1829, popularly called ‘Governor Davey’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1816’.” Australiana 10.3 (1988): 84–7.Nettelbeck, Amanda. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Newman, Terry. “Tasmania, the Name.” Companion to Tasmanian History, 2006. 16 Sep. 2015 ‹http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/T/Tasmania%20name.htm›.Reece, Robert H.W., in Amanda Nettelbeck. “‘Equals of the White Man’: Prosecution of Settlers for Violence against Aboriginal Subjects of the Crown, Colonial Western Australia.” Law and History Review 31.2 (2013): 355–90.Ryan, Lyndall. “The Black Line in Van Diemen’s Land: Success or Failure?” Journal of Australian Studies 37.1 (2013): 3–18.Savery, Henry. 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There are three stages in internet dating: first, the emailing back and forth; second, the phone conversation; and third, the meeting for 'coffee'. But before we discuss the three stages, here are some hints about the preliminary work you have to do. At the outset, you have to trawl through the thousands of people who have placed their profiles on the site. This is aided by limiting your search to a certain age spread, and your city or region. Then you can narrow it down further by checking educational background, whether they have kids, whether they write in New Age jargon, etc You have to try to assess, from their self-descriptions, which ones are likely to be compatible. You also scrutinise their photos, of course, as they will yours — but don't trust these images entirely — more on that later. Self-description. Almost without exception, women and men who describe their main interests as 'romantic walks on the beach and candle-lit dinners' have no real interests and as much personality as a lettuce. Those who say what matters to them is "good food and wine with a classy guy/lady" have a personality, but it's a repugnant one. Here is a useful binary opposition that could provide a useful key to gauging compatibility: people vary in terms of their degree of interiority and exteriority. People with interiority have the ability to think a little abstractly, can discuss emotions, probably read books as well as watch films. They analyse life rather than just describing it. People mainly given to exteriority find their pleasure in doing things — like boating or nightclubs or golf. They see themselves in the world in a different way. Of course, we are all a mixture of the two — and perhaps the best bet is someone who isn't at one extreme end of the spectrum or the other. Useful tip 1. The 'spiritual woman': for reasons unclear, and despite the fact that Australia is one of the most pagan nations on Earth, a disproportionate number of women, rather than men, claim to be religious. Perhaps because in general, women are still more inclined to interiority than men. But most religious women don't expect a partner to be. Instead, the people to be very careful about are the New Agers — they are a large and growing sub-group and apparently spend much of their time devouring books on spirituality, personal growth and self-love. If you have any sort of intellect, or are just a middling humanist who occasionally ponders "Is this all there is? " these people will drive you nuts with their vague platitudes about knowing their inner child. On the other hand, if they seem terrific in all other respects, you can probably gain their respect by saying in a reflective manner, "Is this all there is?" If you can arrange to be gazing at the star-stained night sky while saying this, all the better. This may seem calculating, but we are all putting on a performance when courting. A lot of single people have self-esteem and loneliness issues, and a personal God, the universe, and astrology make them feel less lonely. Useful tip 2: say that although you don't subscribe to mainstream religion, you feel close to some kind of spirituality when gardening — and add how you love to plant herbs. Some okay herbs to mention are: Rosemary, Thyme, Sage. Chuck a couple of these weed-like green things in your garden just in case. Useful tip 3: no matter what else you do, at all costs avoid anyone who smacks of fundamentalism. This cohort takes the Bible literally, think dinosaurs roamed the planet only a few years before Shakespeare, want gay people to admit they are an abomination - and above all, fundos cannot be reasoned with — not in your lifetime. They are deeply insecure and frightened people — which is sad, so be sympathetic to their plight - but don't get drawn into the vortex. Besides, talking about the approach of Armageddon every date gets a bit tedious. Education: It is usually best to pick someone who has an approximately similar level of education to yourself. Having a tertiary education often gives a person a different way of seeing themselves, and of perceiving others. On the other hand, it is possible to do a five year degree in a narrow professional area and know nothing at all useful about human beings and how they operate. (Ref: engineers, dentists, gynaecologists). There are high school graduates who are better-read and more intelligent than most products of a university. So it is up to the individual case. It is a plus to be interested in your partner's work, but not essential. It can be a minus to be in the same field. Ask yourself this: if you were living with this person and you asked them at night how their day had been, would the answer send you to sleep in less than a minute? A lovely man or woman who is an accountant will likely wax lyrical about having just discovered a $245 error in a billing data base. Their face will be flushed with pride. Can your respond appropriately? How often? Or the love of your life may work in an oncology ward, and regale you with the daily triumph of removing sputum from the chests of the moribund. Are you strong enough for that? And worst of all, you may go out with a writer or poet, who regularly drones on about how their rival always gets friendly reviews from his/her newspaper mates, even though they write books full of derivative, precious crap. Sense of humour (SOH): Most men and women will claim in their profile to have a sense of humour — to love to laugh — and, surprisingly often, to have a 'wicked sense of humour'. This is a difficult personal quality to get a bearing on. You may yourself be the kind of person who tricks themselves into thinking their date has a great sense of humour simply because they laughed at your jokes. That is not having a SOH. Having a SOH is possessing the ability to make others laugh — it is active as well as passive. Do they make you laugh? Are their emails touched with wit and whimsy — or just shades of cute? Is one of their close friends, the one who actually possesses a SOH, helping write their emails? It has been known to happen. You will gain a better sense of the SOH situation during the phone call, and definitely during the coffee. Interests: Most internet websites give people the chance to describe themselves by jotting down their favourite music, books, movies, sport. Often this is pretty much all you will know about what interests them, and it is an imperfect instrument. Many internet dating women say they like all music except heavy metal. Why there is this pervasive, gut-wrenching female fear of the E, A and B chords played loudly is a mystery. Anyway, some of those bands even throw in a G or C#m. But who cares. If you are a bloke, hide your Acca Dacca CDs and buy some world music CDs. New Agers of either sex will have collections full of warbling pan pipes, waterfalls and bird calls. If they are a great person in other respects, then you'll just have to get used to the flock of magpies and whip birds in the dining or bedroom. Photographs: Now, the photo on the profile is only a vague guide. It is useful for confirming the person belongs to homo sapiens, but not a lot else. Some people get a professional pic taken, but most include happy snaps, and that is a blow struck for candidness. The more the photo looks like a "glamour" shot, the softer the focus, the less reliable it is. You can get some idea of whether someone is attractive, handsome, cute or weird from the photo. But — and this is really important — they will always look different in the flesh. They will have grown a beard, cut or streaked their hair, and you will for the first time notice they have a nose the size of the AMP building. Fortunately for men, though women are not oblivious to the looks factor, they tend to be more tolerant and less shallow about it. There is a recent trend for women and men with children to put he most attractive and least manic one in the profile photo with them. This signifies: a) love me, love my kid, because I'm proud of James/Jessica/Jade; b) family values; c) at least my kid only has one head. Stage One. The first stage is in some ways the most enjoyable. It is low risk, low stress, you have the pleasurable experience of a comfortable adventure. There is anticipation, getting to know someone, being complimented on your fascinating emails and witty humour (if it's going well), and all the while wearing an old t-shirt and dirty, checked shorts or fluffy slippers. There is the extreme luxury of re-inventing yourself, of telling your favourite story (your own life-story) again and again to a new audience, the little joys of self-disclosures, the discoveries of like-interests, the occasion when they add at the bottom of their letter "looking forward to hearing from you soon". The writing stage is where you try to establish whether you have intellectual, emotional and cultural compatibility — and whether the person is sincere and relatively well-balanced (I stress 'relatively' — no one is perfect). The discovery process is one of exchanging increasingly personal information — work history, enthusiasms and dislikes, family background. She will want to know whether you are 'over' your last girlfriend/partner/wife. Not surprisingly. A lot of internet men are still bitter about their ex — either that, or they rave on about the saintliness of their ex. If encouraged, women will also tell you about the bastard who refused to pay maintenance. There are clearly a lot of those bastards out there. Both of these practices are unwise on the first coffee if you don't want to scare your potential partner off. In reality, you probably are still seething with hurt and injustice as a result of your last dumping, and maybe even the one before that. You may lie in bed at night thinking nostalgically of your ex's face — but this is a dark secret which you must never reveal. People will ask you to be open, but they don't want that open. Involve your friends: without exception, your close friends will enjoy being part of the process when you are deciding which men or women to contact on the internet. You first make a long short list by browsing through the hundreds of profiles. Print off those profiles, then get your friends to sort through them with you. If you have experience in being on selection panels for jobs, this will help. It is a quite complex matter of weighing up a whole range of variables. For example, candidate A will be gorgeous and sexy, have compatible interests, bearable taste in music, be the right age, but have two small children and live on the other side of town. Candidate B will be less attractive, but still look pretty good, have no children, and a very interesting job. Candidate C will be attractive, have two teenage children with whom he/she shares custody, a worthy but dull job, but seems to have an especially self-aware and witty personality. It's tough work rating these profiles, and the best you can do is whittle them down to a top three, and write to all of them. In the emailing stage, you will get more data to either enhance or diminish their desirability. And remember, no one is perfect: if you find someone with a beautiful brain and body who loves Celine Dion — just put up with it. As Buddhists point out, suffering cannot be avoided if you are to live a full life. But let your friends help you with that selection process — they will remind you of important issues that somehow escape your attention; such as: you really don't like other people's children in reality, just in theory. The last time you went out with someone who was newly broken up or divorced he/she hadn't got over his/her girlfriend/husband. Anyone who describes themselves as a 'passionate playmate' is probably unbalanced and tries to find male/female acceptance through over-sexualising or infantalising themselves. It means nothing that someone describes their children as "beautiful" — all mothers/fathers think that, even of the most ghastly, moronic offspring. You really don't like nightclubs any more and you are an awkward dancer. The last time you fell in love with, and tried to rescue, someone with serious emotional 'issues', it led to unimaginable misery, and you swore in future to leave such rescues to the professionals. And so on. Listen to your friends — they know you. And your bad choices impinge on their lives too. Writing is a powerful means of constructing a 'self' to project to others. There is a Thomas Hardy story about a young man who meets a beautiful girl at a fair — but he must return to London. They agree to write to each other. Only the beautiful girl is illiterate, so she asks her employer, an older woman, to ghost-write her love letters to the young man, and the employer kindly agrees. The young man falls in love with the soul and mind of the sensitive and intelligent writer of the letters and assumes the beautiful young girl has authored them. The employer also falls in love with him through his letters. Only on the day he marries the girl does he discover that he has married the wrong woman. This tale tells us about the richness of the written word, but it omits an important point — you can be intrigued and drawn to someone through his or her e-mails, but find on meeting him or her that there is no chemistry at all. Works Cited This creative non-fiction article was based on primary research. The largest Australian internet dating service is RSVP (www.rsvp.com.au). I mainly used that for my research and ensuing coffees/participant observation. There are other sites I checked out, including: www.datenet.com.au www.AussieMatchMaker.com.au www.findsomeone.com.au www.VitalPartners.com.au www.personals.yahoo.com.au There are also internet dating site guides such as: www.shoptheweb.com.au/dating.shtml www.theinternetdatingguide.com www.moonlitwalks.com www.singlesites.com/Australian_Dating.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Neilsen, Philip. "An extract from 'The Internet of Love'" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/internet.php>. APA Style Neilsen, P., (2002, Nov 20). An extract from "The Internet of Love". M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/internet.html

If iconophobia is defined as the suspicion and anxiety towards the power exerted by images, its history is an ancient one in all of its Platonic, Christian, and Judaic forms. At its most radical, iconophobia results in an act of iconoclasm, or the total destruction of the image. At the other end of the spectrum, contemporary iconophobia may be more subtle. Images are simply withdrawn from circulation with the aim of eliminating their visibility. In his book Images in Spite of All, French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman questions the tradition of suspicion and denigration governing visual representations of the Holocaust, arguing we have abdicated our ethical obligation to try to imagine. This essay will argue that disruptions to traditional modes of spectatorship shift the terms of viewing from suspicion to ethical participation. By building on Didi-Huberman’s discussion of images and the spectatorial gaze, this essay will consider Laura Waddington’s 2002 documentary film Border. Waddington spent six months hiding with asylum seekers in the area surrounding the Red Cross refugee camp at Sangatte in northern France. I will argue that Waddington proposes a model of spectatorship that implicates the viewer into the ethical content of the film. By seeking to restore the dignity and humanity of the asylum seekers rather than viewing them with suspicion, Border is an acute reminder of our moral responsibility to bear witness to that which lies beyond the boundaries of conventional representations of asylum seekers.The economy managing the circulation of mainstream media images is a highly suspicious mechanism. After the initial process of image selection and distribution, what we are left with is an already homogenised collection of predictable and recyclable media images. The result is an increasingly iconophobic media gaze as the actual content of the image is depleted. In her essay “Precarious Life,” Judith Butler describes this economy in terms of the “normative processes” of control exercised by the mainstream media, arguing that the structurally unbalanced media representations of the ‘other’ result in creating a progressively dehumanised effect (Butler 146). This process of disidentification completes the iconophobic circle as the spectator, unable to develop empathy, views the dehumanised subject with increasing suspicion. Written in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ensuing War on Terror, Butler’s insights are important as they alert us to the possibility of a breach or rupture in the image economy. It is against Butler’s normative processes that Didi-Huberman’s critique of Holocaust iconoclasm and Waddington’s Border propose a slippage in representation and spectatorship capable of disrupting the homogeneity of the mass circulation of images.Most images that have come to represent the Holocaust in our collective memory were either recorded by the Nazis for propaganda or by the Allies on liberation in 1945. Virtually no photographs exist from inside the concentration camps. This is distinct from the endlessly recycled images of gaunt, emaciated survivors and bulldozers pushing aside corpses which have become critical in defining Holocaust iconography (Saxton 14). Familiar and recognisable, this visual record constitutes a “visual memory bank” that we readily draw upon when conjuring up images of the Holocaust. What occurs, however, when an image falls outside the familiar corpus of Holocaust representation? This was the question raised in a now infamous exhibition held in Paris in 2001 (Chéroux). The exhibition included four small photographs secretly taken by members of the Sonderkommando inside the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1944. The Sonderkommando were the group of prisoners who were delegated the task of the day-to-day running of the crematoria. The photographs were smuggled out of the camps in a tube of toothpaste, and eventually reached the Polish Resistance.By evading the surveillance of the SS the photographs present a breach in the economy of Holocaust iconography. They exist as an exception to the rule, mere fragments stolen from beneath the all-seeing eye of the SS Guards and their watch towers. Despite operating in an impossible situation, the inmate maintained the belief that these images could provide visual proof of the existence of the gas chambers. The images are testimony produced inside the camp itself, a direct challenge to the discourse emphasising the prohibition of representation of the Holocaust and in particular the gas chambers. Figure 1 The Auschwitz crematorium in operation, photograph by Sonderkommando prisoners August 1944 © www.auschwitz.org.plDidi-Huberman’s essay marks a point of departure from the iconophobia which has stressed the unimaginable (Lanzmann), unknowable (Lyotard), and ultimately unrepresentable (Levinas) nature of the Holocaust since the 1980s. Denigrated and derided, images have been treated suspiciously by this philosophical line of thought, emphasising the irretrievable gap between representation and the Holocaust. In a direct assault on the tradition of framing the Holocaust as unrepresentable, Didi-Huberman’s essay becomes a plea to the moral and ethical responsibility to bear witness. He writes of the obligation to these images, arguing that “it is a response we must offer, as a debt to the words and images that certain prisoners snatched, for us, from the harrowing Real of their experience” (3). The photographs are not simply archival documents, but a testament to the humanity of the members of the Sonderkommando the Nazis sought to erase.Suspicion towards the potential power exerted by images has been neutralised by models of spectatorship privileging the viewer’s mastery and control. In traditional theories of film spectatorship, the spectator is rendered in terms of a general omnipotence described by Christian Metz as “an all-powerful position which is of God himself...” (49). It is a model of spectatorship that promotes mastery over the image by privileging the unilateral gaze of the spectator. Alternatively, Didi-Huberman evokes a long counter tradition within French literature and philosophy of the “seer seen,” where the object of the spectator’s gaze is endowed with the ability to return the gaze resulting in various degrees of anxiety and paranoia. The image of the “seer seen” recurs throughout the writing of Baudelaire, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Lacan, and Barthes, negating the unilateral gaze of an omnipotent spectator (Didi-Huberman, Ce que nous voyons).Didi-Huberman explicitly draws upon Jacques Lacan’s thinking about the gaze in light of this tradition of the image looking back. In his 1964 seminars on vision in the Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan dedicates several chapters to demonstrate how the visual field is structured by the symbolic order, the real, symbolic and the imaginary. Following Lacan, Didi-Huberman introduces two terms, the veil-image and the tear-image, which are analogous with Lacan’s imaginary and the real. The imaginary, with its connotations of illusion and fantasy, provides the sense of wholeness in both ourselves and what we perceive. For Didi-Huberman, the imaginary corresponds with the veil-image. Within the canon of Holocaust photography, the veil-image is the image “where nobody really looks,” the screen or veil maintaining the spectator’s illusion of mastery (81). We might say that in the circulation of Holocaust atrocity images, the veil serves to anaesthetise and normalise the content of the image.Lacan’s writing on the gaze, however, undermines the spectator’s mastery over the image by placing the spectator not at the all-seeing apex of the visual field, but located firmly within the visual field of the image. Lacan writes, “in the scopic field, the gaze is outside, I am looked at, that is to say, I am the picture...I am photo-graphed” (Lacan 106). The spectator is ensnared in the gaze of the image as the gaze is reciprocated. For Didi-Huberman, the veil-image seeks to disarm the threat to the spectator being caught in the image-gaze. Lacan describes this neutralisation in terms of “the pacifying, Apollonian effect of painting. Something is given not so much to the gaze as to the eye, something that involves the abandonment, the laying down, of the gaze” (101). Further on, Lacan expresses this in terms of the dompte-regarde, or a taming of the gaze (109). The veil-image maintains the fiction of the spectator’s ascendency by subduing the threat of the image-gaze. In opposition to the veil-image is the tear-image, in which for Didi-Huberman “a fragment of the real escapes” (81). This represents a rupture in the visual field. The real is presented here in terms of the tuché, or missed encounter, resulting in the spectator’s anxiety and trauma. As the real cannot be represented, it is the point where representation collapses, rupturing the illusion of coherency maintained by the veil-image. Operating as an exception or disruption to the rule, the tear-image disrupts the image economy. No longer neutralised, the image returns the gaze, shattering the illusion of the all-seeing mastery of the spectator. Didi-Huberman describes this tearing exception to the rule, “where everyone suddenly feels looked at” (81).To treat the Sonderkommando photographs as tear-images, not veil-images, we are offered a departure from classic models of spectatorship. We are forced to align ourselves and identify with the “inhuman” gaze of the Sonderkommando. The obvious response is to recoil. The gaze here is not the paranoid Sartrean gaze, evoking shame in the spectator-as-voyeur. Nor are these photographs reassuring narcissistic veil-images, but will always remain the inimical gaze of the Other—tearing, ripping images, which nonetheless demand that we do not turn away. It is an ethical response we must offer. If the power of the tear-image resides in its ability to disrupt traditional modes of representation and spectatorship, I would like to discuss this in relation to Laura Waddington’s 2004 film Border. Waddington is a Brussels based filmmaker with a particular interest in documenting the movement of displaced peoples. Just as the Sonderkommando photographs were taken clandestinely from beneath the gaze of the SS, Waddington evaded the surveillance of the French police and helicopter patrols as she bore witness to the plight of asylum seekers trying to reach England. Border presents her stolen testimony, operating outside the familiar iconography of mainstream media’s representation of asylum seekers. If we were to consider the portrayal of asylum seekers by the Australian media in terms of the veil-image, we are left with a predictable body of homogenised and neutralised stock media images. The myth of Australia being overrun by boat people is reinforced by the visual iconography of the news media. Much like the iconography of the Holocaust, these types of images have come to define the representations of asylum seekers. Traceable back to the 2001 Tampa affair images tend to be highly militarised, frequently with Australian Navy patrol boats in the background. The images reinforce the ‘stop the boats’ rhetoric exhibited on both sides of politics, paradoxically often working against the grain of the article’s editorial content. Figure 2 Thursday 16 Apr 2009 there was an explosion on board a suspected illegal entry vessel (SIEV) 36 in the vicinity of Ashmore Reef. © Commonwealth of Australia 2011Figure 3 The crew of HMAS Albany, Attack One, board suspected illegal entry vessel (SIEV) 38 © Commonwealth of Australia 2011 The media gaze is structurally unbalanced against the suffering of asylum seekers. In Australia asylum seekers are detained in mandatory detention, in remote sites such as Christmas Island and Woomera. Worryingly, the Department of Immigration maintains strict control over media representations of the conditions inside the camps, resulting in a further abstraction of representation. Geographical isolation coupled with a lack of transparent media access contributes to the ongoing process of dehumanisation of the asylum seekers. Judith Butler describes this as “The erasure of that suffering through the prohibition of images and representations” (146). In the endless recycling of images of leaky fishing boats and the perimeters of detention centres, our critical capacity to engage becomes progressively eroded. These images fulfil the function of the veil-image, where nobody really looks as there is nothing left to see. Figure 4 Asylum seekers arrive by boat on Christmas Island, Friday, July 8, 2011. AAP Image/JOSH JERGA Figure 5 Woomera Detention Centre. AAP Image/ROB HUTCHISON By reading Laura Waddington’s Border against an iconophobic media gaze, we are afforded the opportunity to reconsider this image economy and the suspicious gaze of the spectator it seeks to solicit. Border reminds us of the paradoxical function of the news image—it shows us everything, but nothing at all. In a subtle interrogation of our indifference to the existence of asylum seekers and their suffering, Border is a record of the six months Waddington spent hidden in the fields surrounding the French Red Cross camp at Sangatte in 2002. Sangatte is a small town in northern France, just south of Calais and only one and a half hours’ drive from Paris. The asylum seekers are predominantly Afghan and Iraqi. Border is a record of the last stop in their long desperate journey to reach England, which then had comparatively humane asylum seeking policies. The men are attempting to cross the channel tunnel, hidden in trucks and on freight trains. Many are killed or violently injured in their attempts to evade capture by the French police. Nevertheless they are sustained by the hope that England will offer them “a better life.” Figure 6 Still from Border showing asylum seekers in the fields of Sangatte ©Laura Waddington 2002Waddington dedicates the film, “for those I met.” It is an attempt to restore the humanity and dignity of the people who are denied individual identities. Waddington refuses to let “those who I met” remain nameless. She names them—Omar, Muhammad, Abdulla—and narrates their individual stories. Border is Waddington’s attempt to return a voice to those who have been systematically dehumanised, by-products of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his classic account of documentary, Bill Nichols describes six modes of documentary representation (99–138). In Border, Waddington is working in the participatory mode, going into the field and participating in the lives of others (115). It is via this mode of representation that Waddington is able to heighten the ethical encounter with the asylum seekers. Waddington was afforded no special status as a filmmaker, but lived as a refugee among the asylum seekers during the six months of filming. At no point are we granted visible access to Waddington, yet we are acutely aware of her presence. She is physically participating in the drama unfolding before her. At times, we become alert to her immediate physical danger, as she too runs through the fields away from the police and their dogs.The suspicious gaze is predicated on maintaining a controlled distance between the spectator and the subject. Michele Aaron (82–123) has recently argued for a model of spectatorship as an intrinsically ethical encounter. Aaron demonstrates that spectatorship is not neutral but always complicit—it is a contract between the spectator and the film. Particularly relevant to the purposes of this essay is her argument concerning the “merging gaze,” where the gaze of the filmmaker and spectator are collapsed. This has the effect of folding the spectator into the film’s narrative (93). Waddington exploits the documentary medium to implicate the spectator into the structure of the film. It is in Waddington’s full participatory immersion into the documentary itself that undermines the conventional distance maintained by the spectator. The spectator can no longer remain neutral as the lines of demarcation between filmmaker and spectator collapse.Waddington was shooting alone with a small video camera at night in extremely low-light conditions. The opening scene is dark and grainy, refusing immediate entry into the film. As our eyes gradually adjust to the light, we realise we are looking at a young man, concealed in the bushes from the menacing glare of the lights of oncoming traffic. Waddington does not afford us the all-perceiving spectatorial mastery over the image. Rather, we are crouching with her as she records the furtive movements of the man. The background sound, a subtle and persistent hum, adds to a growing disquiet, a looming sense of apprehension concerning the fate of these asylum seekers. Figure 7 Grainy still showing the Red Cross camp in Border ©Laura Waddington 2002Waddington’s commentary has been deliberately pared back and her voice over is minimal with extended periods of silence. The camera alternates from meditative, lingering shots taken from the safety offered by the Red Cross camp, to the fields where the shots are truncated and chaotically framed. The actions of the asylum seekers jerk and shudder, producing an image akin to the flicker effect of early silent cinema because the film is not running at the full rate of 24 frames per second. Here the images become blurred to the point of unintelligibility. Like the Sonderkommando photographs, the asylum seekers exist as image-fragments, shards stolen by Waddington’s camera as she too works hard to evade capture. Tension gradually increases throughout the film, cumulating in a riot scene after a decision to close the camp down. The sweeping search lights of the police helicopter remind us of the increased surveillance undertaken by the border patrols. Without the safety of the Red Cross camp, the asylum seekers are offered no protection from the increasing police brutality. With nowhere else to go, the asylum seekers are forced into the town of Sangatte itself, to sleep in the streets. They are huddled together, and there is a faintly discernible chant repeating in the background, calling to the UN for help. At points during the riot scene, Waddington completely cuts the sound, enveloping the film in a haunting silence. We are left with a mute montage of distressing still images recording the clash between the asylum seekers and police. Again, we are reminded of Waddington’s lack of immunity to the violence, as the camera is deliberately knocked from her hand by a police officer. Figure 8 Clash between asylum seekers and police in Border ©Laura Waddington 2002It is via the merged gaze of the camera and the asylum seekers that Waddington exposes the fictional mastery of the spectator’s gaze. The fury of the tear-image is unleashed as the image-gaze absorbs the spectator into its visual field. No longer pacified by the veil, the spectator is unable to retreat to familiar modes of spectatorship to neutralise and disarm the image. With no possible recourse to desire and fantasy, the encounter becomes intrinsically ethical. Refusing to be neutralised by the Lacanian veil, the tear-image resists the anaesthetising effects of recycled and predictable images of asylum seekers.This essay has argued that a suspicious spectator is the product of an iconophobic media gaze. In the endless process of recycling, the critical capacity of the image to engage the viewer becomes progressively disarmed. Didi-Huberman’s reworking of the Lacanian gaze proposes a model of spectatorship designed to disrupt this iconophobic image economy. The veil-image asks little from us as spectators beyond our complicity. Protected by the gaze of the image, the fiction of the all—perceiving spectator is maintained. By abandoning this model of spectatorship as Didi-Huberman and Waddington are asking us to do, the unidirectional relationship between the viewer and the image is undermined. The terms of spectatorship may be relocated from suspicion to an ethical, participatory mode of engagement. We are laying down our weapons to receive the gaze of the Other. ReferencesAaron, Michele. Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On. London: Wallflower, 2007.Border. Waddington, Laura. Love Stream Productions, 2004.Butler, Judith. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.London: Verso, 2004.Chéroux, Clément, ed. Mémoires des Camps. Photographies des Camps de Concentration et d'Extermination Nazis, 1933-1999. Paris: Marval, 2001.Didi-Huberman, Georges. Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz. Trans. Lillis, Shane B. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008.Didi-Huberman, Georges. Ce Que Nous Voyons, Ce Qui Nous regarde.Critique. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1992.Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis.Trans. Sheridan, Alan. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.Levinas, Emmanuel. "Reality and its Shadow." The Levinas Reader. Ed. Hand, Seán. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. 130–43.Lyotard, Jean-François. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1982.Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 2001.Saxton, Libby. Haunted Images: Film, Ethics, Testimony and the Holocaust. London: Wallflower, 2008.

The digital revolution has been characterized by the overlapping of different media technologies and platforms which reshaped both traditional forms of audiovisual consumption and older conceptions of place and space. John Agnew claims that, traditionally, the notion of place has been associated with two different meanings: ‘the first is a geometric conception of place as a mere part of space and the second is a phenomenological understanding of a place as a distinctive coming together in space’ (317). Both of the dominant meanings have been challenged by the idea that the world itself is increasingly “placeless” as space-spanning connections and flows of information, things, and people undermine the rootedness of a wide range of processes anywhere in particular (Friedman). On the one hand, by obliterating physical distance, new technologies such as the Internet and the cell phone are making places obsolete, on the other hand, the proliferation of media representations favoured by these technologies are making places more relevant than ever. These increasing mediatisation processes, in fact, generate what Urry and Larsen call ‘imaginative geographies’, namely the conflation of representational spaces and physical spaces that substitute and enhance each other in contingent ways (116). The smartphone as a new hybrid media platform that combines different technological features such as digital screens, complex software applications, cameras, tools for online communication and GPS devices, has played a crucial role in the construction of new notions of place. This article examines a specific type of phone applications: mobile, digital mapping tools that allow users to identify film-locations. In doing so it will assess how new media platforms can potentially reconfigure notions of both media consumption, and (physical and imagined) mobility. Furthermore, the analysis of digital movie maps and their mediation of film locations will shed light on the way in which contemporary leisure activities reshape the cultural, social and geographic meaning of place. Digital, Mobile Movie MapsDigital movie maps can be defined as software applications, conceived for smart phones or other mobile devices, which enable users to identify the geographical position of film locations. These applications rely on geotagging which is the process of adding geospatial metadata (usually latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates) to texts or images. From this point of view these phone apps belong to a broader category of media that Tristan Thielmann calls geomedia: converging applications of interactive, digital, mapping tools and mobile and networked media technologies. According to Hjorth, recent studies on mobile media practices show a trend toward “re-enacting the importance of place and home as both a geo-imaginary and socio-cultural precept” (Hjorth 371). In 2008 Google announced that Google Maps and Google Earth will become the basic platform for any information search. Similarly, in 2010 Flickr started georeferencing their complete image stock (Thielmann 8). Based on these current developments media scholars such as Thielmann claim that geomedia will emerge in the future as one of the most pervasive forms of digital technology (8).In my research I identified 44 phone geomedia apps that offered content variously related to film locations. In every case the main functionality of the apps consisted in matching geographic data concerning the locations with visual and written information about the corresponding film production. ‘Scene Seekers’, the first app able to match the title of a film with the GPS map of its locations, was released in 2009. Gradually, subsequent film-location apps incorporated a number of other functions including:Trivia and background information about films and locationsSubmission forms which allow users to share information about their favourite film locatiosLocation photosLinks to film downloadFilm-themed itinerariesAudio guidesOnline discussion groupsCamera/video function which allow users to take photos of the locations and share them on social mediaFilm stills and film clipsAfter identifying the movie map apps, I focused on the examination of the secondary functions they offered and categorized the applications based on both their main purpose and their main target users (as explicitly described in the app store). Four different categories of smart phone applications emerged. Apps conceived for:Business (for location scouts and producers)Entertainment (for trivia and quiz buffs)Education (for students and film history lovers)Travel (for tourists)‘Screen New South Wales Film Location Scout’, an app designed for location scouts requiring location contact information across the state of New South Wales, is an example of the first category. The app provides lists, maps and images of locations used in films shot in the region as well as contact details for local government offices. Most of these types of apps are available for free download and are commissioned by local authorities in the hope of attracting major film productions, which in turn might bring social and economic benefits to the region.A small number of the apps examined target movie fans and quiz buffs. ‘James Bond and Friends’, for example, focuses on real life locations where spy/thriller movies have been shot in London. Interactive maps and photos of the locations show their geographical position. The app also offers a wealth of trivia on spy/thriller movies and tests users’ knowledge of James Bond films with quizzes about the locations. While some of these apps provide information on how to reach particular film locations, the emphasis is on trivia and quizzes rather than travel itself.Some of the apps are explicitly conceived for educational purposes and target film students, film scholars and users interested in the history of film more broadly. The Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs, for example, developed a number of smartphone apps designed to promote knowledge about Italian Cinema. Each application focuses on one Italian city, and was designed for users wishing to acquire more information about the movie industry in that urban area. The ‘Cinema Roma’ app, for example, contains a selection of geo-referenced film sets from a number of famous films shot in Rome. The film spots are presented via a rich collection of historical images and texts from the Italian National Photographic Archive.Finally, the majority of the apps analysed (around 60%) explicitly targets tourists. One of the most popular film-tourist applications is the ‘British Film Locations’ app with over 100,000 downloads since its launch in 2011. ‘British Film Locations’ was commissioned by VisitBritain, the British tourism agency. Visit Britain has attempted to capitalize on tourists’ enthusiasm around film blockbusters since the early 2000s as their research indicated that 40% of potential visitors would be very likely to visit the place they had seen in films or on TV (VisitBritain). British Film Locations enables users to discover and photograph the most iconic British film locations in cinematic history. Film tourists can search by film title, each film is accompanied by a detailed synopsis and list of locations so users can plan an entire British film tour. The app also allows users to take photos of the location and automatically share them on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.Movie Maps and Film-TourismAs already mentioned, the majority of the film-location phone apps are designed for travel purposes and include functionalities that cater for the needs of the so called ‘post-tourists’. Maxine Feifer employed this term to describe the new type of tourist arising out of the shift from mass to post-Fordist consumption. The post-tourist crosses physical and virtual boundaries and shifts between experiences of everyday life, either through the actual or the simulated mobility allowed by the omnipresence of signs and electronic images in the contemporary age (Leotta). According to Campbell the post-tourist constructs his or her own tourist experience and destination, combining these into a package of overlapping and disjunctive elements: the imagined (dreams and screen cultures), the real (actual travels and guides) and the virtual (myths and internet) (203). More recently a number of scholars (Guttentag, Huang et al., Neuhofer et al.) have engaged with the application and implications of virtual reality on the planning, management and marketing of post-tourist experiences. Film-induced tourism is an expression of post-tourism. Since the mid-1990s a growing number of scholars (Riley and Van Doren, Tooke and Baker, Hudson and Ritchie, Leotta) have engaged with the study of this phenomenon, which Sue Beeton defined as “visitation to sites where movies and TV programmes have been filmed as well as to tours to production studios, including film-related theme parks” (11). Tourists’ fascination with film sets and locations is a perfect example of Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality. Such places are simulacra which embody the blurred boundaries between reality and representation in a world in which unmediated access to reality is impossible (Baudrillard).Some scholars have focused on the role of mediated discourse in preparing both the site and the traveller for the process of tourist consumption (Friedberg, Crouch et al.). In particular, John Urry highlights the interdependence between tourism and the media with the concept of the ‘tourist gaze’. Urry argues that the gaze dominates tourism, which is primarily concerned with the commodification of images and visual consumption. According to Urry, movies and television play a crucial role in shaping the tourist gaze as the tourist compares what is gazed at with the familiar image of the object of the gaze. The tourist tries to reproduce his or her own expectations, which have been “constructed and sustained through a variety of non-tourist practices, such as film, TV, literature, records, and videos” (Urry 3). The inclusion of the camera functionality in digital movie maps such as ‘British Film Locations’ fulfils the need to actually reproduce the film images that the tourist has seen at home.Film and MapsThe convergence between film and (virtual) travel is also apparent in the prominent role that cartography plays in movies. Films often allude to maps in their opening sequences to situate their stories in time and space. In turn, the presence of detailed geographical descriptions of space at the narrative level often contributes to establish a stronger connection between film and viewers (Conley). Tom Conley notes that a number of British novels and their cinematic adaptations including Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) and Stevenson’s Treasure Island belong to the so called ‘cartographic fiction’ genre. In these stories, maps are deployed to undo the narrative thread and inspire alternative itineraries to the extent of legitimising an interactive relation between text and reader or viewer (Conley 225).The popularity of LOTR locations as film-tourist destinations within New Zealand may be, in part, explained by the prominence of maps as both aesthetic and narrative devices (Leotta). The authenticity of the LOTR geography (both the novel and the film trilogy) is reinforced, in fact, by the reoccurring presence of the map. Tolkien designed very detailed maps of Middle Earth that were usually published in the first pages of the books. These maps play a crucial role in the immersion into the imaginary geography of Middle Earth, which represents one of the most important pleasures of reading LOTR (Simmons). The map also features extensively in the cinematic versions of both LOTR and The Hobbit. The Fellowship of the Ring opens with several shots of a map of Middle Earth, anticipating the narrative of displacement that characterizes LOTR. Throughout the trilogy the physical dimensions of the protagonists’ journey are emphasized by the foregrounding of the landscape as a map.The prominence of maps and geographical exploration as a narrative trope in ‘cartographic fiction’ such as LOTR may be responsible for activating the ‘tourist imagination’ of film viewers (Crouch et al.). The ‘tourist imagination’ is a construct that explains the sense of global mobility engendered by the daily consumption of the media, as well as actual travel. As Crouch, Jackson and Thompson put it, “the activity of tourism itself makes sense only as an imaginative process which involves a certain comprehension of the world and enthuses a distinctive emotional engagement with it” (Crouch et al. 1).The use of movie maps, the quest for film locations in real life may reproduce some of the cognitive and emotional pleasures that were activated while watching the movie, particularly if maps, travel and geographic exploration are prominent narrative elements. Several scholars (Couldry, Hills, Beeton) consider film-induced tourism as a contemporary form of pilgrimage and movie maps are becoming an inextricable part of this media ritual. Hudson and Ritchie note that maps produced by local stakeholders to promote the locations of films such as Sideways and LOTR proved to be extremely popular among tourists (391-392). In their study about the impact of paper movie maps on tourist behaviour in the UK, O’Connor and Pratt found that movie maps are an essential component in the marketing mix of a film location. For example, the map of Pride and Prejudice Country developed by the Derbyshire and Lincolnshire tourist boards significantly helped converting potential visitors into tourists as almost two in five visitors stated it ‘definitely’ turned a possible visit into a certainty (O’Connor and Pratt).Media Consumption and PlaceDigital movie maps have the potential to further reconfigure traditional understandings of media consumption and place. According to Nana Verhoeff digital mapping tools encourage a performative cartographic practice in the sense that the dynamic map emerges and changes during the users’ journey. The various functionalities of digital movie maps favour the hybridization between film reception and space navigation as by clicking on the movie map the user could potentially watch a clip of the film, read about both the film and the location, produce his/her own images and comments of the location and share it with other fans online.Furthermore, digital movie maps facilitate and enhance what Nick Couldry, drawing upon Claude Levi Strauss, calls “parcelling out”: the marking out as significant of differences in ritual space (83). According to Couldry, media pilgrimages, the visitation of TV or film locations are rituals that are based from the outset on an act of comparison between the cinematic depiction of place and its physical counterpart. Digital movie maps have the potential to facilitate this comparison by immediately retrieving images of the location as portrayed in the film. Media locations are rife with the marking of differences between the media world and the real locations as according to Couldry some film tourists seek precisely these differences (83).The development of smart phone movie maps, may also contribute to redefine the notion of audiovisual consumption. According to Nanna Verhoeff, mobile screens of navigation fundamentally revise the spatial coordinates of previously dominant, fixed and distancing cinematic screens. One of the main differences between mobile digital screens and larger, cinematic screens is that rather than being surfaces of projection or transmission, they are interfaces of software applications that combine different technological properties of the hybrid screen device: a camera, an interface for online communication, a GPS device (Verhoeff). Because of these characteristics of hybridity and intimate closeness, mobile screens involve practices of mobile and haptic engagement that turn the classical screen as distanced window on the world, into an interactive, hybrid navigation device that repositions the viewer as central within the media world (Verhoeff).In their discussion of the relocation of cinema into the iPhone, Francesco Casetti and Sara Sampietro reached similar conclusions as they define the iPhone as both a visual device and an interactive interface that mobilizes the eye as well as the hand (Casetti and Sampietro 23). The iPhone constructs an ‘existential bubble’ in which the spectator can find refuge while remaining exposed to the surrounding environment. When the surrounding environment is the real life film location, the consumption or re-consumption of the film text allowed by the digital movie map is informed by multi-sensorial and cognitive stimuli that are drastically different from traditional viewing experiences.The increasing popularity of digital movie maps is a phenomenon that could be read in conjunction with the emergence of innovative locative media such as the Google glasses and other applications of Augmented Reality (A.R.). Current smart phones available in the market are already capable to support A.R. applications and it appears likely that this will become a standard feature of movie apps within the next few years (Sakr). Augmented reality refers to the use of data overlays on real-time camera view of a location which make possible to show virtual objects within their spatial context. The camera eye on the device registers physical objects on location, and transmits these images in real time on the screen. On-screen this image is combined with different layers of data: still image, text and moving image.In a film-tourism application of augmented reality tourists would be able to point their phone camera at the location. As the camera identifies the location images from the film will overlay the image of the ‘real location’. The user, therefore, will be able to simultaneously see and walk in both the real location and the virtual film set. The notion of A.R. is related to the haptic aspect of engagement which in turn brings together the doing, the seeing and the feeling (Verhoeff). In film theory the idea of the haptic has come to stand for an engaged look that involves, and is aware of, the body – primarily that of the viewer (Marx, Sobchack). The future convergence between cinematic and mobile technologies is likely to redefine both perspectives on haptic perception of cinema and theories of film spectatorship.The application of A.R. to digital, mobile maps of film-locations will, in part, fulfill the prophecies of René Barjavel. In 1944, before Bazin’s seminal essay on the myth of total cinema, French critic Barjavel, asserted in his book Le Cinema Total that the technological evolution of the cinematic apparatus will eventually result in the total enveloppement (envelopment or immersion) of the film-viewer. This enveloppement will be characterised by the multi-sensorial experience and the full interactivity of the spectator within the movie itself. More recently, Thielmann has claimed that geomedia such as movie maps constitute a first step toward the vision that one day it might be possible to establish 3-D spaces as a medial interface (Thielmann).Film-Tourism, Augmented Reality and digital movie maps will produce a complex immersive and inter-textual media system which is at odds with Walter Benjamin’s famous thesis on the loss of ‘aura’ in the age of mechanical reproduction (Benjamin), as one of the pleasures of film-tourism is precisely the interaction with the auratic place, the actual film location or movie set. According to Nick Couldry, film tourists are interested in the aura of the place and filming itself. The notion of aura is associated here with both the material history of the location and the authentic experience of it (104).Film locations, as mediated by digital movie maps, are places in which people have a complex sensorial, emotional, cognitive and imaginative involvement. The intricate process of remediation of the film-locations can be understood as a symptom of what Lash and Urry have called the ‘re-subjectification of space’ in which ‘locality’ is re-weighted with a more subjective and affective charge of place (56). According to Lash and Urry the aesthetic-expressive dimensions of the experience of place have become as important as the cognitive ones. By providing new layers of cultural meaning and alternative modes of affective engagement, digital movie maps will contribute to redefine both the notion of tourist destination and the construction of place identity. These processes can potentially be highly problematic as within this context the identity and meanings of place are shaped and controlled by the capital forces that finance and distribute the digital movie maps. Future critical investigations of digital cartography will need to address the way in which issues of power and control are deeply enmeshed within new tourist practices. 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If Continental social theory emerges from a climate of intensely cold winters and short mild summers, how does Australia (or any nation defined by its large masses of aridity) function as an environment in which to produce critical theory and new knowledge? Climate and weather are intrinsic to ambience, but what impact might they have on the conditions of producing academic work? How is ambience relevant to thinking and writing and research? Is there an ambient epistemology? This paper argues that the ambient is an unacknowledged factor in the production of critical thinking, and draws on examples of academics locating their writing conditions as part of their thinking. This means paying attention to the embodied work of thinking, and so I locate myself in order to explore what it might mean to acknowledge the conditions of intellectual work. Consequently I dwell on the impact of heat and light as qualities specific to where I work, but (following Bolt) I also argue that they are terms that are historically associated with new knowledge. Language, then, is already a factor in shaping the way we can think through such conditions, and the narratives available to write about them. Working these conditions into critical narratives may involve mobilising fictional tropes, and may not always be ambient, but they are potent in the academic imaginary and impact the ways in which we can think through location. Present Tense As I sit in Perth right now in a balmy 27 degrees Celsius with the local afternoon sea-breeze (fondly known as the Fremantle Doctor) clearing the stuffiness and humidity of the day, environmental conditions are near perfect for the end of summer. I barely notice them. Not long ago though, it was over 40 degrees for three days in a row. These were the three days I had set aside to complete an academic paper, the last days available before the university opened and normal work would resume. I’d arranged to have the place to myself, but I hadn’t arranged for cooling technologies. As I immersed myself in photocopies and textbooks the intellectual challenges and excitement were my preoccupation. It was hot, but I was almost unreceptive to recognising the discomforts of the weather until sweat began to drip onto pages and keyboards. A break in the afternoon for a swim at the local beach was an opportunity to clarify and see the bigger picture, and as the temperature began to slide into the evening cool it was easier to stay up late working and then sleep in late. I began to work around the weather. What impact does this have on thinking and writing? I remember it as a haze. The paper though, still seems clear and reasoned. My regimen might be read as working despite the weather, but I wonder if the intensity of the heat extends thinking in different directions—to go places where I wouldn’t have imagined in an ambiently cooled office (if I had one). The conditions of the production of knowledge are often assumed to be static, stable and uninteresting. Even if your work is located in exciting Other places, the ‘writing up’ is expected to happen ‘back home’, after the extra-ordinary places of fieldwork. It can be written in the present tense, for a more immediate reading experience, but the writing cannot always happen at the same time as the events being described, so readers accept the use of present tense as a figment of grammar that cannot accommodate the act of writing. When a writer becomes aware of their surroundings and articulates those conditions into their narrative, the reader is lifted out of the narrative into a metaframe; out of the body of writing and into the extra-diegetic. In her essay “Me and My Shadow” (1987), Jane Tompkins writes as if ‘we’ the reader are in the present with her as she makes connections between books, experiences, memories, feelings, and she also provides us with a writing scene in which to imagine her in the continuous present: It is a beautiful day here in North Carolina. The first day that is both cool and sunny all summer. After a terrible summer, first drought, then heat-wave, then torrential rain, trees down, flooding. Now, finally, beautiful weather. A tree outside my window just brushed by red, with one fully red leaf. (This is what I want you to see. A person sitting in stockinged feet looking out of her window – a floor to ceiling rectangle filled with green, with one red leaf. The season poised, sunny and chill, ready to rush down the incline into autumn. But perfect, and still. Not going yet.) (128)This is a strategy, part of the aesthetics and politics of Tompkins’s paper which argues for the way the personal functions in intellectual thinking and writing even when we don’t recognise or acknowledge it. A little earlier she characterises herself as vulnerable because of the personal/professional nexus: I don’t know how to enter the debate [over epistemology] without leaving everything else behind – the birds outside my window, my grief over Janice, just myself as a person sitting here in stockinged feet, a little bit chilly because the windows are open, and thinking about going to the bathroom. But not going yet. (126)The deferral of autumn and going to the bathroom is linked through the final phrase, “not going yet”. This is a kind of refrain that draws attention to the aesthetic architecture of locating the self, and yet the reference to an impending toilet trip raised many eyebrows. Nancy Millar comments that “these passages invoke that moment in writing when everything comes together in a fraction of poise; that fragile moment the writing in turn attempts to capture; and that going to the bathroom precisely, will end” (6). It spoils the moment. The aesthetic green scene with one red leaf is ruptured by the impending toilet scene. Or perhaps it is the intimacy of bodily function that disrupts the ambient. And yet the moment is fictional anyway. There must surely always be some fiction involved when writing about the scene of writing, as writing usually takes more than one take. Gina Mercer takes advantage of this fictional function in a review of a collection of women’s poetry. Noting the striking discursive differences between the editor’s introduction and the poetry collected in the volume, she suggestively accounts for this by imagining the conditions under which the editor might have been working: I suddenly begin to imagine that she wrote the introduction sitting at her desk in twin-set and pearls, her feet constricted by court shoes – but that the selection took place at home with her lying on a large beautifully-linened bed bestrewn by a cat and the poems… (4)These imaginary conditions, Mercer implies, impact on the ways we do our intellectual work, or perhaps different kinds of work require different conditions. Mercer not only imagines the editor at work, but also suggests her own preferred workspace when she mentions that “the other issue I’ve been pondering as I lay on my bed in a sarong (yes it’s hot here already) reading this anthology, has been the question of who reads love poetry these days?” (4). Placing herself as reader (of an anthology of love poetry) on the bed in a sarong in a hot climate partially accounts for the production of the thinking around this review, but probably doesn’t include the writing process. Mercer’s review is written in epistolary form, signaling an engagement with ‘the personal’, and yet that awareness of form and setting performs a doubling function in which scenes are set and imagination is engaged and yet their veracity doesn’t seem important, and may even be part of the fiction of form. It’s the idea of working leisurely that gains traction in this review. Despite the capacity for fiction, I want to believe that Jane Tompkins was writing in her study in North Carolina next to a full-length window looking out onto a tree. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and imagine her writing in this place and time. Scenes of Writing Physical conditions are often part of mythologising a writer. Sylvia Plath wrote the extraordinary collection of poems that became Ariel during the 1962/63 London winter, reputed to have been the coldest for over a hundred years (Gifford 15). The cold weather is given a significant narrative role in the intensity of her writing and her emotional desperation during that period. Sigmund Freud’s writing desk was populated with figurines from his collection of antiquities looking down on his writing, a scene carefully replicated in the Freud Museum in London and reproduced in postcards as a potent staging of association between mythology, writing and psychoanalysis (see Burke 2006). Writer’s retreats at the former residences of writers (like Varuna at the former home of Eleanor Dark in the Blue Mountains, and the Katherine Susannah Pritchard Centre in the hills outside of Perth) memorialise the material conditions in which writers wrote. So too do pilgrimages to the homes of famous writers and the tourism they produce in which we may gaze in wonder at the ordinary places of such extraordinary writing. The ambience of location is one facet of the conditions of writing. When I was a doctoral student reading Continental feminist philosophy, I used anything at hand to transport myself into their world. I wrote my dissertation mostly in Townsville in tropical Queensland (and partly in Cairns, even more tropical), where winter is blue skies and mid-twenties in temperature but summers are subject to frequent build-ups in pressure systems, high humidity, no breeze and some cyclones. There was no doubt that studying habits were affected by the weather for a student, if not for all the academics who live there. Workplaces were icily air-conditioned (is this ambient?) but outside was redolent with steamy tropical evenings, hot humid days, torrential downpours. When the weather breaks there is release in blood pressure accompanying barometer pressure. I was reading contemporary Australian literature alongside French feminist theories of subjectivity and their relation through écriture féminine. The European philosophical and psychoanalytic tradition and its exquisitely radical anti-logical writing of Irigaray, Cixous and Kristeva seemed alien to my tropical environs but perversely seductive. In order to get ‘inside’ the theoretical arguments, my strategy was to interpolate myself into their imagined world of writing, to emulate their imagined conditions. Whenever my friend went on a trip, I caretook her 1940s unit that sat on a bluff and looked out over the Coral Sea, all whitewashed and thick stone, and transformed it into a French salon for my intellectual productivity. I played Edith Piaf and Grace Jones, went to the grocer at the bottom of the hill every day for fresh food and the French patisserie for baguettes and croissants. I’d have coffee brewing frequently, and ate copious amounts of camembert and chocolate. The Townsville flat was a Parisian salon with French philosophers conversing in my head and between the piles of book lying on the table. These binges of writing were extraordinarily productive. It may have been because of the imagined Francophile habitus (as Bourdieu understands it); or it may have been because I prepared for the anticipated period of time writing in a privileged space. There was something about adopting the fictional romance of Parisian culture though that appealed to the juxtaposition of doing French theory in Townsville. It intensified the difference but interpolated me into an intellectual imaginary. Derrida’s essay, “Freud and the Scene of Writing”, promises to shed light on Freud’s conditions of writing, and yet it is concerned moreover with the metaphoric or rather intellectual ‘scene’ of Freudian ideas that form the groundwork of Derrida’s own corpus. Scenic, or staged, like Tompkins’s framed window of leaves, it looks upon the past as a ‘moment’ of intellectual ferment in language. Peggy Kamuf suggests that the translation of this piece of Derrida’s writing works to cover over the corporeal banishment from the scene of writing, in a move that privileges the written trace. In commenting, Kamuf translates Derrida herself: ‘to put outside and below [metre dehors et en bas] the body of the written trace [le corps de la trace écrite].’ Notice also the latter phrase, which says not the trace of the body but the body of the trace. The trace, what Derrida but before him also Freud has called trace or Spur, is or has a body. (23)This body, however, is excised, removed from the philosophical and psychoanalytic imaginary Kamuf argues. Australian philosopher Elizabeth Grosz contends that the body is “understood in terms that attempt to minimize or ignore altogether its formative role in the production of philosophical values – truth, knowledge, justice” (Volatile 4): Philosophy has always considered itself a discipline concerned primarily or exclusively with ideas, concepts, reason, judgment – that is, with terms clearly framed by the concept of mind, terms which marginalize or exclude considerations of the body. As soon as knowledge is seen as purely conceptual, its relation to bodies, the corporeality of both knowers and texts, and the ways these materialities interact, must become obscure. (Volatile 4)In the production of knowledge then, the corporeal knowing writing body can be expected to interact with place, with the ambience or otherwise in which we work. “Writing is a physical effort,” notes Cixous, and “this is not said often enough” (40). The Tense Present Conditions have changed here in Perth since the last draft. A late summer high pressure system is sitting in the Great Australian Bite pushing hot air across the desert and an equally insistent ridge of low pressure sits off the Indian Ocean, so the two systems are working against each other, keeping the weather hot, still, tense, taut against the competing forces. It has been nudging forty degrees for a week. The air conditioning at work has overloaded and has been set to priority cooling; offices are the lowest priority. A fan blasts its way across to me, thrumming as it waves its head from one side to the other as if tut-tutting. I’m not consumed with intellectual curiosity the way I was in the previous heatwave; I’m feeling tired, and wondering if I should just give up on this paper. It will wait for another time and journal. There’s a tension with chronology here, with what’s happening in the present, but then Rachel Blau DuPlessis argues that the act of placing ideas into language inevitably produces that tension: Chronology is time depicted as travelling (more or less) in a (more or less) forward direction. Yet one can hardly write a single sentence straight; it all rebounds. Even its most innocent first words – A, The, I, She, It – teem with heteroglossias. (16)“Sentences structure” DuPlessis points out, and grammar necessitates development, chronological linearity, which affects the possibilities for narrative. “Cause and effect affect” DuPlessis notes (16), as do Cixous and Irigaray before her. Nevertheless we must press on. And so I leave work and go for a swim, bring my core body temperature down, and order a pot of tea from the beach café while I read Barbara Bolt in the bright afternoon light. Bolt is a landscape painter who has spent some time in Kalgoorlie, a mining town 800km east of Perth, and notes the ways light is used as a metaphor for visual illumination, for enlightening, and yet in Kalgoorlie light is a glare which, far from illuminating, blinds. In Kalgoorlie the light is dangerous to the body, causing cancers and cataracts but also making it difficult to see because of its sheer intensity. Bolt makes an argument for the Australian light rupturing European thinking about light: Visual practice may be inconceivable without a consideration of light, but, I will argue, it is equally ‘inconceivable’ to practice under European notions of light in the ‘glare’ of the Australian sun. Too much light on matter sheds no light on the matter. (204)Bolt frequently equates the European notions of visual art practice that, she claims, Australians still operate under, with concomitant concepts of European philosophy, aesthetics and, I want to add, epistemology. She is particularly adept at noting the material impact of Australian conditions on the body, arguing that, the ‘glare’ takes apart the Enlightenment triangulation of light, knowledge, and form. In fact, light becomes implicated bodily, in the facts of the matter. My pterygiums and sun-beaten skin, my mother and father’s melanomas, and the incidence of glaucoma implicate the sun in a very different set of processes. From my optic, light can no longer be postulated as the catalyst that joins objects while itself remaining unbent and unimplicated … (206).If new understandings of light are generated in Australian conditions of working, surely heat is capable of refiguring dominant European notions as well. Heat is commonly associated with emotions and erotics, even through ideas: heated debate, hot topics and burning issues imply the very latest and most provocative discussions, sizzling and mercurial. Heat has a material affect on corporeality also: dehydrating, disorienting, dizzying and burning. Fuzzy logic and bent horizons may emerge. Studies show that students learn best in ambient temperatures (Pilman; Graetz), but I want to argue that thought and writing can bend in other dimensions with heat. Tensions build in blood pressure alongside isometric bars. Emotional and intellectual intensities merge. Embodiment meets epistemology. This is not a new idea; feminist philosophers like Donna Haraway have been emphasizing the importance of situated knowledge and partial perspective for decades as a methodology that challenges universalism and creates a more ethical form of objectivity. In 1987 Haraway was arguing for politics and epistemologies of location, positioning, and situating, where partiality and not universality is the condition of being heard to make rational knowledge claims. These are claims on people’s lives. I am arguing for the view from a body, always a complex contradictory structuring and structured body versus the view from above, from nowhere, from simplicity. (Haraway 588)Working in intellectual conditions when the specificities of ambience is ignored, is also, I suggest, to work in a privileged space, in which there are no distractions like the weather. It is also to work ‘from nowhere, from simplicity’ in Haraway’s words. It is to write from within the pure imaginary space of the intellect. But to write in, and from, weather conditions no matter what they might be is to acknowledge the affect of being-in-the-world, to recognise an ontological debt that is embodied and through which we think. I want to make a claim for the radical conditions under which writing can occur outside of the ambient, as I sit here sweating over theory again. Drawing attention to the corporeal conditions of the scene of writing is a way of situating knowledge and partial perspective: if I were in Hobart where snow still lies on Mount Wellington I may well have a different perspective, but the metaphors of ice and cold also need transforming into productive and generative conditions of particularised knowledge. To acknowledge the location of knowledge production suggests more of the forces at work in particular thinking, as a bibliography indicates the shelf of books that have inflected the written product. This becomes a relation of immanence rather than transcendence between the subject and thought, whereby thinking can be understood as an act, an activity, or even activism of an agent. This is proposed by Elizabeth Grosz in her later work where she yokes together the “jagged edges” (Time 165) of Deleuze and Irigaray’s work in order to reconsider the “future of thought”. She calls for a revision of meaning, as Bolt does, but this time in regard to thought itself—and the task of philosophy—asking whether it is possible to develop an understanding of thought that refuses to see thought as passivity, reflection, contemplation, or representation, and instead stresses its activity, how and what it performs […] can we deromanticize the construction of knowledges and discourses to see them as labor, production, doing? (Time 158)If writing is to be understood as a form of activism it seems fitting to conclude here with one final image: of Gloria Anzaldua’s computer, at which she invites us to imagine her writing her book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), a radical Chicana vision for postcolonial theory. Like Grosz, Anzaldua is intent on undoing the mind/body split and the language through which the labour of thinking can be articulated. This is where she writes her manifesto: I sit here before my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. (75) References Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987. Bolt, Barbara. “Shedding Light for the Matter.” Hypatia 15.2 (2000): 202-216. Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity, 1990. [1980 Les Edition de Minuit] Burke, Janine. The Gods of Freud: Sigmund Freud’s Art Collection. Milsons Point: Knopf, 2006. Cixous, Hélène, and Mireille Calle-Gruber. Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing. London: Routledge, 1997. [1994 Photos de Racine]. Derrida, Jacques, and Jeffrey Mehlman. "Freud and the Scene of Writing." Yale French Studies 48 (1972): 74-117. DuPlessis, Rachel Blau. Blue Studios: Poetry and Its Cultural Work. Tuscaloosa: Alabama UP, 2006. Gifford, Terry. Ted Hughes. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Graetz, Ken A. “The Psychology of Learning Environments.” Educause Review 41.6 (2006): 60-75. Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994. Grosz, Elizabeth. Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 2005. Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies 14.3 (1988): 575-99. Kamuf, Peggy. “Outside in Analysis.” Mosaic 42.4 (2009): 19-34. Mercer, Gina. “The Days of Love Are Lettered.” Review of The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems, ed. Jennifer Strauss. LiNQ 22.1 (1995): 135-40. Miller, Nancy K. Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. New York: Routledge, 1991. Pilman, Mary S. “The Effects of Air Temperature Variance on Memory Ability.” Loyola University Clearinghouse, 2001. ‹http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/306.php›. Tompkins, Jane. “Me and My Shadow.” New Literary History 19.1 (1987): 169-78.

Film adaptation is an ambiguous term, both semantically and conceptually. Among its multiple connotations, the word “adaptation” may signify an artistic composition that has been recast in a new form, an alteration in the structure or function of an organism to make it better fitted for survival, or a modification in individual or social activity in adjustment to social surroundings. What all these definitions have in common is a tacitly implied hierarchy and valorisation: they presume the existence of an origin to which the recast work of art is indebted, or of biological or societal constraints to which the individual should conform in order to survive. The bias implied in the very connotations of the word has affected the theory and study of film adaptation. This bias is most noticeably reflected in the criterion of fidelity, which has been the major standard for evaluating film adaptations ever since George Bluestone’s 1957 pivotal Novels into Films. “Fidelity criticism,” observes McFarlane, “depends on a notion of the text as having and rendering up to the (intelligent) reader a single, correct ‘meaning’ which the film-maker has either adhered to or in some sense violated or tampered with” (7). But such an approach, Leitch argues, is rooted in several unacknowledged but entrenched misconceptions. It privileges literature over film, casts a false aura of originality on the precursor text, and ignores the fact that all texts, whether literary or cinematic, are essentially intertexts. As Kristeva, along with other poststructuralist theorists, has taught us, any text is an amalgam of others, a part of a larger fabric of cultural discourse (64-91). “A text is a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash”, writes Barthes in 1977 (146), and 15 years later film theoretician Robert Stam elaborates: “The text feeds on and is fed into an infinitely permutating intertext, which is seen through evershifting grids of interpretation” (57). The poststructuralists’ view of texts draws on the structuralists’ view of language, which is conceived as a system that pre-exists the individual speaker and determines subjectivity. These assumptions counter the Romantic ideology of individualism, with its associated concepts of authorial originality and a text’s single, unified meaning, based on the author’s intention. “It is language which speaks, not the author,” declares Barthes, “to write is to reach the point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not me” (143). In consequence, the fidelity criterion of film adaptation may be regarded as an outdated vestige of the Romantic world-view. If all texts quote or embed fragments of earlier texts, the notion of an authoritative literary source, which the cinematic version should faithfully reproduce, is no longer valid. Film adaptation should rather be perceived as an intertextual practice, contributing to a dynamic interpretive exchange between the literary and cinematic texts, an exchange in which each text can be enriched, modified or subverted. The relationship between Jonathan Nolan’s short story “Memento Mori” and Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2001) is a case in point. Here there was no source text, as the writing of the story did not precede the making of the film. The two processes were concurrent, and were triggered by the same basic idea, which Jonathan discussed with his brother during a road trip from Chicago to LA. Christopher developed the idea into a film and Jonathan turned it into a short story; he also collaborated in the film script. Moreover, Jonathan designed otnemem> (memento in reverse), the official Website, which contextualises the film’s fictional world, while increasing its ambiguity. What was adapted here was an idea, and each text explores in different ways the narrative, ontological and epistemological implications of that idea. The story, the film and the Website produce a multi-layered intertextual fabric, in which each thread potentially unravels the narrative possibilities suggested by the other threads. Intertextuality functions to increase ambiguity, and is therefore thematically relevant, for “Memento Mori”, Memento and otnemem> are three fragmented texts in search of a coherent narrative. The concept of narrative may arguably be one of the most overused and under-defined terms in academic discourse. In the context of the present paper, the most productive approach is that of Wilkens, Hughes, Wildemuth and Marchionini, who define narrative as a chain of events related by cause and effect, occurring in time and space, and involving agency and intention. In fiction or in film, intention is usually associated with human agents, who can be either the characters or the narrator. It is these agents who move along the chain of causes and effects, so that cause-effect and agency work together to make the narrative. This narrative paradigm underpins mainstream Hollywood cinema in the years 1917-1960. In Narration in the Fiction Film, David Bordwell writes: The classical Hollywood film presents psychologically defined individuals who struggle to solve a clear-cut problem or to attain specific goals. … The story ends with a decisive victory or defeat, a resolution of the problem, and a clear achievement, or non achievement, of the goals. The principal causal agency is thus the character … . In classical fabula construction, causality is the prime unifying principle. (157) The large body of films flourishing in America between the years 1941 and 1958 collectively dubbed film noir subvert this narrative formula, but only partially. As accurately observed by Telotte, the devices of flashback and voice-over associated with the genre implicitly challenge conventionally linear narratives, while the use of the subjective camera shatters the illusion of objective truth and foregrounds the rift between reality and perception (3, 20). Yet in spite of the narrative experimentation that characterises the genre, the viewer of a classical film noir film can still figure out what happened in the fictional world and why, and can still reconstruct the story line according to sequential and causal schemata. This does not hold true for the intertextual composite consisting of Memento, “Memento Mori” and otnemem>. The basic idea that generated the project was that of a self-appointed detective who obsessively investigates and seeks to revenge his wife’s rape and murder, while suffering from a total loss of short term memory. The loss of memory precludes learning and the acquisition of knowledge, so the protagonist uses scribbled notes, Polaroid photos and information tattooed onto his skin, in an effort to reconstruct his fragmented reality into a coherent and meaningful narrative. Narrativity is visually foregrounded: the protagonist reads his body to make sense of his predicament. To recap, the narrative paradigm relies on a triad of terms: connectedness (a chain of events), causality, and intentionality. The basic situation in Memento and “Memento Mori”, which involves a rupture in the protagonist’s/narrator’s psychological time, entails a breakdown of all three pre-requisites of narrativity. Since the protagonists of both story and film are condemned, by their memory deficiency, to living in an eternal present, they are unable to experience the continuity of time and the connectedness of events. The disruption of temporality inevitably entails the breakdown of causality: the central character’s inability to determine the proper sequence of events prevents him from being able to distinguish between cause and effect. Finally, the notion of agency is also problematised, because agency implies the existence of a stable, identifiable subject, and identity is contingent on the subject’s uninterrupted continuity across time and change. The subversive potential of the basic narrative situation is heightened by the fact that both Memento and “Memento Mori” are focalised through the consciousness and perception of the main character. This means that the story, as well as the film, is conveyed from the point of view of a narrator who is constitutionally unable to experience his life as a narrative. This conundrum is addressed differently in the story and in the film, both thematically and formally. “Memento Mori” presents, in a way, the backdrop to Memento. It focuses on the figure of Earl, a brain damaged protagonist suffering from anterograde amnesia, who is staying in a blank, anonymous room, that we assume to be a part of a mental institution. We also assume that Earl’s brain damage results from a blow to the head that he received while witnessing the rape and murder of his wife. Earl is bent on avenging his wife’s death. To remind himself to do so, he writes messages to himself, which he affixes on the walls of his room. Leonard Shelby is Memento’s cinematic version of Earl. By Leonard’s own account, he has an inability to form memories. This, he claims, is the result of neurological damage sustained during an attack on him and his wife, an attack in which his wife was raped and killed. To be able to pursue his wife’s killers, he has recourse to various complex and bizarre devices—Polaroid photos, a quasi-police file, a wall chart, and inscriptions tattooed onto his skin—in order to replace his memory. Hampered by his affliction, Leonard trawls the motels and bars of Southern California in an effort to gather evidence against the killer he believes to be named “John G.” Leonard’s faulty memory is deviously manipulated by various people he encounters, of whom the most crucial are a bartender called Natalie and an undercover cop named Teddy, both involved in a lucrative drug deal. So far for a straightforward account of the short story and the film. But there is nothing straightforward about either Memento or “Memento Mori”. The basic narrative premise, consisting of a protagonist/narrator suffering from a severe memory deficit, is a condition entailing far-reaching psychological and philosophical implications. In the following discussion, I would like to focus on these two implications and to tie them in to the notions of narrativity, intertextuality, and eventually, adaptation. The first implication of memory loss is the dissolution of identity. Our sense of identity is contingent on our ability to construct an uninterrupted personal narrative, a narrative in which the present self is continuous with the past self. In Oneself as Another, his philosophical treatise on the concept of selfhood, Paul Ricoeur queries: “do we not consider human lives to be more readable when they have been interpreted in terms of the stories that people tell about them?” He concludes by observing that “interpretation of the self … finds in narrative, among others signs and symbols, a privileged form of mediation” (ft. 114). Ricoeur further suggests that the sense of selfhood is contingent on four attributes: numerical identity, qualitative identity, uninterrupted continuity across time and change, and finally, permanence in time that defines sameness. The loss of memory subverts the last two attributes of personal identity, the sense of continuity and permanence over time, and thereby also ruptures the first two. In “Memento Mori” and Memento, the disintegration of identity is formally rendered through the fragmentation of the literary and cinematic narratives, respectively. In Jonathan Nolan’s short story, traditional linear narrative is disrupted by shifts in point of view and by graphic differences in the shape of the print on the page. “Memento Mori” is alternately narrated in the first and in the third person. The first person segments, which constitute the present of the story, are written by Earl to himself. As his memory span is ten-minute long, his existence consists of “just the same ten minutes, over and over again” (Nolan, 187). Fully aware of the impending fading away of memory, Earl’s present-version self leaves notes to his future-version self, in an effort to situate him in time and space and to motivate him to the final action of revenge. The literary device of alternating points of view formally subverts the notion of identity as a stable unity. Paradoxically, rather than setting him apart from the rest of us, Earl’s brain damage foregrounds his similarity. “Every man is broken into twenty-four-hour fractions,” observes Earl, comforting his future self by affirming his basic humanity, “Your problem is a little more acute, maybe, but fundamentally the same thing” (Nolan, 189). His observation echoes Beckett’s description of the individual as “the seat of a constant process of decantation … to the vessel containing the fluid of past time” (Beckett, 4-5). Identity, suggests Jonathan Nolan, following Beckett, among other things, is a theoretical construct. Human beings are works in progress, existing in a state of constant flux. We are all fragmented beings—the ten-minute man is only more so. A second strategy employed by Jonathan to convey the discontinuity of the self is the creation of visual graphic disunity. As noted by Yellowlees Douglas, among others, the static, fixed nature of the printed page and its austere linearity make it ideal for the representation of our mental construct of narrative. The text of “Memento Mori” appears on the page in three different font types: the first person segments, Earl’s admonitions to himself, appear in italics; the third person segments are written in regular type; and the notes and signs are capitalised. Christopher Nolan obviously has recourse to different strategies to reach the same ends. His principal technique, and the film’s most striking aspect, is its reversed time sequence. The film begins with a crude Polaroid flash photograph of a man’s body lying on a decaying wooden floor. The image in the photo gradually fades, until the camera sucks the picture up. The photograph presents the last chronological event; the film then skips backwards in ten-minute increments, mirroring the protagonist’s memory span. But the film’s time sequence is not simply a reversed linear structure. It is a triple-decker narrative, mirroring the three-part organisation of the story. In the opening scene, one comes to realise that the film-spool is running backwards. After several minutes the film suddenly reverses and runs forward for a few seconds. Then there is a sudden cut to a different scene, in black and white, where the protagonist (who we have just learned is called Leonard) begins to talk, out of the blue, about his confusion. Soon the film switches to a color scene, again unconnected, in which the “action” of the film begins. In the black and white scenes, which from then on are interspersed with the main action, Leonard attempts to understand what is happening to him and to explain (to an unseen listener) the nature of his condition. The “main action” of the film follows a double temporal structure: while each scene, as a unit of action, runs normally forward, each scene is triggered by the following, rather than by the preceding scene, so that we are witnessing a story whose main action goes back in time as the film progresses (Hutchinson and Read, 79). A third narrative thread, interspersed with the other two, is a story that functions as a foil to the film’s main action. It is the story of Sammy Jankis: one of the cases that Leonard worked on in his past career as an insurance investigator. Sammy was apparently suffering from anterograde amnesia, the same condition that Leonard is suffering from now. Sammy’s wife filed an insurance claim on his behalf, a claim that Leonard rejected on the grounds that Sammy’s condition was merely psychosomatic. Hoping to confirm Leonard’s diagnosis, Sammy’s diabetic wife puts her husband to the test. He fails the test as he tenderly administers multiple insulin injections to her, thereby causing her death. As Leonard’s beloved wife also suffered from diabetes, and as Teddy (the undercover cop) eventually tells Leonard that Sammy never had a wife, the Sammy Jankis parable functions as a mise en abyme, which can either corroborate or subvert the narrative that Leonard is attempting to construct of his own life. Sammy may be seen as Leonard’s symbolic double in that his form of amnesia foreshadows the condition with which Leonard will eventually be afflicted. This interpretation corroborates Leonard’s personal narrative of his memory loss, while tainting him with the blame for the death of Sammy’s wife. But the camera also suggests a more unsettling possibility—Leonard may ultimately be responsible for the death of his own wife. The scene in which Sammy, condemned by his amnesia, administers to his wife a repeated and fatal shot of insulin, is briefly followed by a scene of Leonard pinching his own wife’s thigh before her insulin shot, a scene recurring in the film like a leitmotif. The juxtaposition of the two scenes suggests that it is Leonard who, mistakenly or deliberately, has killed his wife, and that ever since he has been projecting his guilt onto others: the innocent victims of his trail of revenge. In this ironic interpretive twist, it is Leonard, rather than Sammy, who has been faking his amnesia. The parable of Sammy Jankis highlights another central concern of Memento and “Memento Mori”: the precarious nature of truth. This is the second psychological and philosophical implication of what Leonard persistently calls his “condition”, namely his loss of memory. The question explicitly raised in the film is whether memory records or creates, if it retains the lived life or reshapes it into a narrative that will confer on it unity and meaning. The answer is metaphorically suggested by the recurring shots of a mirror, which Leonard must use to read his body inscriptions. The mirror, as Lacan describes it, offers the infant his first recognition as a coherent, unique self. But this recognition is a mis-recognition, for the reflection has a coherence and unity that the subject both lacks and desires. The body inscriptions that Leonard can read only in the mirror do not necessarily testify to the truth. But they do enable him to create a narrative that makes his life worth living. A Lacanian reading of the mirror image has two profoundly unsettling implications. It establishes Leonard as a morally deficient, rather than neurologically deficient, human being, and it suggests that we are not fundamentally different from him. Leonard’s intricate system of notes and body inscriptions builds up an inventory of set representations to which he can refer in all his future experiences. Thus when he wakes up naked in bed with a woman lying beside him, he looks among his Polaroid photographs for a picture which he can match with her, which will tell him what the woman’s name is and what he can expect from her on the basis of past experience. But this, suggest Hutchinson and Read, is an external representation of operations that all of us perform mentally (89). We all respond to sensory input by constructing internal representations that form the foundations of our psyche. This view underpins current theories of language and of the mind. Semioticians tell us that the word, the signifier, refers to a mental representation of an object rather than to the object itself. Cognitivists assume that cognition consists in the operation of mental items which are symbols for real entities. Leonard’s apparently bizarre method of apprehending reality is thus essentially an externalisation of memory. But if, cognitively and epistemologically speaking, Lennie is less different from us than we would like to think, this implication may also extend to our moral nature. Our complicity with Leonard is mainly established through the film’s complex temporal structure, which makes us viscerally share the protagonist’s/narrator’s confusion and disorientation. We become as unable as he is to construct a single, coherent and meaningful narrative: the film’s obscurity is built in. Memento’s ambiguity is enhanced by the film’s Website, which presents a newspaper clipping about the attack on Leonard and his wife, torn pages from police and psychiatric reports, and a number of notes from Leonard to himself. While blurring the boundaries between story and film by suggesting that Leonard, like Earl, may have escaped from a mental institution, otnemem> also provides evidence that can either confirm or confound our interpretive efforts, such as a doctor’s report suggesting that “John G.” may be a figment of Leonard’s imagination. The precarious nature of truth is foregrounded by the fact that the narrative Leonard is trying to construct, as well as the narrative in which Christopher Nolan has embedded him, is a detective story. The traditional detective story proceeds from a two-fold assumption: truth exists, and it can be known. But Memento and “Memento Mori” undermine this epistemological confidence. They suggest that truth, like identity, is a fictional construct, derived from the tales we tell ourselves and recount to others. These tales do not coincide with objective reality; they are the prisms we create in order to understand reality, to make our lives bearable and worth living. Narratives are cognitive patterns that we construct to make sense of the world. They convey our yearning for coherence, closure, and a single unified meaning. The overlapping and conflicting threads interweaving Memento, “Memento Mori” and the Website otnemem> simultaneously expose and resist our nostalgia for unity, by evoking a multiplicity of meanings and creating an intertextual web that is the essence of all adaptation. References Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana, 1977. Beckett, Samuel. Proust. London: Chatto and Windus, 1931. Bluestone, George. Novels into Film. Berkley and Los Angeles: California UP, 1957. Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: Wisconsin UP, 1985. Hutchinson, Phil, and Rupert Read. “Memento: A Philosophical Investigation.” Film as Philosophy: Essays in Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell. Ed. Rupert Read and Jerry Goodenough. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2005. 72-93. Kristeva, Julia. “World, Dialogue and Novel.” Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Ed. Leon S. Rudiez. Trans. Thomas Gora. New York: Columbia UP, 1980. 64-91. Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience.” Ēcrits: A Selection. New York: Norton 1977. 1-7. Leitch, Thomas. “Twelve Fallacies in Contemporary Adaptation Theory.” Criticism 45.2 (2003): 149-71. McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Nolan, Jonathan. “Memento Mori.” The Making of Memento. Ed. James Mottram. London: Faber and Faber, 2002. 183-95. Nolan, Jonathan. otnemem. 24 April 2007 http://otnemem.com>. Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1992. Stam, Robert. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” Film Adaptation. Ed. James Naremore. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2000. 54-76. Telotte, J.P. Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana and Chicago: Illinois UP, 1989. Wilkens, T., A. Hughes, B.M. Wildemuth, and G. Marchionini. “The Role of Narrative in Understanding Digital Video.” 24 April 2007 http://www.open-video.org/papers/Wilkens_Asist_2003.pdf>. Yellowlees Douglass, J. “Gaps, Maps and Perception: What Hypertext Readers (Don’t) Do.” 24 April 2007 http://www.pd.org/topos/perforations/perf3/douglas_p3.html>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Shiloh, Ilana. "Adaptation, Intertextuality, and the Endless Deferral of Meaning: Memento." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/08-shiloh.php>. APA Style Shiloh, I. (May 2007) "Adaptation, Intertextuality, and the Endless Deferral of Meaning: Memento," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/08-shiloh.php>.

She leant lazily across the picnic hamper and reached for my hearing aid in my open-palmed hand. I jerked away from her, batting her hand away from mine. The glare of the summer sun blinded me. I struck empty air. Her tendril-fingers seized the beige seashell curve of my hearing aid and she lifted the cargo of sound towards her eyes. She peered at the empty battery-cage before flicking it open and shut as if it was a cigarette lighter, as if she could spark hearing-life into this trick of plastic and metal that held no meaning outside of my ear. I stared at her. A band of horror tightened around my throat, strangling my shout: ‘Don’t do that!’ I clenched my fist around the new battery that I had been about to insert into my hearing aid and imagined it speeding like a bullet towards her heart. This dream arrived as I researched my anthology of memoir-style essays on deafness, The Art of Being. I had already been reflecting and writing for several years about my relationship with my deaf-self and the impact of my deafness on my life, but I remained uneasy about writing about my deaf-life. I’ve lived all my adult life entirely in the hearing world, and so recasting myself as a deaf woman with something pressing to say about deaf people’s lives felt disturbing. The urgency to tell my story and my anxiety to contest certain assumptions about deafness were real, but I was hampered by diffidence. The dream felt potent, as if my deaf-self was asserting itself, challenging my hearing persona. I was the sole deaf child in a family of five muddling along in a weatherboard war commission house at The Grange in Brisbane during the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. My father’s resume included being in the army during World War Two, an official for the boxing events at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and a bookie with a gift for telling stories. My mother had spent her childhood on a cherry orchard in Young, worked as a nurse in war-time Sydney and married my father in Townsville after a whirlwind romance on Magnetic Island before setting up home in Brisbane. My older sister wore her dark hair in thick Annie-Oakley style plaits and my brother took me on a hike along the Kedron Brook one summer morning before lunchtime. My parents did not know of any deaf relatives in their families, and my sister and brother did not have any friends with deaf siblings. There was just me, the little deaf girl. Most children are curious about where they come from. Such curiosity marks their first foray into sexual development and sense of identity. I don’t remember expressing such curiosity. Instead, I was diverted by my mother’s story of her discovery that I was deaf. The way my mother tells the story, it is as if I had two births with the date of the diagnosis of my deafness marking my real arrival, over-riding the false start of my physical birth three years earlier. Once my mother realized that I was deaf, she was able to get on with it, the ‘it’ being to defy the inevitability of a constrained life for her deaf child. My mother came out swinging; by hook or by crook, her deaf daughter was going to learn to speak and to be educated and to take her place in the hearing world and to live a normal life and that was that. She found out about the Commonwealth Acoustics Laboratory (now known as Australian Hearing Services) where, after I completed a battery of auditory tests, I was fitted with a hearing aid. This was a small metal box, to be worn in a harness around my body, with a long looping plastic cord connected to a beige ear-mould. An instrument for piercing silence, it absorbed and conveyed sounds, with those sounds eventually separating themselves out into patterns of words and finally into strings of sentences. Without my hearing aid, if I am concentrating, and if the sounds are made loudly, I am aware of the sounds at the deeper end of the scale. Sometimes, it’s not so much that I can hear them; it’s more that I know that those sounds are happening. My aural memory of the deep-register sounds helps me to “hear” them, much like the recollection of any tune replays itself in your imagination. With and without my hearing aids, if I am not watching the source of those sounds – for example, if the sounds are taking place in another room or even just behind me – I am not immediately able to distinguish whether the sounds are conversational or musical or happy or angry. I can only discriminate once I’ve established the rhythm of the sounds; if the rhythm is at a tearing, jagged pace with an exaggerated rise and fall in the volume, I might reasonably assume that angry words are being had. I cannot hear high-pitched sounds at all, with and without my hearing aids: I cannot hear sibilants, the “cees” and “esses” and “zeds”. I cannot hear those sounds which bounce or puff off from your lips, such as the letters “b” and “p”; I cannot hear that sound which trampolines from the press of your tongue against the back of your front teeth, the letter “t”. With a hearing-aid I can hear and discriminate among the braying, hee-hawing, lilting, oohing and twanging sounds of the vowels ... but only if I am concentrating, and if I am watching the source of the sounds. Without my hearing aid, I might also hear sharp and sudden sounds like the clap of hands or crash of plates, depending on the volume of the noise. But I cannot hear the ring of the telephone, or the chime of the door bell, or the urgent siren of an ambulance speeding down the street. My hearing aid helps me to hear some of these sounds. I was a pupil in an oral-deaf education program for five years until the end of 1962. During those years, I was variously coaxed, dragooned and persuaded into the world of hearing. I was introduced to a world of bubbles, balloons and fingers placed on lips to learn the shape, taste and feel of sounds, their push and pull of air through tongue and lips. By these mechanics, I gained entry to the portal of spoken, rather than signed, speech. When I was eight years old, my parents moved me from the Gladstone Road School for the Deaf in Dutton Park to All Hallows, an inner-city girls’ school, for the start of Grade Three. I did not know, of course, that I was also leaving my world of deaf friends to begin a new life immersed in the hearing world. I had no way of understanding that this act of transferring me from one school to another was a profound statement of my parents’ hopes for me. They wanted me to have a life in which I would enjoy all the advantages and opportunities routinely available to hearing people. Like so many parents before them, ‘they had to find answers that might not, for all they knew, exist . . . How far would I be able to lead a ‘normal’ life? . . . How would I earn a living? You can imagine what forebodings weighed on them. They could not know that things might work out better than they feared’ (Wright, 22). Now, forty-four years later, I have been reflecting on the impact of that long-ago decision made on my behalf by my parents. They made the right decision for me. The quality of my life reflects the rightness of their decision. I have enjoyed a satisfying career in social work and public policy embedded in a life of love and friendships. This does not mean that I believe that my parents’ decision to remove me from one world to another would necessarily be the right decision for another deaf child. I am not a zealot for the cause of oralism despite its obvious benefits. I am, however, stirred by the Gemini-like duality within me, the deaf girl who is twin to the hearing persona I show to the world, to tell my story of deafness as precisely as I can. Before I can do this, I have to find that story because it is not as apparent to me as might be expected. In an early published memoir-essay about my deaf girlhood, I Hear with My Eyes (in Schulz), I wrote about my mother’s persistence in making sure that I learnt to speak rather than sign, the assumed communication strategy for most deaf people back in the 1950s. I crafted a selection of anecdotes, ranging in tone, I hoped, from sad to tender to laugh-out-loud funny. I speculated on the meaning of certain incidents in defining who I am and the successes I have enjoyed as a deaf woman in a hearing world. When I wrote this essay, I searched for what I wanted to say. I thought, by the end of it, that I’d said everything that I wanted to say. I was ready to move on, to write about other things. However, I was delayed by readers’ responses to that essay and to subsequent public speaking engagements. Some people who read my essay told me that they liked its fresh, direct approach. Others said that they were moved by it. Friends were curious and fascinated to get the inside story of my life as a deaf person as it has not been a topic of conversation or inquiry among us. They felt that they’d learnt something about what it means to be deaf. Many responses to my essay and public presentations had relief and surprise as their emotional core. Parents have cried on hearing me talk about the fullness of my life and seem to regard me as having given them permission to hope for their own deaf children. Educators have invited me to speak at parent education evenings because ‘to have an adult who has a hearing impairment and who has developed great spoken language and is able to communicate in the community at large – that would be a great encouragement and inspiration for our families’ (Email, April 2007). I became uncomfortable about these responses because I was not sure that I had been as honest or direct as I could have been. What lessons on being deaf have people absorbed by reading my essay and listening to my presentations? I did not set out to be duplicitous, but I may have embraced the writer’s aim for the neatly curved narrative arc at the cost of the flinty self-regarding eye and the uncertain conclusion. * * * Let me start again. I was born deaf at a time, in the mid 1950s, when people still spoke of the ‘deaf-mute’ or the ‘deaf and dumb.’ I belonged to a category of children who attracted the gaze of the curious, the kind, and the cruel with mixed results. We were bombarded with questions we could either not hear and so could not answer, or that made us feel we were objects for exploration. We were the patronized beneficiaries of charitable picnics organized for ‘the disadvantaged and the handicapped.’ Occasionally, we were the subject of taunts, with words such as ‘spastic’ being speared towards us as if to be called such a name was a bad thing. I glossed over this muddled social response to deafness in my published essay. I cannot claim innocence as my defence. I knew I was glossing over it but I thought this was right and proper: after all, why stir up jagged memories? Aren’t some things better left unexpressed? Besides, keep the conversation nice, I thought. The nature of readers’ responses to my essay provoked me into a deeper exploration of deafness. I was shocked by the intensity of so many parents’ grief and anxiety about their children’s deafness, and frustrated by the notion that I am an inspiration because I am deaf but oral. I wondered what this implied about my childhood deaf friends who may not speak orally as well as I do, but who nevertheless enjoy fulfilling lives. I was stunned by the admission of a mother of a five year old deaf son who, despite not being able to speak, has not been taught how to Sign. She said, ‘Now that I’ve met you, I’m not so frightened of deaf people anymore.’ My shock may strike the average hearing person as naïve, but I was unnerved that so many parents of children newly diagnosed with deafness were grasping my words with the relief of people who have long ago lost hope in the possibilities for their deaf sons and daughters. My shock is not directed at these parents but at some unnameable ‘thing out there.’ What is going on out there in the big world that, 52 years after my mother experienced her own grief, bewilderment, anxiety and quest to forge a good life for her little deaf daughter, contemporary parents are still experiencing those very same fears and asking the same questions? Why do parents still receive the news of their child’s deafness as a death sentence of sorts, the death of hope and prospects for their child, when the facts show – based on my own life experiences and observations of my deaf school friends’ lives – that far from being a death sentence, the diagnosis of deafness simply propels a child into a different life, not a lesser life? Evidently, a different sort of silence has been created over the years; not the silence of hearing loss but the silence of lost stories, invisible stories, unspoken stories. I have contributed to that silence. For as long as I can remember, and certainly for all of my adult life, I have been careful to avoid being identified as ‘a deaf person.’ Although much of my career was taken up with considering the equity dilemmas of people with a disability, I had never assumed the mantle of advocacy for deaf people or deaf rights. Some of my early silence about deaf identity politics was consistent with my desire not to shine the torch on myself in this way. I did not want to draw attention to myself by what I did not have, that is, less hearing than other people. I thought that if I lived my life as fully as possible in the hearing world and with as little fuss as possible, then my success in blending in would be eloquence enough. If I was going to attract attention, I wanted it to be on the basis of merit, on what I achieved. Others would draw the conclusions that needed to be drawn, that is, that deaf people can take their place fully in the hearing world. I also accepted that if I was to be fully ‘successful’ – and I didn’t investigate the meaning of that word for many years – in the hearing world, then I ought to isolate myself from my deaf friends and from the deaf culture. I continued to miss them, particularly one childhood friend, but I was resolute. I never seriously explored the possibility of straddling both worlds, despite the occasional invitation to do so. For example, one of my childhood deaf friends, Damien, visited me at my parents’ home once, when we were both still in our teens. He was keen for me to join him in the Deaf Theatre, but I couldn’t muster the emotional dexterity that I felt this required. Instead, I let myself to be content to hear news of my childhood deaf friends through the grape-vine. This was, inevitably, a patchy process that lent itself to caricature. Single snippets of information about this person or that person ballooned into portrait-size depictions of their lives as I sketched the remaining blanks of their history with my imagination as my only tool. My capacity to be content with my imagination faltered. * * * Despite the construction of public images of deafness around the highly visible performance of hand-signed communication, the ‘how-small-can-we-go?’ advertorials of hearing aids and the cochlear implant with its head-worn speech processor, deafness is often described as ‘the invisible disability.’ My own experience bore this out. I became increasingly self-conscious about the singularity of my particular success, moderate in the big scheme of things though that may be. I looked around me and wondered ‘Why don’t I bump into more deaf people during the course of my daily life?’ After all, I am not a recluse. I have broad interests. I have travelled a lot, and have enjoyed a policy career for some thirty years, spanning the three tiers of government and scaling the competitive ladder with a reasonable degree of nimbleness. Such a career has got me out and about quite a bit: up and down the Queensland coast and out west, down to Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Hobart, and to the United Kingdom. And yet, not once in those thirty years did I get to share an office or a chance meeting or a lunch break with another deaf person. The one exception took place in the United Kingdom when I attended a national conference in which the keynote speaker was the Chairman of the Audit Commission, a man whose charisma outshines his profound deafness. After my return to Australia from the United Kingdom, a newspaper article about an education centre for deaf children in a leafy suburb of Brisbane, prompted me into action. I decided to investigate what was going on in the world of education for deaf children and so, one warm morning in 2006, I found myself waiting in the foyer for the centre’s clinical director. I flicked through a bundle of brochures and newsletters. They were loaded with images of smiling children wearing cochlear implants. Their message was clear: a cochlear implant brought joy, communication and participation in all that the world has to offer. This seemed an easy miracle. I had arrived with an open mind but now found myself feeling unexpectedly tense, as if I was about to walk a high-wire without the benefit of a safety net. Not knowing the reason for my fear, I swallowed it and smiled at the director in greeting upon her arrival. She is physically a small person but her energy is large. Her passion is bracing. That morning, she was quick to assert the power of cochlear implants by simply asking me, ‘Have you ever considered having an implant?’ When I shook my head, she looked at me appraisingly, ‘I’m sure you’d benefit from it’ before ushering me into a room shining with sun-dappled colour and crowded with a mess of little boys and girls. The children were arrayed in a democracy of shorts, shirts, and sandals. Only the occasional hair-ribbon or newly pressed skirt separated this girl from that boy. Some young mothers and fathers, their faces stretched with tension, stood or sat around the room’s perimeter watching their infant children. The noise in the room was orchestral, rising and falling to a mash of shouts, cries and squeals. A table had been set with several plastic plates in which diced pieces of browning apple, orange slices and melon chunks swam in a pond of juice. Some small children clustered around it, waiting to be served. When they finished their morning fruit, they were rounded up to sit at the front of the room, before a teacher poised with finger-puppets of ducks. I tripped over a red plastic chair – its tiny size designed to accommodate an infant’s bottom and small-sausage legs – and lowered myself onto it to take in the events going on around me. The little boys and girls laughed merrily as they watched their teacher narrate the story of a mother duck and her five baby ducks. Her hands moved in a flurry of duck-billed mimicry. ‘“Quack! Quack! Quack!” said the mother duck!’ The parents trilled along in time with the teacher. As I watched the children at the education centre that sunny morning, I saw that my silence had acted as a brake of sorts. I had, for too long, buried the chance to understand better the complex lives of deaf people as we negotiate the claims and demands of the hearing world. While it is true that actions speak louder than words, the occasional spoken and written word must surely help things along a little. I also began to reflect on the apparent absence of the inter-generational transfer of wisdom and insights born of experience rather than academic studies. Why does each new generation of parents approach the diagnosis of their newborn child’s disability or deafness with such intensity of fear, helplessness and dread for their child’s fate? I am not querying the inevitability of parents experiencing disappointment and shock at receiving unexpected news. I accept that to be born deaf means to be born with less than perfect hearing. All the same, it ought not to be inevitable that parents endure sustained grief about their child’s prospects. They ought to be illuminated as quickly as possible about all that is possible for their child. In particular, they ought to be encouraged to enjoy great hopes for their child. I mused about the power of story-telling to influence attitudes. G. Thomas Couser claims that ‘life writing can play a significant role in changing public attitudes about deafness’ (221) but then proceeds to cast doubt on his own assertion by later asking, ‘to what degree and how do the extant narratives of deafness rewrite the discourse of disability? Indeed, to what degree and how do they manage to represent the experience of deafness at all?’ (225). Certainly, stories from the Deaf community do not speak for me as my life has not been shaped by the framing of deafness as a separate linguistic and cultural entity. Nor am I drawn to the militancy of identity politics that uses terms such as ‘oppression’ and ‘oppressors’ to deride the efforts of parents and educators to teach deaf children to speak (Lane; Padden and Humphries). This seems to be unhelpfully hostile and assumes that deafness is the sole arbitrating reason that deaf people struggle with understanding who they are. It is the nature of being human to struggle with who we are. Whether we are deaf, migrants, black, gay, mentally ill – or none of these things – we are all answerable to the questions: ‘who am I and what is my place in the world?’ As I cast around for stories of deafness and deaf people with which I could relate, I pondered on the relative infrequency of deaf characters in literature, and the scarcity of autobiographies by deaf writers or biographies of deaf people by either deaf or hearing people. I also wondered whether written stories of deafness, memoirs and fiction, shape public perceptions or do they simply respond to existing public perceptions of deafness? As Susan DeGaia, a deaf academic at California State University writes, ‘Analysing the way stories are told can show us a lot about who is most powerful, most heard, whose perspective matters most to society. I think if we polled deaf/Deaf people, we would find many things missing from the stories that are told about them’ (DeGaia). Fighting my diffidence in staking out my persona as a ‘deaf woman’ and mustering the ‘conviction as to the importance of what [I have] to say, [my] right to say it’ (Olsen 27), I decided to write The Art of Being Deaf, an anthology of personal essays in the manner of reflective memoirs on deafness drawing on my own life experiences and supported by additional research. This presented me with a narrative dilemma because my deafness is just one of several life-events by which I understand myself. I wanted to find fresh ways of telling stories of deaf experiences while fashioning my memoir essays to show the texture of my life in all its variousness. A.N.Wilson’s observation about the precarious insensitivity of biographical writing was my guiding pole-star: the sense of our own identity is fluid and tolerant, whereas our sense of the identity of others is always more fixed and quite often edges towards caricature. We know within ourselves that we can be twenty different persons in a single day and that the attempt to explain our personality is doomed to become a falsehood after only a few words ... . And yet ... works of literature, novels and biographies depend for their aesthetic success precisely on this insensitive ability to simplify, to describe, to draw lines around another person and say, ‘This is she’ or ‘This is he.’ I have chosen to explore my relationship with my deafness through the multiple-threads of writing several personal essays as my story-telling vehicle rather than as a single-thread autobiography. The multiple-thread approach to telling my stories also sought to avoid the pitfalls of identity narrative in which I might unwittingly set myself up as an exemplar of one sort or another, be it as a ‘successful deaf person’ or as an ‘angry militant deaf activist’ or as ‘a deaf individual in denial attempting to pass as hearing.’ But in seeking to avoid these sorts of stories, what autobiographical story am I trying to tell? Because, other than being deaf, my life is not otherwise especially unusual. It is pitted here with sadness and lifted there with joy, but it is mostly a plateau held stable by the grist of daily life. Christopher Jon Heuer recognises this dilemma when he writes, ‘neither autobiography nor biography nor fiction can survive without discord. Without it, we are left with boredom. Without it, what we have is the lack of a point, a theme and a plot’ (Heuer 196). By writing The Art of Being Deaf, I am learning more than I have to teach. In the absence of deaf friends or mentors, and in the climate of my own reluctance to discuss my concerns with hearing people who, when I do flag any anxieties about issues arising from my deafness tend to be hearty and upbeat in their responses, I have had to work things out for myself. In hindsight, I suspect that I have simply ignored most of my deafness-related difficulties, leaving the heavy lifting work to my parents, teachers, and friends – ‘for it is the non-deaf who absorb a large part of the disability’ (Wright, 5) – and just got on with things by complying with what was expected of me, usually to good practical effect but at the cost of enriching my understanding of myself and possibly at the cost of intimacy. Reading deaf fiction and memoirs during the course of this writing project is proving to be helpful for me. I enjoy the companionability of it, but not until I got over my fright at seeing so many documented versions of deaf experiences, and it was a fright. For a while there, it was like walking through the Hall of Mirrors in Luna Park. Did I really look like that? Or no, perhaps I was like that? But no, here’s another turn, another mirror, another face. Spinning, twisting, turning. It was only when I stopped searching for the right mirror, the single defining portrait, that I began to enjoy seeing my deaf-self/hearing-persona experiences reflected in, or challenged by, what I read. Other deaf writers’ recollections are stirring into fresh life my own buried memories, prompting me to re-imagine them so that I can examine my responses to those experiences more contemplatively and less reactively than I might have done originally. We can learn about the diversity of deaf experiences and the nuances of deaf identity that rise above the stock symbolic scripts by reading authentic, well-crafted stories by memoirists and novelists. Whether they are hearing or deaf writers, by providing different perspectives on deafness, they have something useful to say, demonstrate and illustrate about deafness and deaf people. I imagine the possibility of my book, The Art of Being Deaf, providing a similar mentoring role to other deaf people and families.References Couser, G. Thomas. Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disablity, and Life Writing. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. Heuer, Christopher Jon. ‘Deafness as Conflict and Conflict Component.’ Sign Language Studies 7.2 (Winter 2007): 195-199. Lane, Harlan. When the Mind Hears: A History of the Deaf. New York: Random House, 1984 Olsen, Tillie. Silences. New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence. 1978. Padden, Carol, and Tom Humphries. Deaf in America: Voices from a Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Schulz, J. (ed). A Revealed Life. Sydney: ABC Books and Griffith Review. 2007 Wilson, A.N. Incline Our Hearts. London: Penguin Books. 1988. Wright, David. Deafness: An Autobiography. New York: Stein and Day, 1969.

'He did what the cipher could not, he rescued himself.' -- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (23) On many levels, the new Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile is a gritty meditation about different types of End: the eternal relationship cycle of 'fragility, tension, ordeal, fragmentation' (adapted, with apologies to Wilhelm Reich); fin-de-siècle anxiety; post-millennium foreboding; a spectre of the alien discontinuity that heralds an on-rushing future vastly different from the one envisaged by Enlightenment Project architects. In retrospect, it's easy for this perspective to be dismissed as jargon-filled cyber-crit hyperbole. Cyber-crit has always been at its best too when it invents pre-histories and finds hidden connections between different phenomena (like the work of Greil Marcus and early Mark Dery), and not when it is closer to Chinese Water Torture, name-checking the canon's icons (the 'Deleuze/Guattari' tag-team), texts and key terms. "The organization of sound is interpreted historically, politically, socially ... . It subdues music's ambition, reins it in, restores it to its proper place, reconciles it to its naturally belated fate", comments imagineer Kodwo Eshun (4) on how cyber-crit destroys albums and the innocence of the listening experience. This is how official histories are constructed a priori and freeze-dried according to personal tastes and prior memes: sometimes the most interesting experiments are Darwinian dead-ends that fail to make the canon, or don't register on the radar. Anyone approaching The Fragile must also contend with the music industry's harsh realities. For every 10 000 Goth fans who moshed to the primal 'kill-fuck-dance' rhythms of the hit single "Closer" (heeding its siren-call to fulfil basic physiological needs and build niche-space), maybe 20 noted that the same riff returned with a darker edge in the title track to The Downward Spiral, undermining the glorification of Indulgent hedonism. "The problem with such alternative audiences," notes Disinformation Creative Director Richard Metzger, "is that they are trying to be different -- just like everyone else." According to author Don Webb, "some mature Chaos and Black Magicians reject their earlier Nine Inch Nails-inspired Goth beginnings and are extremely critical towards new adopters because they are uncomfortable with the subculture's growing popularity, which threatens to taint their meticulously constructed 'mysterious' worlds. But by doing so, they are also rejecting their symbolic imprinting and some powerful Keys to unlocking their personal history." It is also difficult to separate Nine Inch Nails from the commercialisation and colossal money-making machine that inevitably ensued on the MTV tour circuit: do we blame Michael Trent Reznor because most of his audience are unlikely to be familiar with 'first-wave' industrial bands including Cabaret Voltaire and the experiments of Genesis P. Orridge in Throbbing Gristle? Do we accuse Reznor of being a plagiarist just because he wears some of his influences -- Dr. Dre, Daft Punk, Atari Teenage Riot, Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), Tom Waits's Bone Machine (1992), David Bowie's Low (1977) -- on his sleeve? And do we accept no-brain rock critic album reviews who quote lines like 'All the pieces didn't fit/Though I really didn't give a shit' ("Where Is Everybody?") or 'And when I suck you off/Not a drop will go to waste' ("Starfuckers Inc") as representative of his true personality? Reznor evidently has his own thoughts on this subject, but we should let the music speak for itself. The album's epic production and technical complexity turned into a post-modern studio Vision Quest, assisted by producer Alan Moulder, eleventh-hour saviour Bob Ezrin (brought in by Reznor to 'block-out' conceptual and sonic continuity), and a group of assault-technicians. The fruit of these collaborations is an album where Reznor is playing with our organism's time-binding sense, modulating strange emotions through deeply embedded tonal angularities. During his five-year absence, Trent Reznor fought diverse forms of repetitious trauma, from endogenous depression caused by endless touring to the death of his beloved grandmother (who raised him throughout childhood). An end signals a new beginning, a spiral is an open-ended and ever-shifting structure, and so Reznor sought to re-discover the Elder Gods within, a shamanic approach to renewal and secular salvation utilised most effectively by music PR luminary and scientist Howard Bloom. Concerned with healing the human animal through Ordeals that hard-wire the physiological baselines of Love, Hate and Fear, Reznor also focusses on what happens when 'meaning-making' collapses and hope for the future cannot easily be found. He accurately captures the confusion that such dissolution of meaning and decline of social institutions brings to the world -- Francis Fukuyama calls this bifurcation 'The Great Disruption'. For a generation who experienced their late childhood and early adolescence in Reagan's America, Reznor and his influences (Marilyn Manson and Filter) capture the Dark Side of recent history, unleashed at Altamont and mutating into the Apocalyptic style of American politics (evident in the 'Star Wars'/SDI fascination). The personal 'psychotic core' that was crystallised by the collapse of the nuclear family unit and supportive social institutions has returned to haunt us with dystopian fantasies that are played out across Internet streaming media and visceral MTV film-clips. That such cathartic releases are useful -- and even necessary (to those whose lives have been formed by socio-economic 'life conditions') is a point that escapes critics like Roger Scruton, some Christian Evangelists and the New Right. The 'escapist' quality of early 1980s 'Rapture' and 'Cosmocide' (Hal Lindsey) prophecies has yielded strange fruit for the Children of Ezekiel, whom Reznor and Marilyn Manson are unofficial spokes-persons for. From a macro perspective, Reznor's post-human evolutionary nexus lies, like J.G. Ballard's tales, in a mythical near-future built upon past memory-shards. It is the kind of worldview that fuses organic and morphogenetic structures with industrial machines run amok, thus The Fragile is an artefact that captures the subjective contents of the different mind produced by different times. Sonic events are in-synch but out of phase. Samples subtly trigger and then scramble kinaesthetic-visceral and kinaesthetic-tactile memories, suggestive of dissociated affective states or body memories that are incapable of being retrieved (van der Kolk 294). Perhaps this is why after a Century of Identity Confusion some fans find it impossible to listen to a 102-minute album in one sitting. No wonder then that the double album is divided into 'left' and 'right' discs (a reference to split-brain research?). The real-time track-by-track interpretation below is necessarily subjective, and is intended to serve as a provisional listener's guide to the aural ur-text of 1999. The Fragile is full of encrypted tones and garbled frequencies that capture a world where the future is always bleeding into a non-recoverable past. Turbulent wave-forms fight for the listener's attention with prolonged static lulls. This does not make for comfortable or even 'nice' listening. The music's mind is a snapshot, a critical indicator, of the deep structures brewing within the Weltanschauung that could erupt at any moment. "Somewhat Damaged" opens the album's 'Left' disc with an oscillating acoustic strum that anchor's the listener's attention. Offset by pulsing beats and mallet percussion, Reznor builds up sound layers that contrast with lyrical epitaphs like 'Everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now'. Icarus iconography is invoked, but perhaps a more fitting mythopoeic symbol of the journey that lies ahead would be Nietzsche's pursuit of his Ariadne through the labyrinth of life, during which the hero is steadily consumed by his numbing psychosis. Reznor fittingly comments: 'Didn't quite/Fell Apart/Where were you?' If we consider that Reznor has been repeating the same cycle with different variations throughout all of his music to date, retro-fitting each new album into a seamless tapestry, then this track signals that he has begun to finally climb out of self-imposed exile in the Underworld. "The Day the World Went Away" has a tremendously eerie opening, with plucked mandolin effects entering at 0:40. The main slashing guitar riff was interpreted by some critics as Reznor's attempt to parody himself. For some reason, the eerie backdrop and fragmented acoustic guitar strums recalls to my mind civil defence nuclear war films. Reznor, like William S. Burroughs, has some powerful obsessions. The track builds up in intensity, with a 'Chorus of the Damned' singing 'na na nah' over apocalyptic end-times imagery. At 4:22 the track ends with an echo that loops and repeats. "The Frail" signals a shift to mournful introspectiveness with piano: a soundtrack to faded 8 mm films and dying memories. The piano builds up slowly with background echo, holds and segues into ... "The Wretched", beginning with a savage downbeat that recalls earlier material from Pretty Hate Machine. 'The Far Aways/Forget It' intones Reznor -- it's becoming clear that despite some claims to the contrary, there is redemption in this album, but it is one borne out of a relentless move forward, a strive-drive. 'You're finally free/You could be' suggest Reznor studied Existentialism during his psychotherapy visits. This song contains perhaps the ultimate post-relationship line: 'It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, did it?' It's over, just not the way you wanted; you can always leave the partner you're with, but the ones you have already left will always stain your memories. The lines 'Back at the beginning/Sinking/Spinning' recall the claustrophobic trapped world and 'eternal Now' dislocation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder victims. At 3:44 a plucked cello riff, filtered, segues into a sludge buzz-saw guitar solo. At 5:18 the cello riff loops and repeats. "We're in This Together Now" uses static as percussion, highlighting the influence of electricity flows instead of traditional rock instrument configurations. At 0:34 vocals enter, at 1:15 Reznor wails 'I'm impossible', showing he is the heir to Roger Waters's self-reflective rock-star angst. 'Until the very end of me, until the very end of you' reverts the traditional marriage vow, whilst 'You're the Queen and I'm the King' quotes David Bowie's "Heroes". Unlike earlier tracks like "Reptile", this track is far more positive about relationships, which have previously resembled toxic-dyads. Reznor signals a delta surge (breaking through barriers at any cost), despite a time-line morphing between present-past-future. At 5:30 synths and piano signal a shift, at 5:49 the outgoing piano riff begins. The film-clip is filled with redemptive water imagery. The soundtrack gradually gets more murky and at 7:05 a subterranean note signals closure. "The Fragile" is even more hopeful and life-affirming (some may even interpret it as devotional), but this love -- representative of the End-Times, alludes to the 'Glamour of Evil' (Nico) in the line 'Fragile/She doesn't see her beauty'. The fusion of synths and atonal guitars beginning at 2:13 summons forth film-clip imagery -- mazes, pageants, bald eagles, found sounds, cloaked figures, ruined statues, enveloping darkness. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Pilgrimage" utilises a persistent ostinato and beat, with a driving guitar overlay at 0:18. This is perhaps the most familiar track, using Reznor motifs like the doubling of the riff with acoustic guitars between 1:12-1:20, march cries, and pitch-shift effects on a 3:18 drumbeat/cymbal. Or at least I could claim it was familiar, if it were not that legendary hip-hop producer and 'edge-of-panic' tactilist Dr. Dre helped assemble the final track mix. "No, You Don't" has been interpreted as an attack on Marilyn Manson and Hole's Courntey Love, particularly the 0:47 line 'Got to keep it all on the outside/Because everything is dead on the inside' and the 2:33 final verse 'Just so you know, I did not believe you could sink so low'. The song's structure is familiar: a basic beat at 0:16, guitars building from 0:31 to sneering vocals, a 2:03 counter-riff that merges at 2:19 with vocals and ascending to the final verse and 3:26 final distortion... "La Mer" is the first major surprise, a beautiful and sweeping fusion of piano, keyboard and cello, reminiscent of Symbolist composer Debussy. At 1:07 Denise Milfort whispers, setting the stage for sometime Ministry drummer Bill Reiflin's jazz drumming at 1:22, and a funky 1:32 guitar/bass line. The pulsing synth guitar at 2:04 serves as anchoring percussion for a cinematic electronica mindscape, filtered through new layers of sonic chiaroscuro at 2:51. 3:06 phase shifting, 3:22 layer doubling, 3:37 outgoing solo, 3:50-3:54 more swirling vocal fragments, seguing into a fading cello quartet as shadows creep. David Carson's moody film-clip captures the end more ominously, depicting the beauty of drowning. This track contains the line 'Nothing can stop me now', which appears to be Reznor's personal mantra. This track rivals 'Hurt' and 'A Warm Place' from The Downward Spiral and 'Something I Can Never Have' from Pretty Hate Machine as perhaps the most emotionally revealing and delicate material that Reznor has written. "The Great Below" ends the first disc with more multi-layered textures fusing nostalgia and reverie: a twelve-second cello riff is counter-pointed by a plucked overlay, which builds to a 0:43 washed pulse effect, transformed by six second pulses between 1:04-1:19 and a further effects layer at 1:24. E-bow effects underscore lyrics like 'Currents have their say' (2:33) and 'Washes me away' (2:44), which a 3:33 sitar riff answers. These complexities are further transmuted by seemingly random events -- a 4:06 doubling of the sitar riff which 'glitches' and a 4:32 backbeat echo that drifts for four bars. While Reznor's lyrics suggest that he is unable to control subjective time-states (like The Joker in the Batman: Dark Knight series of Kali-yuga comic-books), the track constructions show that the Key to his hold over the listener is very carefully constructed songs whose spaces resemble Pythagorean mathematical formulas. Misdirecting the audience is the secret of many magicians. "The Way Out Is Through" opens the 'Right' disc with an industrial riff that builds at 0:19 to click-track and rhythm, the equivalent of a weaving spiral. Whispering 'All I've undergone/I will keep on' at 1:24, Reznor is backed at 1:38 by synths and drums coalescing into guitars, which take shape at 1:46 and turn into a torrential electrical current. The models are clearly natural morphogenetic structures. The track twists through inner storms and torments from 2:42 to 2:48, mirrored by vocal shards at 2:59 and soundscapes at 3:45, before piano fades in and out at 4:12. The title references peri-natal theories of development (particularly those of Stanislav Grof), which is the source of much of the album's imagery. "Into the Void" is not the Black Sabbath song of the same name, but a catchy track that uses the same unfolding formula (opening static, cello at 0:18, guitars at 0:31, drums and backbeat at 1:02, trademark industrial vocals and synth at 1:02, verse at 1:23), and would not appear out of place in a Survival Research Laboratories exhibition. At 3:42 Reznor plays with the edge of synth soundscapes, merging vocals at 4:02 and ending the track nicely at 4:44 alone. "Where Is Everybody?" emulates earlier structures, but relies from 2:01 on whirring effects and organic rhythms, including a flurry of eight beat pulses between 2:40-2:46 and a 3:33 spiralling guitar solo. The 4:26 guitar solo is pure Adrian Belew, and is suddenly ended by spluttering static and white noise at 5:13. "The Mark Has Been Made" signals another downshift into introspectiveness with 0:32 ghostly synth shimmers, echoed by cello at 1:04 which is the doubled at 1:55 by guitar. At 2:08 industrial riffs suddenly build up, weaving between 3:28 distorted guitars and the return of the repressed original layer at 4:16. The surprise is a mystery 32 second soundscape at the end with Reznor crooning 'I'm getting closer, all the time' like a zombie devil Elvis. "Please" highlights spacious noise at 0:48, and signals a central album motif at 1:04 with the line 'Time starts slowing down/Sink until I drown'. The psychic mood of the album shifts with the discovery of Imagination as a liberating force against oppression. The synth sound again is remarkably organic for an industrial album. "Starfuckers Inc" is the now infamous sneering attack on rock-stardom, perhaps at Marilyn Manson (at 3:08 Reznor quotes Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain'). Jungle beats and pulsing synths open the track, which features the sound-sculpting talent of Pop Will Eat Itself member Clint Mansell. Beginning at 0:26, Reznor's vocals appear to have been sampled, looped and cut up (apologies to Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs). The lines 'I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype/I listened to everyone now I know everyone was right' is a very savage and funny exposure of Manson's constant references to Friedrich Nietzsche's Herd-mentality: the Herd needs a bogey-man to whip it into submission, and Manson comes dangerous close to fulfilling this potential, thus becoming trapped by a 'Stacked Deck' paradox. The 4:08 lyric line 'Now I belong I'm one of the Chosen Ones/Now I belong I'm one of the Beautiful Ones' highlights the problem of being Elect and becoming intertwined with institutionalised group-think. The album version ditches the closing sample of Gene Simmons screaming "Thankyou and goodnight!" to an enraptured audience on the single from KISS Alive (1975), which was appropriately over-the-top (the alternate quiet version is worth hearing also). "The danger Marilyn Manson faces", notes Don Webb (current High Priest of the Temple of Set), "is that he may end up in twenty years time on the 'Tonight Show' safely singing our favourite songs like a Goth Frank Sinatra, and will have gradually lost his antinomian power. It's much harder to maintain the enigmatic aura of an Evil villain than it is to play the clown with society". Reznor's superior musicianship and sense of irony should keep him from falling into the same trap. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "The Big Come Down" begins with a four-second synth/static intro that is smashed apart by a hard beat at 0:05 and kaleidoscope guitars at 0:16. Critics refer to the song's lyrics in an attempt to project a narcissistic Reznor personality, but don't comment on stylistic tweaks like the AM radio influenced backing vocals at 1:02 and 1:19, or the use of guitars as a percussion layer at 1:51. A further intriguing element is the return of the fly samples at 2:38, an effect heard on previous releases and a possible post-human sub-text. The alien mythos will eventually reign over the banal and empty human. At 3:07 the synths return with static, a further overlay adds more synths at 3:45 as the track spirals to its peak, before dissipating at 3:1 in a mesh of percussion and guitars. "Underneath It All" opens with a riff that signals we have reached the album's climatic turning point, with the recurring theme of fragmenting body-memories returning at 0:23 with the line 'All I can do/I can still feel you', and being echoed by pulsing static at 0:42 as electric percussion. A 'Messiah Complex' appears at 1:34 with the line 'Crucify/After all I've died/After all I've tried/You are still inside', or at least it appears to be that on the surface. This is the kind of line that typical rock critics will quote, but a careful re-reading suggests that Reznor is pointing to the painful nature of remanifesting. Our past shapes us more than we would like to admit particularly our first relationships. "Ripe (With Decay)" is the album's final statement, a complex weaving of passages over a repetitive mesh of guitars, pulsing echoes, back-beats, soundscapes, and a powerful Mike Garson piano solo (2:26). Earlier motifs including fly samples (3:00), mournful funeral violas (3:36) and slowing time effects (4:28) recur throughout the track. Having finally reached the psychotic core, Reznor is not content to let us rest, mixing funk bass riffs (4:46), vocal snatches (5:23) and oscillating guitars (5:39) that drag the listener forever onwards towards the edge of the abyss (5:58). The final sequence begins at 6:22, loses fidelity at 6:28, and ends abruptly at 6:35. At millennium's end there is a common-held perception that the world is in an irreversible state of decay, and that Culture is just a wafer-thin veneer over anarchy. Music like The Fragile suggests that we are still trying to assimilate into popular culture the 'war-on-Self' worldviews unleashed by the nineteenth-century 'Masters of Suspicion' (Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche). This 'assimilation gap' is evident in industrial music, which in the late 1970s was struggling to capture the mood of the Industrial Revolution and Charles Dickens, so the genre is ripe for further exploration of the scarred psyche. What the self-appointed moral guardians of the Herd fail to appreciate is that as the imprint baseline rises (reflective of socio-political realities), the kind of imagery prevalent throughout The Fragile and in films like Strange Days (1995), The Matrix (1999) and eXistenZ (1999) is going to get even darker. The solution is not censorship or repression in the name of pleasing an all-saving surrogate god-figure. No, these things have to be faced and embraced somehow. Such a process can only occur if there is space within for the Sadeian aesthetic that Nine Inch Nails embodies, and not a denial of Dark Eros. "We need a second Renaissance", notes Don Webb, "a rejuvenation of Culture on a significant scale". In other words, a global culture-shift of quantum (aeon or epoch-changing) proportions. The tools required will probably not come just from the over-wordy criticism of Cyber-culture and Cultural Studies or the logical-negative feeding frenzy of most Music Journalism. They will come from a dynamic synthesis of disciplines striving toward a unity of knowledge -- what socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson has described as 'Consilience'. Liberating tools and ideas will be conveyed to a wider public audience unfamiliar with such principles through predominantly science fiction visual imagery and industrial/electronica music. The Fragile serves as an invaluable model for how such artefacts could transmit their dreams and propagate their messages. For the hyper-alert listener, it will be the first step on a new journey. But sadly for the majority, it will be just another hysterical industrial album promoted as selection of the month. References Bester, Alfred. The Stars My Destination. London: Millennium Books, 1999. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books, 1998. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. "Trauma and Memory." Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. Eds. Bessel A. van der Kolk et al. New York: Guilford Press, 1996. Nine Inch Nails. Downward Spiral. Nothing/Interscope, 1994. ---. The Fragile. Nothing, 1999. ---. Pretty Hate Machine. TVT, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Alex Burns. "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php>. Chicago style: Alex Burns, "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Alex Burns. (1999) 'This machine is obsolete': a listeners' guide to Nine Inch Nails' The fragile. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionWith the proliferation of remixed (audio-visual) texts such as fan music videos, slash video, mash-ups and digital stories utilising existing and new visual and audio material on sites such as YouTube, questions are opened as to the efficacy of current forms of media textual analysis. Remixed texts have been positioned as a new and transformative form of art that, despite industry copyright concerns, do not compete with existing texts but makes use of them as ‘found material’ in order to produce an ostensibly intertextual experience (Lessig). Intertexts include pastiche, parody and/or allusion to extant texts and, at the same time, acknowledge that no text is purely original but is built on its ostensible or tacit relationality with a broad range of other texts—relationalities which may be activated in reading or be coded into the text. Remixes are often the work of fan audiences who seek to engage in a participatory manner—a particular reading position that shifts into the act of writing—with texts, television, film and music of which one is a member of an avid audience or a community audience that engage with each other through collaborative production of new texts based on old. The remix is a substantial outcome of such readerly, writerly and collaborative engagement whereby meanings drawn intertextually from the original text are re-produced, expanded upon, critiqued or re-framed through several different activities which may include: re-ordering existing audio-visual material in a way which, according to Constance Penley, was once done by Star Trek fans using magnetic tape and two video recorders to produce new narratives and interpretative frames by cutting and suturing material in an order different from that broadcast (Penley);presenting new meanings to texts, stories or narratives by taking visual material either in short cuts or long scenes and layering over popular music audio tracks, which is commonly done by television fans, such as fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the early 2000s, who produce new meanings or re-emphasise old ones around relationships by bringing together (sometimes cheesy) songs with televised footage (Cover, More Than a Watcher). In both cases, the texts are both new and old—they are a remix of existing material, but the act of remixing produces new frames for the activations of meanings or new narratives, that sit between the interactive and the intertextual. The fact that these forms can be traced back to pre-digital technologies of the 1970s (in the case of Penley’s Star Trek fan videos) or the pre-YouTube and Web 2.0 participatory sharing (in the case of Cover’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan videos, distributed through newslists, email and private website) indicates the deep-seated cultural desire or demand for participatory engagement and co-creative forms of encountering texts (Cover, Interactivity). In light of this new form of participatory communication experience, there has emerged a methodological gap requiring new frameworks for researching and analysing the remix text as a text, and within the context of its interactivity, intertextuality, layering and the ways in which these together reconfigure existing narratives and produce new narrative. This paper outlines some approaches used in teaching students about contemporary interactive and convergent digital texts by undertaking practical textual analyses of sample remix audio-video texts. I will discuss some of the more important theoretical issues concerning the analysis of remix texts, with particular attention to notions of interactivity, intertextuality and layering. I will then outline some practical steps for undertaking this kind of analysis in the classroom. By understanding the remix text through a metaphor of layering (drawn from Photoshopping and digital manipulation terminology), a method for ‘remix analysis’ can be put forward that presents innovative ways of engaging with textuality and narrative. Such analyses incorporate narrative sourcing, identification of user-generated content, sequencing, digital manipulation, framing and audio/visual juxtaposition as starting points for reading the remix text. Remix analyses, in this framework, optimise a reflective engagement with contemporary issues of copyright and intellectual property, textual genealogy, intertextuality, co-creative production and emergent forms of interactivity. Interactivity and Intertextuality For Lawrence Lessig, remix is a form of creativity that puts in question the separation between reader and writer. It emphasises instead the participatory form in which read-write creativity (or co-creativity) becomes the normative standard of high-level engagement with extant texts through both selection and arrangement (56). Remix culture, for Lessig, makes use of digital technologies that have been developed for other purposes and practices and delivers forms of collage, complexity, and co-creativity directed towards a broader audience. The role played by YouTube as a sharing site which makes available the massive number of remixed texts is testament to the form’s significance as an interactive, intertextual creation or co-creation. As Burgess and Green have argued, consumer co-creation is fundamental to YouTube’s mission and role in the distribution of texts (4-5). It is more than a peripheral site for re-distribution of either existing texts or private video-logs but, today, operates as a mainstream component in a broader media matrix. In this matrix, the experience of textual audiencehood is re-coded as participatory engagement with prior texts, in order both to reflect on those texts and to produce new ones in a co-creative capacity. This is not to suggest that YouTube is not complicit in copyright regimes that actively seek to restrict participatory and co-creative artistic practice in favour of older models of textual ownership and control over distribution (Cover, Audience Inter/Active). Its digital capacity to police remixed texts that have been marked by corporate copyright holders as unavailable for further use or manipulation has been a substantial development on the side of traditional copyright in the push-pull struggle between free co-creativity and limiting regimes (Cover, Interactivity), although this does not altogether stem the production of the remix as a substantial experience of artistic practice and of user participatory engagement with media matrices. Central to understanding and analysing the remix as a text in its own right is the fact that it is interactive, a point which leads to the assertion that analytic tools suited to traditional, non-interactive texts are not always going to be adequate to the task of unpacking and drawing out thematic and conceptual material from a remix’s narrative. Although interactivity has been difficult to define, the form of interactivity in which we see the remix is that which involves an element of co-creativity between the author of a source text and the user of the text who interacts with the source to transform it into something new. Spiro Kiousis has argued that while definitions of interactivity are amorphous, there is value in the concept “as long as we all accept that the term implies some degree of receiver feedback and is usually linked to new technologies” (357). For Lelia Green, however, interactivity implies the capacity of a communication medium to have its products altered by the actions of a user or audience (xx). In the case of the latter, interactivity covers not only the sorts of texts in which audience or user engagement is required as a built-in part of the process, such as in digital games, but those texts, forms, mediums and experiences in which existing texts are manipulated, revised, re-used or brought together, such as in the remix. Drawing on Bordewijk and van Kaam, Sally McMillan delineated the concept of interactivity into a typology of four intersecting levels or uses: Allocution, in which interactive engagement is minimal, and is set within the context of a single, central broadcaster and multiple receivers on the periphery (273). This would ordinarily include most traditional mass media forms such as television and the selection of channels.Consultation, which occurs in the use of a database, such as a website, where a user actively searches for pre-provided information but does not seek to alter that information (273). Access here does not alter the content, source, narrative or information that has been requested. Drawing information from Wikipedia without the intent of editing information may alter the metadata or framework through providing the site with tracking information, but in this case the textuality of the text as accessed is not transformed through this level of interactivity.Registration, which does record access patterns and accumulates information from the periphery in a central registry which alters the information, significance or context of the material (273). McMillan’s early Web 1.0 example of registrational interactivity was the internet ‘cookie’, which tracks and customises content of internet sites visited by the user. However, as a category of interactivity in which the narrative or form of the text itself is altered in its reading or use, it might also be said to include the electronic game as well as forms of communications engagement which access a source text, manipulate, customise or re-form it using commonly-available or sophisticated software, and re-distribute it through digital means. Here, the narrative is knowingly acted upon in ways which alter it for other uses. Conversational, which occurs when individuals interact directly with each other, usually in real-time in ways which mimic face-to-face engagement without physical presence at a locale (273). An online written chat using a relay platform provided by a social networking site that does not record the text is an example; likewise using a video skype account is also conversational interactivity. While McMillan’s ‘registrational’ definition of interactivity, as the one which gives greater capacity to an audience to change, alter and manipulate a text or a textual narrative, allows considerable redefinition of the traditional author-text-audience relationship, none of the four-scale definitions adequately allow for the ways in which remix texts are at once interactive, intertextual, intermedial and built through participatory re-layering and re-organising of a broader corpus of material in ways typically not invited by the original texts or their original distributional mediums—hence the concerns around copyright and distributional control (Cover, Audience Inter/Active). As an outcome of registrational interactivity, the remix presents itself not merely in terms of how the relationship is structured in the context of new digital media, but also shifts how the audience has been conceived historically in terms of its ability to control the text and its internal structure and coherence. In light of both new developments in interactivity with the text as found in the increasing popularity of new media forms such as electronic gaming, and the ‘backlash’ development of new technologies, software and legal methods that actively seek to prevent alteration and re-distribution of texts, the historical and contemporary conception of the author-text-audience affinity can be characterised as a tactical war of contention for control over the text. This is a struggle set across a number of different contexts, media forms, sites and author/audience capacities but is embodied in the legal, cultural and economic skirmishes over the form and use of remix texts. More significantly, however, the remix is an interactivity that is conscious of the intertextuality that produces the various juxtapositions to create new narratives. All texts are intertextual, and the concept of intertextuality takes into account the network of other, similar texts to which any new text contributes and by which it is influenced. This similarity can be produced by several factors, including genre, allusion, trace, pastiche and aesthetics. Intertextuality can include the fact that a text is related to and permeated by the discourse of its sources (Bignell 92), but in all cases it shapes the meanings, significations and potential readings of a text in a way attuned to the polysemy of contemporary cultural production. In the context of interactivity, however, it is through co-creative engagement that intertextuality of both the source and the new text are drawn out as a deliberate act of creation. Layering As an interactive and deliberately intertextual text, the remix or mash-up is best understood as layered intermedia, that is, as a narrative comprised of—or fused between—moving image and sound, audio which includes dialogue, effects, incidental and narrative-related music. In that context, no individual component of the text can be understood or analysed away from the elements into which it has been remixed. New meanings emerge in intermedia remixes not simply because originary or new intertextualities are produced by user-creators relying on existing sources, but because those sources themselves no longer operate with the same set of meanings and significations, allowing the productive activation of new meanings (Bennett). While it is important to pay attention to the fact that the narrative of a remix text works only through the reconfiguration of the intermedia of audio and visual in order to create a new text with subsequent new potential meanings, the analysis must pay attention to the various forms of layering that constitute all audio-visual texts. For Lessig, such layering is a digital form of collage (70). However it is also the means by which, on the one hand, new intertextualities are developed through juxtaposition of different sources in order to give them all new significations and to activate new meanings and, on the other hand, to draw attention to the existing potential intertextuality of the sources and the polysemy of meaning. Understanding layering of texts involves understanding a text in a three-dimensional capacity. This is where some basic awareness of digital image manipulation through application software such as Photoshop and Gimp can be instructive in providing frameworks through which to understand contemporary digital media forms and analyse the ways in which they, as potential, productively activate sets or ranges of meanings. Such digital manipulation programs require the user to think about, say, an image as being built upon and manipulated across different layers, whereby a core image is ‘drawn out’ into its third dimension through adding, shifting, changing, re-figuring and re-framing—layer over layer. The core remains, but is radically altered by what occurs at the different layers. Likewise, the remix is produced through interacting with a number of different source texts together within a conceptual framework that is three-dimension and operates across layers. These include the two primary layers of the visual and the audio—for remixes are typically audio-visual—but also through interacting with a range of intertextual meanings that, likewise, can be understood in three-dimensional layers across the temporality of an audio-visual moving text. Method of Analysis A simple typology for analysing remix texts—focusing particularly on fan videos on YouTube, including same-sexualised fan fiction known as slash and those texts which re-order television and film material juxtaposed against popular music tracks—emerged from a first-year undergraduate digital media cultures course I taught at The University of Adelaide in 2010. With a broad range of meanings, views, interpretations and engagements emerging in large-group teaching, we workshopped possible scenarios with the aim of establishing some steps that can be used to consider the place of the remix in the context of its narrative interactivity and intertextual groundings. A typological method for analysis is not necessarily the most sophisticated way in which to draw out narrative threads and strands from a remix text and, indeed, there may be value in exploring remixed texts from other perspectives such as the YouTube-enabled participatory reflectiveness that emerges from community and commentary perspectives. However, to understand the narrative elements that emerge from a remix there is also great value in beginning with an unstitching of its constituent components in order to understand the interactive, intertextual, intermedial formation of the remix through its structuration and selectivity and assembling of extant texts. To best describe a typology for analysing the remix as a text and an interactive intertext, we might use an example. Let us say, hypothetically, a YouTube remix video of three- minutes-and-fifty-seconds in length that takes various scenes from the television series Arrested Development, perhaps the two characters of adult brothers GOB and Michael Bluth, from across its four years and sets them against a single audio track, Belle & Sebastian’s Seeing Other People. Such an example would not be an uncommon remix, which may be an expression of fandom for Arrested Development or perhaps an expression of critical engagement that actively draws attention to the range of reading positions, formations and potential productive activation of meanings (Bennett) around sibling relationships in the original. That is, by juxtaposing a popular audio track about the awkwardness of romantic relationships against images of the closeness, distance and competitiveness of the two brothers is to give it a ‘slash’ element, thereby presenting a narrative which either implies a pseudo-sexual or romantic component to the brotherly relationship (an activity not uncommon in the production of slash) or makes a critical statement about the way in which the theatrics of touch, familial hugging, looking and seeing or positioning in visual frames is utilised in the series in ways which are open to alternative readings. Now that it is determined such a remix might actively and self-consciously play with the juxtaposition across two layers to create additional meanings, the real work of analysis can be undertaken. This, of course, could include thematic, discursive or narrative analysis of the text alone. However, if one is to work with the notion that a remix is always produced in both interactivity and intertextuality, then a number of steps must be taken at the level of individual layers and, subsequently, together. This aids in understanding the sourcing, collocation, positioning, re-ordering in order to come to a depth of interpretation as to a possible meaning of the remix among the many available in a polysemic cultural product. Step One: Determine the Video Narrative Source. This involves establishing if the remix’s video material is from a singular source (such as a single film or television episode), multiple sources (many films) and, if multiple, if these are from the same genre, with the same actors, same director or different in each case. It also involves ascertaining if there is user-generated visual content such as additional material, animation or captioning. Exploring the possible arrangements of the visual source, while assuming that the audio track remains singular and identifiable, provides opportunities to consider the thematic, genre and story elements and their significations for the resulting new, co-creative narrative of the remix. This step invites the scholar to consider how the remix’s discernible narrative differs from the scholar’s reading of the source video texts, how the visual material signifies without its original audio component (for example, the dialogue in a television episode) and the ways in which the separation of the source visual from audio presents new interpretative frames. Step Two: Understand the Narrative Sequence. Has the video material been cut (pieces extracted and re-joined? Has the temporal order of the video material been re-sequenced. How do these shifts and changes impact on the narrative or story told? In our example here, we might find a series of scenes of two characters hugging or touching, with the narrative elements from the original episode that occur between—that is, that give a context to those hugs—removed. Asking how the removal of that contextual material presents the source clips as a new narrative and a new interactively-derived creation is central to this step. Step Three: Visual Manipulation. What additional visual manipulation features have been added—fade-ins, fade-outs, framing, changes to the speed or playback time of the source video? Accounting for these enables the viewer to position the remix narrative at a point of distance from the source, shifting from derivative to intertextual. Naturally, these must be understood in the context of the earlier steps while foregrounding the interactive form of the remix as a co-created piece that is more than just an intervention into an original text but the utilisation through manipulation of a range of texts to produce a new one. Step Four: Narrative Engagement and Collocation. Here, the scholar must assess the extent to which the audio source has a ‘fit’ with the visual. Thematic and discourse analysis (among others) can be applied to determine the way in which audio track, in addition to the above four steps and manipulations, productively activate new meanings, contexts and frames in the narrative. Importantly, however, this step requires not only asking what the audio does to the video, but the reverse. Using the Arrested Development example, one must ask what the visual material does for the meanings that are denoted within the audio, its musical elements and its lyrics: to what extent does the video source ‘fit’ with or re-position the significance of the audio dialogue and present it with meanings it would not otherwise have in an audio-online context (or, of course, in the context of its use in an ‘authorised’ music video). Together, these four steps present one possible means of ‘coming at’ the interactive and intertextual roots of the remix as a co-creative text. It is not merely to analyse how the source has been used or how the remix allows the sources to be presented or distributed differently, but to understand how new narratives emerge in the context of the various ‘mixings’ that come out of interactive engagement with the text to produce intertextual activation of meanings. Analysing remix texts through this method opens the possibility not only of being able to articulate readings of the text that are built on interactivity and layering, but a critique of the contemporary conditions of textual production. By demonstrating the ways in which a text can be understood to be located not just within intertextuality but within intertextual layers, it is possible to reflect more broadly on all textuality as being produced, disseminated and having its meanings productively activated in the context of ‘degrees’ of layers and ‘degrees’ of of interactivity. References Bennett, T. “Texts, Readers, Reading Formations.” Literature and History 9.2 (1983): 214-227. Bignell, J. Media Semiotics: An Introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Bordewijk, J.L., and B. van Kaam. “Towards a New Classification of Tele-Information Services.” InterMedia 14.1 (1986): 16-21. Burgess, J., and J. Green. YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. 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