Journal articles on the topic 'SuperJam (Firm)'

AbstractWhen Richard Donner's blockbuster Superman arrived in theaters in 1978, critics praised the filmmakers for avoiding camp in their adaptation of the comic book, comparing the film positively to the Batman television series (1966–68) of the previous decade. Several sequels later, critics attributed the series’ diminishing financial returns to its growing investment in camp, an investment that peaked in Jeannot Szwarc's Supergirl spinoff (1984), a critical and commercial misfire. Drawing on the work of camp theorists Susan Sontag, Moe Meyer, and Andrew Ross, I argue that critics have misrepresented the place of camp within the franchise, a misunderstanding stemming from their neglect of the film scores. There are two different yet overlapping forms of camp operating within these films. In their reviews, critics expressed disdain for pop camp, a highly legible form of camp, characterized by overblown performances, that the Batman show popularized in the 1960s. My analyses of Superman and Supergirl center on a subtler camp aesthetic present from the very start that critics celebrated: a playful mismatching of gender signifiers and an undercutting of heteronormative romantic relationships that I refer to as queer camp. I offer queer readings of John Williams's and Jerry Goldsmith's leitmotivic scores for Superman and Supergirl—supposedly the least campy and the campiest films in the franchise—to bring into focus the overlooked political work the series accomplishes. In a bold reclamation of the comic books’ suppressed queer legacy, the films’ queer camp aesthetic subverts the heteronormativity of the protagonists to construct Superman and Supergirl as queers of steel.

Hollywood has produced many super heroes such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Recently it released a film titled 'Waiting for Superman' which shows a young boy imprisoned within a system and classroom that does not stimulate his learning while actively destroying his motivation and engagement with the educational process. The film implied the task of fixing the problem was so great that only Superman could fix it. So what are the criteria for a super hero? Firstly it is someone with extraordinary powers beyond those of most mortals. In this paper I will propose that most mathematics teachers meet the criteria and are super heroes who combat the spread of darkness and ignorance of mathematics. I will present evidence to prove that most mild mannered mathematics teachers are really super heroes in disguise. Mathematics teachers have super powers. They have the power to understand and value mathematics, something that is beyond the vast majority of the population. What is the basis of their power? It is their mathematics pedagogical and content knowledge. Not only can they do mathematics, but they can construct a learning environment where their students develop conceptual knowledge and deep learning. They use the latest developments in technology to assist their battle with the forces of darkness and innumeracy. While more mathematics has been invented in the last 50 years than in the preceding years of human development, teachers are expected to keep abreast of this new knowledge. Hollywood may be waiting for Superman, but the real super heroes are every day engaged in the battle to reveal to their students the power and the beauty of mathematics that can transform their lives.

With the development of economy and the acceleration of the urbanization process, city fire accidents, casualties and property losses were more and more serious. Fire supervision was not strict and rescue was not timely were the main reasons for the fire and disaster aggravated. This paper used the basic principle of fire safety theory, took ChaoYang District building group as an example,combined with Visual C# and SuperMap Object.Net component GIS platform and realized the Three Dimensional FSHRMS (three dimensional fire safety household registration management system). This system mainly realized the information management of city group construction, fire protection, household register management, three-dimensional fire simulation and other functions.

AbstractThe Porter hypothesis and the pollution haven hypothesis seem to predict opposite reactions by firms facing environmental regulation, as the first invokes the arising of a win–win solution while the second envisages the possibility for firms to flee abroad. We illustrate the possibility of designing policies (taking the form of either emission taxation or environmental standards) able to eliminate firms’ incentives to relocate their plants abroad and create a parallel incentive for them to deliver a win–win solution by investing either in replacement technologies under emission taxation, or in abatement technologies under an environmental standard. This is worked out in a Cournot supergame in which firms may activate the highest level of collusion compatible with their intertemporal preferences.

Through an engagement with interactions between human cognition and social and natural ecologies, recent South Korean films critique perceived deficiencies in Korean cultural forms and practices. The two eco-themed films that are the main focus of this article, Daeho (The Tiger) and Syupeomaenieotteon Sanai (A Man Who Was Superman), thematize an implicit acquiescence to the environmental status quo within South Korea’s inward-looking culture. A Man Who Was Superman, in particular, articulates nested social structures with the effect that social ecology affords a meta-level for a range of social and ecological issues. The foregrounding of these issues is achieved by disrupting the narrative expectations associated with a particular genre ‐ that is, by modal shifts into magical realism and CGI, by evocations of transcendence and by uses of point-of-view shots that present many scenes from a non-human perspective. In each film, viewer interaction with embodied simulation of affect and emotion produces a response which is simultaneously cognitive, empathic and potentially ethical.

Although most title sequences of Ken Russell's films consist of superimpositions of a static text on film images, the elaborate title sequence to Altered States (1981) was specially designed by Richard Greenberg, who had already acquired a reputation for his innovative typography thanks to his work on Superman (1978) and Alien (1979). Greenberg continued these typographic experiments in Altered States. Although both the film and its title sequence were not personal projects for Russell, a close analysis of the title sequence reveals that it functions as a small narrative unit in its own right, facilitating the transition of the spectator from the outside world of the cinema to the inside world of filmic fiction and functioning as a prospective mise-en-abyme and matrix of all the subsequent narrative representations and sequences of the film to come. By focusing on this aspect of the film, the article indicates how the title sequence to Altered States is tightly interwoven with the aesthetic and thematic structure of the film, even though Russell himself may have had less control over its design than other parts of the film.

Implikatur yang Terungkap dalam Film Habibie dan Ainun. Penelitian ini bertujuan untukmengungkapkan wujud implikatur dalam film Habibie dan Ainun serta mengungkapkan fungsiimplikatur dalam film Habibie dan Ainun. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif denganmetode deskriptif. Sumber data penelitian ini adalah film Habibie dan Ainun, tuturan antartokohdalam film, dan dokumen tertulis berupa transkrip tuturan antartokoh dalam film Habibie danAinun. Pengumpulan data tersebut diperoleh dengan menggunakan metode simak dan diikuti denganteknik lanjutan: teknik simak bebas libat cakap dan teknik catat. Hasil penelitian ini adalah sebagaiberikut. Pertama, dalam film Habibie dan Ainun ditemukan implikatur konvensional, seperti “Kamubukan Superman!” dan implikatur percakapan, seperti Ainun: “Kamu baru datang?” Anis: “Iya.Aku baru datang. Nih mas Suwis kerja dulu nih!”. Wujud implikatur percakapan pada penelitianini terungkap dari pelanggaran prinsip kerja sama Grice yang meliputi: (a) pelanggaran maksimkuantitas, (b) pelanggaran maksim kualitas, (c) pelanggaran maksim hubungan, dan (d) pelanggaranmaksim cara. Kedua, fungsi implikatur pada film Habibie dan Ainun, yaitu (a) fungsi implikaturdalam tindak tutur direktif meliputi nasihat, perintah, permintaan, dan larangan, (b) fungsiimplikatur dalam tindak tutur ekspresif meliputi mengejek, memuji, penyesalan, merajuk, khawatir,takut, dan sedih, dan (c) fungsi implikatur dalam tindak tutur asertif meliputi memberi alasan,260memberitahu, melaporkan, menegaskan, menyatakan, meyakinkan, menceritakan, bersikeras, danmemperkirakan.Kata-kata kunci: implikatur, fungsi implikatur

This article explores how fans of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) film franchise challenge the authority of film critics regarding their negative appraisal of comic book film Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice (Snyder, 2016). Observing memes shared in Facebook fan pages, I argue that fans construct their own authority by defining themselves against critics via questioning critics’ taste, constructing critics as villains, and enacting their own sophisticated cultural capital. My research shows how fans use Internet memes to control the discussion and validation of their object of fandom amongst fans on social media. Observing the year following the film’s release, this study analyses memes via a visual rhetoric and modal analysis. While comic-book movie fandom has previously been academically explored, this subset of fans remains under-analysed. What is at stake for DCEU fans is the respect of popular culture, social media and fandom at large, their status impacted by the film’s critical failure.

This article deals with a fairy-opera-film and its specifics. The author reveals traits of mystery (miracle play) in a fairy-opera-film, basing upon a notion of mystery of Carl Orffs theory, in the way as Orff meant it. Syncretism in different kinds of art, specifics of word as an art facility (meaning of a word and a word as sound) are specified. As examples the following films are taken: Bluebeard's Castle (composer Bela Bartok, filmmaker W. Golovin,1968), Iolanta (composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, filmmaker W. Gorriker,1963) and animated musical The Snow Maiden (composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, filmmaker I. Ivanow-Vano,1952). Special attention is drawn to the opera film The Queen of Spades (composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, filmmaker R. Tihomirov,1960). The author discloses in fairy-opera-film elements of commedia dell'arte, that is improvisation and masks. For example in films The Love for three Oranges (composer Sergei Prokofiev, filmmakers W. Titov and J. Bogatyrenko,1970) and The Magic Flute (composer Wolfgang A. Mozart, filmmaker I. Bergman,1975). The author comes to the conclusion concerning the targets and tasks of a fairy-opera-film. Through watching fairy-opera-films children should live cultural and psychological history of humanity step by step in its development through music, dance culture and drama (theater). The main task of fairy-opera-film is to save an entity of a human being, to prevent a childs mutation into either a superman (or bermensch in F. Nietzsches term) or degeneration.

This article explores the critical reception of The Lego Batman Movie (Chris McKay, 2017) in the context of Batman’s long history of multimedia storytelling, anchored to divergent parallel narratives across numerous platforms, and the ways the film appeals to nostalgia through metatextuality. The manner in which critics championed The Lego Batman Movie and derided the earlier live-action Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder, 2016) gave rise to a complex discourse around the cultural value of animation and the larger blockbuster superhero cycle, and discussions of morality, merchandising and commercialism. This article therefore engages with questions of animation’s apparent suitability for particular kinds of child-centric narratives regarded by critics as a vital part of American popular culture.

Three years after the start of the Great Depression, and shortly after A Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency, Terry Ramsaye, editor of the motion picture industry's major trade journal, wrote an editorial entitled “New Deal, Superman and Today.” No doubt many readers thought the world had turned upside down. For years civic reformers had attacked the movies for incarnating the dangers of city life: consumption, class mixing, and a sexual revolution. Now Ramsaye assumed the critic's stance, seeing hard times as divine retribution for the industry's folly. Atop the editorial pulpit, he condemned the Hollywood producers as equal to the monopolists whose speculation and grandiose illusions brought about the stock market crash in 1929. Even more dangerous, film producers spread lavish ideals through the powerful medium of sound films, which were displayed in sumptuous theatres that corrupted public life. After three years of bankruptcies and theatre closings, Ramsaye saw a New Deal pointing the way toward business and cultural reform. Like an old-fashioned revivalist, he then exhorted Hollywood to shed the foreignstyled theatre and create models more in touch with national traditions, “more a part of the town and less something that was imposed by outside Supermen.”

AbstractOur goal was to try and examine the degree to which the different Targums to the books of the Prophets-Targum Jonathan and the Toseftot Targum-do or do not represent a unified attitude to angels and the angelic world. There is no doubt that both TJ and the TTs take the existence of angels for granted; but it is equally clear that TJ adopts a more cautious, reserved, approach than the TTs. Indeed, the TTs are intensely curious about the supernal world. Despite the fact that they derive from a variety of sources and differ quite widely in their language and function, it is undeniable that fifteen of them display such an interest. Moreover, these fifteen instances constitute a representative sample of the different sources and are therefore adequate to indicate a trend shared by the Toseftot Targum as a whole.69 Moreover, I would say that the difference is not one of quantity alone, but also of substance-not only is the number of references larger, but their content is quite different. Unlike TJ to Prophets, the TTs furnish us with the names of no less than seven angels: Uriel, Gabriel, Metatron, Michael, Samael, Penuel and the Angel of Death. The number of groups or categories of angels mentioned in the TTs is also greater. While TJ mentions only such groups as "angels of fire," "angels of trembling," "heavenly angels" and "angels of wind," the TTs refer to still other groups: "cruel angels," "angels of wrath," "angels of peace" and "angels of fear" (in addition to those mentioned in TJ, which also appear in TTs). And such expressions as "his attendants" (smšwhy) or "officers" (srky¸) also occur in the TTs but not in TJ.

SummaryIn a static supergame context, a model is presented in which a foreign and a domestic firm form a cartel for selling a homogeneous good. In order to maximize joint cartel profit, the two firms have agreed to restrict sales to their own home market. Due to transfer costs, this market split paretodominates other cartel solutions. Side payments are assumed to be feasible. The introduction of an import quota may affect cartel stability as measured by a so-called critical interest rate. The two-country setting and the feasibility of side payments lead to results very different from previous findings that mild import regulations foster cartelization whereas severe restrictions destabilize quantity-setting cartels.

Geologerne i Jadar Dalen i Serbien fik sig noget af en overraskelse, da engelske mineraloger udtalte deres dom over det mineral, som netop var kommet op af Balkans undergrund. Det var intet mindre end det Supermandsomstyrtende mineral kryptonit.

The Vedic civilization (1500 – 1000 B.C) flourished in India after the Indus Valley Civilization. The people who evolved the Vedic culture called themselves Aryans. Their earliest literature makes no reference to life in stately cities comparable to those whose remains have been unearthed at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Their religion was normally aniconic, and in their pantheon the female element was subordinated to the male, and the place of honor was given to deities like Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Surya, Agni (fire) and other supernal beings who seem to have been quite unknown to the originator of the Indus culture([i]).The primary source of evidence for this period is the Rigveda. Rig Veda is considered to be the earliest collection of hymns available, For more than three thousand years the Rig-Veda have been looked upon as revealed words of God by millions of Hindus, and have formed the basis of their culture and religion amid continual changes and successive developments. The objective of the study is The origin of the Aryans, the Vedic literature, nature of early Vedic Civilization. And Political Organization, social and economic life of the Early Aryans. And The religion, philosophy of the Rig Vedic Aryans. However, in making certain observations on Early Vedic Society it may be fruitful to see if literary texts and archaeological evidence can supplement each other. If both types of sources are of the same region and of the same period, then they together can give us more detailed ideas on political social life. ([i]) عبد العزيز الزكي، نشأة الفكر الهندي وتطوره في العصور القديمة، مجلة عالم الفكر، مجلد الأول، العدد 3، 1970، ص 232.

When we think of disability today in the Western world, Christopher Reeve most likely comes to mind. A film star who captured people’s imagination as Superman, Reeve was already a celebrity before he took the fall that would lead to his new position in the fame game: the role of super-crip. As a person with acquired quadriplegia, Christopher Reeve has become both the epitome of disability in Western culture — the powerful cultural myth of disability as tragedy and catastrophe — and, in an intimately related way, the icon for the high-technology quest for cure. The case of Reeve is fascinating, yet critical discussion of Christopher Reeve in terms of fame, celebrity and his performance of disability is conspicuously lacking (for a rare exception see McRuer). To some extent this reflects the comparative lack of engagement of media and cultural studies with disability (Goggin). To redress this lacuna, we draw upon theories of celebrity (Dyer; Marshall; Turner, Bonner, & Marshall; Turner) to explore the production of Reeve as celebrity, as well as bringing accounts of celebrity into dialogue with critical disability studies. Reeve is a cultural icon, not just because of the economy, industrial processes, semiotics, and contemporary consumption of celebrity, outlined in Turner’s 2004 framework. Fame and celebrity are crucial systems in the construction of disability; and the circulation of Reeve-as-celebrity only makes sense if we understand the centrality of disability to culture and media. Reeve plays an enormously important (if ambiguous) function in the social relations of disability, at the heart of the discursive underpinning of the otherness of disability and the construction of normal sexed and gendered bodies (the normate) in everyday life. What is distinctive and especially powerful about this instance of fame and disability is how authenticity plays through the body of the celebrity Reeve; how his saintly numinosity is received by fans and admirers with passion, pathos, pleasure; and how this process places people with disabilities in an oppressive social system, so making them subject(s). An Accidental Star Born September 25, 1952, Christopher Reeve became famous for his roles in the 1978 movie Superman, and the subsequent three sequels (Superman II, III, IV), as well as his role in other films such as Monsignor. As well as becoming a well-known actor, Reeve gained a profile for his activism on human rights, solidarity, environmental, and other issues. In May 1995 Reeve acquired a disability in a riding accident. In the ensuing months, Reeve’s situation attracted a great deal of international attention. He spent six months in the Kessler Rehabilitation Institute in New Jersey, and there gave a high-rating interview on US television personality Barbara Walters’ 20/20 program. In 1996, Reeve appeared at the Academy Awards, was a host at the 1996 Paralympic Games, and was invited to speak at the Democratic National Convention. In the same year Reeve narrated a film about the lives of people living with disabilities (Mierendorf). In 1998 his memoir Still Me was published, followed in 2002 by another book Nothing Is Impossible. Reeve’s active fashioning of an image and ‘new life’ (to use his phrase) stands in stark contrast with most people with disabilities, who find it difficult to enter into the industry and system of celebrity, because they are most often taken to be the opposite of glamorous or important. They are objects of pity, or freaks to be stared at (Mitchell & Synder; Thomson), rather than assuming other attributes of stars. Reeve became famous for his disability, indeed very early on he was acclaimed as the pre-eminent American with disability — as in the phrase ‘President of Disability’, an appellation he attracted. Reeve was quickly positioned in the celebrity industry, not least because his example, image, and texts were avidly consumed by viewers and readers. For millions of people — as evident in the letters compiled in the 1999 book Care Packages by his wife, Dana Reeve — Christopher Reeve is a hero, renowned for his courage in doing battle with his disability and his quest for a cure. Part of the creation of Reeve as celebrity has been a conscious fashioning of his life as an instructive fable. A number of biographies have now been published (Havill; Hughes; Oleksy; Wren). Variations on a theme, these tend to the hagiographic: Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy (Alter). Those interested in Reeve’s life and work can turn also to fan websites. Most tellingly perhaps is the number of books, fables really, aimed at children, again, on a characteristic theme: Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve (Kosek; see also Abraham; Howard). The construction, but especially the consumption, of Reeve as disabled celebrity, is consonant with powerful cultural myths and tropes of disability. In many Western cultures, disability is predominantly understood a tragedy, something that comes from the defects and lack of our bodies, whether through accidents of birth or life. Those ‘suffering’ with disability, according to this cultural myth, need to come to terms with this bitter tragedy, and show courage in heroically overcoming their lot while they bide their time for the cure that will come. The protagonist for this this script is typically the ‘brave’ person with disability; or, as this figure is colloquially known in critical disability studies and the disability movement — the super-crip. This discourse of disability exerts a strong force today, and is known as the ‘medical’ model. It interacts with a prior, but still active charity discourse of disability (Fulcher). There is a deep cultural history of disability being seen as something that needs to be dealt with by charity. In late modernity, charity is very big business indeed, and celebrities play an important role in representing the good works bestowed on people with disabilities by rich donors. Those managing celebrities often suggest that the star finds a charity to gain favourable publicity, a routine for which people with disabilities are generally the pathetic but handy extras. Charity dinners and events do not just reinforce the tragedy of disability, but they also leave unexamined the structural nature of disability, and its associated disadvantage. Those critiquing the medical and charitable discourses of disability, and the oppressive power relations of disability that it represents, point to the social and cultural shaping of disability, most famously in the British ‘social’ model of disability — but also from a range of other perspectives (Corker and Thomas). Those formulating these critiques point to the crucial function that the trope of the super-crip plays in the policing of people with disabilities in contemporary culture and society. Indeed how the figure of the super-crip is also very much bound up with the construction of the ‘normal’ body, a general economy of representation that affects everyone. Superman Flies Again The celebrity of Christopher Reeve and what it reveals for an understanding of fame and disability can be seen with great clarity in his 2002 visit to Australia. In 2002 there had been a heated national debate on the ethics of use of embryonic stem cells for research. In an analysis of three months of the print media coverage of these debates, we have suggested that disability was repeatedly, almost obsessively, invoked in these debates (‘Uniting the Nation’). Yet the dominant representation of disability here was the cultural myth of disability as tragedy, requiring cure at all cost, and that this trope was central to the way that biotechnology was constructed as requiring an urgent, united national response. Significantly, in these debates, people with disabilities were often talked about but very rarely licensed to speak. Only one person with disability was, and remains, a central figure in these Australian stem cell and biotechnology policy conversations: Christopher Reeve. As an outspoken advocate of research on embryonic stem-cells in the quest for a cure for spinal injuries, as well as other diseases, Reeve’s support was enlisted by various protagonists. The current affairs show Sixty Minutes (modelled after its American counterpart) presented Reeve in debate with Australian critics: PRESENTER: Stem cell research is leading to perhaps the greatest medical breakthroughs of all time… Imagine a world where paraplegics could walk or the blind could see … But it’s a breakthrough some passionately oppose. A breakthrough that’s caused a fierce personal debate between those like actor Christopher Reeve, who sees this technology as a miracle, and those who regard it as murder. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) Sixty Minutes starkly portrays the debate in Manichean terms: lunatics standing in the way of technological progress versus Christopher Reeve flying again tomorrow. Christopher presents the debate in utilitarian terms: CHRISTOPHER REEVE: The purpose of government, really in a free society, is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. And that question should always be in the forefront of legislators’ minds. (‘Miracle or Murder?’) No criticism of Reeve’s position was offered, despite the fierce debate over the implications of such utilitarian rhetoric for minorities such as people with disabilities (including himself!). Yet this utilitarian stance on disability has been elaborated by philosopher Peter Singer, and trenchantly critiqued by the international disability rights movement. Later in 2002, the Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, invited Reeve to visit Australia to participate in the New South Wales Spinal Cord Forum. A journalist by training, and skilled media practitioner, Carr had been the most outspoken Australian state premier urging the Federal government to permit the use of embryonic stem cells for research. Carr’s reasons were as much as industrial as benevolent, boosting the stocks of biotechnology as a clean, green, boom industry. Carr cleverly and repeated enlisted stereotypes of disability in the service of his cause. Christopher Reeve was flown into Australia on a specially modified Boeing 747, free of charge courtesy of an Australian airline, and was paid a hefty appearance fee. Not only did Reeve’s fee hugely contrast with meagre disability support pensions many Australians with disabilities live on, he was literally the only voice and image of disability given any publicity. Consuming Celebrity, Contesting Crips As our analysis of Reeve’s antipodean career suggests, if disability were a republic, and Reeve its leader, its polity would look more plutocracy than democracy; as befits modern celebrity with its constitutive tensions between the demotic and democratic (Turner). For his part, Reeve has criticised the treatment of people with disabilities, and how they are stereotyped, not least the narrow concept of the ‘normal’ in mainstream films. This is something that has directly effected his career, which has become limited to narration or certain types of television and film work. Reeve’s reprise on his culture’s notion of disability comes with his starring role in an ironic, high-tech 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (Bleckner), a movie that in the original featured a photojournalist injured and temporarily using a wheelchair. Reeve has also been a strong advocate, lobbyist, and force in the politics of disability. His activism, however, has been far more strongly focussed on finding a cure for people with spinal injuries — rather than seeking to redress inequality and discrimination of all people with disabilities. Yet Reeve’s success in the notoriously fickle star system that allows disability to be understood and mapped in popular culture is mostly an unexplored paradox. As we note above, the construction of Reeve as celebrity, celebrating his individual resilience and resourcefulness, and his authenticity, functions precisely to sustain the ‘truth’ and the power relations of disability. Reeve’s celebrity plays an ideological role, knitting together a set of discourses: individualism; consumerism; democratic capitalism; and the primacy of the able body (Marshall; Turner). The nature of this cultural function of Reeve’s celebrity is revealed in the largely unpublicised contests over his fame. At the same time Reeve was gaining fame with his traditional approach to disability and reinforcement of the continuing catastrophe of his life, he was attracting an infamy within certain sections of the international disability rights movement. In a 1996 US debate disability scholar David T Mitchell put it this way: ‘He’s [Reeve] the good guy — the supercrip, the Superman, and those of us who can live with who we are with our disabilities, but who cannot live with, and in fact, protest and retaliate against the oppression we confront every second of our lives are the bad guys’ (Mitchell, quoted in Brown). Many feel, like Mitchell, that Reeve’s focus on a cure ignores the unmet needs of people with disabilities for daily access to support services and for the ending of their brutal, dehumanising, daily experience as other (Goggin & Newell, Disability in Australia). In her book Make Them Go Away Mary Johnson points to the conservative forces that Christopher Reeve is associated with and the way in which these forces have been working to oppose the acceptance of disability rights. Johnson documents the way in which fame can work in a variety of ways to claw back the rights of Americans with disabilities granted in the Americans with Disabilities Act, documenting the association of Reeve and, in a different fashion, Clint Eastwood as stars who have actively worked to limit the applicability of civil rights legislation to people with disabilities. Like other successful celebrities, Reeve has been assiduous in managing his image, through the use of celebrity professionals including public relations professionals. In his Australian encounters, for example, Reeve gave a variety of media interviews to Australian journalists and yet the editor of the Australian disability rights magazine Link was unable to obtain an interview. Despite this, critiques of the super-crip celebrity function of Reeve by people with disabilities did circulate at the margins of mainstream media during his Australian visit, not least in disability media and the Internet (Leipoldt, Newell, and Corcoran, 2003). Infamous Disability Like the lives of saints, it is deeply offensive to many to criticise Christopher Reeve. So deeply engrained are the cultural myths of the catastrophe of disability and the creation of Reeve as icon that any critique runs the risk of being received as sacrilege, as one rare iconoclastic website provocatively prefigures (Maddox). In this highly charged context, we wish to acknowledge his contribution in highlighting some aspects of contemporary disability, and emphasise our desire not to play Reeve the person — rather to explore the cultural and media dimensions of fame and disability. In Christopher Reeve we find a remarkable exception as someone with disability who is celebrated in our culture. We welcome a wider debate over what is at stake in this celebrity and how Reeve’s renown differs from other disabled stars, as, for example, in Robert McRuer reflection that: ... at the beginning of the last century the most famous person with disabilities in the world, despite her participation in an ‘overcoming’ narrative, was a socialist who understood that disability disproportionately impacted workers and the power[less]; Helen Keller knew that blindness and deafness, for instance, often resulted from industrial accidents. At the beginning of this century, the most famous person with disabilities in the world is allowing his image to be used in commercials … (McRuer 230) For our part, we think Reeve’s celebrity plays an important contemporary role because it binds together a constellation of economic, political, and social institutions and discourses — namely science, biotechnology, and national competitiveness. In the second half of 2004, the stem cell debate is once again prominent in American debates as a presidential election issue. Reeve figures disability in national culture in his own country and internationally, as the case of the currency of his celebrity in Australia demonstrates. In this light, we have only just begun to register, let alone explore and debate, what is entailed for us all in the production of this disabled fame and infamy. Epilogue to “Fame and Disability” Christopher Reeve died on Sunday 10 October 2004, shortly after this article was accepted for publication. His death occasioned an outpouring of condolences, mourning, and reflection. We share that sense of loss. How Reeve will be remembered is still unfolding. The early weeks of public mourning have emphasised his celebrity as the very embodiment and exemplar of disabled identity: ‘The death of Christopher Reeve leaves embryonic-stem-cell activism without one of its star generals’ (Newsweek); ‘He Never Gave Up: What actor and activist Christopher Reeve taught scientists about the treatment of spinal-cord injury’ (Time); ‘Incredible Journey: Facing tragedy, Christopher Reeve inspired the world with hope and a lesson in courage’ (People); ‘Superman’s Legacy’ (The Express); ‘Reeve, the Real Superman’ (Hindustani Times). In his tribute New South Wales Premier Bob Carr called Reeve the ‘most impressive person I have ever met’, and lamented ‘Humankind has lost an advocate and friend’ (Carr). The figure of Reeve remains central to how disability is represented. In our culture, death is often closely entwined with disability (as in the saying ‘better dead than disabled’), something Reeve reflected upon himself often. How Reeve’s ‘global mourning’ partakes and shapes in this dense knots of associations, and how it transforms his celebrity, is something that requires further work (Ang et. al.). The political and analytical engagement with Reeve’s celebrity and mourning at this time serves to underscore our exploration of fame and disability in this article. Already there is his posthumous enlistment in the United States Presidential elections, where disability is both central and yet marginal, people with disability talked about rather than listened to. The ethics of stem cell research was an election issue before Reeve’s untimely passing, with Democratic presidential contender John Kerry sharply marking his difference on this issue with President Bush. After Reeve’s death his widow Dana joined the podium on the Kerry campaign in Columbus, Ohio, to put the case herself; for his part, Kerry compared Bush’s opposition to stem cell research as akin to favouring the candle lobby over electricity. As we write, the US polls are a week away, but the cultural representation of disability — and the intensely political role celebrity plays in it — appears even more palpably implicated in the government of society itself. References Abraham, Philip. Christopher Reeve. New York: Children’s Press, 2002. Alter, Judy. Christopher Reeve: Triumph over Tragedy. Danbury, Conn.: Franklin Watts, 2000. Ang, Ien, Ruth Barcan, Helen Grace, Elaine Lally, Justine Lloyd, and Zoe Sofoulis (eds.) Planet Diana: Cultural Studies and Global Mourning. Sydney: Research Centre in Intercommunal Studies, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1997. Bleckner, Jeff, dir. Rear Window. 1998. Brown, Steven E. “Super Duper? The (Unfortunate) Ascendancy of Christopher Reeve.” Mainstream: Magazine of the Able-Disabled, October 1996. Repr. 10 Aug. 2004 http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/brown96c.html>. Carr, Bob. “A Class Act of Grace and Courage.” Sydney Morning Herald. 12 Oct. 2004: 14. Corker, Mairian and Carol Thomas. “A Journey around the Social Model.” Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. Ed. Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare. London and New York: Continuum, 2000. Donner, Richard, dir. Superman. 1978. Dyer, Richard. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: BFI Macmillan, 1986. Fulcher, Gillian. Disabling Policies? London: Falmer Press, 1989. Furie, Sidney J., dir. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. 1987. Finn, Margaret L. Christopher Reeve. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 1997. Gilmer, Tim. “The Missionary Reeve.” New Mobility. November 2002. 13 Aug. 2004 http://www.newmobility.com/>. Goggin, Gerard. “Media Studies’ Disability.” Media International Australia 108 (Aug. 2003): 157-68. Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Disability in Australia: Exposing a Social Apartheid. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005. —. “Uniting the Nation?: Disability, Stem Cells, and the Australian Media.” Disability & Society 19 (2004): 47-60. Havill, Adrian. Man of Steel: The Career and Courage of Christopher Reeve. New York, N.Y.: Signet, 1996. Howard, Megan. Christopher Reeve. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1999. Hughes, Libby. Christopher Reeve. Parsippany, NJ.: Dillon Press, 1998. Johnson, Mary. Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve and the Case Against Disability Rights. Louisville : Advocado Press, 2003. Kosek, Jane Kelly. Learning about Courage from the Life of Christopher Reeve. 1st ed. New York : PowerKids Press, 1999. Leipoldt, Erik, Christopher Newell, and Maurice Corcoran. “Christopher Reeve and Bob Carr Dehumanise Disability — Stem Cell Research Not the Best Solution.” Online Opinion 27 Jan. 2003. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=510>. Lester, Richard (dir.) Superman II. 1980. —. Superman III. 1983. Maddox. “Christopher Reeve Is an Asshole.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=creeve>. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1997. Mierendorf, Michael, dir. Without Pity: A Film about Abilities. Narr. Christopher Reeve. 1996. “Miracle or Murder?” Sixty Minutes. Channel 9, Australia. March 17, 2002. 15 June 2002 http://news.ninemsn.com.au/sixtyminutes/stories/2002_03_17/story_532.asp>. Mitchell, David, and Synder, Sharon, eds. The Body and Physical Difference. Ann Arbor, U of Michigan, 1997. McRuer, Robert. “Critical Investments: AIDS, Christopher Reeve, and Queer/Disability Studies.” Journal of Medical Humanities 23 (2002): 221-37. Oleksy, Walter G. Christopher Reeve. San Diego, CA: Lucent, 2000. Reeve, Christopher. Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 2002. —. Still Me. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1998. Reeve, Dana, comp. Care Packages: Letters to Christopher Reeve from Strangers and Other Friends. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1999. Reeve, Matthew (dir.) Christopher Reeve: Courageous Steps. Television documentary, 2002. Thomson, Rosemary Garland, ed. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York UP, 1996. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. Thousands Oak, CA: Sage, 2004. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and David P Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2000. Wren, Laura Lee. Christopher Reeve: Hollywood’s Man of Courage. Berkeley Heights, NJ : Enslow, 1999. Younis, Steve. “Christopher Reeve Homepage.” 12 Aug. 2004 http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/greatsleep/1023/main.html>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Goggin, Gerard & Newell, Christopher. "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. & Newell, C. (Nov. 2004) "Fame and Disability: Christopher Reeve, Super Crips, and Infamous Celebrity," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/02-goggin.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. "Assessing Creative Media's Social Impact." The Fledgling Fund, Dec. 2008. 15 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.thefledglingfund.org/media/research.html›. Barsam, Richard M. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana UP. 1992. BRITDOC Foundation. The End of the Line: A Social Impact Evaluation. London: Channel 4, 2011. 12 Oct. 2011 ‹http://britdoc.org/news_details/the_social_impact_of_the_end_of_the_line/›. Cieply, Michael. "Uneven Growth for Film Studio with a Message." New York Times 5 Jun. 2011: B1. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Emerging Media and Documentary Practice." The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs. Aug. 2008. 22 Sep. 2011. ‹http://www.gpia.info/node/911›. Grierson, John. "First Principles of Documentary (1932)." Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary. Eds. Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. 97-102. Hart, Philip Solomon and Anthony Leiserowitz. "Finding the Teachable Moment: An Analysis of Information-Seeking Behavior on Global Warming Related Websites during the Release of The Day After Tomorrow." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 3.3 (2009): 355-66. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. ———. "Transmedia Storytelling 101." Confessions of an Aca-Fan. The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. 22 Mar. 2007. 10 Oct. 2011 ‹http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html›. Madaus, George, and Daniel Stufflebeam. "Program Evaluation: A Historical Overview." Evaluation in Education and Human Services 49.1 (2002): 3-18. Manyika, James, Michael Chui, Jacques Bughin, Brad Brown, Richard Dobbs, Charles Roxburgh, and Angela Hung Byers. Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity. McKinsey Global Institute. May 2011 ‹http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/big_data/›. Muraskin, Lana. 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Find your black holes and white walls, know them … it is the only way you will be able to dismantle them and draw your lines of flight.—Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus Defined by originator David Belle as “an art to help you pass any obstacle”, the practice of “parkour” or “free running” constitutes both a mode of movement and a new way of interacting with the urban environment. Parkour was created by Belle (partly in collaboration with his childhood friend Sébastien Foucan) in France in the late 1980s. As seen in the following short video “Rush Hour”, a trailer for BBC One featuring Belle, parkour practitioners (known as “traceurs”), leap, spring, and vault from objects in the urban milieu that are intended to limit movement (walls, curbs, railings, fences) or that unintentionally hamper passage (lampposts, street signs, benches) through the space. “Rush Hour” was among the first media representations of parkour, and it had a significant role in introducing and popularizing the practice in Britain. Parkour has subsequently been widely disseminated via news reports, Nike and Toyota ads, the documentaries Jump London (2003) and Jump Britain (2005), and feature films, including Luc Besson’s Yamakasi – Les Samouraïs des Temps Modernes (2001) and Banlieu 13 (2004; just released in the U.S. as District B13), starring David Belle as Leto and Cyril Raffaelli as Damien. Sébastien Foucan will appear in the upcoming James Bond film Casino Royale as Mollaka, a terrorist who is chased (parkour-style) and then killed by Bond. (Foucan can also be seen in the film’s trailer, currently available at both SonyPictures.com and AOL.com; the film itself is scheduled for release in November 2006). Madonna’s current “Confessions” tour features an extended parkour sequence (accompanying the song “Jump”), albeit one limited to the confines of a scaffold erected over the stage. Perhaps most important in the rapid development of parkour into a world-wide youth movement, however, has been the proliferation of parkour websites featuring amateur videos, photos, tutorials, and blogs. The word “parkour” is derived from the French “parcours” (as the sport is known in France): a line, course, circuit, road, way or route, and the verb “parcourir”: to travel through, to run over or through, to traverse. As a physical discipline, parkour might be said to have a “poetics” — first, in general, in the Aristotelian sense of constructing through its various techniques (tekhnē) the drama of each parkour event. Secondly, one can consider parkour following Aristotle’s model of four-cause analysis as regards its specific materials (the body and the city), form or “vocabulary” of movements (drawn primarily from gymnastics, the martial arts, and modern dance), genre (as against, say, gymnastics), and purpose, including its effects upon its audience and the traceurs themselves. The existing literature on parkour (at this point, mostly news reports or websites) tends to emphasize the elements of form or movement, such as parkour’s various climbs, leaps, vaults, and drops, and the question of genre, particularly the ongoing, heated disputes among traceurs as to what is or is not true parkour. By contrast, my argument in this essay will focus principally on the materials and purpose of parkour: on the nature of the city and the body as they relate to parkour, and on the ways in which parkour can be seen to “remap” urban space and to demonstrate a resistance to its disciplinary functions, particularly as manifest in the urban street “grid.” The institution of the street “grid” (or variations upon it such as Haussmann’s Parisian star-configuration) facilitates both the intelligibility — in terms of both navigation and surveillance — and control of space in the city. It situates people in urban spaces in determinate ways and channels the flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. The “grid” thus carries a number of normalizing and disciplinary functions, creating in effect what the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari refer to as a “striation” of urban space. This striation constitutes “a process of capture of flows of all kinds, populations, commodities or commerce, money or capital, etc.” within a field of determinate spatial coordinates (Deleuze and Guattari 386). It establishes “fixed paths in well-defined directions, which restrict speed, regulate circulation, relativize movement, and measure in detail the relative movements of subjects and objects” (Deleuze and Guattari 386). Many of these aspects of striation can be seen in the ways urban space is depicted in the “Rush Hour” video: in the gridlocked traffic, the flashing tail-lights, the “STOP” light and “WAIT” sign, the sign indicating the proper directional flow of traffic, and the grim, bundled-up pedestrians trudging home en masse along the congested streets. Against these images of conformity, regulation, and confinement, the video presents the parkour ethos of originality, “reach,” escape, and freedom. Belle’s (shirtless) aerial traversal of the urban space between his office and his flat — a swift, improvisational flow across the open rooftops (and the voids between them), off walls, and finally down the sloping roof into his apartment window — cuts across the striated space of the streets below and positions him, for that time, beyond the constrictions of the social realm and its “concrete” manifestations. Though parkour necessarily involves obstacles that must be “overcome,” the goal of parkour is to do this as smoothly and efficiently as possible, or, in the language of its practitioners, for the movement to be “fluid like water.” The experience of parkour might, then, be said to transform the urban landscape into “smooth space,” in Deleuze and Guattari’s sense of “a field without conduits or channels” (371), and thus into a space of uninhibited movement, at least in certain ideal moments. Parkour seems to trace a path of desire (even if the desire is simply to avoid the crowds and get home in time to watch BBC One) that moves along a Deleuzean “line of flight,” a potential avenue of escape from the forces of striation and repression. Here the body is propelled over or through (most parkour movement actually takes place at ground level) the strata of urban space, perhaps with the hope that, as Deleuze and Guattari suggest, “one will bolster oneself directly on a line of flight enabling one to blow apart strata, cut roots, and make new connections” (15). In the process, parkour becomes “an art of displacement,” appropriating urban space in ways that temporarily disrupt their controlling logics and even imply the possibility of a smooth space of desire. One might see parkour as an overcoming of social space (and its various constrictions and inhibitions of desire, its “stop” and “wait” signs) through the interplay of body and material barriers. The body becomes an instrument of freedom. This, again, is graphically conveyed in “Rush Hour” through the opening scene in which Belle strips off his business suit and through the subsequent repeated contrasts of his limber, revealed body to the rigid, swathed figures of the pedestrians below. In part an effect of the various camera angles from which it is shot, there is also an element of the “heroic” in this depiction of the body. This aspect of the representation appears to be knowingly acknowledged in the video’s opening sequence. The first frame is a close-up, tightly focused on a model of a ninja-like figure with a Japanese sword who first appears to be contemplating a building (with an out-of-focus Belle in the background contemplating it from the opposite direction), but then, in the next, full shot, is revealed to be scaling it — in the manner of superheroes and King Kong. The model remains in the frame as Belle undresses (inevitably evoking images of Clark Kent stripping down to his Superman costume) and, in the final shot of that sequence, the figure mirrors Belle’s as he climbs through the window and ascends the building wall outside. In the next sequence, Belle executes a breath-taking handstand on a guard railing on the edge of the roof with the panorama of the city behind him, his upper body spanning the space from the street to the edge of the city skyline, his lower body set against the darkening sky. Through the practice of parkour, the relation between body and space is made dynamic, two reality principles in concert, interacting amid a suspension of the social strata. One might even say that the urban space is re-embodied — its rigid strata effectively “liquified.” In Jump London, the traceur Jerome Ben Aoues speaks of a Zen-like “harmony between you and the obstacle,” an idealization of what is sometimes described as a state of “flow,” a seemingly effortless immersion in an activity with a concomitant loss of self-consciousness. It suggests a different way of knowing the city, a knowledge of experience as opposed to abstract knowledge: parkour is, Jaclyn Law argues, “about curiosity and seeing possibilities — looking at a lamppost or bus shelter as an extension of the sidewalk” (np.). “You just have to look,” Sébastien Foucan insists in Jump London, “you just have to think like children….” Parkour effectively remaps urban space, creating a parallel, “ludic” city, a city of movement and free play within and against the city of obstacles and inhibitions. It reminds us that, in the words of the philosopher of urban space Henri Lefebvre, “the space of play has coexisted and still coexists with spaces of exchange and circulation, political space and cultural space” (172). Parkour tells us that in order to enter this space of play, we only need to make the leap. References Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Jump London (2003). Mike Christie, director. Mike Smith, producer. Featuring Jerome Ben Aoues, Sébastien Foucan, and Johann Vigroux. Law, Jaclyn. “PK and Fly.” This Magazine May/June 2005 http://www.thismagazine.ca/issues/2005/05/>. Lefebvre, Henri. “Perspective or Prospective?” Writings on Cities. Trans. Eleonore Kofman and Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. Rush Hour (2002). BBC One promotion trailer. Tom Carty, dir. Edel Erickson, pro. Produced by BBC Broadcast. See also: Wikipedia on parkour: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour> Parkour Worldwide Association: http://www.pawa.fr/> Parkour Net (multilingual): http://parkour.net/> NYParkour: http://www.nyparkour.com/> PKLondon.com: http://www.pklondon.com/> Nike’s “The Angry Chicken” (featuring Sébastien Foucan): http://video.google.com/videoplay? docid=-6571575392378784144&q=nike+chicken> There is an extensive collection of parkour videos available at YouTube A rehearsal clip featuring Sébastien Foucan coaching the dancers for Madonna’s Confessions tour can be seen at YouTube Citation reference for this article MLA Style Geyh, Paula. "Urban Free Flow: A Poetics of Parkour." M/C Journal 9.3 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/06-geyh.php>. APA Style Geyh, P. (Jul. 2006) "Urban Free Flow: A Poetics of Parkour," M/C Journal, 9(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/06-geyh.php>.