Journal articles on the topic 'Western beauty standards'

In this paper, drawing on notions, such as harmful cultural practices and beauty, and based on semi-structured interviews with young female university students in Iran, perceptions and experiences on beauty practices and cosmetic surgery are studied. We show how despite existing criticism of the gendered aspects of beauty practices among Iranian women who practice them, they are still practiced on a large scale. In contemporary Iran, the female body as a contested space for expression of social capital is under influence by the globalized beauty standards that predominantly rely on Western beauty ideals. This article explores beauty practices and positions them in the religious and political discourses of body and corporality in contemporary Iran. This empirical study reveal that despite the popularity of particular practices in Iran, especially nose jobs, beauty is not perceived as a common good but as a necessary evil by young Iranian women. We discuss how beauty is perceived, articulated, practiced and potentially resisted by young women in Iran.

No philistine, Thorstein Veblen thought humankind's innate impulse to imbue experience with aesthetic unity advanced all knowledge, and that the most beautiful objects, ideas, and actions met a standard of communal benefit reflecting humanity's naturally selected sociability. Though German idealism was an early influence, it clashed with Veblen's historicist critique of Western institutions, and it was William James's psychology that refined his ideas into a coherent aesthetics with ethical and political applications, by clarifying how instinct, habit, and environment could interact to institutionalize standards of beauty subverting the native altruism of the aesthetic impulse. Over years of association with John Dewey, Veblen concluded that a redeemed and reflective will to behold and create beauty in and through selfless activity could advance a more efficient and egalitarian society, and that humans cooperatively shaping their environments for the common good could approximate the German tradition's ideal of harmonizing personal freedom and external reality.

<em>Negotiating identity and the determining conditions of these identities are inextricable linked to the history of colonialism and its related practices of slavery, displacement and racial and cultural discrimination. Added to these are the recent waves of migration which have led to transnational experiences of misrepresentations that formerly colonised people are faced with, and which they have to deal with in order to assert or form new identities. The domain of beauty and its complex discourses involving its relationship to identity are intricately linked to ideology and power relations. The destabilisation of the African identity, especially in diaspora contexts, has been a direct consequence of the supremacist ideologies of the colonising powers. One of the fundamental questions raised by the cultural issues surrounding beauty is: how can the African overcome social expectations of beauty based on western standards that play negatively on their sense of identity? The answer to this question lies in the diverse definitions of beauty from different cultural perspectives. When awareness is raised on issues of racial stereotypes and cultural prejudices, the process of demystification of the myth of racial superiority begins, signalling also the start of the African’s journey towards a new conceptualisation of self.</em>

Having as a starting point one of the stereotypes of Japanese women considered a purveyor of kawaii this paper aims to explore a counterexample to Sanrio’s Hello Kitty mania offered by Shiseidō cosmetics through its overseas advertisements created during a long history on the European market. Even though the image of Japan is based mainly on the concept of kawaii Shiseidō tried at first on the local market to make a turn from that fragile, helpless and naïve perception of women to a more sophisticated one. Successful advertisements are made to answer a specific target audience’s needs, thus in order to go global there was a need to adapt typical Asian beauty standards to European ones. Shiseidō’s mission is to keep up with the times without forgetting the roots, the source of power, thus it has constantly worked in developing new strategies in order to thrive on the Western beauty market without setting aside Japanese tradition. Shiseidō corporate through its smaller brands like Majolica Majorca, Pure & Mild, Haku (meaning “white”) etc. still promote whitest white skin, a beauty ideal which prevails since the Heian period (794-1185). Considering that Shiseidō has a history of more than 50 years on the European market we propose an analysis on three beauty print advertisements elaborated during 1980-2000 in order to observe the constructed image of Japan through the imaginary of the French artist, Serge Lutens, responsible for the visual identity of the brand in Europe since 1980. The question is if it is a matter of “selling” the exotic to an unfamiliar receiver or a naive reflection of Japaneseness from a European’s perspective? Through this case study on beauty print advertisements created for the European market after 1990 we want to mirror the image of Japan in Europe as depicted through the specter of the biggest Japanese beauty conglomerate in the world, Shiseidō.

There is a need to meet and maintain high standards of safety, health and hygiene so that no risk is present to workers and clients in salon/parlors. Given the fact that hair and beauty salon workers and customers are at risk, this study is focused on hair and beauty salon workers’ OHS awareness, knowledge of the risks and practices of risk preventions. Based on the data collected by interviewing a total of 60 salon/parlor workers from 60 workplaces in western Nepal, the study has revealed that the level of OHS awareness, knowledge of risk and risk prevention practices among salon/ parlor workers associated with their profession is satisfactory. Similarly, the level of OHS awareness, knowledge of risk and risk prevention practices associated with their profession is more satisfactory in urban area than the rural areas.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hjsa.v5i0.7038 Himalayan Journal of Sociology & Anthropology-Vol. V (2012) 34-53

Western cultures promote a thin and curvaceous ideal body size that most women find difficult to achieve by healthy measures, resulting in poor body image and increased risk for eating pathology. Research focusing on body image in lesbian and bisexual women has yielded inconsistent results. In total, 11 lesbian and bisexual women were interviewed regarding their experiences with body image. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed that these women experienced similar mainstream pressures to conform to a thin body ideal. Furthermore, participants perceived additional pressure to conform to heteronormative standards of beauty since the normalisation of homosexuality and the increase in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender representation in mainstream media.

This study provides sociological insight into the response of Inuit women to mainstream Western media representations of their culture. Historically, there have been inaccurate and stereotypical media representations of Indigenous peoples reproduced in many forms of entertainment media. Social theories such as Pierre Bourdieu’s symbolic violence, Johan Galtung’s cultural violence, and George Gerbner and Gaye Tuchman’s symbolic annihilation are applied to contemporary media representations of Inuit women. This study explains how Inuit women make sense of popular music videos that utilize Inuit themes. Local Indigenous organizations in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, were collaborated with to facilitate focus groups for Inuit women to express their reactions to the videos and discuss how their culture is presented in mainstream Western music videos. Key themes that were identified include the following: unrealistic Western beauty standards projected onto Indigenous women; the normalization of harmful media tropes including the silence regarding Inuit women’s victimization, and the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women; and the importance of positive role models, and self-representation of Inuit women in media.

Media, in its diverse forms, has become a powerful tool for construction and portrayal of the “shoulds, oughts, and musts” of a woman’s body. As a result of “thinning” of beauty ideals in the media, the real woman finds the representations of ideal woman to be increasingly unattainable. This exploratory study examined the effect of acute media images for a sample of young adult Indian woman ( N = 60). A 2 (intervention group) × 2 (time) mixed-group design was used where half the participants were presented with thin-ideal media images, whereas the other half were presented with control images. The participants were examined on body image dissatisfaction, thin-ideal internalization, and self-esteem. Results of the study indicate a significant increase in thin-ideal internalization and body dissatisfaction and a significant decrease in self-esteem scores as a result of exposure to the thin-ideal media images. The findings of the study indicate that, similar to their counterparts in Europe and North America, young urban Indian women experience body image disturbances when exposed to thin-ideal images. The findings have been examined in light of the spread of global media and homogenization of beauty standards among non-Western countries.

Using the theoretical lenses of intersectionality and racial-ethnic socialization, we conducted a focus group study with 29 Black women. We analyzed transcripts via a grounded theory approach for the sources of messages about skin color and hair and for participants’ responses to these messages. Family members were the primary source of messages about skin color and hair. Peers and the media also communicated such messages. Messages ranged from endorsement of Western standards of beauty to an embrace of darker skin colors and natural hair texture. Rather than serving as passive recipients of messages, participants sifted through and reconciled messages with varying degrees of resolution. Their accounts reflected their intersectional experiences as Black women representing a variety of physical attributes. We discuss the influence of these physical attributes on their individual racial-gender identity development in light of a second burgeoning Black hair movement in the United States, that embraces Black natural hair. Findings may help families and others build understanding of, and increase sensitivity toward, the intra- and interpersonal implications of colorism for Black women. Findings may also inform institutional policies (e.g., school, work) and practices to reduce barriers and improve consequences for the Black women navigating these settings.

Contemporary theoretical trends have brought the body into the foreground as a social/cultural construction based on various power relations. Within broader discussions of individual concerns about physical appearance, the alteration of the body by means of cosmetic surgery has become a highly topical issue. Such procedures have now become widespread and are beginning to impact even on youth across developed countries; representations of cosmetic surgery are now also beginning to feature in a range of media, including manga. Although a relatively new medium, manga treats a wide variety of themes and reaches a large audience including young people; the appearance of cosmetic surgery as one of its concerns reflects youth culture's interest in this new fashion. Discussions of media representations of cosmetic surgery tend to centre on gender (as women/girls predominate in terms of the number of patients), and on race. As often noted, Japan (along with other Asian countries) is, with its particular historical and social background, greatly influenced by Western standards of beauty. This article will consider, from the angles listed above, four manga texts that deal with cosmetic surgery. In pointing out not only the reproduction of the power relations but also the potential for subverting those relations, it will read these dual powers on the bodies of the young characters, depicted as subjects of cosmetic surgical procedures.

In the modern culture, the phenomenon of the 'disabled' body is a intersection place of its ableist ideology, power relations and pseudoscientific explanations, and they are urged by the neo-eugenic project of the perfect world creating. As the prisoner of the biomedical discourse, such a body, deprived of any agensy, loaded with the culture-historicaly constituated non-power, is a particularly suitable field of the mainstream culture for spreading almost archetypically powerful apocaliptic visions of confronting with the enemy's otherness. For that reason, the underlying supposition of the article is that the 'disabled' body, by means of the uniqueness of its morphology and anatomical-physiological structure, says nothing about itself, the basis of that it which would qualify to be a cult victim of the discriminatory gaze, but it is a reflection the culture frustrated by its own failure to produce an apsolutelly controlable order of things. Our ideas of demonic figure of the 'disabled' body conceal the century-old (absurd and idle) negentropic struggle of the Western civilization, conceptualy supplied with the criteria, norms and standards of health, normalcy, beauty and the truth, instrumentally supplied with the preventive and rehabilitative provisions of medicine, cosmetology and fashion and institutionally supplied with asylums, to provide itself with kingdom of peace and serenity through pouring out any otherness, first of all the (sub)cultural one, intentionally reduced to the pure biological.

Since Armenia’s independence in 1991, thousands of diasporans have made the decision to return and settle in the ancestral homeland. The returnees, who speak Western Armenian, one of the two standardised forms of modern Armenian, are switching to the use of Eastern Armenian, the official variant of the homeland. Using two determinants of language perception—standardisation and vitality—this paper analyses the reactions received by thirty returnees who emigrated from nine countries, when speaking Western Armenian to an Eastern Armenian-speaking society. The vitality of the language shows signs of increasing through an encouragement by locals aware of the language’s historical significance, and an admiration of its ‘beauty’ and terminology. A heightened vitality has led returnees to feel confident about its use during social interactions and the possibility of the standard being incorporated into the nation’s linguistic narrative. However, confusion and ridicule due to a differing pronunciation, vocabulary, terminology, and the inability to be understood by some in Armenian society, has led to discomfort by returnees who are shifting to the usage of Eastern Armenian. At present, the use of Western Armenian in the homeland remains within the confines of family, friends and returnee circles. Despite the changing status of Western Armenian through a notable welcoming of the language into the linguistic narrative of the country, some segments of Armenian society do not perceive Western Armenian as an acceptable standard for broader use in Armenian society and national institutions. The homeland’s inconsistent, and at times questionable, acceptance of the language perpetuates the status quo that Western Armenian remains an unacceptable standard within the homeland and for use only in the diaspora.

ABSTRACTHow do non-Western societies envisage the relationship between the body and ageing? The present work aimed to shed light on this question by exploring how adult men and women of different ages living in Dakar, Senegal, view their bodies. A quantitative methodology was selected, and this study was carried out on a sample of 1,000 dwellers of the Senegalese capital, aged 20 and older. This sample was constructed using the quota method in order to strive for representativeness. Results indicate that appearance was highly important for Senegalese women and men, and for younger and older adults alike. As in Western cultures, beauty and youth were strongly connected. The large majority of Senegalese women and men were satisfied with their looks across the lifespan. However, older women were slightly less satisfied, consistent with the double standard hypothesis. Little discrepancy was found between felt age and chronological age throughout the entire lifecourse, arguing against an ageless self hypothesis in this African population. The mask of ageing hypothesis was also rejected, as men's and women's identification with their body did not diminish significantly across age. These observations from an African perspective call for greater attention to the ageing process in non-Western societies in order to challenge hypotheses developed in Western societies and understand more broadly the role of culture.

This paper attempts to explore African Americans’ world view and its roots in Black Aesthetics. It also reveals that Black art is an aesthetic transformation of African Americans for freedom and an expectation of a higher level of life. Supporters of Black Aesthetics appealed to black artists to establish a new standard of judgment and beauty based on African myths, spirituality, belief systems and music in opposition to Western aesthetic. However, the Black Aesthetics had its origins in those first artistic resonances of black slaves in the form of spirituals, coded singing and signifying, and later in writings. Black aesthetic theory in the United States traces its origin to the literature of slavery and freedom. The slave narratives depict African-Americans’ artistic and academic labors to show their humanity and critical moments in the development of Black aesthetics. Writing about their own communities in order to establish a sense of self-worth and claiming their identities as African Americans are crucial elements in the works of many Black writers.

The article highlights the issue of achieving a sound standard in the performance interpretation of sacred music by Ukrainian choral groups, which is relevant in the process of understanding the intonation-figurative sphere of performance. We believe that the standard performance version is the performance embodiment of a musical work that corresponds to the sound ideals characteristic of a certain tradition. The sound standard covers a complex of aesthetic and performing means that form a system of physiologically-technological technical-virtuosic, artistic-aesthetic components of the reference sound. Based on the analysis of the choral concert of Maxim Berezovsky "Don't reject me in my old age" in the performance versions of the Lviv state academic men's choral Capella "Dudarik" (conductor – Nikolay Katsal) and the Kiev chamber choir named after B. Lyatoshinsky (conductor – Viktor Ikonnik), the measure of compliance of their performance with the standard parameters of sound is traced.In the performance skills of both groups, the ability to reinterpret a musical work in accordance with its verbal basis can be traced. Depending on the figurative content, a rational reserved approach is used, devoid of emotional sound expression, or, in another situation, the secrets of spiritual experiences are soulfully transmitted. This mobility in the sense of the laws of eternal beauty and the ability to embody them in choral sonority, the combination of properties of the conscious and unconscious, determine the features of performing thinking inherent in the Ukrainian national choral art. The performance of the choral Capella "dudarik" truthfully conveys the performance style of the XVIII century, in which M. Berezovsky created. The combination of high light trebles, timbre- free soft Altos, ringing tenor groups and deep basses creates an impression of directness and sincerity in the transmission of spiritual content. But the choral intonation of the Kiev chamber choir appeals to the Western European style of music making, which is characterized by the most accurate reproduction of the elements of articulation specified in the composer's text – strokes, accents, caesuras, dynamic palette. At the same time, the balance of the single timbre ensemble of the choir with the deep "heart" sound paint characteristic of the Ukrainian tradition is preserved. The interpretation of musical architectonics by both groups brings its own uniqueness to their performing style and image-sound paint – and this is the ability to perceive and report the living matter of the work, to reincarnate the essential meanings of the national spiritual and aesthetic experience. Each of the considered performance versions corresponds to the essential characteristics of the reference sound.

Abstract Proteasome inhibitors as bortezomib have been included in standard treatment regimens in several hematological malignancies, especially multiple myeloma. As resistance mechanisms depending on MDR1 expression have not been evaluated in detail for proteasome-inhibitors it was the aim of our study to investigate resistance of cells to Bortezomib and MLN-273 conferred by MDR1. To address that question K562Dox cells have been long-term cultured in low concentrated doxorubicin to obtain MDR1 overexpression. These cells were stably transfected with a Sleeping-Beauty vector system carrying an siRNA targeting the mRNA of PgP. With that approach, PgP was reduced to 10% compared to the wild-type cell line. PgP-positive and PgP-negative cells were exposed to bortezomib and MLN-273 and proliferation measured was in a 3H-Thymidine incorporation assay. This showed a dose-dependent reduction of DNA-synthesis in cells exposed to Bortezomib, regardless of PgP-expression. In contrast, MLN-273 showed a PgP-dependency by inhibiting cells expressing PgP (K562Dox: EC 50 of 5,6 ng/ml and vector control cells K562Dox-Co: EC 50 of 29 ng/ml) less than MDR1-knock-down cells (K562Dox-siMDR1: EC50 of 0.3 ng/ml). In MDR1 positive cells this growth inhibition was reveresed by addition of verapamil, a MDR1 blocking substance (K562Dox: EC50 of 2.4 ng/ml and K562Dox-Co: EC50 of 2.8 ng/ml). This growth inhibitory effect was due to apoptosis induction, which has been shown by staining for Annexin V and propidium iodide. The direct effect of MDR1 on proteasome activity was measured by western blotting IkBα, a substrate of the proteasome, which was still present in MLN-273 treated MDR1-negative cells but not in MDR1-positive cells incubated with MLN-273. These results show that MLN-273 highly likely is a substrate for MDR1, which may gain clinical significance in treating hematological malignancies in the future.

Resumo Este artigo analisa a representação feminina relacionada a estéticas contra-hegemônicas na edição comemorativa da revista ELLE Brasil publicada em maio de 2015. O objetivo é pensar de que forma a diversidade está conquistando espaço na indústria da moda e nos meios de comunicação que a representam. Tomando como ponto de partida o conceito de representação social em Hall e Moscovici, discutimos aqui o significado desse conteúdo, que se distingue do padrão de beleza normativo da mulher branca, loira, ocidental e extremamente magra, considerando a forma concreta que o significado simbólico dessas representações assumem na revista. Palavras-chave: jornalismo de moda; gênero; representação Resumen Este artículo analiza la representación femenina relacionada a estéticas contra-hegemónicas en la edición conmemorativa de la revista ELLE Brasil de mayo de 2015. El objetivo es pensar cómo la diversidad está conquistando espacios en la industria de la moda y los medios de comunicación que abordan el tema. A partir del concepto de representación social de Hall y Moscovici, discutimos el significado de ese contenido que se distingue del patrón de belleza normativo de la mujer blanca, rubia, occidental y flaca, considerando las formas prácticas que el significado simbólico de esas representaciones asumen en la revista. Palabras-clave: periodismo de moda, género, representación Abstract This article analyzes female representations related to counter-hegemonic aesthetics in the commemorative edition of Elle Brazil magazine published in may 2015. We aim to discuss how diversity is gaining ground in the fashion industry and in the specialized media that addresses this issue. Taking the concept of social representation as presented in Hall and Moscovici, we discuss the meanings of this content that differ from the normative standard of beauty represented by white, blond, Western and thin women, considering the pratical forms that the symbolic meaning of these representations take in the magazine. Keywords: fashion journalism, gender, representation.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the interconnection between the corporatisation of K-beauty and Korea’s nation branding exercise and its links with soft power. Through the investigation of the transformation of Korea’s beauty industry, the authors seek to illustrate the inter-relationship of the market systems and national identification practices. Design/methodology/approach This study employed the qualitative case study approach to examine the latest development of Korea’s medical tourism. Through analysing a variety of secondary data that associated to the latest development of cosmetic tourism, this paper presents the impact of the transformation and reconfiguration of Korea’s beauty industry on the country’s nation branding strategy and the development of Korea’s soft power in the global marketplace. Findings The findings highlight how Korea’s new cosmetic tourism industry contributed to the renewal of Korea’s nation brand in the global market. The findings also illustrate the interconnection of the emerging Korean popular cultural products (K-pop and K-beauty) in the regional and global marketplace. Research limitations/implications The findings demonstrate the role of market in re-defining a nation’s brand and identity. The findings also illustrate how market-driven strategy influences the development of a nation’s soft power in the regional and/or global marketplace. Practical implications The study shows that practitioners can be active agents in nation branding. Through highlighting strategies to develop soft power within and beyond the country boundary, this study shows how market agents, governments and other stakeholders can co-create a market system that transform and reconfigure the nation brand in the global marketplace. Social implications In additional to explore the transformation of the beauty industry in Korea, this paper also presents the history and transformation of the beauty standards in Korea and other Asian cultures. Such dialogue invites marketing and consumer researchers to further explore the role of history and culture in guiding the production and consumption of new (consumption) standards. Originality/value This is the first paper that connects the theory of soft power in nation branding and country-of-origin literature. The case analysis of the socio-historical development of K-beauty also demonstrates how non-Western cultural goods enter the international marketplace. In summary, this paper provides new conceptual framework that illustrates a new collaborative mechanism that engages government and practitioners to co-create new cultural norms and standards to the local and international markets.

This article explores the ongoing obsession with the thigh gap ideal in certain pockets of Western societies. A thigh gap is the space some women have between their inner thighs when they stand with their feet together. The thigh gap ideal is flaunted on “thinspo” websites, which compile diet and exercise tips and display pictures of fashion models and “real women” in their efforts to inspire women to become thinner. I aim to identify what is wrong with the thigh gap obsession and to suggest a way to overcome it. I begin by describing the genesis of the obsession. I then argue that the relation women in the grip of this preoccupation have to their bodies is an instance of what I call bodily alienation. Next, I consider responses to the thigh gap phenomenon. I claim that a viable response, besides broadening standards of beauty, lies in pursuing bodily activities for their own sake. I call the view I articulate “sensualism.” I conclude by discussing the merits of an individual response of the type I advocate, in light of the structural character of women’s oppression through standards of beauty.

Introduction‘Dream’ has been researched across numerous fields in its multiplicity within both a physical and emotional capacity. For Pagel et al., there is no fixed definition of what ‘dream’ is or are. However, in an advertising context, ’dream’ is the idealised version of our desires, re-visualised in real life (Coombes and Batchelor 103). It could be said that for countless consumers, advertising imagery has elicited dreams of living the perfect life and procuring material pleasures (Manca et al.; Hood). Goodis asserts, “advertising doesn’t always mirror how people are acting but how they are dreaming, in a sense what we are doing is wrapping up your emotions and selling them back to you” (qtd. in Back and Quaade 65). One component of this notion of ‘dream’ in advertising is captured by wishful images of the face and body in their ‘perfect form’ presented in a field of other beauty ideals. For our purposes, ‘dream’ is a “philosophical concept” (Pagel et al. 14) by which dreams are a series of aspirations and desires that consumers internalise, while at the same time, find difficult to achieve. ‘Dream’, then, will be used to critically explore how the beauty and advertising industries collectively employ ethnic ambiguity in addition to other tactics and strategies to sell us dream-like visions of idealised beauty. Forever Dreaming: The Introduction of Ethnic AmbiguityWe can link dreams to beauty as both areas of analysis contain many cultural interpretations and can be deconstructed to reveal different meanings (Sontag). In many ways, beauty is another dream and Sontag notes that the concept of beauty is often linked to certain physical traits that an individual possesses. These physical traits are capitalised upon by product marketing by which Hood claims, aims to enhance one, or even more, of them. For example, lipstick is not marketed as simply as a mixture of wax and pigment but rather a way to “obtain beauty, find romance or gain confidence” (7). As a result, global beauty brands can find long term marketing success through meaningful product marketing. This long-term marketing success relies on influencing human behaviour and perceptions. As a result of meaningful marketing, consumers may find themselves driven to purchase implicit qualities in products advertised to reflect their dreams (Hood).Following the 1980s, this version of meaningful marketing has become a driving purpose for advertising agencies around the globe (Steel). Advertising agencies rely on deeper human insights, identifying latent desires to create a brief that must ultimately sell a dream (Steel). The ideal strategy needs to define something that will build brand loyalty and encourage consumers to have a symbiotic relationship connecting their dreams with the product being sold. As Hood argues, “advertising consists of selling not just things but also dreams”. While this concept is one that “some see as inherently damning”, it is also inherently necessary (7). We understand that people are emotional beings, investing in the artefacts they build, obtain or use with significance “beyond merely utilitarian” (7). For these reasons, beauty advertisers act as the purveyors of dreams in the form of physical perfection as an articulation of consumer’s own aspirations of beauty.These aspirations of dream beauty are a direct representation of our thoughts and feelings. As such, it should be noted that we as consumers are often encouraged to draw inspiration from imagery that is often times seen as ethnically ambiguous. “Ethnic ambiguity” is the absence of any one prominent ethnic or racial feature that is easily discernible to one specific group (Garcia 234; Harrison et al.). An example of this ethnic ambiguity can be seen in marketing campaigns by high end makeup artist and her eponymous range of cosmetics, Charlotte Tilbury. Most notably, in a 2015 launch for her “Makeup Wardrobe”, Tilbury’s makeup palettes boasted 10 aspirational ‘looks’ and personas that could be achieved simply through purchase. The images of women featured on a figurative ‘wheel of fortune’ digital display used to market products online. This digital ‘wheel of fortune’ comprised of ethnically ambiguous models against descriptive persona’s such as “The Dolce Vita” and “The Glamour Muse”. These kinds of digital marketing tools required consumers to make a decision based on what their dream ‘look’ is through an ethnically ambiguous lens and from here are guided to purchase their desired aesthetic. Like Charlotte Tilbury, the beauty industry has seen a growing body of cosmetic brands that employ ethnic ambiguity to sell dreams of homogenised beauty. We will see the ways in which modern day beauty brands, such as Kylie Jenner Cosmetics and Fenty Beauty have come to adopt ethnic ambiguity or embrace entire ethnic and racial groups in order to expand their consumer influence.Aspirational Ambiguity: Dreams of DisempowermentSince the early 2000s, beauty advertising has seen a prominent rise in the use of ethnically ambiguous models. Some see this as an effort to answer the global desire for diversity and inclusion. However, the notion that beauty standards transcend racial boundaries and is inclusive, is simply another form of appropriating and fetishising ethnicity (R. Sengupta). In many ways, these manufactured dream-like versions of beauty have evolved to reach wider markets, in the hope that consumers will be emboldened to both embrace their racial heritage, and at the same time conform to homogenised standards of beauty (Frith et al.; Harrison et al.).In this bid to diversify and extend consumer reach, there are three prominent reasons why ethnically ambiguous models are more likely to be featured over models whose African, Indigenous, and/or Asian heritage is more prominent. Firstly, ethnically ambiguous models do not seem to conform to a particular notion of what is considered beautiful. For many decades, popular culture has been saturated with images of thin, of young, of narrow noses and hips, of blonde, blue eyes, and Caucasian hair textures (Harrison et al.; Hunter; Saraswati). These Westernised beauty ideals have been historically shaped through years of colonial influence, grounded in an imbalance of power and imposed to create a culture of dominance and oppression (Saraswati). Secondly, ethnic models are featured to convey “the sense of the ‘exotic’, and their ‘otherness’ acts to normalise and entrench the dominant ideal of white beauty” (qtd. in Redmond 175). ‘Otherness’ can be defined as the opposite of the majority, in Westernised society this ‘other’ can mean “people who are other than white, male, able bodied, heterosexual” (qtd. in Graycar 74). This ‘otherness’ showcased by ethnically ambiguous models draws viewers in. Physical features that were possessed by one specific ethnic group such as African, Asian, Latinx or Indigenous peoples have now become blended and are no longer confined to one race. Additionally, ethnically ambiguous models enable white consumers to dream about an exotic local or lifestyle, while at the same time providing ethnic audiences a way to see themselves.Finally, it is undeniable that ethnically ambiguous and mixed-race models have become desirable due to a historical preference for light skin (Saraswati). The visual references of light-skinned beauty epitomise a colonial dream and this standardisation has been transferred to indigenous peoples, or ethnic minorities in Western countries. According to Harrison et al, “marketers use mixed-race representations as cultural currency by mythologising mixed-race bodies as the new beauty standard” to represent a racial bridge, “tailored to ameliorate perceived racial divides” (503). Therefore, ethnically ambiguous models have an assumed advantage over their racially dominant counterparts, because they appear to straddle various racial boundaries. They are constructed to embody whomever, from wherever and whenever, fetishising their roleplay for the industry, when it pleases. This further exoticises multi-racial beauty models and renders them a commodified fantasy for many consumers alike. The continued commodification of ethnic ambiguity is problematic as it exploits models with distinctly mixed-race heritage to continue to sell images of white-washed beauty (Solomon et al.). An argument could be made that scarcity contributes to mixed-race models’ value, and therefore the total number of advertising opportunities that are offered to mixed-race models remains limited. To date, numerous studies highlight a limited use of racially diverse models within the beauty industry and does not reflect the growing global body of diverse consumers with purchasing power (Wasylkiw et al.; Redmond; Johnson; Jung and Lee; Frith et al.). In fact, prior to globalisation, Yan and Bissell claim that “each culture had a unique standard of attractiveness, derived from traditional views about beauty as well as the physical features of the people” (197) and over time the construction of dream beauty is characterised using Western features combined with exoticised traits of indigenous ethnic groups. Akinro and Mbunyuza-Memani claim that this “trend of normalising white or 'western' feminine looks as the standard of beauty” has pervaded a number of these indigenous cultures, eventually disseminated through the media as the ultimate goal (308). It can also be argued that the “growing inclusion of mixed-race models in ads is driven less by the motivation to portray diversity and driven more by pragmatism,” and in a more practical sense has implications for the “financial future of the advertised brands and the advertising industry as a whole” (Harrison et al. 513). As a result, uses of mixed-race models “are rather understood as palatable responses within dominant white culture to racial and ethnic minority populations growing in … cultural prominence” (513) in a tokenistic bid to sell a dream of unified beauty.The Dream Girl: Normalisation of Mixed-RaceIn 2017, an article in CNN’s Style section highlighted the growing number of mixed-race models in Japan’s fashion and beauty industry as a modern-day phenomenon from Japan’s interlocking history with the United States (Chung and Ogura). These beauty and fashion influencers refer to themselves as hafu, an exclusionary term that historically represented an “othered” minority of mixed-race heritage in Japanese society signalling complex and troubled interactions with majority Japanese (Oshima). The complications once associated with the term ‘hafu’ are now being reclaimed by bi-racial beauty and fashion models and as such, these models are beginning to defy categorisation and, in some ways, national identity because of their chameleon-like qualities. However, while there is an increasing use of mixed-race Japanese models, everyday mixed-race women are regularly excluded within general society; which highlights the incongruent nature of ‘half’ identity. And yet there is an increasing preference and demand from fashion and beauty outlets to feature them in Japanese and Western popular culture (Harrison et al.; Chung and Ogura). Numéro Tokyo’s editorial director Sayumi Gunji, estimated that almost 30-40 per cent of runway models in present day Japan, identify as either bi-racial mixed-race or multi-racial (Chung and Ogura).Gunji claims:"Almost all top models in the their 20s are hafu, especially the top models of popular fashion magazines ... . [In] the Japanese media and market, a foreigner's flawless looks aren't as readily accepted -- they feel a little distant. But biracial models, who are taller, have bigger eyes, higher noses [and] Barbie-doll-like looks, are admired because they are dreamy looking but not totally different from the Japanese. That's the key to their popularity," she adds. (Qtd. in Chung and Ogura)The "dreamy look" that Gunji describes is attributed to a historical preference toward light skin and a kind of willingness and sensuality, that once, only white models could be seen to tout (Frith et al. 58). Frith et al. and O’Barr discuss that beauty in Japanese advertising mirrors “the way women are portrayed in advertising in the West” (qtd. in Frith et al. 58). The emergence of hafu in Japanese beauty advertising sees these two worlds, a mixture of doll-like and sensual beauty, converging to create a dream-like standard for Japanese consumers. The growing presence of Japanese-American models such as Kiko Mizuhara and Jun Hasegawa are both a direct example of the unattainable ‘dreamy look’ that pervades the Japanese beauty industry. Given this ongoing trend of mixed-race models in beauty advertising, a recent article on Refinery29 talks about the significance of how mixed-race models are disassembling their once marginalised status.A. Sengupta writes:In contrast to passing, in which mixedness was marginalized and hidden, visibly multiracial models now feature prominently in affirmative sites of social norms. Multiracial looks are normalized, and, by extension, mixed identity is validated. There’s no cohesive social movement behind it, but it’s a quiet sea change that’s come with broadened beauty standards and the slow dismantling of social hierarchies.Another example of the normalisation in multi-racial identity is Adwoa Aboah, a mixed-race British model and feminist activist who has been featured on the covers of numerous fashion publications and on runways worldwide. In British Vogue’s December 2017 issue, titled “Great BRITAIN”, Adwoa Aboah achieved front cover status, alongside her image featured other politically powerful names, perhaps suggesting that Aboah represents not only the changing face of a historically white publication but as an embodiment of an increasingly diverse consumer landscape. Not only is she seen as both as a voice for those disenfranchised by the industry, by which she is employed, but as a symbol of new dreams. To conclude this section, it seems the evolution of advertising’s inclusion of multi-racial models reveals a progressive step change for the beauty industry. However, relying simply on the faces of ethnically ambiguous talent has become a covert way to fulfil consumer’s desire for diversity without wholly dismantling the destructive hierarchies of white dominance. Over this time however, new beauty creations have entered the market and with it two modern day icons.Architecting Black Beauty through the American DreamAccording to Kiick, the conception of the ‘American Dream’ is born out of a desire to “seek out a more advantageous existence than the current situation” (qtd. in Manca et al. 84). As a result of diligent hard work, Americans were rewarded with an opportunity for a better life (Manca et al.). Kylie Jenner’s entry into the beauty space seemed like a natural move for the then eighteen-year-old; it was a new-age representation of the ‘American Dream’ (Robehmed 2018). In less than five years, Jenner has created Kylie Cosmetics, a beauty empire that has since amassed a global consumer base, helping her earn billionaire status. A more critical investigation into Jenner’s performance however illustrates that her eponymous range of beauty products sells dreams which have been appropriated from black culture (Phelps). The term cultural appropriation refers to the way dominant cultures “adopt and adapt certain aspects of another’s culture and make it their own” (qtd. in Han 9). In Jenner’s case, her connection to ethnic Armenian roots through her sisters Kourtney, Kim, and Khloe Kardashian have significantly influenced her expression of ‘othered’ culture and moreover ethnic beauty ideals such as curvier body shapes and textured hair. Jenner’s beauty advertisements have epitomised what it means to be black in America, cherry picking racialised features of black women (namely their lips, hips/buttocks and afro-braided hairstyles) and rearticulated them through a white lens. The omission of the ‘black experience’ in her promotion of product is problematic for three reasons. Firstly, representing groups or people without invitation enables room for systemic stereotyping (Han). Secondly, this stereotyping can lead to continued marginalisation of minority cultures (Kulchyski). And finally, the over exaggeration of physical attributes, such as Jenner’s lips, hips and buttocks, reinforces her complicity in exoticising and fetishising the “other”. As a result, consumers of social media beauty advertising may pay less attention to cultural appropriation if they are already unaware that the beauty imagery they consume is based on the exploitation of black culture.Another perspective on Jenner’s use of black culture is in large part due to her cultural appreciation of black beauty. This meaning behind Jenner’s cultural appreciation can be attributed to the inherent value placed on another person’s culture, in the recognition of the positive qualities and the celebration of all aspects of that culture (Han). This is evidenced by her recent addition of cosmetic products for darker complexions (Brown). However, Jenner’s supposed fascination with black culture may be in large part due to the environment in which she was nurtured (Phelps). As Phelps reveals, “consider the cultural significance of the Kardashian family, and the various ways in which the Kardashian women, who are tremendously wealthy and present as white, have integrated elements of black culture as seemingly “natural” in their public bodily performances” (9). Although the Kardashian-Jenner family have faced public backlash for their collective appropriation they have acquired a tremendous “capital gain in terms of celebrity staying power and hyper-visibility” (Phelps 9). Despite the negative attention, Kylie Jenner’s expression of black culture has resurfaced the very issues that had once been historically deemed insignificant. In spite of Jenner’s cultural appropriation of black beauty, her promotion through Kylie Cosmetics continues to sell dreams of idealised beauty through the white lens.In comparison, Rihanna Fenty’s cosmetic empire has been touted as a celebration of diversity and inclusion for modern-age beauty. Unlike Kylie Cosmetics, Fenty’s eponymous brand has become popular for its broader message of inclusivity across both skin tone, body shape and gender. Upon her product release, Fenty Beauty acknowledged a growing body of diverse consumers and as a direct response to feature models of diverse skin tones, cultural background and racial heritage. Perhaps more importantly, Fenty Beauty’s challenge to the ongoing debate around diversity and inclusion has been in stark contrast to Kylie Jenner’s ongoing appropriation of black culture. Images featured at the first brand and product launch of Fenty Beauty and in present day advertising, show South Sudanese model Duckie Thot and hijab-wearing model Halima Aden as central characters within the Fenty narrative, illustrating that inclusion need not remain ambiguous and diversity need not be appropriated. Fenty’s initial product line up included ninety products, but most notably, the Pro Filt’r foundation caused the most publicity. Since its introduction in 2017, the foundation collection contained range of 40 (now 50) inclusive foundation shades, 13 of these shades were designed to cater for much darker complexions, an industry first (Walters). As a result of the brand’s inclusion of diverse product shades and models, Fenty Beauty has been shown to push boundaries within the beauty industry and the social media landscape (Walters). Capitalising on all races and expanding beauty ideals, Fenty’s showcase of beauty subscribes to the notion that for women everywhere in the world, their dreams can and do come true. In conclusion, Fenty Beauty has played a critical role in re-educating global consumers about diversity in beauty (Walters) but perhaps more importantly Rihanna, by definition, has become a true embodiment of the ‘American Dream’.Conclusion: Future Dreams in BeautyIt is undeniable that beauty advertising has remained complicit in selling unattainable dreams to consumers. In the context of ‘dream’ as a philosophical concept, it is more important than ever to ensure our dreams are mirrored, not as an ambiguous body of consumers, but as diverse and unique individuals. Changemakers in the industry such as Fenty Beauty are challenging this status quo and beauty advertising in general will have to evolve their strategy in a bid to answer to an increasingly globalised market. It must be reinforced however, that while “beauty companies and advertisers work effectively to reach a growingly multicultural market, scholars have a responsibility to assess the ramifications that accompany such change,” (Harrison et al. 518). If advertising’s role is to mirror consumers’ dreams then, our roles as dreamers have never been so important. ReferencesAkinro, Ngozi, and Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani. "Black Is Not Beautiful: Persistent Messages and the Globalization of 'White' Beauty in African Women’s Magazines." 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The medium of dance is most often valued in Western society for its artistry and great skill of movement. However, the beauty of this medium often overshadows its ability to create pointed, and often political, messages through the body’s kinesthetic movement in physical space. As embodied expression through time and space, dance must be understood as an art form that actively seeks to create meaning (Hellensleben 2010), a fact that is acutely evident in the dance form known as Waacking. Born out of improvisation-based techniques, Waacking originated in gay, Black and Latino underground disco clubs of 1970’s Los Angeles. The gestures of Waacking were inspired by classical Hollywood glamour actresses, culminating in the distinctive fast, rhythmic arm whipping typical of this dance style. Yet, it is the more performative elements of the dance that holds one’s interest by including components of large locomotion, dramatic gesture and facial expression, and a compelling narrative. This expressive style of movement resulted in Waacking becoming a catalyst for gay refusal, functioning as a method for gay men to express themselves and fully explore their identity. Through an analysis of personal experience and online videos in dialogue with the methodologies of embodiment, phenomenology, and performativity, I will explore how Waacking has shifted from a form of gay refusal to a form of gender refusal, allowing there to be a renegotiation of gender standards through the catalyst of black queer kinesthetics and gender kinesthetics.

The Walt Disney Company has been creating magical fairy tales since the early 1900s and is a trusted brand synonymous with wholesome, family entertainment (Wasko). Over time, this reputation has resulted in the Disney brand’s huge financial growth and influence on audiences worldwide. (Wohlwend). As the largest global media powerhouse in the Western world (Beattie), Disney uses its power and influence to shape the perceptions and ideologies of its audience. In the twenty-first century there has been a proliferation of retellings of Disney fairy tales, and Kilmer suggests that although the mainstream perception is that these new iterations promote gender equity, new cultural awareness around gender stereotypes, and cultural insensitivity, this is illusory. Tangled, for example, was a popular film selling over 10 million DVD copies and positioned as a bold new female fairy tale character; however, academics took issue with this position, writing articles entitled “Race, Gender and the Politics of Hair: Disney’s Tangled Feminist Messages”, “Tangled: A Celebration of White Femininity”, and “Disney’s Tangled: Fun, But Not Feminist”, berating the film for its lack of any true feminist examples or progressiveness (Kilmer). One way to assess the impact of Disney is to look at the use of shape shifting and transformation in the narratives – particularly those that include women and young girls. Research shows that girls and women are often stereotyped and sexualised in the mass media (Smith et al.; Collins), and Disney regularly utilises body modification and metamorphosis within its narratives to emphasise what good and evil ‘look’ like. These magical transformations evoke what Marina Warner refers to as part of the necessary surprise element of the fairy tale, while creating suspense and identity with storylines and characters. In early Disney films such as the 1937 version of Snow White, the queen becomes the witch who brings a poison apple to the princess; and in the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty the ‘bad’ fairy Maleficent shapeshifts into a malevolent dragon. Whilst these ‘good to evil’ (and vice versa) tropes are easily recognised, there are additional transformations that are arguably more problematic than those of the increasingly terrifying monsters or villains. Disney has created what we have coined the ‘princess bubble’, where the physique and behaviour of the leading women in the tales has become a predictor of success and good fortune, and the impression is created of a link between their possession of beauty and the ‘happily-ever-after’ outcome received by the female character. The value, or worth, of a princess is shown within these stories to often increase according to her ability to attract men. For example, in Brave, Queen Elinor showcases the extreme measures taken to ‘present’ her daughter Merida to male suitors. Merida is preened, dressed, and shown how to behave to increase her value to her family, and whilst she manages to persuade them to set aside their patriarchal ideologies in the end, it is clear what is expected from Merida in order to gain male attention. Similarly, Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow White are found to be of high ‘worth’ by the princes on account of their beauty and form. We contend, therefore, that the impression often cast on audiences by Disney princesses emphasises that beauty = worth, no matter how transgressive Disney appears to be on the surface. These princesses are flawlessly beautiful, capable of winning the heart of the prince by triumphing over their less attractive rivals – who are often sisters or other family members. This creates the illusion among young audiences that physical attractiveness is enough to achieve success, and emphasises beauty as the priority above all else. Therefore, the Disney ‘princess bubble’ is highly problematic. It presents a narrow range of acceptability for female characters, offers a distorted view of gender, and serves to further engrain into popular culture a flawed stereotype on how to look and behave that negates a fuller representation of female characters. In addition, Armando Maggi argues that since fairy tales have been passed down through generations, they have become an intrinsic part of many people’s upbringing and are part of a kind of universal imaginary and repository of cultural values. This means that these iconic cultural stories are “unlikely to ever be discarded because they possess both a sentimental value and a moral ‘soundness’” (Rutherford 33), albeit that the lessons to be learnt are at times antiquated and exclusionary in contemporary society. The marketing and promotion of the Disney princess line has resulted in these characters becoming an extremely popular form of media and merchandise for young girls (Coyne et al. 2), and Disney has received great financial benefit from the success of its long history of popular films and merchandise. As a global corporation with influence across multiple entertainment platforms, from its streaming channel to merchandise and theme parks, the gender portrayals therefore impact on culture and, in particular, on how young audiences view gender representation. Therefore, it could be argued that Disney has a social responsibility to ensure that its messages and characters do not skew or become damaging to the psyche of its young audiences who are highly impressionable. When the representation of gender is examined, however, Disney tends to create highly gendered performances in both the early and modern iterations of fairy tales, and the princess characters remain within a narrow range of physical portrayals and agency. The Princess Bubble Although there are twelve official characters within the Disney princess umbrella, plus Elsa and Anna from the Disney Frozen franchise, this article examines the eleven characters who are either born or become royalty through marriage, and exhibit characteristics that could be argued to be the epitome of feminine representation in fairy tales. The characters within this ‘princess bubble’ are Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Elsa, and Anna. The physical appearance of those in the princess bubble also connects to displays around the physical aspects of ethnicity. Nine out of eleven are white skinned, with Jasmine having lightened in skin tone over time, and Tiana now having a tanned look rather than the original dark African American complexion seen in 2009 (Brucculieri). This reinforces an ideology that being white is superior. Every princess in our sample has thick and healthy long hair, the predominant colour being blonde. Their eyes are mostly blue, with only three possessing a dark colour, a factor which reinforces the characteristics and representation of white ethnic groups. Their eyes are also big and bulbous in shape, with large irises and pupils, and extraordinarily long eyelashes that create an almost child-like look of innocence that matches their young age. These princesses have an average age of sixteen years and are always naïve, most without formal education or worldly experience, and they have additional distinctive traits which include poise, elegance and other desired feminine characteristics – like kindness and purity. Ehrenreich and Orenstein note that the physical attributes of the Disney princesses are so evident that the creators have drawn criticism for over-glamorising them, and for their general passiveness and reliance on men for their happiness. Essentially, these women are created in the image of the ultimate male fantasy, where an increased value is placed on the virginal look, followed by a perfect tiny body and an ability to follow basic instructions. The slim bodies of these princesses are disproportionate, and include long necks, demure shoulders, medium- to large-sized perky breasts, with tiny waists, wrists, ankles and feet. Thus, it can be argued that the main theme for those within the princess bubble is their physical body and beauty, and the importance of being attractive to achieve success. The importance of the physical form is so valued that the first blessing given by the fairies to Aurora from Sleeping Beauty is the gift of physical beauty (Rutherford). Furthermore, Tanner et al. argue that the "images of love at first sight in the films encourage the belief that physical appearance is the most important thing", and these fairy tales often reflect a pattern that the prince cannot help but to instantly fall in love with these women because they are so striking. In some instances, like the stories of Cinderella and Snow White, these princesses have not uttered a single word to their prince before these men fall unconditionally and hopelessly in love. Cinderella need only to turn up at the ball as the best dressed (Parks), while Snow White must merely “wait prettily, because someday her prince will come" (Inge) to reestablish her as royalty. Disney emphasises that these princesses win their man solely on the basis that they are the most beautiful girls in the land. In Sleeping Beauty, the prince overhears Aurora’s singing and that sets his heart aflame to the point of refusing to wed the woman chosen for him at birth by the king. Fortunately, she is one and the same person, so the patriarchy survives, but this idea of beauty, and of 'love at first sight', continues to be a central part of Disney movies today, and shows that “Disney Films are vehicles of powerful gender ideologies” (Hairianto). These princesses within the bubble of perfection have priority placed on their physical and sexual beauty (Dietz), formulating a kind of ‘beauty contest motif’. Examples include Gaston, who does not love Belle in Beauty and the Beast, but simply wants her as his trophy wife because he deems her to be the most beautiful girl in the town. Ariel, from The Little Mermaid, looks as if she "was modeled after a slightly anorexic Barbie doll with thin waist and prominent bust. This representation portrays a dangerous model for young women" (Zarranz). The sexualisation of the characters continues as Jasmine has “a delicate nose and small mouth" (Lacroix), with a dress that can be considered as highly sexualised and unsuitable for a girl of sixteen (Lacroix). In Tangled, Rapunzel is held hostage in the tower by Mother Gothel because she is ‘as fragile as a flower’ and needs to be ‘kept safe’ from the harms in the world. But it is her beauty that scares the witch the most, because losing Rapunzel would leave the old woman without her magical anti-aging hair. She uses scare tactics to ensure that Rapunzel remains unseen to the world. These examples are all variations of the beauty theme, as the princesses all fall within narrow and predictable tropes of love at first sight where the woman is rescued and initiated into womanhood by being chosen by a man. Disney’s Progressive Representation? At times Disney’s portrayal of princesses appears illusively progressive, by introducing new and different variations of princesses into the fold – such as Merida in the 2012 film Brave. Unfortunately, this is merely an illusion as the ‘body-perfect’ image remains an all-important ideal to snare a prince. Merida, the young and spirited teenage princess, begins her tale determined not to conform to the desired standards set for a woman of her standing; however, when the time comes for her to be married, there is no negotiating with her mother, the queen, on dress compliance. Merida is clothed against her will to re-identify her in the manner which her parents deem appropriate. Her ability to express her identity and individuality removed, now replaced by a masked version, and thus with the true Merida lost in this transformation, her parents consider Merida to be of renewed merit and benefit to the family. This shows that Disney remains unchanged in its depiction of who may ‘fit’ within the princess bubble, because the rubric is unchanged on how to win the heart of the man. In fact, this film is possibly more troublesome than the rest because it clearly depicts her parents to deem her to be of more value only after her mother has altered her physical appearance. It is only after the total collapse of the royal family that King Fergus has a change of patriarchal heart, and in fact Disney does not portray this rumpled, ripped-sleeved version of the princess in its merchandising campaign. While the fantasy of fairy tales provides enthralling adventures that always end in happiness for the pretty princesses that encounter them, consideration must be given to all those women who have not met the standard and are left in their wake. If women do not conform to the standards of representation, they are presented as outcasts, and happiness eludes them. Cinderella, for example, has two ugly stepsisters, who, no matter how hard they might try, are unable to match her in attractiveness, kindness, or grace. Disney has embraced and not shunned Perrault’s original retelling of the tale, by ensuring that these stepsisters are ugly. They have not been blessed with any attributes whatsoever, and cannot sing, dance, or play music; nor can they sew, cook, clean, or behave respectably. These girls will never find a suitor, let alone a prince, no matter how eager they are to do so. On the physical comparison, Anastasia and Drizella have bodies that are far more rounded and voluptuous, with feet, for example, that are more than double the size of Cinderella’s magical slipper. These women clearly miss the parameters of our princess bubble, emphasising that Disney is continuing to promote dangerous narratives that could potentially harm young audience conceptions of femininity at an important period in their development. Therefore, despite the ‘progressive’ strides made by Disney in response to the vast criticism of their earlier films, the agency afforded to their new generation of princesses does not alter the fact that success comes to those who are beautiful. These beautiful people continue to win every time. Furthermore, Hairianto has found that it is not uncommon for the media to directly or indirectly promote “mental models of how a woman should look, speak and interact with others”, and that Disney uses its pervasive princess influence “to shape perceptions of female identity and desirability. Females are made to measure themselves against the set of values that are meted out by the films” (Hairianto). In the 2017 film Beauty and the Beast, those outside of the princess bubble are seen in the characters of the three maidens from the village who are always trying to look their very best in the hope of attracting Gaston (Rutherford). Gaston is not only disinterested but shows borderline contempt at their glances by permitting his horse to spray mud and dirt all over their fine clothing. They do not meet the beauty standard set, and instead of questioning his cruelty, the audience is left laughing at the horse’s antics. Interestingly, the earlier version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast portrays these maidens as blonde, slim, and sexy, closely fitting the model of beauty displayed in our princess bubble; however, none match the beauty of Belle, and are therefore deemed inferior. In this manner, Disney is being irresponsible, placing little interest in the psychological ‘safety’ or affect the messages have upon young girls who will never meet these expectations (Ehrenreich; Best and Lowney; Orenstein). Furthermore, bodies are shaped and created by culture. They are central to self-identity, becoming a projection of how we see ourselves. Grosz (xii) argues that our notions of our bodies begin in physicality but are forever shaped by our interactions with social realities and cultural norms. The media are constantly filled with images that “glorify and highlight some kinds of bodies (for example, the young, able-bodied and beautiful) while ignoring or condemning others” (Jones 193), and these influences on gender, ethnicity, sexuality, race, and religion within popular culture therefore play a huge part in identity creation. In Disney films, the princess bubble constantly sings the same song, and “children view these stereotypical roles as the right and only way to behave” (Ewert). In The Princess and the Frog, Tiana’s friend Charlotte is so desperate to ‘catch’ a prince that "she humorously over-applies her makeup and adjusts her ball gown to emphasize her cleavage" (Breaux), but the point is not lost. Additionally, “making sure that girls become worthy of love seems central to Disney’s fairy tale films” (Rutherford 76), and because their fairy tales are so pervasive and popular, young viewers receive a consistent message that being beautiful and having a tiny doll-like body type is paramount. “This can be destructive for developing girls’ views and images of their own bodies, which are not proportioned the way that they see on screen” (Cordwell 21). “The strongly gendered messages present in the resolutions of the movies help to reinforce the desirability of traditional gender conformity” (England et al. 565). Conclusion The princess bubble is a phenomenon that has been seen in Disney’s representation of female characters for decades. Within this bubble there is a narrow range of representation permitted, and attempts to make the characters more progressive have instead resulted in narrow and restrictive constraints, reinforcing dangerous female stereotypes. Kilmer suggests that ultimately these representations fail to break away from “hegemonic assumptions about gender norms, class boundaries, and Caucasian privileging”. Ultimately this presents audiences with strong and persuasive messages about gender performance. Audiences conform their bodies to societal ‘rules’: “as to how we ‘wear’ and ‘use’ our bodies” (Richardson and Locks x), including for example how we should dress, what we should weigh, and how to become popular. In our global hypermediated society, viewers are constantly exposed to princesses and other appropriate bodies. These become internalised ideals and aid in positive and negative thoughts and self-identity, which in turn creates additional pressure on the female body in particular. The seemingly innocent stories with happy outcomes are therefore unrealistic and ultimately excluding of those who cannot or will not ‘fit into the princess bubble’. The princess bubble, we argue, is therefore predictable and restrictive, promoting female passiveness and a reliance of physical traits over intelligence. The dominance of beauty over all else remains the road to female success in the Disney fairy tale film. References Beauty and the Beast. Dirs. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise. Walt Disney Productions, 1991. Film. Beauty and the Beast. Dir. Bill Condon. Walt Disney Pictures, 2017. Film. Best, Joel, and Kathleen S. Lowney. “The Disadvantage of a Good Reputation: Disney as a Target for Social Problems Claims.” The Sociological Quarterly 50 (2009): 431–449. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2009.01147.x. Brave. Dirs. Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman. Walt Disney Pictures, 2012. Film. Breaux, Richard, M. “After 75 Years of Magic: Disney Answers Its Critics, Rewrites African American History, and Cashes in on Its Racist Past.” Journal of African American Studies 14 (2010): 398-416. Cinderella. Dirs. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hamilton Luske. Walt Disney Productions, 1950. Film. Collins, Rebecca L. “Content Analysis of Gender Roles in Media: Where Are We Now and Where Should We Go?” Sex Roles 64 (2011): 290–298. doi:10.1007/s11199-010-9929-5. Cordwell, Caila Leigh. The Shattered Slipper Project: The Impact of the Disney Princess Franchise on Girls Ages 6-12. Honours thesis, Southeastern University, 2016. Coyne, Sarah M., Jennifer Ruh Linder, Eric E. Rasmussen, David A. Nelson, and Victoria Birkbeck. “Pretty as a Princess: Longitudinal Effects of Engagement with Disney Princesses on Gender Stereotypes, Body Esteem, and Prosocial Behavior in Children.” Child Development 87.6 (2016): 1–17. Dietz, Tracey, L. “An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior.” Sex Roles 38 (1998): 425–442. doi:10.1023/a:1018709905920. England, Dawn Elizabeth, Lara Descartes, and Melissa A. Collier-Meek. "Gender Role Portrayal and the Disney Princesses." Sex Roles 64 (2011): 555-567. Ewert, Jolene. “A Tale as Old as Time – an Analysis of Negative Stereotypes in Disney Princess Movies.” Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences 13 (2014). Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies. London, Routledge, 1994. Inge, M. Thomas. “Art, Adaptation, and Ideology: Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 32.3 (2004): 132-142. Jones, Meredith. “The Body in Popular Culture.” Being Cultural. Ed. Bruce M.Z. Cohen. Auckland University, 2012. 193-210. Kilmer, Alyson. Moving Forward? Problematic Ideology in Twenty-First Century Fairy Tale Films. Central Washington University, 2015. Lacroix, Celeste. “Images of Animated Others: The Orientalization of Disney's Cartoon Heroines from The Little Mermaid to The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Popular Communications 2.4 (2004): 213-229. Little Mermaid, The. Dirs. Ron Clements and John Musker. Walt Disney Pictures, 1989. Film. Maggi, Armando. Preserving the Spell: Basile's "The Tale of Tales" and Its Afterlife in the Fairy-Tale Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Orenstein, Peggy. Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. New York: HarperCollins, 2011. Parks, Kari. Mirror, Mirror: A Look at Self-Esteem & Disney Princesses. Honours thesis. Ball State University, 2012. Pinocchio. Dirs. Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen, Wilfred Jackson, Jack Kinney, Norm Ferguson, Bill Roberts, and T. Lee. Walt Disney Productions, 1940. Film. Princess and the Frog, The. Dirs. Ron Clements and John Musker. Walt Disney Pictures, 2009. Film. Richardson, Niall, and Adam Locks. Body Studies: The Basics. Routledge, 2014. Rutherford, Amanda M. Happily Ever After? A Critical Examination of the Gothic in Disney Fairy Tale Films. Auckland University of Technology, 2020. Sleeping Beauty. Dirs. Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman, and Les Clark. Walt Disney Productions, 1959. Film. Smith, Stacey L., Katherine M. Pieper, Amy Granados, and Mark Choueite. “Assessing Gender-Related Portrayals in Topgrossing G-Rated Films.” Sex Roles 62 (2010): 774–786. Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. Dirs. David Hand, Wilfred Jackson, Ben Sharpsteen, William Cottrell, Perce Pearce, and Larry Morey. Walt Disney Productions, 1937. Film. Tangled. Dirs. Nathan Greno and Byron Howard. Walt Disney Pictures, 2010. Film. Tanner, Litsa RenÉe, Shelley A. Haddock, Toni Schindler Zimmerman, and Lori K. Lund. “Images of Couples and Families in Disney Feature-Length Animated Films.” The American Journal of Family Therapy 31 (2003): 355-373. Warner, Marina. Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds. London: Oxford UP, 2002. Wasko, Janet. Understanding Disney: The Manufacture of Fantasy. Polity Press, 2001. Wohlwend, Karen E. “Damsels in Discourse: Girls Consuming and Producing Identity Texts through Disney Princess Play.” Reading Research Quarterly 44.1 (2009): 57-83. Zarranaz, L. Garcia. “Diswomen Strike Back? The Evolution of Disney's Femmes in the 1990s.” Atenea 27.2 (2007) 55-65.

Apparently some people upon coming across [Down Syndrome dolls] were offended. […] Still, it’s curious, and telling, what gives offense. Was it the shock of seeing a doll not modeled on the normative form that caused such offense? Or the assumption that any representation of Down Syndrome must naturally intend ridicule? Either way, it would seem that we might benefit from an examination of such reactions—especially as they relate to instances of the idealisation of the human form that dolls […] represent. (Faulkner) IntroductionWhen Joanne Faulkner describes public criticism of dolls designed to look like they have Down Syndrome, she draws attention to the need for an examination of the way discourses of disability are communicated. She calls, in particular, for an interrogation of people’s reactions to the disruption of the idealised human form that most dolls adopt. The case of Down Syndrome dolls is fascinating, yet critical discussion of these dolls from a disability or cultural studies perspective is conspicuously lacking. To address this lack, this paper draws upon theories of the cultural construction of disability, beauty, and normalcy (Garland-Thompson, Kumari Campbell, Wendell), to explore the way ideas about disability are communicated and circulated. The dominant discourse of disability is medical, where people are diagnosed or identified as disabled if they meet certain criteria, or lists of physical impairments. These lists have a tendency to subsume the disparate qualities of disability (Garland-Thompson) and remove people considered disabled from the social and cultural world in which they live (Snyder and Mitchell 377). While Down Syndrome dolls, produced by Downi Creations and Helga’s European Speciality Toys (HEST) in the US and Europe respectively, are reflective of such lists, they also perform the cultural function of increasing the visibility of disability in society. In addition, the companies distributing these dolls state that they are striving for greater inclusion of people with Down Syndrome (Collins, Parks). However, the effect of the dominance of medicalised discourses of disability can be seen in the public reaction to these dolls. This paper seeks also to bring an interrogation of disability into dialogue with a critical analysis of the discursive function of lists.The paper begins with a consideration of lists as they have been used to define disability and organise knowledge within medicine, and the impact this has had on the position of disability within society. In order to differentiate itself from medical discourses, the emerging social model also relied on lists during the 1980s and 1990s. However, these lists also decontextualised disability by ignoring certain factors for political advantage. The social model, like medicine, tended to ignore the diversity of humanity it was apparently arguing for (Snyder and Mitchell 377). The focus then shifts to the image of Down Syndrome dolls and the ensuing negative interpretation of them focusing, in particular, on reader comments following a Mail Online (Fisher) article. Although the dolls were debated across the blogosphere on a number of disability, special needs parenting, and Down Syndrome specific blogs, people commenting on The Mail Online—a UK based conservative tabloid newspaper—offer useful insights into communication and meaning making around disability. People establish meanings about disability through communication (Hedlund 766). While cultural responses to disability are influenced by a number of paradigms of interpretation such as superstition, religion, and fear, this paper is concerned with the rejection of bodies that do not ascribe to cultural standards of beauty and seeks to explore this paradigm alongside and within the use of lists by the various models of disability. This paper interrogates the use of lists in the way meanings about disability are communicated through the medical diagnostic list, the Down Syndrome dolls, and reactions to them. Each list reduces the disparate qualities and experiences of disability, yet as a cultural artefact, these dolls go some way towards recognising the social and cultural world that medicalised discourses of disability ignore. Drawing on the use of lists within different frameworks of disability, this paper contrasts the individual, or medical, model of disability (that being disabled is a personal problem) with the social model (that exclusion due to disability is social oppression). Secondly, the paper compares the characteristics of Down Syndrome dolls with actual characteristics of Down Syndrome to conclude that these features aim to be a celebrated, not stigmatised, aspect of the doll. By reasserting alternative notions of the body, the dolls point towards a more diverse society where disability can be understood in relation to social oppression. However, these aims of celebration have not automatically translated to a more diverse understanding. This paper aims to complicate perceptions of disability beyond a rudimentary list of characteristics through a consideration of the negative public response to these dolls. These responses are an example of the cultural subjugation of disability.Lists and the Creation of Normative Cultural ValuesFor Robert Belknap, lists are the dominant way of “organizing data relevant to human functioning” (8). While lists are used in a number of ways and for a variety of purposes, Belknap divides lists into two categories—the practical and the literary. Practical lists store meanings, while literary lists create them (89). Belknap’s recognition of the importance of meaning making is particularly relevant to a cultural interrogation of disability. As Mitchell and Snyder comment:Disability’s representational “fate” is not so much dependant upon a tradition of negative portrayals as it is tethered to inciting the act of meaning-making itself. (6)Disability unites disparate groups of people whose only commonality is that they are considered “abnormal” (Garland-Thompson). Ableism—the beliefs, processes, and practices which produce the ideal body—is a cultural project in which normative values are created in an attempt to neutralise the fact that all bodies are out of control (Kumari Campbell). Medical models use diagnostic lists and criteria to remove bodies from their social and cultural context and enforce an unequal power dynamic (Snyder and Mitchell 377).By comparison, the social model of disability shifts the emphasis to situate disability in social and cultural practices (Goggin and Newell 36). Lists have also been integral to the formation of the social model of disability as theorists established binary oppositions between medical and social understandings of disability (Oliver 22). While these lists have no “essential meaning,” through discourse they shape human experience (Liggett). Lists bring disparate items together to structure meaning and organisation. According to Hedlund, insights into the experience of disability—which is neither wholly medical nor wholly social—can be found in the language we use to communicate ideas about disability (766). For example, while the recent production of children’s dolls designed to reflect a list of the physical features of Down Syndrome (Table 2) may have no inherent meaning, negative public reception reveals recognisable modes of understanding disability. Down Syndrome dolls are in stark contrast to dolls popularly available which assume a normative representation. For Blair and Shalmon (15), popular children’s toys communicate cultural standards of beauty. Naomi Wolf describes beauty as a socially constructed normative value used to disempower women in particular. The idealisation of the human form is an aspect of children’s toys that has been criticised for perpetuating a narrow conception of beauty (Levy 189). Disability is likewise subject to social construction and is part of a collective social reality beyond diagnostic lists (Hedlund 766).Organising Knowledge: The Social vs. Medical Model of DisabilityDisability has long been moored in medical cultures and institutions which emphasise a sterile ideal of the body based on a diagnosis of biological difference as deviance. For example, in 1866, John Langdon Down sought to provide a diagnostic classification system for people with, what would later come to be called (after him), Down Syndrome. He focused on physical features:The hair is […] of a brownish colour, straight and scanty. The face is flat and broad, and destitute of prominence. The cheeks are roundish, and extended laterally. The eyes are obliquely placed, and the internal canthi more than normally distant from one another. The palpebral fissure is very narrow. The forehead is wrinkled transversely from the constant assistance which the levatores palpebrarum derive from the occipito-frontalis muscle in the opening of the eyes. The lips are large and thick with transverse fissures. The tongue is long, thick, and is much roughened. The nose is small. The skin has a slight dirty yellowish tinge, and is deficient in elasticity, giving the appearance of being too large for the body. (Down)These features form what Belknap would describe as a “pragmatic” list (12). For Belknap, scientific classification, such as the description Langdon Down offers above, introduces precision and validation to the use of lists (167). The overt principle linking these disparate characteristics together is the normative body from which these features deviate. Medicalised discourses, such as Down’s list, have been linked with the institutionalisation of people with this condition and their exclusion from the broader community (Hickey-Moody 23). Such emphasis on criteria to proffer diagnosis removes and decontextualises bodies from the world in which they live (Snyder and Mitchell 370). This world may in fact be the disabling factor, rather than the person’s body. The social model emerged in direct opposition to medicalised definitions of disability as a number of activists with disabilities in the United Kingdom formed The Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and concluded that people with disability are disabled not by their bodies but by a world structured to exclude their bodies (Finkelstein 13). By separating disability (socially created) from impairment (the body), disability is understood as society’s unwillingness to accommodate the needs of people with impairments. The British academic and disability activist Michael Oliver was central to the establishment of the social model of disability. Following the activities of the UPIAS, Oliver (re)defined disability as a “form of social oppression,” and created two lists (reproduced below) to distinguish between the social and individual (or medical) models of disability. By utilising the list form in this way, Oliver both provided a repository of information regarding the social model of disability and contextualised it in direct opposition to what he describes as the individual model. These lists present the social model as a coherent discipline, in an easy to understand format. As Belknap argues, the suggestion of order is a major tool of the list (98). Oliver’s list suggests a clear order to the emerging social model of disability—disability is a problem with society, not an individual. However, this list was problematic because it appeared to disregard impairment within the experience of disability. As the “impersonal became political” (Snyder and Mitchell 377), impairment became the unacknowledged ambiguity in the binary opposition the social model was attempting to create (Shakespeare 35). Nevertheless, Oliver’s lists successfully enforced a desired order to the social model of disability. The individual modelThe social modelPersonal tragedy theorySocial oppression theoryPersonal problemSocial problemIndividual treatmentSocial actionMedicalisationSelf helpProfessional dominanceIndividual and collective responsibilityExpertiseExperienceAdjustmentAffirmationIndividual identityCollective identityPrejudiceDiscriminationAttitudesBehaviourCareRightsControlChoicePolicyPoliticsIndividual adaptation Social changeTable 1 The Individual v Social Model of Disability (Oliver)The social model then went through a period of “lists,” especially when discussing media and culture. Positive versus negative portrayals of disability were identified and scholars listed strategies for the appropriate representation of disability (Barnes, Barnes Mercer and Shakespeare). The representations of impairment or the physical markers of disability were discouraged as the discipline concerned itself with establishing disability as a political struggle against a disabling social world. Oliver’s lists arrange certain “facts” about disability. Disability is framed as a social phenomenon where certain aspects are emphasised and others left out. While Oliver explains that these lists were intended to represent extreme ends of a continuum to illustrate the distinction between disability and impairment (33), these are not mutually exclusive categories (Shakespeare 35). Disability is not simply a list of physical features, nor is it a clear distinction between individual/medical and social models. By utilising lists, the social model reacts to and attempts to move beyond the particular ordering provided by the medical model, but remains tied to a system of classification that imposes order on human functioning. Critical analysis of the representation of disability must re-engage the body by moving beyond binaries and pragmatic lists. While lists organise data central to human functioning, systems of meaning shape the organisation of human experience. Down Syndrome dolls, explored in the next section, complicate the distinction between the medical and social models.Down Syndrome DollsThese dolls are based on composites of a number of children with Down Syndrome (Hareyan). Helga Parks, CEO of HEST, describes the dolls as a realistic representation of nine physical features of Down Syndrome. Likewise, Donna Moore of Downi Creations employed a designer to oversee the production of the dolls which boast 13 features of Down Syndrome (Velasquez). These features are listed in the table below. HEST Down Syndrome Dolls Downi CreationsSmall ears set low on head with a fold at the topSmall ears with a fold at the topEars set low on the headSmall mouthSmall mouthProtruding tongueSlightly protruding tongueShortened fingers Shortened fingersPinkie finger curves inwardAlmond shaped eyesAlmond-shaped eyesHorizontal crease in palm of handHorizontal crease in palm of handGap between first and second toeA gap between the first and second toesShortened toesFlattened back of headFlattened back of headFlattened bridge across nose Flattened bridge across noseOptional: An incision in the chest to indicate open-heart surgery Table 2: Down Syndrome Dolls (Parks, Velasquez) Achieving the physical features of Down Syndrome is significant because Parks and Moore wanted children with the condition to recognise themselves:When a child with Down’s syndrome [sic.] picks up a regular doll, he doesn’t see himself, he sees the world’s perception of “perfect.” Our society is so focused on bodily perfection. (Cresswell)Despite these motivations, studies show that children with Down Syndrome prefer to play with “typical dolls” that do not reflect the physical characteristics of Down Syndrome (Cafferty 49). According to Cafferty, it is possible that children prefer typical dolls because they are “more attractive” (49). Similar studies of diverse groups of children have shown that children prefer to play with dolls they perceive as fitting into social concepts of beauty (Abbasi). Deeply embedded cultural notions of beauty—which exclude disability (see Morris)—are communicated from childhood (Blair & Shalmon 15). Notions of bodily perfection dominate children’s toys and Western culture in general as Cresswell comments above. Many bodies, not just those deemed “disabled,” do not conform to these cultural standards. Cultural ideals of beauty and an idealisation of the human body according to increasingly narrow parameters are becoming conflated with conceptions of normality (Wendell 86). Recognition of disability as subject to cultural rejection allows us to see “beauty and normalcy [as] a series of practices and positions [taken] in order to avoid the stigmatization of ugliness and abnormality” (Garland-Thompson). The exaggerated features of the doll problematise the idea that people with disability should strive to appear as nondisabled as possible and in turn highlights that some people, such as those with Down Syndrome, cannot “pass” as nondisabled and must therefore navigate a life and community that is not welcoming. While lists of the features of Down Syndrome store associated medicalised meanings, the discussion of the dolls online (the medium through which they are sold) provides insight into the cultural interpretation of disability and the way meaning is made. The next section of the paper considers a selection of negative responses to the Down Syndrome dolls that followed an article published in Mail Online (Fisher). What Causes Offence? Prior to Down Syndrome dolls, the majority of “disability dolls” were constructed through their accessories rather than through the dolls’ physical form and features. Wheelchairs, white canes, guide dogs and harnesses, plastic walkers, leg braces, and hearing aids could be purchased for use with dolls. Down Syndrome dolls look different as the features of impairment are embedded in the dolls’ construction. While accessories have a more temporary feel about them, the permanence of the impairments attributed to the doll was problematic for some who felt it projected a negative image of disability. Listed below are several negative comments following an article published in Mail Online (Fisher):What a grim world we are living in. No longer are dollies for play, for make believe, or for fun. Now it all about self image and psychological “help.” We “disabled” know we are “disabled”—we don’t need a doll to remind us of that! Stop making everything PC; let children be children and play and laugh once again!I think it’s sick and patronising.Who on earth are those education “experts?” Has nobody told them that you don’t educate children by mirroring their defects/weaknesses/negative traits but by doing exactly the opposite, mirroring back the BEST in them?The Downs Syndrome doll looks like they took the physical traits and presented them in an exaggerated way to make them more noticeable. That doll does not look attractive to me at all. If someone has a child that WANTS such a doll, fine. I can’t really see how it would help many of them, it would be like a huge sign saying “You are different.”The terminology used (grim, sick, patronising, defect, weak, negative, unattractive, different) to describe disability in these posts is significant. These descriptions are ideological categories which disadvantage and devalue “bodies that do not conform to certain cultural standards” (Garland-Thompson). Implicit and explicit in all of these comments is the sense that disability and Downs Syndrome in particular is undesirable, unattractive even. When listed together, like Belknap’s literary lists, they are not random or isolated interpretations; they form part of a larger system of meaning making around disability.These responses are informed by the notion that in order to gain equality in society, people with disability must suppress their difference and focus instead on how they are really just like everybody else. However, this focus ignores barriers to inclusion, such as in the rejection of bodies that do not ascribe to cultural standards of beauty. An increasing visibility of impairment in popular culture such as children’s toys advances an understanding of disability as diversity through difference and not something inherently bad. ConclusionPeter Laudin of Pattycake Doll, a company which sells Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Disabled dolls, has found that children “love all dolls unconditionally whether it’s special needs or not” (Lee Adam). He suggests that the majority of the negative responses to the Down Syndrome dolls stem from prejudice (Lee Adam). Dolls popularly available idealise the human form and assume a normative representation. While this has been criticised for communicating damaging standards of beauty from childhood (Levy, Blair and Shalmon), critiques about disability are not as widely understood. The social and medical models of disability focus attention on certain aspects of disability through lists; however, the reduction of diagnostic criteria in the form of a list (whether medical or social) decontextualises disability from the social and cultural world. Thus, the list form, while useful, has elided the disparate qualities of disability. As Belknap argues, lists “ask us to make them meaningful” (xv). Although the dolls discussed in this paper have been criticised for stereotyping and emphasising the difference between children with disability and those without, an inclusion of the physical features of Down Syndrome is consistent with recent moves within critical disability studies to re-engage the body (Shakespeare 35). As Faulkner notes in the epigraph to this paper, an examination of negative reactions to these dolls reveals much about the cultural position of people with disability. References Abbasi, Jennifer. “Why 6-Year Old Girls Want to be Sexy.” Live Science 16 July (2012). 30 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.livescience.com/21609-self-sexualization-young-girls.html›. Barnes, Colin. Disabling Imagery and the Media: An Exploration of the Principles for Media Representations of Disabled People. Krumlin Halifax: Ryburn Publishing, 1992. 5 Aug. 2012 http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Barnes/disabling%20imagery.pdf.Barnes, Colin, Geoff Mercer, and Tom Shakespeare. Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction. Malden: Polity Press, 1999.Belknap, Robert. The List: The Uses and Pleasures of Cataloguing. New Haven: Yale U P, 2004.Blair, Lorrie, and Maya Shalmon. “Cosmetic Surgery and the Cultural Construction of Beauty.” Art Education 58.3 (2005): 14-18.Cafferty, Diana De Rosa. A Doll Like Me: Do Children with Down Syndrome Prefer to Play with Dolls That Have the Physical Features Associated with Down Syndrome? MS thesis. U of California, 2012. Campbell, Fiona Kumari. Contours of Ableism: The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.Collins, Allyson. “Dolls with Down Syndrome May Help Kids.” ABC News. 27 Jun. 2008. 4 Oct. 2012 ‹http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Parenting/story?id=5255393&page=1#.UGzQXK6T-XP›. Cresswell, Adam. “Dolls with Disability Divide Opinion.” The Australian 12 Jul. 2008. 26 Dec. 2008 ‹http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24000338-23289,00.html›.Down, John Langdon. “Observations on an Ethnic Classification of Idiots.” Neonatology on the Web. 1866. 3 Aug. 2012 ‹http://www.neonatology.org/classics/down.html›.Faulkner, Joanne “Disability Dolls.” What Sorts of People? 26 Jun. 2008. 29 Aug. 2012 ‹http://whatsortsofpeople.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/disability-dolls/›.Finkelstein, Vic. “Representing Disability.” Disabling Barriers—Enabling Environments. Ed. John Swain, et al. Los Angeles: Sage, 2004. 13-20.Fisher, Lorraine. “Parents’ Fury at ‘Down's Syndrome Dolls’ Designed to Help Children Deal with Disability.” Mail Online 7 Jul. 2008. 26 Dec. 2008. ‹http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1032600/Parents-fury-Downs-Syndrome-dolls-designed-help-children-deal-disability.html›. 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Introduction In The X-Files episode “Humbug”, agents Scully and Mulder travel to Florida to investigate a series of murders taking place in a community of sideshow performers, or freaks. At the episode’s end, one character, a self-made freak and human blockhead, muses on the future of the freak community:twenty-first century genetic engineering will not only eradicate the Siamese twins and the alligator-skinned people, but you’re going to be hard-pressed to find a slight overbite or a not-so-high cheek bone … . Nature abhors normality. It can’t go very long without creating a mutant. (“Humbug”) Freaks, he says, are there to remind people of the necessity of mutations. His observation that genetic engineering will eradicate anomalies of nature accurately illustrates the gradual shift that society was witnessing in the late twentieth century away from the anomalous freak and toward surgical perfection. Yet this desire for perfection, which has manifested itself in often severe surgical deformities, has seen a shift in what constitutes the freak for a contemporary audience, turning what was once an anomaly into a mass-produced creation. While the freaks of the nineteenth and early twentieth century were born with facial or anatomical deformities that warranted their place in the sideshow performance (bearded ladies, midgets, faints, lobster men, alligator-skinned people, etc.), freaks of the twenty-first century can be seen as something created by a plastic surgeon, a shift which undermines the very understanding of freak ontology. As Katherine Dunne put it: “a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born” (28). In her discussion of the monstrous body, Linda Williams writes that “the monster’s body is perceived as freakish in its possession of too much or too little” (63). This may have included a missing or additional limb, distorted sizes and heights, and anatomical growths. John Merrick, or the “Elephant Man” (fig. 1), as he was famously known, perfectly embodied this sense of excess that is vital to what people perceive as the monstrous body. In his discussion of freaks and the freakshow, Robert Bogdan notes that promotional posters exaggerated the already-deformed nature of freaks by emphasising certain physical anomalies and turning them into mythological creatures: “male exhibits with poorly formed arms were billed as ‘The Seal Man’; with poorly formed legs, ‘the Frog Man’; with excesses of hair, ‘The Lion Man’ or ‘Dog Boy’” (100). Figure 1: John Merrick (the Elephant Man) <https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/193584483966192229/>.The freak’s anomalous nature made them valuable, financially but also culturally: “in many ways, the concept of ‘freak,’ is an anomaly in current social scientific thinking about demonstrable human variation. During its prime the freak show was a place where human deviance was valuable, and in that sense valued” (Bogdan 268). Many freaks were presented as “human wonders”, while “their claims to fame were quite commonplace” (Bogdan 200). Indeed, Bogdan argues that “while highly aggrandized exhibits really were full of grandeur, with respectable freaks the mundane was exploited as amazing and ordinary people were made into human wonders” (200). Lucian Gomoll similarly writes that freakshows “directed judgement away from the audience and onto the performers, assuring observers of their own unmarked normalcy” (“Objects of Dis/Order” 205).The anomalous nature of the freak therefore promoted the safety of normality at the same time as it purported to showcase the brilliance of the extraordinary. While the freaks themselves were normal, intelligent people, the freakshow served as a vehicle to gaze at oneself with a sense of relief. As much as many freakshows attempt to dismantle notions of normality, they serve to emphasise empathy, not envy. The anomalous freak is never an envied body; the particular dimensions of the freakshow mean that it is the viewer who is to be envied, and the freak who is to be pitied. From Freakshow to SideshowIn nineteenth-century freakshows, exploitation was rife; as Alison Piepmeier explains, “many of the so-called Aztecs, Pinheads, and What Is Its?”, were, in fact, “mentally disabled people dressed in wild costumes and forced to perform” (53). As a result, “freakishness often implied loss of control over one’s self and one’s destiny” (53). P.T. Barnum profited from his exploitation of freaks, while many freaks themselves also benefited from being exhibited. As Jessica Williams writes, “many freak show performers were well paid, self-sufficient, and enjoyed what they did” (69). Bogdan similarly pointed out that “some [freaks] were exploited, it is true, but in the culture of the amusement world, most human oddities were accepted as showmen. They were congratulated for parlaying into an occupation [that], in another context, might have been a burden” (268). Americans of all classes, Anissa Janine Wardi argues, enjoyed engaging in the spectacle of the freak. She writes that “it is not serendipitous that the golden age of the freak show coincided with the building of America’s colonial empire” (518). Indeed, the “exploration of the non-Western world, coupled with the transatlantic slave trade, provided the backdrop for America’s imperialist gaze, with the native ‘other’ appearing not merely in the arena of popular entertainment, but particularly in scientific and medical communities” (518). Despite the accusations levelled against Barnum, his freakshows were seen as educational and therefore beneficial to both the public and the scientific community, who, thanks to Barnum, directly benefited from the commercialisation of and rising public interest in the freak. Discussing “western conventions of viewing exotic others”, Lucian Gomoll writes that “the freak and the ‘normal’ subject produced each other in a relationship of uneven reciprocity” (“Feminist Pleasures” 129). He writes that Barnum “encouraged onlookers to define their own identities in contrast to those on display, as not disabled, not animalistic, not androgynous, not monstrous and so on”. By the twentieth century, he writes, “shows like Barnum’s were banned from public spaces as repugnant and intolerable, and forced to migrate to the margins” (129).Gomoll commends the Freakatorium, a museum curated by the late sword swallower Johnny Fox, as “demonstrating and commemorating the resourcefulness and talents of those pushed to the social margins” (“Objects of Dis/Order” 207). Gomoll writes that Fox did not merely see freaks as curiosities in the way that Barnum did. Instead, Fox provided a dignified memorial that celebrated the uniqueness of each freak. Fox’s museum displays, he writes, are “respectable spaces devoted to the lives of amazing people, which foster potential empathy from the viewers – a stark contrast to nineteenth-century freakshows” (205). Fox himself described the necessity of the Freakatorium in the wake of the sideshow: New York needs a place where people can come see the history of freakdom. People that were born with deformities that were still amazing and sensitive people and they allowed themselves to be viewed and exhibited. They made a good living off doing that. Those people were to be commended for their courageousness and bravery for standing in front of people. (Hartzman)Fox also described the manner in which the sideshow circuit was banned over time:then sideshows went out because some little girl was offended because she thought the only place she could work was the sideshow. Her mother thought it was disgraceful that people exhibited themselves so she started calling the governor and state’s attorney trying to get sideshows banned. I think it was Florida or South Carolina. It started happening in other states. They said no exhibiting human anomalies. These people who had been working in sideshows for years had their livelihood taken away from them. What now, they’re supposed to go be institutionalized? (Hartzman) Elizabeth Stephens argues that a shift occurred in the early twentieth century, and that by the late ‘30s “people with physical anomalies had been transformed in the cultural imagination from human oddities or monsters to sick people requiring diagnoses and medical intervention” (Stephens). Bogdan noted that by the 1930s, “the meaning of being different changed in American society. Scientific medicine had undermined the mystery of certain forms of human variation, and the exotic and aggrandized modes had lost their flamboyant attractiveness” (274). So-called freaks became seen as diseased bodies who “were now in the province of physicians, not the general public” (274). Indeed, scientific interest transformed the freak into a medical curiosity, contributing to the waning popularity of freakshows. Ironically, although the freaks declined in popularity as they moved into the medical community, medicine would prove to be the domain of a new kind of freak in the ensuing years. The Manufactured Freak As the freakshow declined in popularity, mainstream culture found other subjects whose appearance provoked curiosity, awe, and revulsion. Although plastic surgery is associated with the mid-to-late twentieth century and beyond, it has a long history in the medical practice. In A History of Plastic Surgery, Paolo Santoni-Rugiu and Philip J. Sykes note that “operations for the sole purpose of improving appearances came on the scene in 1906” (322). Charles C. Miller was one of the earliest pioneers of plastic surgery; Santoni-Rugiu and Sykes write that “he never disguised the fact that his ambition was to do Featural Surgery, correcting imperfections that from a medical point of view were not considered to be deformities” (302). This attitude would fundamentally transform notions of the “normal” body. In the context of cosmetic surgery, it is the normal body that becomes manipulated in order to produce something which, despite intentions, proves undoubtedly freakish. Although men certainly engage in plastic surgery (notably Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff) the twenty-first century surgical freak is synonymous with women. Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs points out the different expectations levelled against men and women with respect to ageing and plastic surgery. While men, she says, “are closely scrutinised for attempting to hide signs of ageing, particularly hair loss”, women, in contrast, “are routinely maligned if they fail to hide the signs of ageing” (363). She observes that while popular culture may accept the ageing man, the ageing woman is less embraced by society. Consequently, women are encouraged—by the media, their fans, and by social norms around beauty—to engage in surgical manipulation, but in such a way as to make their enhancements appear seamless. Women who have successful plastic surgery—in the sense that their ageing is well-hidden—are accepted as having successfully manipulated their faces so as to appear flawless, while those whose surgical exploits are excessive or turn out badly become decidedly freakish. One of the most infamous plastic surgery cases is that of Jocelyn Wildenstein, also known as “catwoman”. Born Jocelynnys Dayannys da Silva Bezerra Périsset in 1940, Wildenstein met billionaire art dealer Alec N. Wildenstein whom she married in the late 1970s. After discovering her husband was being unfaithful, Wildenstein purportedly turned to cosmetic surgery in order to sculpt her face to resemble a cat, her husband’s favourite animal. Ironically but not surprisingly, her husband purportedly screamed in terror when he saw his wife’s revamped face for the first time. And although their relationship ended in divorce, Wildenstein, dubbed “the Bride of Wildenstein”, continued to visit her plastic surgeon, and her face became progressively more distorted over the years (Figure 2). Figure 2: Jocelyn Wildenstein over the years <https://i.redd.it/vhh3yp6tgki31.jpg>. The exaggerated and freakish contours of Wildenstein’s face would undoubtedly remind viewers of the anatomical exaggerations seen in traditional freaks. Yet she does not belong to the world of the nineteenth century freak. Her deformities are self-inflicted in an attempt to fulfil certain mainstream beauty ideals to exaggerated lengths. Like many women, Wildenstein has repeatedly denied ever having received plastic surgery, claiming that her face is natural, while professing admiration for Brigitte Bardot, her beauty idol. Such denial has made her the target of further criticism, since women are not only expected to conceal the signs of ageing successfully but are also ironically expected to be honest and transparent about having had work done to their faces and bodies, particularly when it is obvious. The role that denial plays not just in Wildenstein’s case, but in plastic surgery cases more broadly, constitutes a “desirability of naturalness” (122), according to Debra Gimlin. There is, she argues, an “aesthetic preference for (surgically enhanced) ‘naturalness’” (122), a desire that sits between the natural body and the freak. This kind of appearance promotes more of an uncanny naturalness that removes signs of ageing but without being excessive; as opposed to women whose use of plastic surgery is obvious (and deemed excessive according to Williams’ “monstrous body”) the unnatural look that some plastic surgery promotes is akin to an absence of normal features, such as wrinkles. One surgeon that Gimlin cites argues that he would not remove the wrinkles of a woman in her 60s: “she’s gonna look like a freak without them”, he says. This admission signifies a clear distinction between what we understand as freakish plastic surgery (Wildenstein) and the not-yet-freakish appearance of women whose surgically enhanced appearance is at once uncanny and accepted, perpetuating norms around plastic surgery and beauty. Denial is thus part of the fabric of performing naturalness and the desire to make the unnatural seem natural, adding another quasi-freakish dimension to the increasingly normalised appearance of surgically enhanced women. While Wildenstein is mocked for her grotesque appearance, in addition to her denial of having had plastic surgery, women who have navigated plastic surgery successfully are congratulated and envied. Although contemporary media increasingly advocates the ability to age naturally, with actresses like Helen Mirren and Meryl Streep frequently cited as natural older beauties, natural ageing is only accepted to the extent that this look of naturalness is appeasing. Unflattering, unaltered naturalness, on the other hand, is demonised, with such women encouraged to turn to the knife after all in order to achieve a more acceptable look of natural ageing, one that will inevitably and ironically provoke further criticism. For women considering plastic surgery, they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Grant McCracken notes the similarities between Wildenstein and the famous French body artist Orlan: “like Orlan, Wildenstein had engaged in an extravagant, destructive creativity. But where Orlan sought transformational opportunity by moving upward in the Renaissance hierarchy, toward saints and angels, Wildenstein moved downwards, toward animals” (25). McCracken argues that it isn’t entirely clear whether Orlan and Wildenstein are “outliers or precursors” to the contemporary obsession with plastic surgery. But he notes how the transition of plastic surgery from a “shameful secret” to a ubiquitous if not obligatory phenomenon coincides with the surgical work of Orlan and Wildenstein. “The question remains”, he says, “what will we use this surgery to do to ourselves? Orlan and Wildenstein suggest two possibilities” (26).Meredith Jones, in her discussion of Wildenstein, echoes the earlier sentiments of Williams in regards to the monster’s body possessing too much or too little. In Wildenstein’s case, her freakishness is provoked by excess: “when too many body parts become independent they are deemed too disparate: wayward children who no longer lend harmony or respect to their host body. Jocelyn Wildenstein’s features do this: her cheeks, her eyes, her forehead and her lips are all striking enough to be deemed untoward” (125). For Jones, the combination of these features “form a grotesquery that means their host can only be deemed, at best, perversely beautiful” (125). Wildenstein has been referred to as a “modern-day freak”, and to a certain extent she does share something in common with the nineteenth century freak, specifically through the manner in which her distorted features invite viewers to gawk. Like the Elephant Man, her freakish body possesses “too much”, as Williams put it. Yet her appearance evokes none of the empathy afforded traditional freaks, whose facial or anatomical deformities were inherent and thus cause for empathy. They played no role in the formation of their deformities, only reclaiming agency once they exhibited themselves. While Wildenstein is, certainly, an anomaly in the sense that she is the only known woman who has had her features surgically altered to appear cat-like, her appearance more broadly represents an unnerving trajectory that reconstructs the freak as someone manufactured rather than born, upending Katherine Dunne’s assertion that true freaks are born, not made. Indeed, Wildenstein can be seen as a precursor to Nannette Hammond and Valeria Lukyanova, women who surgically enhanced their faces and bodies to resemble a real-life Barbie doll. Hammond, a woman from Cincinnati, has been called the first ‘Human Barbie’, chronicling the surgical process on her Instagram account. She states that her children and husband are “just so proud of me and what I’ve achieved through surgery” (Levine). This surgery has included numerous breast augmentations, botox injections and dental veneers, in addition to eyelash extensions and monthly fake tans. But while Hammond is certainly considered a “scalpel junkie”, Valeria Lukyanova’s desire to transform herself into a living Barbie doll is particularly uncanny. Michael’s Idov’s article in GQ magazine titled: “This is not a Barbie Doll. This is an Actual Human Being” attests to the uncanny appearance of Lukyanova. “Meeting Valeria Lukyanova is the closest you will come to an alien encounter”, Idov writes, describing the “queasy fear” he felt upon meeting her. “A living Barbie is automatically an Uncanny Valley Girl. Her beauty, though I hesitate to use the term, is pitched at the exact precipice where the male gaze curdles in on itself.” Lukyanova, a Ukrainian, admits to having had breast implants, but denies that she has had any more modifications, despite the uncanny symmetry of her face and body that would otherwise allude to further surgeries (Figure 3). Importantly, Lukyanova’s transformation both fulfils and affronts beauty standards. In this sense, she is at once freakish but does not fit the profile of the traditional freak, whose deformities are never confused with ideals of beauty, at least not in theory. While Johnny Fox saw freaks as talented, unique individuals, their appeal was borne of their defiance of the ideal, rather than a reinforcement of it, and the fact that their appearance was anomalous and unique, rather than reproducible at whim. Figure 3: Valeria Lukyanova with a Barbie Doll <http://shorturl.at/mER06>.Conclusion As a modern-day freak, these Barbie girls are a specific kind of abomination that undermines the very notion of the freak due to their emphasis on acceptance, on becoming mainstream, rather than being confined to the margins. As Jones puts it: “if a trajectory […] is drawn between mainstream cosmetic surgery and these individuals who have ‘gone too far’, we see that while they may be ‘freaks’ now, they nevertheless point towards a moment when such modifications could in fact be near mainstream” (188). The emphasis that is placed on mainstream acceptance and reproducibility in these cases affronts traditional notions of the freak as an anomalous individual whose features cannot be replicated. But the shift that society has seen towards genetic and surgical perfection has only accentuated the importance of biological anomalies who affront the status quo. While Wildenstein and the Barbie girls may provoke a similar sense of shock, revulsion and pity as the Elephant Man experienced, they possess none of the exceptionality or cultural importance of real freaks, whose very existence admonishes mainstream standards of beauty, ability, and biology. References Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1990. Dunne, Katherine. Geek Love. London: Abacus, 2015. Fairclough-Isaacs, Kirsty. "Celebrity Culture and Ageing." Routledge Handbook of Cultural Gerontology. Eds. Julia Twigg and Wendy Martin. New York: Routledge, 2015. 361-368.Gimlin, Debra. Cosmetic Surgery Narratives: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Women’s Accounts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Gommol, Lucian. “The Feminist Pleasures of Coco Rico’s Social Interventions.” Art and the Artist in Society. Eds. José Jiménez-Justiniano, Elsa Luciano Feal, and Jane Elizabeth Alberdeston. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. 119-134. ———. “Objects of Dis/Order: Articulating Curiosities and Engaging People at the Freakatorium.” Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities. Eds. Amy K. Levin and Joshua G. Adair. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. 197-212. Hartzman, Marc. “Johnny Fox: A Tribute to the King of Swords.” Weird Historian. 17 Dec. 2017. <https://www.weirdhistorian.com/johnny-fox-a-tribute-to-the-king-of-swords/>.“Humbug.” The X-Files: The Complete Season 3. Writ. Darin Morgan. Dir. Kim Manners. Fox, 2007. Idov, Michael. “This Is Not a Barbie Doll. This Is an Actual Human Being.” GQ. 12 July 2017. <https://www.gq.com/story/valeria-lukyanova-human-barbie-doll>.Jones, Meredith. Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery. Oxford: Berg, 2008.McCracken, Grant. Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2008.Levine, Daniel D. “Before and After: What $500,000 of Plastic Surgery Bought Human Barbie.” PopCulture.com. 7 Dec. 2017. <https://popculture.com/trending/news/nannette-hammond-before-human-barbie-cost-photos/>. Piepmeier, Alison. Out in Public: Configurations of Women's Bodies in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill and London: U of North Carolina P, 2004. Santoni-Rugiu, Paolo, and Philip J. Sykes. A History of Plastic Surgery. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2017. Stephens, Elizabeth. “Twenty-First Century Freak Show: Recent Transformations in the Exhibition of Non-Normative Bodies.” Disability Studies Quarterly 25.3 (2005). <https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/580/757>.Wardi, Anissa Janine. “Freak Shows, Spectacles, and Carnivals: Reading Jonathan Demme’s Beloved.” African American Review 39.4 (Winter 2005): 513-526.Williams, Jessica L. Media, Performative Identity, and the New American Freak Show. London and New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. Williams, Linda. “When the Woman Looks.” Horror, The Film Reader. Ed. Mark Jancovich. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 61-66.

Anomaly: something different, abnormal, peculiar, not easily classified or classifiable; a deviation; a detour. Something out of time and out of place. No longer can we read the anomaly without considering the larger global crisis of COVID-19. Where were we if not out of time during the temporal disjunction – time out of joint, after Shakespeare – of worldwide lockdowns, which coincided with the time of proposal and submission, the time of reading and editing this issue? Where were we, as scholars in North America, if not out of place when we set out to curate a collection of essays in a journal which “originated” down under? A related question: what happens when the anomaly becomes standardised as the norm?Daniel Fineman’s “The Anomaly of Anomaly of Anomaly” inverts the paradigm of scientific expression, opening the “philosophically unassailable” to “metaphysical, political, and ethical challenge” to make a claim about the anomaly as a reflection of global misrepresentation and the prevailing powers of governance. To accomplish this, Fineman returns to the metrics system, the cooptation of the 18th century’s democratic revolutions by “representative” governments, and the so-called “Second Law of Thermodynamics”.What happens, moreover, when anomaly falls back onto social practices, and informs the way academia perceives social formations? Christopher Little raises this issue when reviewing the literature produced on “Chav” subculture, and how the anomalous Chav intersects with race, class, ethnicity, and consumer culture.The ways in which social practices inform and intersect with national patterns of belonging and exclusion have never been more apparent than during the current pandemic. In Michelle Aung Thin’s contribution, the smartphone is read as an anomalous, hybrid, and foreign object with connotations of fluidity and connection, all dangerous qualities in Myanmar, a conservative, former pariah state. Within the framework of recent scholarship on mixed race identification and affect theory, Aung Thin addresses deeply held fears around ethnic belonging, cultural adeptness, and hybridity, tracing these anxieties to the original scene of colonisation. The smartphone, in her essay, acts as a conduit – between pre-colonial Mandalay and contemporary Yangon – and a reminder of historical trauma.In an essay that unpacks the complexity of a music video by Japanese Breakfast, the solo musical project of Michelle Zauner, Runchao Liu posits identificatory ghostly performances as a locus of confrontation between past and present. In her analysis of what she defines as “ghostly matters: the hanbok and the manicured nails”, Liu locates both “the conjuring-up of the Korean diaspora and the troubling of everyday post-racial America”, where the connections between ethnic concerns and anomaly are both discomposed and concretised. Starting from the theoretical premises laid out by Gilles Deleuze, who maintained that computational processes were incompatible with anomaly, Emma Stamm sets out to prove the contrary, grounding her analysis on the work of M. Beatrice Fazi, while applying it to the specific field of live-coded music. Through a close treatment of the improvisational techniques involved in the processes of writing audio computer functions for the production of “sound in real time”, Stamm herself produces a characterisation of the aesthetic dimensions of live coding that problematises the divisions between discrete and continuous media.The anomalous body of the freak, from its early manifestation to its contemporary manufactured exaggeration of contemporary beauty standards, is the subject of Siobhan Lyons’s investigation of the freak as biological anomaly. Drawing on the parallel ascent of “Catwoman” and real-life “Barbie”, the author connects earlier manifestations of the biological freak to the mediatic resonance given to what she defines as “the twenty-first century surgical freak”.Jasmine Chen’s exploration of Pili puppetry, a popular TV series depicting martial arts-based narratives and fight sequences, reveals how this “anomalous media form ... proliferates anomalous media viewing experiences and desires in turn”. Her attention to the culture of fandom and cosplay attends to a broader structural shift: the “reversible dialectic between fan-star and flesh-object”.Shifting this volume’s inquiry from popular culture to architecture, we turn to Patrick Leslie West and Cher Coad, and their close reading of the CCTV Headquarters as “an anomaly within an anomaly in contemporary Beijing’s urban landscape”, due to the collision of classical China and the “predominantly capitalist and neo-liberalist ‘social relationship’ of China and the Western world”. Recalling Roberto Schwarz’s argument, that “forms are the abstract of specific social relationships” (53), the authors conclude that the real “site of this unsettlement” is data. We end where we begin, with our featured article by Bronwyn Fredericks, who includes architecture among the practices that have evidenced the fraught relationship between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous people, using the University of Queensland and its Great Court as a landscape and a case study. Dismantling the perception of Indigeneity as anomalous, Fredericks articulates the visibility of Indigenous voices and sovereignty, ultimately establishing their presence and power through mixed-media events and collaborative writing productions.Ultimately, our aim for this issue, and the response of its contributions, revolve on this question of power relations, and, indeed, on the politics of presence: to make anomaly visible, not as outlier or aberration, but as meta-textual shift, a symptom of and a reaction to larger conditions encompassing and obscured by the technical processes of logistics and the neoliberal governance that organise our everyday life. We hope that closer consideration to such a performative shift, explored here in its multiple and various facets, might also constitute a critical response.ReferencesSchwarz, Roberto. Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture. New York: Verso, 1992.

IntroductionThis paper addresses two separate notions of embodiment – western maternal embodiment and art making as a form of embodied critical resistance. It takes as its subject breeder; my unpublished five minute video installation from 2012, which synthesises these two separate conceptual framings of embodiment as a means to visually and conceptually rupture dominant ideologies surrounding Australian motherhood. Emerging from a paradoxical landscape of fear, loathing and desire, breeder is my dark satirical take on ambivalent myths surrounding suburban Australian motherhood. Portraying my white, heavily pregnant body breeding, cooking and consuming pink, sugar-coated butterflies, breeder renders literal the Australian mother as both idealised nation-builder and vilified, self-indulgent abuser. A feminine reification of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Children, breeder attempts to make visible my own grapplings with maternal ambivalence, to complicate even further, the already strained position of motherhood within the Australian cultural imaginary. Employing the mediums of video and performance to visually manifest an ambivalent protagonist who displays both nurturing maternal ideals and murderous inclinations, breeder pushes contradictory maternal expectations to their breaking point and challengingly offers the following proposition: “This is what you want; but what you’ll get is so much more than you bargained for” (Grosz 136). Drawing upon critical, feminist theorising that challenges idealised views of motherhood; accounts of motherhood by mothers themselves; as well as my own personal grapplings with maternal expectations, this paper weaves reflexive writing with textual analysis to explore how an art-based methodology of embodied critical resistance can problematise representations of motherhood within Australia. By visualising the disjuncture between dominant representations of motherhood that have saturated Australian mainstream media since the late 1990s and the complex ambivalent reality of some women’s actual experiences of mothering, this paper discusses how breeder’s intimate portrayal of maternal domesticity at the limits of tolerability, critically resists socially acceptable mothering practices by satirising the cultural construct of motherhood as a means “to use it, deform it, and make it groan and protest” (Nietzsche qtd. in Gutting).Contradictory Maternal KnowledgeImages of motherhood are all around us; communicating ideals and stereotypes that tell us how mothers should feel, think and act. But these images and the concepts of motherhood that underpin them are full of contradictions. Cultural representations of the idealised and sometimes “yummy mummy” - middle class, attractive, healthy, sexy and heterosexual – (see Fraser; Johnson), contrast with depictions of “bad” mothers, leading to motherhood being simultaneously idealised and demonised within the popular press (Bullen et al.; McRobbie, Top Girls; McRobbie, In the Aftermath; McRobbie, Reflections on Feminism; Walkerdine et al.). Mothers own accounts of motherhood reflect these unsettling contradictions (Miller; Thomson et al.; Wilkinson). Claiming the maternal experience is both “heaven and hell” due to the daily experience of irreconcilable and contradictory feelings (Coward), mothers (myself included), silently struggle between feelings of extreme love and opposing feelings of failure, despair and hate as we get caught up in trying to achieve a set of ideals that promulgate standards of perfection that are beyond our reach. Surrounded by images of motherhood that do not resonate with the contradictory nature of the lived maternal experience, mothers are “torn in two” as we desperately try to reconcile or find absolution for maternal emotions that dominant cultural representations of motherhood render unacceptable. According to Roszika Parker, this complicated and contradictory experience where a mother has both loving and hating feelings for her child is that of maternal ambivalence; a form of exquisite suffering that oscillates between the overwhelming affect of blissful gratification and the raw edges of bitter resentment (Parker 1). As Parker states, maternal ambivalence refers to:Those fleeting (or not so fleeting) feelings of hatred for a child that can grip a mother, the moment of recoil from a much loved body, the desire to abandon, to smash the untouched plate of food in a toddler’s face, to yank a child’s arm while crossing the road, scrub too hard with a face cloth, change the lock on an adolescent or the fantasy of hurling a howling baby out of the window (5).However, it is not only feelings of hatred that stir up ambivalence in the mother, so too can the overwhelming intensity of love itself render the rush of ambivalence so surprising and so painful. Commenting on the extreme contradictory emotions that fill a mother and how not only excessive hatred, but excessive love can turn dangerously fatal, Parker turns to Simone De Beauvoir’s idea of “carnal plenitude”; that is, where the child elicits from the mother, the emotion of domination; where the child becomes the “other” who is both prey and double (30). For Parker, De Beauvoir’s “carnal plenitude” is imaged by mothers in a myriad of ways, from a desire to gobble up the child, to feelings of wanting to gather the child into a fatal smothering hug. Commenting on her own unsettling love/hate relationship with her child, Adrienne Rich describes her experiences of maternal ambivalences as “the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves and blissful gratification and tenderness” (363). Unable to come to terms with this paradox at the core of the unfolding process of motherhood, our culture defends itself against this illogical ambivalence in the mother by separating the good nurturing mother from the bad neglectful mother in an attempt to deny the fact that they are one and the same. Resulting in a culture that either denigrates or idealises mothers, we are constantly presented with images of the good perfect nurturing mother and her murderous alter ego; the bad fatal mother who neglects and smothers. This means that how a mother feels about mothering or the meaning it has for her, is heavily determined by cultural representations of motherhood. Arguing for a creative transformation of the maternal that breaches the mutual exclusivities that separate motherhood, I am called to action by Susan Rubin Suleiman, who writes (quoting psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch): “Mothers don’t write, they are written” (Suleiman 5). As a visual attempt to negotiate, translate and thus “write” my lived experience of Australian motherhood, breeder gives voice to the raw material of contradictory (and often taboo experiences) surrounding maternal embodiment and subjectivity. Hijacking and redeploying contradictory understandings and representations of Australian motherhood to push maternal ideals to their breaking point, breeder seeks to create a kind of “mother trouble” that challenges the disjuncture between dominant social constructions of motherhood designed to keep us assigned to our proper place. Viscerally embracing the reality that much of life with small children revolves around loss of control and disintegration of physical boundaries, breeder visually explores the complex and contradictory performances surrounding lived experiences of mothering within Australia to complicate even further the already strained position of western maternal embodiment.Situated Maternal KnowledgeOver the last decade and a half, women’s bodies and their capacity to reproduce have become centre stage in the unfolding drama of Australian economic policy. In 1999 fears surrounding dwindling birth-rates and less future tax revenue, led then Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett to address a number of exclusive private girls’ schools. Making Australia-wide headlines, Kennett urged these affluent young women to abandon their desire for a university degree and instead invited them to consider motherhood as the ultimate career choice (Dever). In 2004, John Howard’s Liberal government made headlines as they announced the new maternity allowance; a $3000 lump-sum financial incentive for women to leave work and have babies. Ending this announcement by urging the assembled gathering of mostly male reporters to go home and have “one for the Dad, one for the Mum and one for the Country” (Baird and Cutcher 103), Federal Treasurer Peter Costello made a last ditch effort to save Baby Boomers from their imminent pensionless doom. Failing to come to terms with the impending saturation of the retirement market without the appropriate tax payer support, the Liberal Government turned baby-making into the ultimate Patriotic act as they saw in women bodies, the key to prevent Australia’s looming economic crisis. However, not all women’s bodies were considered up to the job of producing the longed for “Good tax-paying Citizen” (Tyler). Kennett only visited exclusive private girls’ schools (Ferrier), headhunting only the highest calibre of affluent breeders. Blue-collar inter-mingling was to be adamantly discouraged. Costello’s 2004 “baby bonus” catch-cry not only caused international ire, but also implicitly relegated the duty of child-bearing patriotism to a normalised heterosexual, nuclear family milieu. Unwed or lesbian mothers need not apply. Finally, as government spokespeople repeatedly proclaimed that the new maternity allowance was not income tested, this suggested that the target nation-builder breeder demographic was the higher than average income earner. Let’s get it straight people – only highly skilled, high IQ’s, heterosexual, wedded, young, white women were required in this exclusive breeding program (see Allen and Osgood; Skeggs; Tyler). And if the point hadn’t already been made perfectly clear, newspaper tabloids, talkback radio and current affairs programs all over the country were recruited to make sure the public knew exactly what type of mother Australia was looking for. Out of control young, jobless single mothers hit the headlines as fears abounded that they were breeding into oblivion. An inherently selfish and narcissistic lot, you could be forgiven for thinking that Australia was running rampant with so-called bogan single mothers, who left their babies trapped in hot airless cars in casino carparks all over the country as they spent their multiple “baby bonus’” on booze, ciggies, LCD’s and gambling (see Milne; O’Connor; Simpson and Dowling). Sucking the economy dry as they leeched good tax-payer dollars from Centrelink, these undesirables were the mothers Australia neither needed nor wanted. Producing offspring relegated to the category of bludgerhood before they could even crawl, these mothers became the punching bag for the Australian cultural imaginary as newspaper headlines screamed “Thou Shalt Not Breed” (Gordon). Seen as the embodiment of horror regarding the ever out-of-control nature of women’s bodies, these undesirable mothers materialised out of a socio-political landscape that although idealised women’s bodies as Australia’s economic saviour, also feared their inability to be managed and contained. Hoarding their capacity to reproduce for their own selfish narcissistic desires, these white trash mothers became the horror par excellence within the Australian cultural imaginary as they were publically regarded as the vilified evil alter-ego of the good, respectable white affluent young mother Australian policy makers were after. Forums all over the country were inundated. “Yes,” the dominant voices seemed to proclaim: “We want to build our population. We need more tax-paying citizens. But we only want white, self-less, nurturing, affluent mothers. We want women who can breed us moral upstanding subjects. We do not want lazy good for nothing moochers.” Emerging from this paradoxical maternal landscape of fear, loathing and desire, breeder is a visual and performative manifestation of my own inability to come to terms with the idealisation and denigration of motherhood within Australia. Involving a profound recognition that the personal is still the political, I not only attempt to visually trace the relationship between popular Australian cultural formations and individual experiences, but also to visually “write” my own embodied grapplings with maternal ambivalence. Following the premise that “critique without resistance is empty and resistance without critique is blind” (Hoy 6), I find art practice to be a critically situated and embodied act that can openly resist the power of dominant ideologies by highlighting maternal corporeal transgressions. A creative destablising action, I utilise the mediums of video and performance within breeder to explore personal, historical and culturally situated expectations of motherhood within Australia as a means to subvert dominant ideologies of motherhood within the Australian cultural imaginary. Performing Maternal KnowledgeReworking Goya’s Romantic Gothic vision of fatherhood in Saturn Devouring His Children, breeder is a five minute two-screen video performance that puts an ironic twist to the “good” and “bad” myths of Australian motherhood. Depicting myself as the young white heavily pregnant protagonist breeding monarch butterflies in my suburban backyard, sugar-coating, cooking and then eating them, breeder uses an exaggerated kitsch aesthetic to render literal the Australian mother as both idealistic nation-builder and self-indulgent abuser. Selfishly hoarding my breeding potential for myself, luxuriating and devouring my “offspring” for my own pleasure and delight rather than for the common good, breeder simultaneously defies and is complicit with motherhood expectations within the suburban Australian imaginary. Filmed in my backyard in the southern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, breeder manifests my own maternal ambivalence and deliberately complicates the dichotomous and strained position motherhood holds in western society. Breeder is presented as a two screen video installation. The left screen is a fast-paced, brightly coloured, jump-cut narrative with a pregnant protagonist (myself). It has three main scenes or settings: garden, kitchen and terrace. The right screen is a slow-moving flow of images that shows the entire monarch butterfly breeding cycle in detail; close ups of eggs slowly turning into caterpillars, caterpillars creating cocoons and the gradual opening of wings as butterflies emerge from cocoons. All the while, the metamorphic cycle is aided by the pregnant protagonist, who cares for them until she sets them free of their breeding cage. In the left screen, apricot roses, orange trees, yellow hibiscus bushes, lush green lawns, a swimming pool and an Aussie backyard garden shed are glimpsed as the pregnant protagonist runs, jumps and sneaks up on butterflies while brandishing a red-handled butterfly net; dressed in red high heels and a white lace frock. Bunnies with pink bows jump, dogs in pink collars bark and a very young boy dressed in a navy-blue sailor suit all make cameo appearances as large monarch butterflies are collected and placed inside a child’s cherry red insect container. In a jump-cut transition, the female protagonist appears in a stark white kitchen; now dressed in a bright pink and apricot floral apron and baby-pink hair ribbon tied in a bow in her blonde ponytail. Standing behind the kitchen bench, she carefully measures sugar into a bowl. She then adds pink food colouring into the crystal white sugar, turning it into a bright pink concoction. Cracking eggs and separating them, she whisks the egg whites to form soft marshmallow peaks. Dipping a paint brush into the egg whites, she paints the fluffy mixture onto the butterflies (now dead), which are laid out on a well-used metal biscuit tray. Using her fingers to sprinkle the bright pink sugar concoction onto the butterflies, she then places them into the oven to bake and stands back with a smile. In the third and final scene, the female protagonist sits down at a table in a garden terrace in front of French-styled doors. Set for high tea with an antique floral tea pot and cup, lace table cloth and petit fours, she pours herself a cup of tea. Adding a teaspoon of sugar, she stirs and then selects a strawberry tart from a three-tiered high-tea stand that holds brightly iced cupcakes, cherry friands, tiny lemon meringue pies, sweet little strawberry tarts and pink sugar coated butterflies. Munching her way through tarts, pies, friands and cupcakes, she finally licks her lips and fuchsia tipped fingers and then carefully chooses a pink sugar coated butterfly. Close ups of her crimson coated mouth show her licking the pink sugar-crumbs from lips and fingers as she silently devours the butterfly. Leaning back in chair, she smiles, then picks up a pink leather bound book and relaxes as she begins to read herself into the afternoon. Screen fades to black. ConclusionAs a mother I am all fragmented, contradictory; full of ambivalence, love, guilt and shame. After seventeen years and five children, you would think that I would be used to this space. Instead, it is a space that I battle to come to terms with each and every day. So how to strategically negotiate engrained codes of maternity and embrace the complexities of embodied maternal knowledge? Indeed, how to speak of the difficulties and incomparable beauties of the maternal without having those variously inflected and complex experiences turn into clichés of what enduring motherhood is supposed to be? Visually and performatively grappling with my own fallout from mothering ideals and expectations where sometimes all I feel I am left with is “a monster of selfishness and intolerance” (Rich 363), breeder materialises my own experiences with maternal ambivalence and my inability to reconcile or negotiate multiple contradictory identities into a single maternal position. Ashamed of my self, my body, my obsessions, my anger, my hatred, my rage, my laughter, my sorrow and most of all my oscillation between a complete and utter desire to kill each and every one of my children and an overwhelming desire to gobble them all up, I make art work that is embedded in the grime and grittiness of my everyday life as a young mother living in the southern suburbs of Western Australia. A life that is most often mundane, sometimes sad, embarrassing, rude and occasionally heartbreaking. A life filled with such simple joy and such complicated sorrow. A life that in reality, is anything but manageable and contained. Although this is my experience, I know that I am not the only one. As an artist I engage in the embodied and critically resistant practice of sampling from my “mother” identities in order to bring out multiple, conflictive responses that provocatively encourage new ways of thinking and acknowledging embodied maternal knowledge. Although claims abound that this results in a practice that is “too personal” or “too specific” (Liss xv), I do not believe that this in fact risks reifying essentialism. Despite much feminist debate over the years regarding essentialist/social constructivist positions, I would still rather use my body as a site of embodied knowledge then rhetorically give it up. Acting as a disruption and challenge to the concepts of idealised or denigrated maternal embodiment, the images and performances of motherhood in breeder then, are more than simple acknowledgements of the reality of the good and bad mother, or acts reclaiming an identity that they taught me to despise (Cliff) or rebelling against having to be a "woman" at all. Instead, breeder is a lucid and explicit declaration of intent that politely refuses to keep every maternal body in its place.References Allen, Kim, and Jane Osgood. “Young Women Negotiating Maternal Subjectivities: The Significance of Social Class.” Studies in the Maternal. 1.2 (2009). 30 July 2012 ‹www.mamsie.bbk.ac.uk›.Almond, Barbara. The Monster Within. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.Baird, Marian, and Leanne Cutcher. “’One for the Father, One for the Mother and One for the Country': An Examination of the Construction of Motherhood through the Prism of Paid Maternity Leave.” Hecate 31.2 (2005): 103-113. Bullen, Elizabeth, Jane Kenway, and Valerie Hey. “New Labour, Social Exclusion and Educational Risk Management: The Case of ‘Gymslip Mums’.” British Educational Research Journal. 26.4 (2000): 441-456.Cliff, Michelle. Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise. Michigan: Persephone Press, 1980.Coward, Ross. “The Heaven and Hell of Mothering: Mothering and Ambivalence in the Mass Media.” In Wendy Hollway and Brid Featherston, eds. Mothering and Ambivalence. London: Routledge, 1997.Dever, Maryanne. “Baby Talk: The Howard Government, Families and the Politics of Difference.” Hecate 31.2 (2005): 45-61Ferrier, Carole. “So, What Is to Be Done about the Family?” Australian Humanities Review (2006): 39-40.Fraser, Liz. The Yummy Mummy Survival Guide. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.Gutting, Gary. Foucault: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.Gordon, Josh. “Thou Shalt Not Breed.” The Age, 9 May 2010.Grosz, Elizabeth. Volatile Bodies. St Leonards: Allen and Unwin, 1986.Hoy, David C. Critical Resistance. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.Johnson, Anna. The Yummy Mummy Manifesto: Baby, Beauty, Body and Bliss. New York: Ballantine, 2009.Liss, Andrea. Feminist Art and the Maternal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.McRobbie, Angela. “Top Girls: Young Women and the Post-Feminist Sexual Contract.” Cultural Studies. 21. 4. (2007): 718-737.---. In the Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage. 2008.---. “Reflections on Feminism, Immaterial Labour and the Post-Fordist Regime.” New Formations 70 (Winter 2011): 60-76. 30 July 2012 ‹http://dx.doi.org.dbgw.lis.curtin.edu.au/10.3898/NEWF.70.04.2010›.Miller, Tina. Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005.Milne, Glenn. “Baby Bonus Rethink.” The Courier Mail 11 Nov. 2006. 30 Sep. 2011 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national-old/baby-bonus-rethink/story-e6freooo-1111112507517›.O’Connor, Mike. “Baby Bonus Budget Handouts a Luxury We Can Ill Afford.” The Courier Mai. 5 Dec. 2011. 30 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/handouts-luxury-we-can-ill-afford/story-e6frerdf-1226213654447›.Parker, Roszika. Mother Love/Mother Hate, London: Virago Press, 1995.Rich, Adrienne. “Anger and Tenderness.” In M. Davey, ed. Mother Reader. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001.Simpson, Kirsty, and Jason Dowling. “Gambling Soars in Child Bonus Week”. The Sunday Age Aug. 2004. 28 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/handouts-luxury-we-can-ill-afford/story-e6frerdf-1226213654447›.Skeggs, Beverly. Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming Respectable. London: Sage, 1997.Suleiman, Susan. “Writing and Motherhood,” Mother Reader Ed. Moyra Davey. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001. 113-138Thomson, Rachel, Mary Jane Kehily, Lucy Hadfield, and Sue Sharpe. Making Modern Mothers. Bristol: Policy Press, 2011. 30 July 2012 ‹http://www.policypress.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781847426055&sf1=keyword&st1=motherhood&m=1&dc=16›.Tyler, Imogen. “’Chav Mum, Chav Scum’: Class Disgust in Contemporary Britain.” Feminist Media Studies 8.2. (2008): 17-34. 31 July 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680770701824779›.Walkerdine, Valerie, Helen Lucey, and Melody June. Growing Up Girl: Psychosocial Explorations of Gender and Class. London: Palgrave. 2001. Wilkinson, Tony. Uncertain Surrenders: The Coexistence of Beauty and Menace in the Maternal Bond and Photography. PhD thesis. Perth: Edith Cowan University, 2012. 31 July 2012 ‹http://ro.ecu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1458&context=theses›.

The old “Is the glass half empty or half full?” question does more than just illustrate a person’s proclivity for pessimism or for optimism. It alerts us to the possibility that the same real world phenomena may be interpreted in entirely different ways, with very real consequences. It is this notion that I apply to the way fat sex and thin sex are conceptualised in the larger social consciousness. While sexual, romantic and/or intimate acts between people where at least one individual is fat (Fat Sex) are deemed atypical, abnormal, fetishistic and even abusive (Saguy qtd. in Swami & Tovee 90; Schur qtd. in Prohaska 271; Gailey 119), such encounters between able-bodied individuals who are thin or of average weight (Thin Sex) are deemed normal and desirable. I argue in this article that this discrepancy in how we label and treat fat and thin sexuality is unjustified because the two domains are more similar than distinct. Given their similarity we should treat similar aspects of both domains in the same way, i.e. either as normal, or as fetishistic based on relevant criteria rather than body size. I also argue that fat prejudice and thin privilege underlie this discrepancy in modern western society. I finally conclude that this causes significant personal and social harm to both fat and thin individuals.Fat Sex – The Fetishized NormalHanne Blank, in writing of her foray into publishing body positive material exploring fat sexuality, speaks of the need for spaces that acknowledge the vitality and diversity of fat sex; not in fetishistic and pornographic portrayals of Big Beautiful Women offering themselves up as an object of desire but reflecting the desires and sexual experiences of fat people themselves (10). If there are a 100 million people in America who are obese according to BMI standards, she argues, they represent a whole array of body sizes and a lot of sexual activity, which she describes as follows:Fat people have sex. Sweet, tender, luscious sex. Sweaty, feral, sheet-ripping sex. Shivery, jiggly, gasping sex. Sentimental, slow, face-cradling sex. Even as you read these words, there are fat people out there somewhere joyously getting their freak on. Not only that, but fat people are falling in love, having hook-ups, being crushed-out, putting on sexy lingerie, being the objects of other people’s lust, flirting, primping before hot dates, melting a little as they read romantic notes from their sweeties, seducing and being seduced, and having shuddering, toe-curling orgasms that are as big as they are. It’s only natural. (15)Such normalcy and diverse expression, however, is not usually portrayed in popular media, nor even in much scholarly research. Apart from body positive spaces carved out by the fat acceptance movement online and the research of fat studies scholars, which, contextualises fat sexuality as healthy and exciting, in “the majority of scholarship on this topic, fat women’s sexual behaviors are never the result of women’s agency, are always the result of their objectification, and are never healthy” (Prohaska 271).This interpretation of fat sexuality, the assumptions associated with it and the reinforcement of these attitudes have much to do with the pervasiveness of fat prejudice in society today. One study estimates that the prevalence of weight based discrimination in the US increased by 66% between 1996 and 2006 (Andreyeva, Puhl and Brownell) and is now comparable to gender and race based discrimination (Puhl, Andreyeva and Brownell). This is not an isolated trend. An anthropological study analysing the globalisation of notions of fat being unhealthy and a marker of personal and social failing suggests that we have on our hands a rapidly homogenising global stigma associated with fat (Brewis, Wutich and Rodriguez-Soto), a climate of discrimination leading many fat people to what Goffman describes as a spoiled identity (3).Negative stereotypes affecting fat sexuality are established and perpetuated through a process of discursive constraint (Cordell and Ronai 30-31). “’No man will ever love you,’ Weinstein’s grandmother informs her (Weinstein, prologue), simultaneously offering her a negative category to define herself by and trying to coerce her into losing weight – literally constraining the discourse that Weinstein may apply to herself.Discursive constraint is created not only by individuals reinforcing cultural mores but also by overt and covert messages embedded in social consciousness: “fat people are unattractive”, “fat is ugly”, “fat people are asexual”, “fat sex is a fetish”, “no normal person can be attracted to a fat person”. Portrayals of fat individuals in mainstream media consolidate these beliefs.One of the most loved fat characters of 1990s, Fat Monica from the sitcom Friends is gluttonous, ungainly (rolling around in a bean bag, jolting the sofa as she sits), undesirable (Chandler says to Ross, “I just don’t want to be stuck here all night with your fat sister!”), and desperate for sex, affection and approval from the opposite sex: “the comedic potential of Fat Monica is premised on an understanding that her body is deviant or outside the norm” (Gullage 181).In Shallow Hal, a film in which a shallow guy falls in love with the inner beauty of a fat girl, Hal (Jack Black) is shown to be attracted to Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow) only after he can no longer see her real fat body and her “inner beauty” is represented by a thin white blond girl. All the while, the movie draws laughs from the audience at the fat jokes and gags made at the expense of Paltrow’s character.Ashley Madison, a website for married people looking to have an affair, used the image of a scantily clad fat model in an advertisement with the tagline “Did your wife scare you last night?”, implying that infidelity is justified if you’re not attracted to your partner, and fatness precludes attraction. And a columnist from popular magazine Marie Claire wrote about Mike and Molly, a sitcom about two fat people in a relationship:Yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. (Kelly)It is the prevalence of these beliefs that I call the fetishisation of fat sexuality. When fat bodies are created as asexual and undesirable, it gives rise to the rhetoric that to be sexually attracted to a fat body is unnatural, therefore making any person who is attracted to a fat body a fetishist and the fat person themselves an object of fetish.The internalisation of these beliefs is not only something that actively harms the self-esteem, sexual agency & health and happiness of fat individuals (Satinsky et al.), but also those who are attracted to them. Those who internalise these beliefs about themselves may be unable to view themselves as sexual and engage with their own bodies in a pleasurable manner, or to view themselves as attractive, perhaps discounting any assertions to the contrary. In a study designed to investigate the relationship between body image and sexual health in women of size, one participant revealed:I’ve had my issues with T as far as um, believing that T is attracted to me…because of my weight, my size and the way I look. (Satinsky et al. 717)Another participant speaks of her experience masturbating and her discomfort at touching her own flesh, leading her to use a vibrator and not her hands:Like, I don’t, I don’t look down. I look at the ceiling and I try to – it’s almost like I’m trying to imagine that I was thinner. Like, imagine that my stomach was flatter or something like that, which sounds bizarre, but I guess that’s what I’m trying to do. (Satinsky et al. 719)Others stay in bad marriages because they believe they wouldn’t find anyone else (Joanisse and Synnott 55) or tolerate abuse because of their low self-esteem (Hester qtd. in Prohaska 271).Similarly, men who internalise these attitudes about fat find it easier to dehumanise and objectify fat women, believe that they’d be desperate for sex and hence an easy target for a sexual conquest, and are less deserving of consideration (Prohaska and Gailey 19).On the other hand, many men who find fat women attractive (Fat Admirers or FA’s) remain closeted because their desire is stigmatised. Many do not make their preference known to their peer group and families, nor do they publicly acknowledge the woman they are intimate with. Research suggests that FA’s draw the same amount of stigma for being with fat women and finding them attractive, as they would for themselves being fat (Goode qtd. in Prohaska and Gailey).I do not argue here that all fat individuals have spoiled identities or that all expressions of fat sexuality operate from a place of stigma and shame, but that fat sexuality exists within a wider social fabric of fat phobia, discrimination and stigmatisation. Fulfilling sexual experience must therefore be navigated within this framework. As noted, the fat acceptance movement, body positive spaces online, and fat studies scholarship help to normalise fat sexuality and function as tools for resisting stigma and fetishisation.Resisting Stigma: Creating Counter NarrativesGailey, in interviews with 36 fat-identified women, found that though 34 of them (94%) had ‘experienced a life of ridicule, body shame and numerous attempts to lose weight’ which had an adverse effect on their relationships and sex life, 26 of them reported a positive change after having ‘embodied the size acceptance ideology’ (Gailey 118).Recently, Kristin Chirico, employee of Buzzfeed, released first an article and then a video titled My Boyfriend Loves Fat Women about her relationship with her boyfriend who loves fat women, her own discomfort with her fatness and her journey in embracing size acceptance ideologies: I will let him enjoy the thing he loves without tearing it down. But more importantly, I will work to earn love from me, who is the person who will always play the hardest to get. I will flirt as hard as I can, and I will win myself back.Books such as Wann’s Fat!So?, Blank’s Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them), Chastain’s Fat: The Owner’s Manual and her blog Dances with Fat, Tovar’s Hot and Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion, as well as Substantia Jones’s fat photography project called The Adipositivity Project are some examples of fat activism, size acceptance and body positive spaces and resources. The description on Jones’s site reads:The Adipositivity Project aims to promote the acceptance of benign human size variation and encourage discussion of body politics, not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that's normally unseen. When fat individuals create personal narratives to resist stigmatisation of fat sexuality they confront the conundrum of drawing the line between sexual empowerment and glorifying fat fetishism. To see one’s own and other fat bodies as sexual, normal and worthy of pleasure is one way to subvert this fetishism. One would also take seriously any sexual advances, seeing oneself as desirable. The line between normal expression of fat sexuality and the wide spread belief that fat sex is fetishistic is so blurred however, that it becomes difficult to differentiate between them, so it is common to ask if one is being sexual or being an object of fetish. There is also the tension between the heady sense of power in being a sexual agent, and the desire to be wanted for more than just being a fat body.Modern burlesque stage is one arena where fat bodies are being recreated as sexy and desirable, offering a unique resource to ‘fat performers and audience members who want to experience their bodies in new and affirming ways’. Because burlesque is an erotic dance form, fat women on the burlesque stage are marked as ‘sexual, without question or challenge’. The burlesque stage has a great capacity to be a space for transforming sexual identity and driving changes in audience attitudes, creating a powerful social environment that is contrary to mainstream conditions in society (Asbill 300).The founder and creative director of “Big Burlesque” and “Fat-Bottom Revue” the world’s first all-fat burlesque troupe, however, notes that when she started Big Burlesque there were a couple of “bigger” performers on the neo-burlesque circuit, but they did not specifically advocate fat liberation. ‘Fat dance is rare enough; fat exotic/erotic dance is pretty much unheard of outside of “fetish” acts that alienate rather than normalise fat bodies’ (McAllister 305).In another instance, Laura writes that to most men her weight is a problem or a fetish, constraining the potential in relationships. Speaking of BBW (Big Beautiful Women) and BHM (Big Handsome Men) websites that cater to Fat Admirers she writes:As I’ve scrolled through these sites, I’ve felt vindicated at seeing women my size as luscious pinups. But, after a while, I feel reduced to something less than a person: just a gartered thigh and the breast-flesh offered up in a corset. I want to be lusted after. I want to be wanted. But, more than this, I want to love, and be loved. I want everything that love confers: being touched, being valued and being seen.That sexual attraction might rely wholly or partly on physical attributes, however, is hardly unfamiliar, and is an increasing phenomenon in the wider culture and popular media. Of course, what counts there is being thin and maintaining the thin state!Thin Sex: The Normalised FetishUnlike the fat body, the thin body is created as beautiful, sexually attractive, successful and overwhelmingly the norm (van Amsterdam). Ours is a culture fixated on physical beauty and sex, both of which are situated in thin bodies. Sexiness is a social currency that buys popularity, social success, and increasingly wealth itself (Levy). Like fat sex, thin sex operates on the stage set by the wider cultural ideals of beauty and attractiveness and that of the burden of thin privilege. Where stigma situates fat sexuality to abnormality and fetish, thin sexuality has to deal with the pressures of conforming to and maintaining the thin state (vam Amsterdam).Thin individuals also deal with the sexualisation of their bodies, confronting the separation of their personhood from their sexuality, in a sexual objectification of women that has long been identified as harmful. Ramsey and Hoyt explore how being objectified in heterosexual relationships might be related to coercion within those relationships. Their evidence shows that women are routinely objectified, and that this objectification becomes part of the schema of how men relate to women. Such a schema results in a fracturing of women into body parts dissociated from their personhood , making it easier to engage in violence with, and feel less empathy for female partners (in cases of rape or sexual assault). (Ramsey and Hoyt) What is interesting here is the fact that though aspects of thin sexuality are recognised as fetishistic (objectification of women), thin sex is still considered normal.Thin Sex, Fat Sex and 50 Shades of OverlapThe normalisation of sexual objectification -- society for the most part being habituated to the fetishistic aspects of thin sex, can be contrasted with attitudes towards comparable aspects of fat sex. In particular, Feederism, is generally viewed within scholarly discourse (and public attitudes) as ‘a consensual activity, a fetish, a stigmatised behaviour, and abuse’ (Terry & Vassey, Hester, Bestard, Murray as qtd. in Prohaska 281). Prohaska argues that Feederism and Diet Culture are broadly similar phenomena that elicit tellingly opposing judgements. She reports that the culture of feederism (as analysed on online forums) is a mostly consensual activity, where the community vocally dissuades non-consensual activities and any methods that may cause bodily harm (268). It is mostly a community of people who discuss measures of gradual weight gain and support and encourage each other in those goals. This, she argues, is very similar in tone to what appears on weight loss websites and forums (269). She contends, however that despite these parallels ‘the same scrutiny is not given to those who are attempting to lose weight as is placed upon those who do not diet or who try to gain weight’ (269).She notes that whereas in judging feederism emphasis is on fringe behaviours, in evaluating diet culture the focus is on behaviours deemed normal and healthy while only disorders like anorexia, bulimia, and pill using are judged fringe behaviours. This disparity, she claims, is rooted in fat phobia and prejudice (270).In comparing the dating sections of feederism websites with mainstream dating sites she notes that here too the nature of ads is similar, with the only difference being that in mainstream sites the body size preference is assumed. People seeking relationships on both kinds of sites look for partners who are ‘caring, intelligent and funny’ and consider ‘mutual respect’ as key (270).This is similar to what was revealed in an article by Camille Dodero, who interviewed a number of men who identify as fat admirers and delved into the myths and realities of fat admiration. The article covers stories of stigma that FA’s have faced and continue to face because of their sexual preference, and also of internalised self-hatred that makes it difficult for fat women to take their advances seriously. The men also create BBW/BHM dating websites as more than a fetish club. They experience these online spaces as safe spaces where they can openly meet people they would be interested in just as one would on a normal/mainstream dating site. Even if most women fit the type that they are attracted to in such spaces, it does not mean that they would be attracted to all of those women, just as on match.com one would look over prospective candidates for dating and that process would include the way they look and everything else about that person.Attempting to clear up the misconception that loving fat women is a fetish, one of the interviewees says,“Steve, over there, has a type,” gesturing wanly at a stranger in a hockey jersey probably not named Steve. “I have a type, too. Mine’s just bigger. He may like skinny blondes with bangs and long legs. I like pear shapes with brown hair and green eyes. I have a type—it just happens to be fat.” Besides, people aren’t fetish objects, they’re people. “It’s not like having a thing for leather.” (Dodero 3)ConclusionAnalysis of the domains of thin and fat sex shows that both have people engaging in sexual activity and romantic and intimate relationships with each other. Both have a majority of individuals who enjoy consensual, fulfilling sex and relationships, however these practices and desires are celebrated in one domain and stigmatised in the other. Both domains also have a portion of the whole that objectifies relationship partners with immense potential for harm, whether this involves sexualisation and objectification and its related harms in thin sex, objectification of fat bodies in some BBW and BHM circles, and the fringes of feederism communities, or non-body size specific fetish acts that individuals from both domains engage in. Qualitatively, since both domains significantly overlap, it is difficult to find the justification for the fetishisation of one and the normativity of the other. It seems plausible that this can be accounted for by the privilege associated with thin bodies and the prejudice against fat.Our failure to acknowledge such fetishisation of normal fat sex and normalisation of the fetishistic aspects of thin sex creates huge potential for harm for both groups, for it not only causes the fragmentation of effort when it comes to addressing these issues but also allows for the rich vitality and diversity of “normal” fat sex to wallow in obscurity and stigma.References Andreyeva, Tatiana, Rebecca M. Puhl, and Kelly D. Brownell. "Changes in Perceived Weight Discrimination among Americans, 1995–1996 through 2004–2006." Obesity 16 (2008): 1129-1134.Asbill, D. Lacy. "'I’m Allowed to Be a Sexual Being': The Distinctive Social Conditions of the Fat Burlesque Stage." The Fat Studies Reader, eds. Sondra Solovay and Esther Rothblum. New York: New York UP, 2009. 299.Blank, Hanne. Big Big Love, Revised, A Sex and Relationship Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them). New York: Celestial Arts, 2011.Bogart, Laura. Salon 4 Aug. 2014.Brewis, A.A., A. Wutich and I. Rodriguez-Soto. "Body Norms and Fat Stigma in Global Perspective." Current Anthropology 52 (2011): 269-276.Chirico, Kristin. My Boyfriend Loves Fat Women. 25 Feb. 2015.Cordell, Gina, and Carol Rambo Ronai. "Identity Management among Overweight Women: Narrative Resistance to Stigma." Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness, eds. Jeffery Sobal and Donna Maurer. Transaction Publishers, 1999. 29-48. Dodero, Camille. Guys Who Like Fat Chicks. 4 May 2011.Prohaska, Ariane, and Jeannine A. Gailey. "Achieving Masculinity through Sexual Predation: The Case of Hogging." Journal of Gender Studies 19.1 (2010): 13-25.Gailey, Jeannine A. “Fat Shame to Fat Pride: Fat Women’s Sexual and Dating Experiences.” Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society 1.1 (2012). Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1963.Gullage, Amy. "Fat Monica, Fat Suits and Friends." Feminist Media Studies 14.2 (2012): 178-89. Jacqueline. "I'm The 'Scary' Model in That Awful Ashley Madison Ad." 11 July 2011. Online. 24 May 2015.Jones, Substantia. The Adipositivity Project. n.d. Kelly, M. "Should 'Fatties' Get a Room? (Even on TV?)" 2010.Levy, Ariel. "Raunch Culture." Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. New York: Free Press, 2005. 7-45.McAllister, Heather. "Embodying Fat Liberation." The Fat Studies Reader, eds. Sondra Solovay and Esther Rothblum. New York: New York UP, 2009. 305.Prohaska, Ariane. “Help Me Get Fat! Feederism as Communal Deviance on the Internet.” Deviant Behaviour 35.4 (2014). Puhl, Rebecca M., Tatiana Andreyeva, and Kelly Brownell. "Perceptions of Weight Discrimination: Prevalence and Comparison to Race and Gender Discrimination in America." International Journal of Obesity 32 (2008): 992-1000.Ramsey, Laura R., and Tiffany Hoyt. "The Object of Desire: How Being Objectified Creates Sexual Pressure for Women in Heterosexual Relationships." Psychology of Women Quarterly (2014): 1-20.Satinsky, Sonya, et al. "'Fat Girl Complex': A Preliminary Investigation of Sexual Health and Body Image in Women of Size." Culture, Health and Sexuality: An International Journal for Research, Intervention and Care 15.6 (2013): 710-25.Swami, Viren, and Martin J. Tovee. “Big Beautiful Women: The Body Size Preferences of Male Fat Admirers.” The Journal of Sex Research 46.1 (2009): 89-86.Joanisse, Leanne, and Anthony Synnott. "Fighting Back: Reactions and Resistance to the Stigma of Obesity." Interpreting Weight: The Social Management of Fatness and Thinness, eds. Jeffery Sobal and Donna Maurer. New York: First Transaction Printing, 2013. 49-73.Van Amsterdam, Noortje. "Big Fat Inequalities, Thin Privilege: An Intersectional Perspective on 'Body Size'." European Journal of Women's Studies 20.2 (2013): 155-69.Weinstein, Rebecca Jane. “Fat Sex: The Naked Truth”. EBook, 2012.

Introduction: Socialism – from Eternal Reality to Passing DreamThe Year of Revolutions in 1989 presaged the end of the Cold War. For many people, it must have felt like the end of the Twentieth Century, and the 1990s a period of waiting for the Millennium. However, the 1990s was, in fact, a period of profound transformation in the post-Socialist world.In early representations of Socialism’s end, a dominant narrative was that of collapse. Dramatic events, such as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall in Germany enabled representation of the end as an unexpected moment. Senses of unexpectedness rested on erstwhile perceptions of Socialism as eternal.In contrast, the 1990s came to be a decade of revision in which thinking switched from considering Socialism’s persistence to asking, “why it went wrong?” I explore this question in relation to former-Yugoslavia. In brief, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) was replaced through the early 1990s by six independent nation states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Kosovo came much later. In the states that were significantly ethnically mixed, the break-up was accompanied by violence. Bosnia in the 1990s will be remembered for an important contribution to the lexicon of ideas – ethnic cleansing.Revisionist historicising of the former-Yugoslavia in the 1990s was led by the scholarly community. By and large, it discredited the Ancient Ethnic Hatreds (AEH) thesis commonly held by nationalists, simplistic media commentators and many Western politicians. The AEH thesis held that Socialism’s end was a consequence of the up-swelling of primordial (natural) ethnic tensions. Conversely, the scholarly community tended to view Socialism’s failure as an outcome of systemic economic and political deficiencies in the SFRY, and that these deficiencies were also, in fact the root cause of those ethnic tensions. And, it was argued that had such deficiencies been addressed earlier Socialism may have survived and fulfilled its promise of eternity (Verdery).A third significant perspective which emerged through the 1990s was that the collapse of Socialism was an outcome of the up-swelling of, if not primordial ethnic tensions then, at least repressed historical memories of ethnic tensions, especially of the internecine violence engendered locally by Nazi and Italian Fascist forces in WWII. This perspective was particularly en vogue within the unusually rich arts scene in former-Yugoslavia. Its leading exponent was Slovenian avant-garde rock band Laibach.In this article, I consider Laibach’s career and methods. For background the article draws substantially on Alexei Monroe’s excellent biography of Laibach, Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK (2005). However, as I indicate below, my interpretation diverges very significantly from Monroe’s. Laibach’s most significant body of work is the cover versions of Western pop songs it recorded in the middle part of its career. Using a technique that has been labelled retroquotation (Monroe), it subtly transforms the lyrical content, and radically transforms the musical arrangement of pop songs, thereby rendering them what might be described as martial anthems. The clearest illustration of the process is Laibach’s version of Opus’s one hit wonder “Live is Life”, which is retitled as “Life is Life” (Laibach 1987).Conventional scholarly interpretations of Laibach’s method (including Monroe’s) present it as entailing the uncovering of repressed forms of individual and collective totalitarian consciousness. I outline these ideas, but supplement them with an alternative interpretation. I argue that in the cover version stage of its career, Laibach switched its attention from seeking to uncover repressed totalitarianism towards uncovering repressed memories of ethnic tension, especially from WWII. Furthermore, I argue that its creative medium of Western pop music is especially important in this regard. On the bases of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Bosnia (University of Melbourne Human Ethics project 1544213.1), and of a reading of SFRY’s geopolitical history, I demonstrate that for many people, Western popular cultural forms came to represent the quintessence of what it was to be Yugoslav. In this context, Laibach’s retroquotation of Western pop music is akin to a broader cultural practice in the post-SFRY era in which symbols of the West were iconoclastically transformed. Such transformation served to reveal a public secret (Taussig) of repressed historic ethnic enmity within the very heart of things that were regarded as quintessentially and pan-ethnically Yugoslav. And, in so doing, this delegitimised memory of SFRY ever having been a properly functioning entity. In this way, Laibach contributed significantly to a broader process in which perceptions of Socialist Yugoslavia came to be rendered less as a reality with the potential for eternity than a passing dream.What Is Laibach and What Does It Do?Originally of the industrial rock genre, Laibach has evolved through numerous other genres including orchestral rock, choral rock and techno. It is not, however, a rock group in any conventional sense. Laibach is the musical section of a tripartite unit named Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK) which also encompasses the fine arts collective Irwin and a variety of theatre groups.Laibach was the name by which the Slovenian capital Ljubljana was known under the Austrian Habsburg Empire and then Nazi occupation in WWII. The choice of name hints at a central purpose of Laibach and NSK in general, to explore the relationship between art and ideology, especially under conditions of totalitarianism. In what follows, I describe how Laibach go about doing this.Laibach’s central method is eclecticism, by which symbols of the various ideological regimes that are its and the NSK’s subject matter are intentionally juxtaposed. Eclecticism of this kind was characteristic of the postmodern aesthetics typical of the 1990s. Furthermore, and counterintuitively perhaps, postmodernism was as much a condition of the Socialist East as it was the Capitalist West. As Mikhail N. Epstein argues, “Totalitarianism itself may be viewed as a specific postmodern model that came to replace the modernist ideological stance elaborated in earlier Marxism” (102). However, Western and Eastern postmodernisms were fundamentally different. In particular, while the former was largely playful, ironicising and depoliticised, the latter, which Laibach and NSK may be regarded as being illustrative of, involved placing in opposition to one another competing and antithetical aesthetic, political and social regimes, “without the contradictions being fully resolved” (Monroe 54).The performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work fulfils three principal functions. It works to (1) reveal hidden underlying connections between competing ideological systems, and between art and power more generally. This is evident in Life is Life. The video combines symbols of Slovenian romantic nationalism (stags and majestic rural landscapes) with Nazism and militarism (uniforms, bodily postures and a martial musical arrangement). Furthermore, it presents images of the graves of victims of internecine violence in WWII. The video is a reminder to Slovenian viewers of a discomforting public secret within their nation’s history. While Germany is commonly viewed as a principal oppressor of Slovenian nationalism, the rural peasantry, who are represented as embodying Slovenian nationalism most, were also the most willing collaborators in imperialist processes of Germanicisation. The second purpose of the performance of unresolved contradictions in Laibach’s work is to (2) engender senses of the alienation, especially as experienced by the subjects of totalitarian regimes. Laibach’s approach in this regard is quite different to that of punk, whose concern with alienation - symbolised by safety pins and chains - was largely celebratory of the alienated condition. Rather, Laibach took a lead from seminal industrial rock bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle (see, for example, Walls of Sound (Throbbing Gristle 2004)), whose sound one fan accurately describes as akin to, “the creation of the universe by an angry titan/God and a machine apocalypse all rolled into one” (rateyourmusic.com). Certainly, Laibach’s shows can be uncomfortable experiences too, involving not only clashing symbols and images, but also the dissonant sounds of, for example, martial music, feedback, recordings of the political speeches of totalitarian leaders and barking dogs, all played at eardrum-breaking high volumes. The purpose of this is to provide, as Laibach state: “a ritualized demonstration of political force” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 44). In short, more than simply celebrating the experience of totalitarian alienation, Laibach’s intention is to reproduce that very alienation.More than performatively representing tyranny, and thereby senses of totalitarian alienation, Laibach and NSK set out to embody it themselves. In particular, and contra the forms of liberal humanism that were hegemonic at the peak of their career in the 1990s, their organisation was developed as a model of totalitarian collectivism in which the individual is always subjugated. This is illustrated in the Onanigram (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst), which, mimicking the complexities of the SFRY in its most totalitarian dispensation, maps out in labyrinthine detail the institutional structure of NSK. Behaviour is governed by a Constitution that states explicitly that NSK is a group in which, “each individual is subordinated to the whole” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 273). Lest this collectivism be misconceived as little more than a show, the case of Tomaž Hostnik is instructive. The original lead singer of Laibach, Hostnik committed ritual suicide by hanging himself from a hayrack, a key symbol of Slovenian nationalism. Initially, rather than mourning his loss, the other members of Laibach posthumously disenfranchised him (“threw him out of the band”), presumably for his act of individual will that was collectively unsanctioned.Laibach and the NSK’s collectivism also have spiritual overtones. The Onanigram presents an Immanent Consistent Spirit, a kind of geist that holds the collective together. NSK claim: “Only God can subdue LAIBACH. People and things never can” (NSK, Neue Slowenische Kunst 289). Furthermore, such rhetorical bombast was matched in aspiration. Most famously, in one of the first instances of a micro-nation, NSK went on to establish itself as a global and virtual non-territorial state, replete with a recruitment drive, passports and anthem, written and performed by Laibach of course. Laibach’s CareerLaibach’s career can be divided into three overlapping parts. The first is its career as a political provocateur, beginning from the inception of the band in 1980 and continuing through to the present. The band’s performances have touched the raw nerves of several political actors. As suggested above, Laibach offended Slovenian nationalists. The band offended the SFRY, especially when in its stage backdrop it juxtaposed images of a penis with Marshal Josip Broz “Tito”, founding President of the SFRY. Above all, it offended libertarians who viewed the band’s exploitation of totalitarian aesthetics as a route to evoking repressed totalitarian energies in its audiences.In a sense the libertarians were correct, for Laibach were quite explicit in representing a third function of their performance of unresolved contradictions as being to (3) evoke repressed totalitarian energies. However, as Žižek demonstrates in his essay “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists”, Laibach’s intent in this regard is counter-totalitarian. Laibach engage in what amounts to a “psychoanalytic cure” for totalitarianism, which consists of four envisaged stages. The consumers of Laibach’s works and performances go through a process of over-identification with totalitarianism, leading through the experience of alienation to, in turn, disidentification and an eventual overcoming of that totalitarian alienation. The Žižekian interpretation of the four stages has, however been subjected to critique, particularly by Deleuzian scholars, and especially for its psychoanalytic emphasis on the transformation of individual (un)consciousness (i.e. the cerebral rather than bodily). Instead, such scholars prefer a schizoanalytic interpretation which presents the cure as, respectively collective (Monroe 45-50) and somatic (Goddard). Laibach’s works and pronouncements display, often awareness of such abstract theoretical ideas. However, they also display attentiveness to the concrete realities of socio-political context. This was reflected especially in the 1990s, when its focus seemed to shift from the matter of totalitarianism to the overriding issue of the day in Laibach’s homeland – ethnic conflict. For example, echoing the discourse of Truth and Reconciliation emanating from post-Apartheid South Africa in the early 1990s, Laibach argued that its work is “based on the premise that traumas affecting the present and the future can be healed only by returning to the initial conflicts” (NSK Padiglione).In the early 1990s era of post-socialist violent ethnic nationalism, statements such as this rendered Laibach a darling of anti-nationalism, both within civil society and in what came to be known pejoratively as the Yugonostagic, i.e. pro-SFRY left. Its darling status was cemented further by actions such as performing a concert to celebrate the end of the Bosnian war in 1996, and because its ideological mask began to slip. Most famously, when asked by a music journalist the standard question of what the band’s main influences were, rather than citing other musicians Laibach stated: “Tito, Tito and Tito.” Herein lies the third phase of Laibach’s career, dating from the mid-1990s to the present, which has been marked by critical recognition and mainstream acceptance, and in contrasting domains. Notably, in 2012 Laibach was invited to perform at the Tate Modern in London. Then, entering the belly of what is arguably the most totalitarian of totalitarian beasts in 2015, it became the first rock band to perform live in North Korea.The middle part in Laibach’s career was between 1987 and 1996. This was when its work consisted mostly of covers of mainstream Western pop songs by, amongst others Opus, Queen, The Rolling Stones, and, in The Final Countdown (1986), Swedish ‘big hair’ rockers. It also covered entire albums, including a version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. No doubt mindful of John Lennon’s claim that his band was more popular than the Messiah himself, Laibach covered the Beatles’ final album Let It Be (1970). Highlighting the perilous hidden connections between apparently benign and fascistic forms of sedentarism, lead singer Milan Fras’ snarling delivery of the refrain “Get Back to where you once belong” renders the hit single from that album less a story of homecoming than a sinister warning to immigrants and ethnic others who are out of place.This career middle stage invoked critique. However, commonplace suggestions that Laibach could be characterised as embodying Retromania, a derivative musical trend typical of the 1990s that has been lambasted for its de-politicisation and a musical conservatism enabled by new sampling technologies that afforded a forensic documentary precision that prohibits creative distortion (Reynolds), are misplaced. Several scholars highlight Laibach’s ceaseless attention to musical creativity in the pursuit of political subversiveness. For example, for Monroe, the cover version was a means for Laibach to continue its exploration of the connections between art and ideology, of illuminating the connections between competing ideological systems and of evoking repressed totalitarian energies, only now within Western forms of entertainment in which ideological power structures are less visible than in overt totalitarian propaganda. However, what often seems to escape intellectualist interpretations presented by scholars such as Žižek, Goddard and (albeit to a lesser extent) Monroe is the importance of the concrete specificities of the context that Laibach worked in in the 1990s – i.e. homeland ethno-nationalist politics – and, especially, their medium – i.e. Western pop music.The Meaning and Meaningfulness of Western Popular Culture in Former YugoslaviaThe Laibach covers were merely one of many celebrations of Western popular culture that emerged in pre- and post-socialist Yugoslavia. The most curious of these was the building of statues of icons of screen and stage. These include statues of Tarzan, Bob Marley, Rocky Balboa and, most famously, martial arts cinema legend Bruce Lee in the Bosnian city of Mostar.The pop monuments were often erected as symbols of peace in contexts of ethnic-national violence. Each was an ethnic hybrid. With the exception of original Tarzan Johnny Weismuller — an ethnic-German American immigrant from Serbia — none was remotely connected to the competing ethnic-national groups. Thus, it was surprising when these pop monuments became targets for iconoclasm. This was especially surprising because, in contrast, both the new ethnic-national monuments that were built and the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments that remained in all their concrete and steel obduracy in and through the 1990s were left largely untouched.The work of Simon Harrison may give us some insight into this curious situation. Harrison questions the commonplace assumption that the strength of enmity between ethnic groups is related to their cultural dissimilarity — in short, the bigger the difference the bigger the biffo. By that logic, the new ethnic-national monuments erected in the post-SFRY era ought to have been vandalised. Conversely, however, Harrison argues that enmity may be more an outcome of similarity, at least when that similarity is torn asunder by other kinds of division. This is so because ownership of previously shared and precious symbols of identity appears to be seen as subjected to appropriation by ones’ erstwhile comrades who are newly othered in such moments.This is, indeed, exactly what happened in post-socialist former-Yugoslavia. Yugoslavs were rendered now as ethnic-nationals: Bosniaks (Muslims), Croats and Serbs in the case of Bosnia. In the process, the erection of obviously non-ethnic-national monuments by, now inevitably ethnic-national subjects was perceived widely as appropriation – “the Croats [the monument in Mostar was sculpted by Croatian artist Ivan Fijolić] are stealing our Bruce Lee,” as one of my Bosnian-Serb informants exclaimed angrily.However, this begs the question: Why would symbols of Western popular culture evoke the kinds of emotions that result in iconoclasm more so than other ethnically non-reducible ones such as those of the Partisans that are celebrated in the old Socialist pan-Yugoslav monuments? The answer lies in the geopolitical history of the SFRY. The Yugoslav-Soviet Union split in 1956 forced the SFRY to develop ever-stronger ties with the West. The effects of this became quotidian, especially as people travelled more or less freely across international borders and consumed the products of Western Capitalism. Many of the things they consumed became deeply meaningful. Notably, barely anybody above a certain age does not reminisce fondly about the moment when participation in martial arts became a nationwide craze following the success of Bruce Lee’s films in the golden (1970s-80s) years of Western-bankrolled Yugoslav prosperity.Likewise, almost everyone above a certain age recalls the balmy summer of 1985, whose happy zeitgeist seemed to be summed up perfectly by Austrian band Opus’s song “Live is Life” (1985). This tune became popular in Yugoslavia due to its apparently feelgood message about the joys of attending live rock performances. In a sense, these moments and the consumption of things “Western” in general came to symbolise everything that was good about Yugoslavia and, indeed to define what it was to be Yugoslavs, especially in comparison to their isolated and materially deprived socialist comrades in the Warsaw Pact countries.However, iconoclastic acts are more than mere emotional responses to offensive instances of cultural appropriation. As Michael Taussig describes, iconoclasm reveals the public secrets that the monuments it targets conceal. SFRY’s great public secret, known especially to those people old enough to have experienced the inter-ethnic violence of WWII, was ethnic division and the state’s deceit of the historic normalcy of pan-Yugoslav identification. The secret was maintained by a formal state policy of forgetting. For example, the wording on monuments in sites of inter-ethnic violence in WWII is commonly of the variety: “here lie the victims in Yugoslavia’s struggle against imperialist forces and their internal quislings.” Said quislings were, of course, actually Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (i.e. fellow Yugoslavs), but those ethnic nomenclatures were almost never used.In contrast, in a context where Western popular cultural forms came to define the very essence of what it was to be Yugoslav, the iconoclasm of Western pop monuments, and the retroquotation of Western pop songs revealed the repressed deceit and the public secret of the reality of inter-ethnic tension at the heart of that which was regarded as quintessentially Yugoslav. In this way, the memory of Yugoslavia ever having been a properly functioning entity was delegitimised. Consequently, Laibach and their kind served to render the apparent reality of the Yugoslav ideal as little more than a dream. ReferencesEpstein, Mikhail N. After the Future: The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture. Amherst: U of Massachusettes P, 1995.Goddard, Michael. “We Are Time: Laibach/NSK, Retro-Avant-Gardism and Machinic Repetition,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 11 (2006): 45-53.Harrison, Simon. “Identity as a Scarce Resource.” Social Anthropology 7 (1999): 239–251.Monroe, Alexei. Interrogation Machine: Laibach and NSK. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005.NSK. Neue Slowenische Kunst. Ljubljana: NSK, 1986.NSK. Padiglione NSK. Ljubljana: Moderna Galerija, 1993.rateyourmusic.com. 2018. 3 Sep. 2018 <https://rateyourmusic.com/artist/throbbing-gristle>.Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. London: Faber and Faber, 2011.Taussig, Michael. Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Žižek, Slavoj. “Why Are Laibach and NSK Not Fascists?” 3 Sep. 2018 <www.nskstate.com/appendix/articles/why_are_laibach.php.>

Representation of Aboriginality in National Geographic In trafficking images of cultural difference, National Geographic has an unrivalled worldwide reach to over 37 million people per issue. Over the past 25 years, 48 photographs of Aboriginal Australians have appeared in 11 articles in the magazine. This article first examines how the magazine has exoticised, naturalised and sexualised Aboriginal Australians. By deploying the standard evolutionary model, National Geographic typically represents Aboriginal Australians as Black savages relegated to the Stone Age. In the remote outback "Arnhem Land Aboriginals Cling to the Dreamtime" (Scollay & Tweedie 645). In "Journey into Dreamtime" (Arden & Abell 8) an Aboriginal man is "triumphant with his kill of a wild turkey [and] leads a small group of Aborigines who have returned to some of the old ways of their nomadic ancestors in the Great Sandy Desert". The article concludes that the Stone Age encounter with modernity depicted in the magazine became a journey through time from location past to location present. Exoticisation The world of the Aboriginal Australians is male through the eyes of National Geographic. This stems from the Western cultural pattern that assigns things masculine to the cultural and things feminine to the natural realm (Ortner). The male Aboriginal performer of an initiation ritual in "Leapingin tribute" (Scollay & Tweedie 656-7) is represented as rooted in tradition and living in a sacred yet superstitious world. Portraits abound of men with painted faces, as in "Surging energy" (Scollay & Tweedie 648). Male finery and self-display become salient markers, Aboriginal "Boys summon courage" in male initiation focussing on bloodletting (Scollay & Tweedie 656). Such images convey the impression that the region is one of nature, taboo, danger and adventure and that it is a land out of time. The enchantment with ritual stems from it being a key to the past and indicative of photographer and writer having travelled through space to travel through time, similar to the connection made by Victorian evolutionary anthropologists last century (see Fabian). Naturalisation The naturalised Aboriginal Australians appearing in National Geographic are characterised by having timeless societies and personalities, what Wolf identifies as people without history. Routine location narratives naturalise Aboriginal Australians through their remote landscapes and seascapes ("blazing bushfire", Scollay & Tweedie 652-3; "conjuring an image as old as his ancestors", "scorched in one season, sodden in the next" Newman & Abell 3-9). In the West the cultural appropriation of nature is the object of labour, whereas for Aboriginal Australians it is the subject of labour. Aboriginal men are hunters ("triumphant with his kill", Arden & Abell 9; "the earth and sea of their own accord furnish them with all the things necessary for life", Newman & Abell 14-5). Thus, in National Geographic the productive world of work further naturalises the Aboriginal 'Other'. Sexualisation Naked Black women provide the hallmark National Geographic imagery of the sexualized 'Other'. By purveying the nude Aboriginal female, the magazine develops Western ideas about race, gender and sexuality, subcategorised in each case as black, female and unrepressed (Lutz & Collins 115). Women are white, men are Black and Black women are invisible in popular visual representations of motherhood in Western culture. In trafficking in photographs of Black women for an overwhelmingly white readership, National Geographic is clearly linking narrative threads of gender and race (Lutz & Collins166). As the readers' gaze focusses on the Aboriginal child they become the site for dealing with racial anxieties through creating the Black love object ("an appetite for learning", Scollay & Tweedie 654; "mud mates", Ellis & Austen 8-9). National Geographic's nickname for mother-child photos is 'tits and tots' (Meltzer) and they are a romantic staple in the magazine. Aboriginal mothering in "marriages of diplomacy" is idealised as the foundation of human social life (Scollay & Tweedie 650-1). However, with "seven of Johnny Bungawuy's 11 wives and a handful of his 52 children" this marriage is exotic enough to make cultural difference an issue because it depicts the unusually large number of plural marriage partners available to Aboriginal men in their practice of polygyny. The attribution of erotic qualities and sexual license to Aboriginal women is a result of displaying their bodies for close examination. The naked Aboriginal women in "marriages of diplomacy" represent the nude stylised as ethnographic fact (Scollay & Tweedie 650-1). The addition of a woman in the "marriages of diplomacy" photograph commoditises the practice of polygyny and illustrates that women have traditionally been seen as objects to be possessed, owned and adornments to the lives of men (Pollack). Location Past to Location Present Idealisation of the Aboriginal 'Other' allows for detemporalisation to be played out in alluring images of a simpler, natural Aboriginal world only now tentatively facing the throes of modernisation. Social Darwinism counterpoises superstition/ritual with science/technology and darker skin/exotic clothes with lighter skin/Western clothes. The Aboriginal guide bearing a "striking resemblance to his counterpart on the Burke-Wills journey" facilitates a form of ancestor worship that relates to what Rosaldo calls imperialist nostalgia for the passing of what we ourselves have destroyed (Judge & Scherschel 165). Photographs of the Aboriginal Australians are organised into a story about cultural evolution couched in normative discourse of modernisation and development as progress. In photographs contrasting the premodern with the modern the commodity stands for the future: "soda, soap, and spears in the arms of an [Aboriginal] father and daughter demonstrate their coexistence with white society" (Scollay & Tweedie 662). While for the Aboriginal father in "keeping faith with past and future" his "son enters an era that will inevitably propel his people into modern society" (MacLeish & Nebbia 171). Commodities in these contrasting representations are to be seen simply as a stage on the way to Westernisation. Dynamism, change and agency are apportioned to the Western centre, while Aboriginal Australians are just responding to the onslaught of modernisation on the periphery. Aboriginal masculinisation of modernity is situated in a series of photographs depicting the expansive frontier outback where Aboriginal stockmen are content to muster the cattle of white station owners. In "boiling the red dust" the Aboriginal stockman strums his guitar but sometimes "lapses into tradition and roams on walkabout" (Walker & Scherschel 457). Another Aboriginal stockman, in "saga of beef or bust", "uses his tracking ability to run down strays and cleanskins -- unbranded beasts" (MacLeish & Nebbia 161). "Other than his boots and a jug of water all he owns is rolled into the swag", the Aboriginal stockman must compete with the modern helicopter ("pesky as a giant fly", MacLeish & Stanfield 165); alternatively, "with a wager on the line, an Aboriginal stockman whoops it up at the annual Bedourie Race Meeting" (Ellis & Austen 3). The idealised image is one of the rugged yet happy lives of the Aboriginal stockman in transition to modernity. Social evolutionary theory "saw women in non-Western societies as oppressed and servile creatures, beasts of burden, chattels who could be bought and sold, eventually to be liberated by 'civilisation' or 'progress', thus attaining the enviable position of women in Western society" (Etienne & Leacock 1). Aboriginal feminisation of modernity is told through stories about the premodern helpmate to husband work of Aboriginal women. "Sharing a 'cuppa' at the start of their day" is gendered with vulnerability, primitivity, superstition and the constraints of tradition (Newman & Abell 24-5). The ambivalent message represented in "sharing a 'cuppa' at the start of their day" is complicated by the Aboriginal woman's stockman partner being white. Western ideological understanding of women's work has changed since WWII from helpmate to husband to self-realisation and independence (Chafe). However, images of Aboriginal women in modern work are conspicuously absent. Dispossessed Aboriginal prospectors earn money by 'yandying' ("Paddy Blair's no Irishman", MacLeish & Stanfield 166) -- "winnowing by tossing handfuls of ore into the wind to separate dirt from tin or gold" and 'noodling' -- "poking through rubble" ("selling water and renting bulldozers", Moore & Tweedie 569). Abject "down-and-outs addicted to cheap, poisonous wood alcohol" end up as dispossessed fringe-dwelling 'goomies' in Redfern ("matron saint", Starbird & Madden 224-5). Resistance through situationally motivated undertaking by Indigenous people against expropriation of land and resources is rarely represented in the media (see Drinnon), and National Geographic first attempts such a representation in the 1980s with "heads of several clans" (Scollay & Tweedie 653). Aboriginal men attempt to block a government mining survey crew. But the six Aboriginal men gaze off in different directions and only one is clearly focussed on something in the frame, thus the assembled men assume a disconnected, uncoordinated look. In the 1990s National Geographic story "The Uneasy Magic of Australia's Cape York Peninsula", Aboriginality is equated with caring for the land (Newman & Abell). Aboriginal peoples of Cape York Peninsula are portrayed as conservators valuable for their preservation of biocultural diversity ("the richlytextured landscape", Newman & Abell 17). Aboriginal "white sand people" of Cape York Peninsula are "on a sacred mission" when they "return an ancestor's skull to their homeland at Shelbourne Bay (Newman & Abell 32-3). After years of frustrated efforts to win back their lost domain, the peninsula's native people are at last gaining ground". Aboriginal Australian uses of land and resources are idealised as non-destructive and caring in contrast to rapacious postcolonial development aggression. National Geographic images of Aboriginal Australians have moved from the exoticised, naturalised and sexualised location past. Images in the location present of Cape York mirror the postcolonial transition from Aboriginal dispossession informed by terra nullius to their contemporary empowerment informed by native title. References Arden, H., and S. Abell. "Journey into Dreamtime: The Land of Northwest Australia." National Geographic 179 (Jan. 1991): 8-42. Chafe, W. "Social Change and the American Woman, 1940-70". A History of Our Time: Readings on Postwar America. Eds. W. Chafe and H. Sitkoff. New York: Oxford UP, 1983. 157-65. Drinnon, R. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian Hating and Empire Building. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1980. Ellis, W., and D. Austen. "Queensland: Broad Shoulder of Australia." National Geographic 169 (Jan. 1986): 2-39. Etienne, M. and E. Leacock, eds. Women and Colonisation: Anthropological Perspectives. New York: Praeger, 1980. Fabian, J. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia UP, 1983. Judge, J., and J. Scherschel. "The Journey of Burke and Wills: First across Australia." National Geographic Feb. (1979): 52-91. Lutz, C., and J. Collins. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. MacLeish, K., and T. Nebbia. "The Top End Down Under." National Geographic Feb. (1993): 143-73. MacLeish, K. and J. Stanfield. "Western Australia: The Big Country." National Geographic Feb. (1975): 147-87. Meltzer, M. Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life. NewYork: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1978. Moore, K., and P. Tweedie. "Coober Pedy: Opal Capital of Australia's Outback." National Geographic Oct. (1976): 560-71. Newman, C., and S. Abell. "The Uneasy Magic of Australia's Cape York Peninsula." National Geographic June (1996 ): 2-33. Ortner, S. "Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?" Woman, Culture, and Society. Eds. M. Rosaldo and L. Lamphere. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1974. 67-88. Pollack, G. "What's Wrong with Images of Women?" Looking On: Images of Femininity in the Visual Arts and the Media. Ed. R. Betterton. London: Pandora, 1987. 40-8. Rosaldo, R. Culture and Truth. Boston: Beacon P, 1989. Scollay, C., and P. Tweedie. "Arnhem Land Aboriginals Cling to the Dreamtime." National Geographic Nov. (1980): 645-61. Starbird, E., and R. Madden. "Sydney: Big, Breezy, and a Bloomin' Good Show." National Geographic Feb. (1979): 211-36. Walker, H., and J. Scherschel. "South Australia, Gateway to the Great Outback." National Geographic April (1970): 441-81. Wolf, E. Europe and the People without History.Berkeley: U of California P, 1982. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Hyndman. "Postcolonial Representation of Aboriginal Australian Culture: Location Past to Location Present in National Geographic." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php>. Chicago style: David Hyndman, "Postcolonial Representation of Aboriginal Australian Culture: Location Past to Location Present in National Geographic," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Hyndman. (2000) Postcolonial representation of Aboriginal Australian culture: location past to location present in National Geographic. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/geo.php> ([your date of access]).

Introduction This paper is based upon an investigation into the life of a street market in the city of Ha Noi in Vietnam, and experience of the street food served on Ha Noi’s pavements. It draws upon interviews with itinerant food vendors conducted by the researchers and upon accounts of their daily lives from a Vietnamese film subtitled in English and French, sourced from the Vietnamese Women’s Museum (Jensen). The research considers the lives of the people making and selling street food against the distilled versions of cultural experience accessible through the pages of two recent English language cookbooks focussing upon this cuisine. The data from the fieldwork is used as a point for critical comparison (Fram) with recipes and descriptions from Hanoi Street Food (Vandenberghe and Thys) and Vietnamese Street Food (Lister and Pohl), two recent relevant English language cookbooks. The research question addressed is “How are the everyday lives of Vietnamese street market cooks (mis)represented in cookery-related books published for an English-language readership?” The research team comprises an Australian Cultural Studies academic (Lelia Green) and a bi-lingual Vietnamese researcher (Nguyen Hong Van), who is Ha Noi born and bred, but who has lived overseas and whose first degree, in Sociology, is from a Canadian university. In each other’s company and over a period of some weeks, Lelia and Van spent more than 40 hours on ethnographic fieldwork in street markets, and interviewing street vendors. The purpose of the research was exploratory, but it was also undertaken as a means of making the labour and lives of marginalised women more visible, since most itinerant food vendors in Vietnam are women (Jensen). As Bhomik notes, male vendors “are engaged in motor cycle repair or sale of higher priced goods such as personal products, souvenirs etc. and their earnings are higher” (2261). Although the teamwork between Lelia and Van went some way to resolve the challenges posed by insider/outsider qualitative research (Corbin, Dwyer, and Buckle), Van has never lived or worked as a street vendor. First Take an Informal Street Market … Eating on the Street An informal Vietnamese street market is a multi-layered space, ordered according to the geography of the area in which the food is prepared and consumed. The informality of a street market indicates its status between legitimacy and repression. Informal street markets spring up in locales where there is significant demand—usually office workers nearby, and schools. The food they sell is cheap and flavourful, catering for the needs of people who have little time or money and want something hot and nourishing to start, punctuate, or end the day. As markets grow, so the vendors in the market constitute a secondary population in need of sustenance. Itinerant street vendors carry with them everything they need for their day’s work. Typically this includes a little oil or coal-based stove, their raw ingredients, dishes or trays for food preparation and serving, often a bowl for washing food or utensils, and a large bag to carry the dirty dishes used by their customers. Often these tools of their trade will be carried in two baskets balanced upon a pole that acts as a yoke across the vendor’s neck. Sometimes well-resourced vendors will also carry, (or push a bicycle or cart with), sets of small plastic stools and tables, so that their clients can sit and enjoy their food. In the semi-tropical climate of Ha Noi, carrying the raw materials to cook for and feed dozens of patrons is a tiring and difficult business. These street vendors’s lives are made more complex by the semi-legitimacy of the informal street market where itinerants are viewed as potential sources of income by a series of officials who extort small but frequent payments in the form of demanding bribes, or levying fines for illegal activity such as obstructing the pavement (Lincoln). Trung, who sells crab noodles, says the police are the most difficult aspect of her job: “they can come anytime and confiscate all my stuff and give me a fine. One time I was so panicked when I saw them approaching on a small truck that I took all my bowls and ran. The bowl slipped out of my hands and cut into my leg. I still have a deep scar from that accident” (Trung). Now add a smattering of street vendors. Bánh Mỳ: Bread Rolls “1 French baguette”, states the Vandenberghe and Thys recipe for bánh mỳ, implicitly acknowledging the hundred years of French colonisation which provides Vietnam with its excellent breads and pastries, “beat the eggs lightly in a mixing bowl, crumble the paté and combine the paté and the lightly beaten eggs. Put the oil in a small frying pan and cook the omelette […] fold the omelette double and put it on the [grilled, heated] bread […] the variations are endless” (71). The young Vietnamese woman, Anh, sells bánh mỳ trứng ngải cứu, bread rolls with egg cooked with mugwort, an aromatic leafy herb. She explains her initial motivation to sell food on the street: “some women in my village already came to the city to sell. I can’t earn much money at home and I need money to send my children to school, so I decided to follow them” (Anh). She shares rented accommodation in the city with other women—sometimes up to ten people in a room (Jensen)—and starts her day at 4.30am, washing vegetables and preparing her baskets. Although a street trader herself, she is networked into a complex set of supply and delivery connections. Her eggs and bread are delivered fresh each morning and she buys the mugwort from a market near her lodgings. “I leave home around 6am and start walking along the streets. […] I mostly sell to shop keepers. They have to stay in their shop so I bring breakfast to them. I walk through a lot of streets, whenever someone calls out I will stop and make bread for them” (Anh). Mid-morning, at around 10am, Anh goes back to her home to have lunch and prepare for the afternoon, with a fresh delivery of eggs around 1.00-1.30pm. Usually, she leaves again around 2.00pm “but if it’s too hot outside, I will stay until 3pm, because it is very tiring to walk in the heat, and people don’t eat that early either. I go home whenever I sell out […], sometimes as early as 4pm, or as late as 7pm” (Anh). Like many street vendors, Anh has sought out points of contact with the local community to punctuate her walking with episodes of rest. Her customers are mainly other Vietnamese people, “shop keepers and residents of the streets I walk along every day. There is an old lady. I sit in front of her shop every afternoon from 3pm to 5pm. She eats one egg every day” (Anh). Anh has been selling Bánh mỳ on the streets for three years, but this is not her only source of income: “At home I grow rice, but I can only harvest it at the end of the season. It only takes a storm or hail to destroy the whole effort I spend for months […] This [food] is very easy to make, and I make a little profit everyday” (Anh). She has never worked from a recipe book: “I think only people in hotels, like a big chef who makes complicated dishes need recipes, this one is very easy, just a common everyday food” (Anh). As for the problems posed by the policing of informal markets, Anh says: “if I am not careful, the ward police will give me a fine for selling on the street.” Such a calamity can write off the profit of many hours’ or days’ work. Xôi: Sticky Rice Xôi is a popular street food dish, and Lister and Pohl provide two recipes, one for xôi lạc (sticky rice with peanuts)(68), and one for xôi xéo (sticky rice with turmeric and mung beans, and fried shallots) (80). Nga, the xôi seller interviewed for this research, sells both types of sticky rice along with xôi gậc (a festive red sticky rice cooked with and coloured by spiny bitter gourd, and typically eaten at Tết, the celebration for the Lunar New Year) and xôi đỗ đen, sticky rice with black bean. She used to specialise in only one kind of sticky rice but, as she says, “business was slow so I added other types of sticky rice. I sit here in the morning everyday anyway, so I sell different types, a small quantity for each” (Nga). The biggest complication for street vendors selling sticky rice is the requirement that it is still being steamed just before being sold, so that it is hot, soft, and sticky, and not dried out. The cooked sticky rice is usually packed in banana leaves under a plastic cover and put in a bamboo basket. The basket helps with ventilation while banana leaves keep the rice moist and the plastic cover keeps in heat. Traditionally, xôi is also sold in banana leaves. Nga uses first a layer of banana leaf, then one of plastic, and finally newspaper. Nga is a grandmother and constructs her street vending as a retirement job, which puts food on the table for her husband and herself. In Vietnam, there is a tradition that the younger generations look after their elders, but her work as a street vendor means that Nga and her husband can retain their autonomy and help their own family, for longer. Nga starts cooking at 4.00am, but her street food is only one element of her income: “In addition to selling here, I also deliver to restaurants. Actually most of my income comes from them. I deliver at around 5 to 5.30am, and start selling here at 6” (Nga). Both of Lister and Pohl’s recipes start with soaking the sticky rice overnight in water, just as Nga does. She says, “I wash the rice and soak them before I go to bed the night before. I get up, start the stove which uses black coal. I sell out all the rice everyday, otherwise it won’t taste good […] usually I sell out at 8 or 8.30am, 9am at the latest. I don’t work in the afternoon. I pick up my grandchildren at 4pm and take care of them until the end of the day.” Nga has strong views about the place of recipes in cooking, especially in cooking as a business: I don’t need to learn from a book. Written recipes or informal teaching from relatives is the same, they are just the starting point. What matters is you learn from your own experience. For example, you soak your rice for 6 hours today, but your customers complain that the rice is not soft, so you soak it for 8 hours next time. Or maybe you sell to a poorer community, you will adjust your ingredients to cheaper type, so you can reduce your price but still make profit; but if you sell in a richer neighbourhood, you make sure you have good quality, even with higher price, or else they will not buy from you (Nga). Lister and Pohl dedicate a two-page spread (70-1) to Ðặng Thị Sáu and her Xôi shopfront stall, noting that she learned her business from her mother-in-law who was “an itinerant sticky rice peddler for most of her life, walking the city streets, selling from bamboo baskets. It was a hard and uncertain life and not one Sáu wanted to follow” (70). Sáu’s compromise, ultimately, was to sell sticky rice from the comparative security and stability of a fixed location. Lister and Pohl’s focus upon Sáu and her food, along with the pictures of everyday life featured in Vietnamese Street Food, mean that this is more than an inspirational cookbook. It is a vivid introduction to the vernacular foodways of Vietnam “a set of social, economic and cultural practices around the production and consumption of food that are normatively distinctive to an ethnocultural group” (Jonas 119). Bún Riêu Cua: Crab Meat Noodle Crab meat noodle is a complicated recipe and a reminder that many people who eat street food do so because these are favourite Vietnamese dishes which may require considerable effort to prepare. The specialisation of street food vendors, making a complicated dish for the relish of dozens of customers, allows busy Vietnamese workers to enjoy their authentic cuisine at an affordable cost without the time constraints of buying multiple ingredients and making the dish themselves. The recipe in Hanoi Street Food involves several steps: preparation of the sauce using sautéing, frying and reducing (Jones); cooking of the crab in boiling water (not including separately bought crabmeat used in the sauce); creation of a chicken stock, to which the sauce is added; along with the washing and chopping a range of vegetables including soya bean sprouts, spring onions, lettuce, fresh herbs, lime etc., some of which is used as garnish (Vandenberghe, and Thys 90). Trung and her husband have been selling their bún riêu cua for five years. For nine years prior to working as a street food vendor, Trung was a recyclables collector. She began working in the city when she “followed a cousin to Ha Noi so I could earn money to support my family of six people. At first I collected materials such as plastic bottles, metal, papers, etc, but because I carried too much on my shoulders, I developed severe back pain and shoulder pain” (Trung). Now she and her husband use a bicycle to help carry the various necessities for her bún riêu cua street stall, using the vehicle to reduce some of the physical burden of the work. Trung learned how to make bún riêu cua from an aunt in Hai Phong, “I just observed her and other people”. The dish remains time consuming, however:I get up at 3am to start preparing the crab and cook the soup. My husband washes vegetables. It often takes us about 2 hours. By 5am, we leave the house, and we are here by 5.30, ready to sell breakfast […] I am most busy during lunchtime, from 10am to 1-2pm. Breakfast time can last from 6am to 9am. When I am not selling to customers I often get tired and easily fall asleep because I always crave sleep. In between, my husband and I wash dishes. He also delivers to people too. We get lots of phone calls from patients of the hospitals nearby. They say my food is more delicious than food in the hospital’s canteen […] Usually I go home around 4pm in the summer and 5 to 6pm in the winter. But I also stop by different shops to buy ingredients for the next day on my way home. Once I get home, I wash the bowls, re-supply and re-arrange my stuffs, and do some preparation. I work until I go to bed at 9pm (Trung). The illustration for this recipe in Hanoi Street Food is not of the dish itself, but of young Vietnamese men enjoying the dish. As is the case with Lister and Pohl, Vandenberghe and Thys’s book is about more than recipes, it is a rich evocation of daily life on the streets of Vietnam. Serve with a Side-dish of Conclusions Authentic street food is cooked, sold and consumed on the street. However, street food cookbooks tend to recommended shopfront eateries, partly because they are easier to find, and are more convenient, in that neither the tourist nor the vendor is at risk of police intervention. Another reason for featuring the more established vendors with their own premises concerns food hygiene: In 1989 the Vietnamese government adopted a law on the protection of people’s health. A survey on food samples in Hanoi showed that 47 per cent were microbiologically unsafe. [This has now changed.] The government has adopted two practices for ensuring safer street food, namely, monitoring street food vendors through a licensing system, and educating and training them on hygiene (Bhowmik 2260). Such licensing, training and the maintenance of hygiene standards are more difficult to police with itinerant food vendors. In the two cookbooks featured, ingredients tend to be measured as to specific amounts, with the idea that the result should be predictable. Street vendors, however, learn to cook their signature dishes from friends, relatives, and experience. They do not measure their ingredients while cooking, and their products vary from one vendor to another, and also to some extent from day to day, even given the same cook. This creates a special characteristic of street food and means that regular customers gravitate to particular vendors whose choice of seasoning and cooking techniques culminates in the most attractive results according to their personal taste. While there are lots of stalls captioned as bánh mỳ, regular customers will find that there are significant differences between stalls. One reason for this is offered in Lister and Pohl: small quantities of special ingredients that are difficult to get in Vietnam and impossible elsewhere. The cook in a featured Bánh cuốn stall (selling rice pancakes) adds a drop of giant water bug juice to season her dipping broth: “ ‘It’s the real thing! One drop off the top of a chopstick is enough’ she explains” (Lister, and Pohl 33). As is clear from the interviews with vendors, itinerant sellers of street food don’t use recipe books, and have generally learned how to cook their dishes through women’s networks of family and friends. The two cookbooks discussed are designed for consumption by people who engage in or aspire to “food and drink tourism” (Boniface vii) in Vietnam, whether the readers have visited in person or become aware of the cuisine through popular culture, such as Luke Nguyen’s SBS cooking shows (Nguyen). They are as much coffee table books as collections of recipes, and are written by westerners for a western readership. The recipes focus on ingredients that can be sourced in everyday western contexts but the beautiful and evocative photographs of daily life in Vietnam, supplemented by written commentary on people and place, clearly locate the recipes in their Vietnamese cultural context. Culinary tourism allows people unfamiliar with a cuisine and culture to use “food to explore new cultures and ways of being” (Long 21). Street food vendors are part of many communities. They require knowledge, skill, and personal networks to acquire the quality ingredients at the best possible price for the daily routine of food preparation and selling. Whereas recipe books deal with domestic-scale food production, a vendor may cook for a hundred or more people in a single day. Many itinerant street food sellers work in the city to support absent husbands and children in rural locations, taking money home on a regular basis ($20 profit a fortnight makes their labour worthwhile), and spending 10 days in 14 on the streets (Jensen). As women help each other to begin a career as a vendor through oral teaching, observation, and first-hand experience, they do away with the invisible, authoritative voice of cookbooks. Itinerant food sellers are also a part of the larger communities in which they work, including customers, their suppliers, and other actors such as the authorities and the media. This larger community sets the tone for their food, and their lives. The vast majority of vendors of street food are women, prepared to work hard and with passion and pride to make enough money to make a difference to their families. Books about street food might help recreate some of the dishes that can be bought on the streets of Vietnam. After participating in street life, however, as an observer or customer, it becomes clear that recipe cookbooks intended for English readers only capture part of the complexity and beauty of street food, and the lives of those who make it. References Anh. Personal communication. Trans. Nguyen Hong Van. 2013. Boniface, Priscilla. Tasting Tourism: Travelling for Food and Drink. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Bhowmik, Sharit K. “Street Vendors in Asia: A Review.” Economic and Political Weekly (2005): 2256–64. Burr, Vivien. Social Constructionism. 2nd ed. Oxford: Routledge, 2003. Corbin Dwyer, Sonya, and Jennifer L. Buckle. “The Space Between: On Being an Insider-Outsider in Qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 8.1 (2009): 54–63. Fram, Sheila M. “The Constant Comparative Analysis Method Outside of Grounded Theory.” The Qualitative Report 18, Article 1 (2013): 1–25. 28 Apr. 2013 ‹http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR18/fram1.pdf›. Jensen, Rolf. Street Vendors [DVD of three films, Their Voices, Thuy’s Story and Loi’s Story]. Ha Noi: Vietnamese Women’s Museum, 2012. Jonas, Tammi. “Eating the Vernacular, Being Cosmopolitan.” Cultural Studies Review 19.1 (2013): 117–37. 19 May 2013 ‹http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/viewFile/3076/3428›. Jones, G. Stephen. “The Difference between Sautéing, Pan Frying and Stir Frying [blog post].” The Reluctant Gourmet. 30 Apr. 2010. 28 Apr. 2013 ‹http://reluctantgourmet.com/cooking-techniques/frying/item/856-saute-pan-fry-and-stir-fry›. Lincoln, Martha. “Report from the Field: Street Vendors and the Informal Sector in Hanoi.” Dialectical Anthropology 32.3 (2008): 261–5. Lister, Tracey, and Andreas Pohl. Vietnamese Street Food. Rev. ed. Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2013. Long, Lucy. “A Folkloristic Perspective on Eating and Otherness.” Culinary Tourism. Ed. Lucy Long. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2004. 20–50. Nga. Personal communication. (trans. Nguyen Hong Van), 2013. Nguyen, Luke. Luke Nyugen’s Vietnam [SBS]. 2009 ‹http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/lukenguyen/watchonline/page/i/1/show/lukenguyen›. Trung. Personal communication. Trans. Nguyen Hong Van. 2013. Vandenberghe, Tom, and Luk Thys. Hanoi Street Food: Cooking and Travelling in Vietnam. Tielt: Uitgeverij Lannoo nv, 2011.

In recent years, the US television landscape has been flooded with reboots, remakes, and revivals of “classic” nineties television series, such as Full/er House (1987-1995, 2016-present), Will & Grace (1998-2006, 2017-present), Roseanne (1988-1977, 2018), and Charmed (1998-2006, 2018-present). The term “reboot” is often used as a catchall for different kinds of revivals and remakes. “Remakes” are derivations or reimaginings of known properties with new characters, cast, and stories (Loock; Lavigne). “Revivals” bring back an existing property in the form of a continuation with the same cast and/or setting. “Revivals” and “remakes” both seek to capitalise on nostalgia for a specific notion of the past and access the (presumed) existing audience of the earlier series (Mittell; Rebecca Williams; Johnson).Reboots operate around two key pleasures. First, there is the pleasure of revisiting and/or reimagining characters that are “known” to audiences. Whether continuations or remakes, reboots are invested in the audience’s desire to see familiar characters. Second, there is the desire to “fix” and/or recuperate an earlier series. Some reboots, such as the Charmed remake attempt to recuperate the whiteness of the original series, whereas others such as Gilmore Girls: A Life in the Year (2017) set out to fix the ending of the original series by giving audiences a new “official” conclusion.The Roseanne reboot is invested in both these pleasures. It reunites the original cast for a short-lived, but impactful nine-episode tenth season. There is pleasure in seeing Roseanne (Roseanne Barr), Dan (John Goodman), Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), Becky (Lecy Goranson [seasons one to six, ten], Sarah Chalke [seasons six to nine]), Darlene (Sara Gilbert), and DJ (Michael Fishman) back in the Conner house with the same well-worn couch and afghan. The (attempted) recuperation is of author-star Barr, whose recent politics are in stark contrast to the working-class second-wave feminist politics of her nineties’ persona. This article is particularly interested in the second pleasure, because both the original series and the reboot situate the voice of Barr as central to the series’ narrative and politics.Despite achieving the highest ratings of any US sitcom in the past three years (O’Connell), on 29 May 2018, ABC announced that it was cancelling the Roseanne reboot. This decision came about in the wake of a racist tweet, where Barr compared a black woman (high-ranking Obama aide Valerie Jarrett) to an ape. Barr’s tweet and the cancellation of Roseanne, highlight the limits of nostalgia and Roseanne/Barr’s particular brand of white feminism. While whiteness and a lack of racial awareness are (and always have been) at the centre of Barr’s performance of feminism, the political landscape has shifted since the 1990s, with the rise of third and fourth-wave feminisms and intersectional activism. As such in the contemporary landscape, there is the expectation that white feminist figures take on and endorse anti-racist stances.This article argues that the reboot’s attempt to capitalise on nineties nostalgia exposes the limits of Roseanne/Barr’s feminism, as well as the limits of nostalgia. The feminist legacy of nineties-era Roseanne cannot and does not recuperate Barr’s star-persona. Also, the reboot and its subsequent cancellation highlight how the feminism of the series is embodied by Barr and her whiteness. This article will situate Roseanne and Barr within a feminist tradition on US television, before exploring how the reboot operates and circulates differently to the original series.From Roseanne (1988-1997) to Roseanne (2018)In its original form, Roseanne holds the distinction of being one of the most highly discussed and canonised feminist-leaning television series of all time, alongside The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), Cagney and Lacey (1981-1988), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2004). Roseanne also enabled and informed many popular feminist-leaning contemporary series, including Girls (2012-2017), Mom (2013-present), Better Things (2016-present), and Dietland (2018). Although it may seem anachronistic today, Roseanne and Barr helped define what it means to be a feminist and speak feminist politics on US television.Roseanne depicts the lives of the Conner family, headed by parents Roseanne and Dan. They live in the fictional blue-collar town of Lanford, Illinois with their three children Becky, Darlene, and DJ. Both Roseanne and Dan experience precarious employment and embark on numerous (mostly failed) business ventures throughout the series’ run. The reboot catches up with the Conner family in 2018, after Roseanne has experienced a health scare and single mom Darlene has moved into her parents’ house with her two children Harris (Emma Kenney) and Mark (Ames McNamara). In the new season, Roseanne and Dan’s children are experiencing similar working conditions to their parents in the 1990s. Becky works at a Mexican restaurant and is eager to act as surrogate mother to earn $50,000, Darlene is recently unemployed and looking for work, and DJ has just returned from military service.A stated objective of reviving Roseanne was to address the contentious US political landscape after the election of President Donald J. Trump (VanDerWerff). Barr is a vocal supporter of President Trump, as is her character in the reboot. The election plays a key role in the new season’s premise. The first episode of season 10 establishes that the titular Roseanne has not spoken to her sister Jackie (who is a Hillary Clinton supporter) in over a year. In both its nineties and 2018 incarnations, Roseanne makes apparent the extent to which feminist politics are indebted to and spoken through the author-star. The series is based on a character that Barr created and is grounded in her life experience. Barr and her character Roseanne are icons of nineties televisual feminism. While the other members of the Conner family are richly drawn and compelling, Roseanne is the centre of the series. It is her voice and perspective that drives the series and gives it its political resonance. Roseanne’s power in the text is authorised by Barr’s stardom. As Melissa Williams writes: “For nearly a decade, Barr was one of the most powerful women in Hollywood” (180).In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, Roseanne (and Barr) represented a new kind of feminist voice on US television, which at that stage (and still today) was dominated by middle-class women. Unlike Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore), Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad), or Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen), Roseanne did not have a stable job and her family’s economic situation was often precarious. Roseanne/Barr adopted and used a feminism of personality popularised on television by Mary Tyler Moore and Lucille Ball. Unlike her foremothers, though, Roseanne/Barr was not slender, feminine, or interested in being likeable to men. Roseanne did not choose to work outside of the home, which marked her as different from many of US television’s other second-wave feminists and/or mothers. As Rachael Horowitz writes: “Roseanne’s feminism was for women who have to work because bills must get paid, who assert their role as head of the house despite the degrading work they often do during the day to pay for their kids’ food and clothes” (9).According to Kathleen Rowe, Barr is part of a long line of “female grotesques” whose defining features are excess and looseness (2-3). Rowe links Barr’s fatness or physical excess with her refusal to shut up and subversive speech. The feminism of Roseanne is contained within and expressed through Barr’s unruly white body (and voice). Barr’s unruliness and her unwillingness to follow the social conventions of politeness and decorum are tied to her (perceived) feminist politics.Understandings of Barr’s stardom, however, have shifted considerably in the years since the publication of Rowe’s analysis. While Barr is still “unruly,” her unruliness is no longer located in her body (which has been transformed to meet more conventional standards of western beauty), but rather in her Twitter presence, which is pro-Israel, pro-Trump, and anti-immigration. As Roxane Gay writes of the reboot: “Whatever charm and intelligence she [Barr] brought to the first nine seasons of her show, a show I very much loved, are absolutely absent in her current persona, particularly as it manifests on Twitter.”Feminist Voice and Stardom on US TVRoseanne performs what Julie D’Acci calls “explicit general feminism,” which is defined by “dialogue and scenes that straightforwardly addressed discrimination against women in both public and private spheres, stories structured around topical feminist causes, and the use of unequivocal feminist language and slogans” (147). However, the feminist politics of Roseanne and Barr are (and never were) straightforward or uncomplicated.Studies of feminism on US television have primarily focused on comedies that feature female television stars who function as advocates for feminism and women’s issues (Spigel; Rabinovitz; D’Acci). Much of the critical discussion of feminist voice in US female-led television identifies the feminist intervention as taking place at the level of performance (Dow; Spigel; Spangler). Comedic series such as I Love Lucy (1951-1957), Murphy Brown (1988-1998, 2018-present), and Grace Under Fire (1993-1998), and dramatic series’, such as Cagney and Lacey and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, privilege the articulation of feminist ideas through performance and character.Roseanne is not a series that derives its comedy from a clash of different perspectives or a series where politics are debated and explored in a nuanced a complex way. Roseanne promotes a distinct singular perspective – that of Roseanne Barr. In seasons one to nine, the character Roseanne is rarely persuaded to think differently about an issue or situation or depicted as “wrong.” The series centres Roseanne’s pain and distress when Becky elopes with Mark (Glenn Quinn), or when Jackie is abused by her boyfriend Fisher (Matt Roth), or when Darlene accidently gets pregnant. Although those storylines are about other characters, Roseanne’s emotions are central. Roseanne/Barr’s perspective (as fictional character and media personality) informs the narrative, sensibility, and tone. Roseanne is not designed to contain multiple perspectives.Roseanne is acutely aware of its place in the history of feminist voice and representations of women on US television. Television is central to the series’ articulation of feminism and feminist voice. In season seven episode “All About Rosey,” the series breaks the fourth wall (as it does many times throughout its run), taking the audience behind the scenes where some of US television’s most well-known (and traditional) mothers are cleaning the Conner’s kitchen. June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley) from Leave It to Beaver (1957-1963), Joan Nash (Pat Crowley) from Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1965-1967), Ruth Martin (June Lockhart) from Lassie (1958-1964), Norma Arnold (Alley Mills) from The Wonder Years (1988-1993), and Louise Jefferson (Isabel Sanford) from The Jeffersons (1975-1985) at first sit in judgment of Barr and her character Roseanne, claiming she presents “wrong image” for a TV mother. However, Roseanne/Barr eventually wins over the TV mothers, declaring “the important thing is on my show, I’m the boss and father knows squat” (7.19). It is in contrast to more traditional television mothers that Roseanne/Barr’s feminist voice comes into focus.In the ninth and final season of Roseanne’s initial run, the series (arguably) becomes a parody of its former self. By this point in the series, “Barr was seen as the sole cause of the show’s demise, as a woman who was ‘imploding,’ ‘losing the plot,’ or ‘out of control’” (White 234). White argues that depicting the working-class Conners’ social and economic ascension to upper-class diminishes the distinction between Barr and her character (243). White writes that in the series’ finale, the “line between performer and character is irrevocably blurred; it is unclear whether the voice we are hearing is that of Roseanne Conner or Roseanne Barr” (244). This blurring between Roseanne and Barr becomes particularly contentious in season 10.Rebooting Roseanne: Season 10Season 10 redacts and erases most of the events of season nine, which itself was a fantasy, as revealed in the season nine finale. As such, the reboot is not a simple continuation, because in the season nine finale it is revealed that Dan suffered a fatal heart attack a year earlier. The final monologue (delivered in voice-over by Barr) “reveals” that Roseanne has been writing and editing her experiences into a digestible story. The “Conners winning the lottery” storyline that dominated season nine was imagined by Roseanne as an elaborate coping strategy after Dan’s death. Yet in the season 10 reboot, Dan is revealed to be alive, as is Darlene and David’s (Johnny Galecki) daughter Harris, who was born during the events of season nine.The limits of Roseanne/Barr’s feminism within the contemporary political landscape come into focus around issues of race. This is partly because the incident that incited ABC to cancel the reboot of Roseanne was racially motivated, and partly because Roseanne/Barr’s feminism has always relied on whiteness. Between 1997 and 2018, Barr’s unruliness has become less associated with empowering working-class women and more with railing against minorities and immigrants. In redacting and erasing the events of season nine, the reboot attempts to step back the conflation between Roseanne and Barr with little success.In the first episode of season 10, “Twenty Years to Life”, Roseanne is positioned as the loud-mouthed victim of circumstance and systemic inequality – similar to her nineties-persona. Yet in 2018, Roseanne mocks same things that nineties’ Roseanne took seriously, including collective action, community building, and labour conditions. Roseanne claims: “It is not my fault that I just happen to be a charismatic person that’s right about everything” (10.01). Here, the series attempts to make light of a now-outdated understanding of Barr’s persona, but it comes off as tone-deaf and lacking self-awareness.Roseanne has bigoted tendencies in both the 1990s and in 2018, but the political resonance of those tendencies and their relationships to feminisms and nostalgia differs greatly from the original series to the reboot. This is best illustrated by comparing season seven episode “White Men Can’t Kiss” and season 10 episode “Go Cubs.” In the former, Roseanne is appalled that she may have raised a racist son and insists DJ must kiss his black classmate Geena (Rae’Ven Larrymore Kelly) in the school play. Towards the end of this episode, Geena’s father comes by the restaurant where Roseanne and Jackie are closing up. When the tall black man knocks on the locked door, Roseanne refuses to let him inside. She appears visibly afraid. Once Roseanne knows he is Geena’s father, she lets him in and he confronts her about her racist attitude. Roseanne (and the audience) is forced to sit in the discomfort of having her bigotry exposed. While there are no material consequences for Roseanne or DJ’s racism, within the context of the less intersectional 1990s, this interaction does not call into question Roseanne or Barr’s feminist credentials.In season 10, Roseanne tackles similar issues around race, ignorance, and bigotry, but it plays out very differently. In the reboot’s seventh episode, Roseanne suspects her Muslim refugee neighbours Fatima (Anne Bedian) and Samir (Alain Washnevky) are terrorists. Although Roseanne is proven wrong, she is not forced to reckon with her bigotry. Instead, she is positioned as a “hero” later in the episode, when she berates a supermarket cashier for her racist treatment of Fatima. Given what audiences know about Barr’s off-screen politics, this does not counteract the impression of racism, but compounds it. It also highlights the whiteness of the politics embodied by Roseanne/Barr both on-screen and off. Although these are two very different racial configurations (anti-blackness and Islamophobia), these episodes underline the shifting reception and resonance of the feminism Roseanne/Barr embodies.ConclusionIn June 2018, shortly after the cancellation of the Roseanne reboot, ABC announced that it was developing a spin-off without Barr called The Conners (2018-present). In the spin-off Roseanne is dead and her family is dealing with life after Roseanne/Roseanne (Crucchiola). Here, Roseanne suffers the same fate as Dan in season nine (she dies off-screen), but now it is Barr who is fictionally buried. While The Conners attempts to rewrite the story of the Conner family by rejecting Barr’s racist views and removing her financial and creative stake in their stories, Barr cannot be erased or redacted from Roseanne or the story of the Conner family, because it is her story.The reboot and its cancellation illuminate how Barr and Roseanne’s feminist voice has not evolved past its white second-wave roots. The feminism of Roseanne is embodied by Barr in all her unruliness and whiteness. Roseanne/Barr/Roseanne has not taken on the third and fourth-wave critiques of second-wave feminisms, which emphasise the limits of white feminisms. The failure of the Roseanne reboot reveals that the pleasure and nostalgia of seeing the Conner family back together is not enough. Ultimately, Roseanne is without intersectionality, and thus cannot (and should not) be recognised as feminist in the contemporary political landscape.ReferencesBetter Things. Cr. Pamela Adlon and Louis C.K. 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This paper argues that artist Dope Saint Jude is transforming South African hip-hop by queering a genre that has predominantly been male and heteronormative. Specifically, I analyse the opening skit of her music video “Keep in Touch” in order to unpack the ways which she revives Gayle, a gay language that adopted double-coded forms of speech during the apartheid era—a context in which homosexuals were criminalised. The use of Gayle and spaces close to the city centre of Cape Town (such as Salt River and Woodstock) speaks to the city as it was before it was transformed by the decline of industries due to the country’s adoption of neoliberal economics and, more recently, by the gentrification of these spaces. Dope Saint Jude therefore reclaims these city spaces through her use of gay modes of speech that have a long history in Cape Town and by positioning her work as hip-hop, which has been popular in the city for well over two decades. Her inclusion of transgender MC and DJ Angel Ho pushes the boundaries of hegemonic and binary conceptions of gender identity even further. In essence, Dope Saint Jude is transforming local hip-hop in a context that is shaped significantly by US cultural imperialism. The artist is also transforming our perspective of spaces that have been altered by neoliberal economics.Setting the SceneDope Saint Jude (DSJ) is a queer MC from Elsies River, a working class township located on Cape Town's Cape Flats in South Africa. Elsies River was defined as a “coloured” neighbourhood under the apartheid state's Group Areas Act, which segregated South Africans racially. With the aid of the Population Registration Act, citizens were classified, not merely along the lines of white, Asian, or black—black subjects were also divided into further categories. The apartheid state also distinguished between black and “coloured” subjects. Michael MacDonald contends that segregation “ordained blacks to be inferior to whites; apartheid cast them to be indelibly different” (11). Apartheid declared “African claims in South Africa to be inferior to white claims” and effectively claimed that black subjects “belonged elsewhere, in societies of their own, because their race was different” (ibid). The term “coloured” defined people as “mixed race” to separate communities that might otherwise have identified as black in the broad and inclusive sense (Erasmus 16). Racial categorisation was used to create a racial hierarchy with white subjects at the top of that hierarchy and those classified as black receiving the least resources and benefits. This frustrated attempts to establish broad alliances of black struggles against apartheid. It is in this sense that race is socially and politically constructed and continues to have currency, despite the fact that biologically essentialist understandings of race have been discredited (Yudell 13–14). Thanks to apartheid town planning and resource allocation, many townships on the Cape Flats were poverty-stricken and plagued by gang violence (Salo 363). This continues to be the case because post-apartheid South Africa's embrace of neoliberal economics failed to address racialised class inequalities significantly (Haupt, Static 6–8). This is the '90s context in which socially conscious hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City or Black Noise, came together. They drew inspiration from Black Consciousness philosophy via their exposure to US hip-hop crews such as Public Enemy in order to challenge apartheid policies, including their racial interpellation as “coloured” as distinct from the more inclusive category, black (Haupt, “Black Thing” 178). Prophets of da City—whose co-founding member, Shaheen Ariefdien, also lived in Elsies River—was the first South African hip-hop outfit to record an album. Whilst much of their work was performed in English, they quickly transformed the genre by rapping in non-standard varieties of Afrikaans and by including MCs who rap in African languages (ibid). They therefore succeeded in addressing key issues related to race, language, and class disparities in relation to South Africa's transition to democracy (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire). However, as is the case with mainstream US hip-hop, specifically gangsta rap (Clay 149), South African hip-hop has been largely dominated by heterosexual men. This includes the more commercial hip-hop scene, which is largely perceived to be located in Johannesburg, where male MCs like AKA and Cassper Nyovest became celebrities. However, certain female MCs have claimed the genre, notably EJ von Lyrik and Burni Aman who are formerly of Godessa, the first female hip-hop crew to record and perform locally and internationally (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166; Haupt, “Can a Woman in Hip-Hop”). DSJ therefore presents the exception to a largely heteronormative and male-dominated South African music industry and hip-hop scene as she transforms it with her queer politics. While queer hip-hop is not new in the US (Pabón and Smalls), this is new territory for South Africa. Writing about the US MC Jean Grae in the context of a “male-dominated music industry and genre,” Shanté Paradigm Smalls contends,Heteronormativity blocks the materiality of the experiences of Black people. Yet, many Black people strive for a heteronormative effect if not “reality”. In hip hop, there is a particular emphasis on maintaining the rigidity of categories, even if those categories fail [sic]. (87) DSJ challenges these rigid categories. Keep in TouchDSJ's most visible entry onto the media landscape to date has been her appearance in an H&M recycling campaign with British Sri Lankan artist MIA (H&M), some fashion shoots, her new EP—Reimagine (Dope Saint Jude)—and recent Finnish, US and French tours as well as her YouTube channel, which features her music videos. As the characters’ theatrical costumes suggest, “Keep in Touch” is possibly the most camp and playful music video she has produced. It commences somewhat comically with Dope Saint Jude walking down Salt River main road to a public telephone, where she and a young woman in pig tails exchange dirty looks. Salt River is located at the foot of Devil's Peak not far from Cape Town's CBD. Many factories were located there, but the area is also surrounded by low-income housing, which was designated a “coloured” area under apartheid. After apartheid, neighbourhoods such as Salt River, Woodstock, and the Bo-Kaap became increasingly gentrified and, instead of becoming more inclusive, many parts of Cape Town continued to be influenced by policies that enable racialised inequalities. Dope Saint Jude calls Angel Ho: DSJ: Awêh, Angie! Yoh, you must check this kak sturvy girl here by the pay phone. [Turns to the girl, who walks away as she bursts a chewing gum bubble.] Ja, you better keep in touch. Anyway, listen here, what are you wys?Angel Ho: Ah, just at the salon getting my hair did. What's good? DSJ: Wanna catch on kak today?Angel Ho: Yes, honey. But, first, let me Gayle you this. By the jol by the art gallery, this Wendy, nuh. This Wendy tapped me on the shoulder and wys me, “This is a place of decorum.”DSJ: What did she wys?Angel Ho: De-corum. She basically told me this is not your house. DSJ: I know you told that girl to keep in touch!Angel Ho: Yes, Mama! I'm Paula, I told that bitch, “Keep in touch!” [Points index finger in the air.](Saint Jude, Dope, “Keep in Touch”)Angel Ho's name is a play on the male name Angelo and refers to the trope of the ho (whore) in gangsta rap lyrics and in music videos that present objectified women as secondary to male, heterosexual narratives (Sharpley-Whiting 23; Collins 27). The queering of Angelo, along with Angel Ho’s non-binary styling in terms of hair, make-up, and attire, appropriates a heterosexist, sexualised stereotype of women in order to create room for a gender identity that operates beyond heteronormative male-female binaries. Angel Ho’s location in a hair salon also speaks to stereotypical associations of salons with women and gay subjects. In a discussion of gender stereotypes about hair salons, Kristen Barber argues that beauty work has traditionally been “associated with women and with gay men” and that “the body beautiful has been tightly linked to the concept of femininity” (455–56). During the telephonic exchange, Angel Ho and Dope Saint Jude code-switch between standard and non-standard varieties of English and Afrikaans, as the opening appellation, “Awêh,” suggests. In this context, the term is a friendly greeting, which intimates solidarity. “Sturvy” means pretentious, whilst “kak” means shit, but here it is used to qualify “sturvy” and means that the girl at the pay phone is very pretentious or “full of airs.” To be “wys” means to be wise, but it can also mean that you are showing someone something or educating them. The meanings of these terms shift, depending on the context. The language practices in this skit are in line with the work of earlier hip-hop crews, such as Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap, to validate black, multilingual forms of speech and expression that challenge the linguistic imperialism of standard English and Afrikaans in South Africa, which has eleven official languages (Haupt, “Black Thing”; Haupt, Stealing Empire; Williams). Henry Louis Gates’s research on African American speech varieties and literary practices emerging from the repressive context of slavery is essential to understanding hip-hop’s language politics. Hip-hop artists' multilingual wordplay creates parallel discursive universes that operate both on the syntagmatic axis of meaning-making and the paradigmatic axis (Gates 49; Haupt, “Stealing Empire” 76–77). Historically, these discursive universes were those of the slave masters and the slaves, respectively. While white hegemonic meanings are produced on the syntagmatic axis (which is ordered and linear), black modes of speech as seen in hip-hop word play operate on the paradigmatic axis, which is connotative and non-linear (ibid). Distinguishing between Signifyin(g) / Signification (upper case, meaning black expression) and signification (lower case, meaning white dominant expression), he argues that “the signifier ‘Signification’ has remained identical in spelling to its white counterpart to demonstrate [. . .] that a simultaneous, but negated, parallel discursive (ontological, political) universe exists within the larger white discursive universe” (Gates 49). The meanings of terms and expressions can change, depending on the context and manner in which they are used. It is therefore the shared experiences of speech communities (such as slavery or racist/sexist oppression) that determine the negotiated meanings of certain forms of expression. Gayle as a Parallel Discursive UniverseDSJ and Angel Ho's performance of Gayle takes these linguistic practices further. Viewers are offered points of entry into Gayle via the music video’s subtitles. We learn that Wendy is code for a white person and that to keep in touch means exactly the opposite. Saint Jude explains that Gayle is a very fun queer language that was used to kind of mask what people were saying [. . .] It hides meanings and it makes use of women's names [. . . .] But the thing about Gayle is it's constantly changing [. . .] So everywhere you go, you kind of have to pick it up according to the context that you're in. (Ovens, Saint Jude and Haupt)According to Kathryn Luyt, “Gayle originated as Moffietaal [gay language] in the coloured gay drag culture of the Western Cape as a form of slang amongst Afrikaans-speakers which over time, grew into a stylect used by gay English and Afrikaans-speakers across South Africa” (Luyt 8; Cage 4). Given that the apartheid state criminalised homosexuals, Gayle was coded to evade detection and to seek out other members of this speech community (Luyt 8). Luyt qualifies the term “language” by arguing, “The term ‘language’ here, is used not as a constructed language with its own grammar, syntax, morphology and phonology, but in the same way as linguists would discuss women’s language, as a way of speaking, a kind of sociolect” (Luyt 8; Cage 1). However, the double-coded nature of Gayle allows one to think of it as creating a parallel discursive universe as Gates describes it (49). Whereas African American and Cape Flats discursive practices function parallel to white, hegemonic discourses, gay modes of speech run parallel to heteronormative communication. Exclusion and MicroaggressionsThe skit brings both discursive practices into play by creating room for one to consider that DSJ queers a male-dominated genre that is shaped by US cultural imperialism (Haupt, Stealing Empire 166) as a way of speaking back to intersectional forms of marginalisation (Crenshaw 1244), which are created by “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks 116). This is significant in South Africa where “curative rape” of lesbians and other forms of homophobic violence are prominent (cf. Gqola; Hames; Msibi). Angel Ho's anecdote conveys a sense of the extent to which black individuals are subject to scrutiny. Ho's interpretation of the claim that the gallery “is a place of decorum” is correct: it is not Ho's house. Black queer subjects are not meant to feel at home or feel a sense of ownership. This functions as a racial microaggression: “subtle insults (verbal, nonverbal, and/or visual) directed toward people of color, often automatically or unconsciously” (Solorzano, Ceja, and Yosso 60). This speaks to DSJ's use of Salt River, Woodstock, and Bo-Kaap for the music video, which features black queer bodies in performance—all of these spaces are being gentrified, effectively pushing working class people of colour out of the city (cf. Didier, Morange, and Peyroux; Lemanski). Gustav Visser explains that gentrification has come to mean a unit-by-unit acquisition of housing which replaces low-income residents with high-income residents, and which occurs independent of the structural condition, architecture, tenure or original cost level of the housing (although it is usually renovated for or by the new occupiers). (81–82) In South Africa this inequity plays out along racial lines because its neoliberal economic policies created a small black elite without improving the lives of the black working class. Instead, the “new African bourgeoisie, because it shares racial identities with the bulk of the poor and class interests with white economic elites, is in position to mediate the reinforcing cleavages between rich whites and poor blacks without having to make more radical changes” (MacDonald 158). In a news article about a working class Salt River family of colour’s battle against an eviction, Christine Hogg explains, “Gentrification often means the poor are displaced as the rich move in or buildings are upgraded by new businesses. In Woodstock and Salt River both are happening at a pace.” Angel Ho’s anecdote, as told from a Woodstock hair salon, conveys a sense of what Woodstock’s transformation from a coloured, working class Group Area to an upmarket, trendy, and arty space would mean for people of colour, including black, queer subjects. One could argue that this reading of the video is undermined by DSJ’s work with global brand H&M. Was she was snared by neoliberal economics? Perhaps, but one response is that the seeds of any subculture’s commercial co-option lie in the fact it speaks through commodities (for example clothing, make-up, CDs, vinyl, or iTunes / mp3 downloads (Hebdige 95; Haupt, Stealing Empire 144–45). Subcultures have a window period in which to challenge hegemonic ideologies before they are delegitimated or commercially co-opted. Hardt and Negri contend that the means that extend the reach of corporate globalisation could be used to challenge it from within it (44–46; Haupt, Stealing Empire 26). DSJ utilises her H&M work, social media, the hip-hop genre, and international networks to exploit that window period to help mainstream black queer identity politics.ConclusionDSJ speaks back to processes of exclusion from the city, which was transformed by apartheid and, more recently, gentrification, by claiming it as a creative and playful space for queer subjects of colour. She uses Gayle to lay claim to the city as it has a long history in Cape Town. In fact, she says that she is not reviving Gayle, but is simply “putting it on a bigger platform” (Ovens, Saint Jude, and Haupt). The use of subtitles in the video suggests that she wants to mainstream queer identity politics. Saint Jude also transforms hip-hop heteronormativity by queering the genre and by locating her work within the history of Cape hip-hop’s multilingual wordplay. ReferencesBarber, Kristin. “The Well-Coiffed Man: Class, Race, and Heterosexual Masculinity in the Hair Salon.” Gender and Society 22.4 (2008): 455–76.Cage, Ken. “An Investigation into the Form and Function of Language Used by Gay Men in South Africa.” Rand Afrikaans University: MA thesis, 1999.Clay, Andreana. “‘I Used to Be Scared of the Dick’: Queer Women of Color and Hip-Hop Masculinity.” Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology. Ed. Gwendolyn D. Pough, Elain Richardson, Aisha Durham, and Rachel Raimist. California: Sojourns, 2007.Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2005. Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”. Stanford Law Review 43.6 (1991): 1241–299.Didier, Sophie, Marianne Morange, and Elisabeth Peyroux. “The Adaptative Nature of Neoliberalism at the Local Scale: Fifteen Years of City Improvement Districts in Cape Town and Johannesburg.” Antipode 45.1 (2012): 121–39.Erasmus, Zimitri. “Introduction.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988.Gqola, Pumla Dineo. Rape: A South African Nightmare. Johannesburg: Jacana, 2015.Hames, Mary. “Violence against Black Lesbians: Minding Our Language.” Agenda 25.4 (2011): 87–91.Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. London: Harvard UP, 2000.Haupt, Adam. “Can a Woman in Hip Hop Speak on Her Own Terms?” Africa Is a Country. 23 Mar. 2015. <http://africasacountry.com/2015/03/the-double-consciousness-of-burni-aman-can-a-woman-in-hip-hop-speak-on-her-own-terms/>.Haupt, Adam. Static: Race & Representation in Post-Apartheid Music, Media & Film. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012. Haupt, Adam. Stealing Empire: P2P, Intellectual Property and Hip-Hop Subversion. Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2008. Haupt, Adam. “Black Thing: Hip-Hop Nationalism, ‘Race’ and Gender in Prophets of da City and Brasse vannie Kaap.” Coloured by History, Shaped by Place. Ed. Zimitri Erasmus. Cape Town: Kwela Books & SA History Online, 2001. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge, 1979.Hogg, Christine. “In Salt River Gentrification Often Means Eviction: Family Set to Lose Their Home of 11 Years.” Ground Up. 15 June 2016. <http://www.groundup.org.za/article/salt-river-gentrification-often-means-eviction/>.hooks, bell. Outlaw: Culture: Resisting Representations. New York: Routledge, 1994.Lemanski, Charlotte. “Hybrid Gentrification in South Africa: Theorising across Southern and Northern Cities.” Urban Studies 51.14 (2014): 2943–60.Luyt, Kathryn. “Gay Language in Cape Town: A Study of Gayle – Attitudes, History and Usage.” University of Cape Town: MA thesis, 2014.MacDonald, Michael. Why Race Matters in South Africa. University of Kwazulu-Natal Press: Scottsville, 2006.Msibi, Thabo. “Not Crossing the Line: Masculinities and Homophobic Violence in South Africa”. Agenda. 23.80 (2009): 50–54.Pabón, Jessica N., and Shanté Paradigm Smalls. “Critical Intimacies: Hip Hop as Queer Feminist Pedagogy.” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (2014): 1–7.Salo, Elaine. “Negotiating Gender and Personhood in the New South Africa: Adolescent Women and Gangsters in Manenberg Township on the Cape Flats.” Journal of European Cultural Studies 6.3 (2003): 345–65.Solórzano, Daniel, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso. “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate: The Experiences of African American College Students.” Journal of Negro Education 69.1/2 (2000): 60–73.Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean. Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. New York: New York UP, 2007.Smalls, Shanté Paradigm. “‘The Rain Comes Down’: Jean Grae and Hip Hop Heteronormativity.” American Behavioral Scientist 55.1 (2011): 86–95.Visser, Gustav. “Gentrification: Prospects for Urban South African Society?” Acta Academica Supplementum 1 (2003): 79–104.Williams, Quentin E. “Youth Multilingualism in South Africa’s Hip-Hop Culture: a Metapragmatic Analysis.” Sociolinguistic Studies 10.1 (2016): 109–33.Yudell, Michael. “A Short History of the Race Concept.” Race and the Genetic Revolution: Science, Myth, and Culture. Ed. Sheldon Krimsky and Kathleen Sloan. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.InterviewsOvens, Neil, Dope Saint Jude, and Adam Haupt. One FM Radio interview. Cape Town. 21 Apr. 2016.VideosSaint Jude, Dope. “Keep in Touch.” YouTube. 23 Feb. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2ux9R839lE>. H&M. “H&M World Recycle Week Featuring M.I.A.” YouTube. 11 Apr. 2016. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7MskKkn2Jg>. MusicSaint Jude, Dope. Reimagine. 15 June 2016. <https://dopesaintjude.bandcamp.com/album/reimagine>.

Susanne Bier and David Farr’s 2016 television adaptation of John le Carré’s novel The Night Manager (“Manager”) indexes the resilience of traditional Christian misogyny in contemporary British-American media. In the first episode of the series, Sophie (Aure Atika)’s partner Freddie Hamid (David Avery) brutally beats her. In the subsequent scene, despite her scars, Sophie has a sex scene with the eponymous night manager Pine (Tom Hiddlestone). Sophie’s eye socket and the left side of her face bear fresh bruises and wounds throughout the sex scene. And in the sixth and final episode, Pine and Jed (Elizabeth Debicki) have sex after she has been tortured at length by her partner Roper’s (Hugh Laurie) henchman, at Roper’s request. Jed’s neck, face, and arms bear bruises from the torture.These sex scenes function as a space of revelation. I interpret the women’s wounds and injuries alongside a feminist-critical tradition of reading noir on screen. Inaugurated by Ann Kaplan’s 1978 Women in Film Noir, many feminist commentators have since made the claim that women in noir achieve a peculiar significance, and their key scenes a subversive meaning; “in excess of” their punitive treatment within the narrative (Kaplan 5; Harvey 31; Tasker Working Girls 117). My reading emphasizes a tension between Manager’s patriarchal narrative framing and these two sex scenes that I argue disrupt and subvert the former.That Sophie and Jed are brutalised by their partners does not tell us much: it is a routine expectation in British-American film and television that “bad guys” are tough on “their” chicks. It is only after these violent encounters with their partners, when the women share “romantic” moments with Pine, that the text’s patriarchal entitlement is laid bare (“revelation” stems from Late Latin revelare to “lay bare”). Forgetting about their cuts, injuries and bruises, they desire Pine, remove their clothes, and are stimulated, stimulating, pleasuring, and pleasured. Director Bier and writer Farr assume that a 2016 British and American audience will (i) find these encounters between Sophie and Pine, and Pine and Jed, to be romantic and tender; and also (ii) find Pine’s behavior consistent with that of a “savior”. These expectations regarding audience complicity are truly revelatory.Sophie and Jed’s wounds constitute a space of revelation: the wounds are in excess of, and spill over, the patriarchal narrative framing. Their wounds indicate that the narrative has approached a moment of excessive patriarchal entitlement—emphasising extreme power imbalances between Pine and the women—and break through the narrative framing and encourage feminist enquiry. I use feminist legal theorist Catharine MacKinnon’s theory of consent to argue that, given this blatant power inequity, it could be interpreted the characters have different perspectives of the sexual act and it is questionable whether the women are in fact consenting (182).Critical ReceptionAcademic engagement with John le Carré’s well-respected espionage novels continues to emerge, including the books of Myron Aronoff, Tony Barley, Matthew Bruccoli and Judith Baughman, John Cobbs, David Monaghan, Peter Lewis and Peter Wolfe. There are a small number of academic commentaries exploring the screen adaptations of his novels, including Eric Morgan’s “Whores and Angels” and Geraint D’Arcy’s “Essentially, Another Man’s Woman”. Unfortunately, there are almost no academic commentaries on Manager, with the exception of Gunhild Agger’s “Geopolitical Location and Plot in The Night Manager”, and none that focus on the handling of gender themes within it.However, there are abundant mainstream media articles and reviews of Manager. I randomly selected seven of these articles and reviews in order to gauge the response to these sex scenes within a 2016 British-American media community. I looked at articles and reviews by Hal Boedeker, Caitlin Flynn, Tim Goodman, Jeff Jensen, Tom Lamont, Jasper Rees, and Claire Webb. None of the articles mention the theme of “gender” or note the gendered violence in the series. The reviews are complicit with the patriarchal narrative framing, and introduce Sophie and Jed in terms of their physical appearances and in their relation to principal male characters. “Beautiful and pale” Jed is “girlfriend of Bogeyman arms dealer” (Jensen), and is also referred to as “Roper’s long-legged trophy girlfriend” (Rees). Sophie, in a “sultry brunette corner” is a “tempting, tragic damsel-in-distress” (Rees) and “arouses Pine” (Jensen). However, reviewers describe the character Burr (who is male in the novel but played by Olivia Colman in the series) with greater dignity and detail. Introducing the character Sophie (Aure Atika), reviewer Tom Goodman does not refer to her by character or actress name despite the fact he introduces male characters by both. Instead, Sophie is a “beautiful connected woman” and is subsequently referred to as “the woman” (Goodman). This anonymity of Sophie as character, and Atika as actor, indexes the Christian misogyny in operation here: in Genesis, Adam only names Eve after the fall of man (New International Version, Gen. 3:20). Goodman’s textual erasure supports Sophie’s vulnerability and expendability within the narrative logic. Indeed, the reviews recapitulate stock noir themes, suggesting that the women are seductively manipulative: Goodman implies that both Bier and Debicki both deploy beauty so as to distract or beguile (Goodman), and Jensen notes that the women are “sultry with danger” (Jensen).Commentators and reviewers have likened Manager, with good reason, to screen adaptations of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. This is a useful comparison for the purposes of clarifying my own analytical approach. Lisa Funnell and Klaus Dodds’s Geographies, Genders and Geopolitics of James Bond, endorse a feminist geopolitical sensibility that audits which bodies are vulnerable, and which are disposable (14). Bond, like Manager’s Pine, is fundamentally privileged and invulnerable (14). Their account of Bond also describes Pine: “white, cis-gender, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied… British, attended Cambridge… he can move, act, and perform; gain access to places, spaces and resources” (1). Sophie’s vulnerability counterpoints Pine’s privilege. Against Pine’s athletic form and blond features stands the “foreign” Sophie, iterated through an emphasis on her dark features, silk dresses (that reference kaftans), and accented language (she delivers English language lines with a strong accent and discloses to Pine that she has tried to “Anglicise” her identity and has changed name). Sophie’s social and financial precarity seems behind her decision to become the mistress of violent gangster Freddie Hamid (in “Episode One” Sophie explains that Hamid “owns her”). By the end of this episode Hamid has violently beaten her then later murdered her. And even though the character Jed is white and American, it is implied that financial necessity is behind her choice of Richard Roper as partner. Jed is violently tortured and beaten in “Episode Six”.Funnell and Dodds also note Bond’s capacity to sexually satisfy women as a key dimension of his hegemonic masculinity (1). In Manager, the spectator is presumed complicit with the narrative framing and is expected to uncritically accept Pine’s extreme desirability to women. The assumption of Pine’s sexiness and sexual competency together constitute his entitlement, made clear in sex scenes between him and Sophie, and him and Jed. These sex scenes follow events of gendered violence and I raise the possibility that they also constitute instances of gendered violence.Noir Feminine ArchetypesReviewers have pointed out that Manager engages with the noir tradition (Jensen). Sophie and Jed are both “fallen” women, reflecting the Christian heritage of the noir tradition, though incarnate different noir archetypes (Allen 6). Mysterious and seductive Sophie emerges as a femme fatale in the first episode: the dark and seductive girlfriend of gangster Freddie Hamid, Sophie entrusts Pine with delicate and dangerous information, leading him into a dark world. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the snake convinces Eve that the fruit does not bring death but instead knowledge. Eve wishes to share this knowledge with her partner “but keep the odds of knowledge in my power / without co-partner?” ultimately precipitating the fall of Adam and mankind (Milton 818). Sophie shares information regarding Hamid and Roper’s illegal arms deal with Pine. There are two transgressions on her part: she shares her partner’s confidential information with Pine and then has an affair with him. Hamid murders Sophie for the betrayals. However, Sophie’s murder does not erase her narrative significance: the event motivates protagonist Pine in his chief quest to ‘bring Roper down’, and as Boedeker concurs, the narrative’s action is “driven by this event”. Indeed, Yvonne Tasker notes the dual function of the femme fatale: she is both “an archetype which suggests an equation between female sexuality, death and danger” and also “functions as the vibrant centre of the narrative” (Tasker 117).Pine’s later love interest Jed is an example of the more complicated “good-bad girl” noir type, as Andrew Spicer has usefully coined it (92). The “good-bad girl” occupies a morally ambiguous space between the (dangerously sexy) femme fatale and (fundamentally decent) “girl-next-door” (Spicer 92). Both “good” and “bad”, Jed is unmarried but living with villain Roper, whom she has presumably selected out of economic necessity; she is a mother, but this does not bestow her with maternal legitimacy as she keeps her son a secret and is physically remote from him. Jed finds “real love” with Pine and betrays Roper in assisting Pine’s espionage plot. Roper’s henchman punishes Jed for the betrayal (in the torture scene Roper laments “I saw how you looked at him last night”; “Episode 6”).Despite the routine sexism and punitive thrust of the noir narrative, the women’s “romantic” sex scenes with Pine are laden with subversive significance. In her analysis of women in noir, Sylvia Harvey argues:Despite the ritual punishment of acts of transgression, the vitality with which these acts are endowed produces an excess of meaning which cannot finally be contained. Narrative resolutions cannot recuperate their subversive significance. (31)The visibility of Sophie and Jed’s wounds throughout their respective sex scenes with Pine signals an excessive patriarchal entitlement that disrupts the narrative logic and invites us to question the women’s perspectives. My analysis of the scenes is informed by feminist legal theorist Catharine MacKinnon’s argument that under unequal power relations consent is fraught, if not impossible (180). MacKinnon argues that women’s beliefs and reactions are shaped by power inequality, including the threat of male violence, economic dependence, and need (175).Analysis of Sophie and Pine’s InteractionsI first analyse Sophie’s dialogue because I seek to demonstrate that there is a communication breakdown in play: Sophie is asking Pine for help and safety while Pine thinks she is seducing him. Sophie’s verbal exchanges with Pine can be read in two different ways: (i) according to the patriarchal narrative framing (the spectator is positioned alongside Pine, seeing Sophie as scopophilic object); or (ii) from a feminist perspective that takes Sophie’s situation and perspective into account (Mulvey 835-36). Sophie’s language is legible as flirtation. If we are uncritically complicit with the narrative framing, Sophie is usually trying to arrange time alone with Pine because she desires him. However, if we emphasise Sophie’s perspective, she is asking for privacy, discretion, and help to stay alive (and to save the lives of others too, given that she is foiling an arms deal). Catharine MacKinnon’s observation that “men are systematically conditioned not even to notice what women want” plays out elegantly in the scenes between Pine and Sophie (181). Pine manages to discern that Sophie needs some sort of help, but shows no regard for her perspective or the significant power inequality between the two of them. From their earliest interaction in “Episode One” Sophie addresses Pine in a flirtatious way. In an audacious request, although it is ‘below’ his duties as manager she insists he make her a coffee and cheekily demands he sit with her while she drinks it. Their interaction is a standard flirtatious tête-à-tête, entailing the playful query “what do you [Pine] know of me?” Sophie begs Pine to copy some documents for her in his office even though he points out that his colleague performs such duties. Sophie suggestively demands “I would prefer to use your office”. It seems that by insisting on time alone with him, Sophie’s goal is that Pine does the task, rather than the task be done per se. However, it promptly transpires that Sophie sought a private location in order to share classified information with him, having noted at an earlier date Pine’s friendship with a British diplomat. She asks him to “hold onto” the documents “in case something happens to her”.Pine nonetheless passes on these classified documents to this contact.Sophie and Pine’s next interaction follows a similar pattern: she rings him from her hotel room and asks him to bring her a scotch. He suggests alternative ways she can procure a drink, yet she confirms the real object of her desire (“I want you”). Pine smirks as he approaches her room. Sophie’s declaration appears as (i) a desirous statement and invitation to come to her room for sex but it is in fact (ii) a demand that Pine (specifically) comes to her room, because she wants to know with whom he shared the documents and to reveal to him the injuries she received as a punishment for his leak.After realising the danger he has put her in, Pine takes her to a remote house to secure her safety. Once inside, she implores “why do you sit so far away?” which sounds like a request for closeness, perhaps even that he touch her. Yet the extent of her desired proximity, and the nature of the touch she requests, can be interpreted in (at least) two ways. Certainly, Pine believes that she desires sexual intercourse with him. The spectator is meant to interpret this request along those lines by virtue of Atika’s seductive delivery. Pine explains that he sits with distance “out of respect” and Sophie teases “is that why you came all the way here, to respect me?” This remark reveals Sophie’s assumption that Pine’s assistance has been transactional (help in exchange for sex) and the content indicates the kind of sex she assumes he expects (“disrespectful” sex, or at least sex that playfully skirts the boundaries of respect). In a declaration that stands up as a positive affirmation of consent under British and American law, Sophie announces: “I want one of your many selves to sleep with me tonight.”From a freshly bruised eye socket, Sophie lovingly stares at Pine. Extra-diegetic strings instruct us that the moment is romantic. Pine strokes the (unbruised side) side of her face. Could her question “why do you sit so far away?” have been a request that he sit near her, place an arm around her shoulder, hold her hand, stroke her forehead, perhaps even tend to her wounds? Might the request that he “sleep with [her] tonight” have been a request that he sleep in the cottage, albeit on the floor?Sophie and Pine are subsequently displayed naked, limbs entangled. A new shot, a close-up of the right side of her face, displays a scab atop her eyebrow, a deeply bruised eye socket, further bruises down her cheeks, and a split lip. The muscular, broad Pine is atop Sophie and thrusting; Sophie’s split lip smiles in ecstasy and gratitude. A post-coital shot follows: she stares lovingly down at him with her facial injuries on full display, her dark eyes stare into his lucid green. Pine asks Sophie’s “real name”. Samira recounts that she changed her name to Sophie in order to “be more Western”. The power inequality is manifest on gendered, cultural, social, and physical lines: in order to advance her social position, Samira has sought to Anglicise herself and partnered with a violent (though influential) criminal (who has recently brutalised her). Her life is in danger, she is (depicted as) dark and foreign and ostensibly has no social or support network (is isolated enough to appeal to a hotel manager for help). Meanwhile, Pine is Western university-educated, a spectacle of white male athletic privilege, and has elite connections with British intelligence.Catharine MacKinnnon argues that consent is only a meaningful option if the parties are equally powerful (174). Sophie’s extreme vulnerability renders their situations patently unequal. As MacKinnon argues “when perspective is bound up with situation, and [that] situation is unequal, whether or not a contested interaction is authoritatively considered rape comes down to whose meaning wins” (182). I do not argue that Pine rapes Sophie per se. However, the revealing of Sophie’s injuries efficiently articulates the power inequality in their situations and thus problematises a straightforward assumption of her consent. MacKinnon’s argues that rape occurs “somewhere between” the following three factors (182). First, “what the woman actually wanted” (Sophie wanted to save the lives of others (by foiling an arms deal) and not die for the breach). Second, “what she was able to express about what she wanted” (class/gender/race power dynamics may have frustrated Sophie’s ability to articulate her needs and might have motivated her sexually suggestive tenor). Third, “what the man comprehended she wanted” (Pine assumes that Sophie, like all women, sexually desire him).Analysis of Jed and Pine’s InteractionsThe injustice of Pine and Sophie’s sexual encounter finds its counterpart in Pine’s sexual encounter with Jed in the final episode of the series (“Episode Six”). Roper discovers that Jed has given a third party (Pine and his colleagues) access to his private (incriminating) files. Roper instructs his henchman to torture Jed until she identifies this third party. The henchman holds Jed by the back of her neck and dunks her head repeatedly into bathwater. The camera reveals deep bruises on her arms. Jed refuses to identify her beloved (Pine) as the ‘rat’, yet the astute Roper nevertheless surmises “you must care deeply about the person you are protecting”.Alas, the dominant narrative must go on: Roper and Pine attend to an arms deal; the deal fails because Pine has set Roper up to appear as though he has robbed the buyers (and so on). Burr and Pine’s mission to “bring down” Roper has been completed. I keep wondering what Roper’s henchman has been doing to Jed during this “men’s business”. Alas, after Pine has completed the job, we encounter Jed again. She is in bed, her limbs entangled with Pine’s. The camera positioning and shot sequencing are almost identical to the sex scene between Pine and Sophie in “Episode One”. A medium close-up from the left reveals Pine thrusting atop Jed. Through pale moonlight the viewer discerns injures on Jed’s face and chin.The morning after this (brief) sex scene, Pine and Jed discuss her imminent departure (“home” to New York, to be reunited with her son). Debicki’s performance is tremendously tender: her lip trembles, her voice shakes as she swallows tears. Jed is sad because she is bidding Pine farewell, and, as she verbalises to Pine, she is nervous about whether her son will “recognise her”. Does Jed’s torture also give her grounds to weep and tremble? Ever a gentleman, Pine clasps her hand, and while marching her to her taxi, we see more bruises atop her left arm.I am also not arguing that Pine raped Jed. Yet given what Jed had endured earlier that day – torture by drowning, as commissioned and witnessed by her own partner – was sexual intercourse what she desired or needed? The visibility of Jed’s injuries throughout the sex scene marks an apotheosis of patriarchal entitlement. Might a fraternal or (even remedial) touch have been Pine’s first priority? Does Jed need a hug? Does she need ice? Had Pine been educated or socialised in a different tradition, one remotely attuned to what anyone might need after a disastrously traumatic and violent event, he might not have found penetrative sex an appropriate remedy. Pine’s absolute security in his own sexual desirability meant that he found the activity suitable, yet her injuries break my blind faith in his sexiness. I wish to raise the possibility that intercourse after this event might have compounded the violent events Jed endured that day. Contrary to the narrative’s implication, penetrative intercourse (even with Tom Hiddleston) might not heal Sophie or Jed’s wounds.ConclusionI am not a humourless feminist immune to the entertaining (and often entertainingly preposterous) dimensions of the spy and action genre. In fact, I enthusiastically await subsequent screen adaptations of le Carré’s work and the next Bond instalment. This is not a call to “cancel” a genre, text, director or writer. Biblically, a “revelation” has always instructed humans on how to live in this life. These sex scenes do not merely lay bare extreme patriarchal entitlement but might instruct directors and writers working within the genre to keep wounds, and wounded women, out of their sex scenes. I think that is a modest request. ReferencesAgger, Gunhild. “Geopolitical Location and Plot in The Night Manager.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 7 (2017): 27-42.Allen, Virginia. The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon. Troy, New York: The Whitston Publishing Company, 1983.Aronoff, Myron. The Spy Novels of John le Carré: Balancing Ethics and Politics. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.Barley, Tony. Taking Sides: The Fiction of John le Carré. Philadelphia: Open U, 1986.Boedeker, Hal. “‘Night Manager’: Check in for Tom Hiddleston.” Orlando Sentinel, 16 Apr. 2016. 7 June 2020 <https://www.orlandosentinel.com/entertainment/tv-guy/os-night-manager-check-in-for-tom-hiddleston-20160416-story.html>.Bruccoli, Matthew, and Judith Baughman. Conversations with John le Carré. Oxford: U of Mississippi P, 2004.Cobbs, John. Understanding John le Carré. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1998.D’arcy, Geraint. “‘Essentially, Another Man’s Woman’: Information and Gender in the Novel and Adaptations of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” Adaptation 7.3 (2014): 275-90.Funnell, Lisa, and Klaus Dodds. Geographies, Genders and Geopolitics of James Bond. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.Flynn, Caitlin. “Who Is Sophie on ‘The Night Manager’? 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New York: St. Martin’s, 1986.Morgan, Eric. “Whores and Angels of Our Striving Selves: The Cold War Films of John le Carré, Then and Now.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 36.1 (2016): 88-103.Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 833-44.The Night Manager. Dir. S. Bier. Screenplay D. Farr. UK/USA: BBC and AMC, 2016.Rees, Jasper. “The Night Manager, Episode 1: Brilliant Event Drama.” The Telegraph, 20 Apr. 2016. 2 June 2020 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/02/19/the-night-manager-episode-1-event-drama-of-the-highest-calibre/>.Scheppele, Kim. “The Reasonable Woman.” The Responsive Community, Rights and Responsibilities 1.4 (1991): 36–47.Tasker, Yvonne. Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. London: Routledge, 1998.———. “Women in Film Noir.” A Companion to Film Noir. Eds. Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson. 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IntroductionNordic mythology, also known as Norse mythology, is a term used to describe Medieval creation myths and tales of Gods and otherworldly realms, told and retold by Northern Germanic and Scandinavian tribes of the ninth century AD (see for example Gaiman).I discuss a new type of Nordic mythology that is being created through popular culture, social media, books, and television shows. I am interested in how contemporary portrayals of the Nordic countries has created a kind of mythological place called Scandinavia, where things, people, and ideas are better than in other places.Whereas the old myths portray a fierce warrior race, the new myths create a utopian Scandinavia as a place that is inherently good; a place that is progressive and harmonious. In the creation of these new myths the underbelly of the North is often neglected, producing a homogenised representation of a group of countries that are in actuality diverse and inevitably imperfect.ScandimaniaGenerally the term Scandinavia always refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. When including Finland and Iceland, it is more accurate to refer to the five as the Nordic countries. I was born and grew up in Denmark. My observations are skewed towards a focus on Denmark, rather than Scandinavia as a whole. Though I will use the term Nordic and Scandinavia throughout the article, it is worth noting that these definitions describe a group of countries that despite some commonalities are also quite different in geography, and culture.Whether we are speaking strictly of Scandinavia or of the Nordic countries as a whole, one thing is certain: in recent years there has been a surge of popularity in all things Nordic. Scandinavian design has been popular since the 1950s, known for its functionality and simplistic beauty, and globalised through the Swedish furniture chain IKEA. Consequently, Nordic interior design has become a style widely praised and emulated, as has Nordic fashion, architecture, and innovation.The fact that Scandinavian people are often represented as being intelligent and beautiful adds to the notion of stylish and aesthetically pleasing ideals. This is partly why sperm from Danish sperm donors is the most sought after and widely distributed in the world: perhaps prospective parents find the idea of having a baby of Viking stock appealing (Kale). Nordic countries are also known for their egalitarian societies, which are described as “the holy grail of a healthy economy and society” (Cleary). These are countries where the collective good is cherished. Tax rates are high (in Denmark between 55 per cent and 60 per cent of income), which leads to excellent welfare systems.In recent years other terms have entered the collective Western vocabulary. New Nordic Cuisine describes a trend that has taken the culinary world by storm. This term refers to food that is created with seasonal, local, and foraged ingredients. The emphasis being a renewed connection to nature and old ways. In 2016 the Danish word hygge was shortlisted by the Oxford Dictionary as word of the year. A word, which has no direct English translation, it means “a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture)”. Countless books were published in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, explaining the art of hygge. Other Scandinavian words are now becoming popular, such as the Swedish lagom, meaning “just enough”.In the past two years, the United Nations’ World Happiness Report listed Denmark and Norway as the happiest places on earth. Other surveys similarly put the Nordic countries on top as the most prosperous places on earth (Anderson).Mythologies and Discursive FormationsThe standard definition of myth is a “traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” Or “A widely held but false belief or idea” (Oxford Dictionaries, Myth).During what became known as the “discursive turn”, both Barthes and Foucault expanded the conception of myth by placing it within a wider socio-political and historical contexts of power and truth. “Discursive formations” became a commonly accepted way of describing a cluster of ideas, images, and practices that define particular “truths” within a given cultural context (Hall 6). In other words, myths serve specific purposes within given socio-cultural constructions.I argue that the current idolisation of Scandinavia is creating a common global narrative of a superior society. A mythical place that has “figured it out”, and found the key to happiness. The mythologised North is based on an array of media stories, statistics, reports, articles, advertising, political rhetoric, books, films, TV series, exhibitions, and social media activity. These perpetuate a “truth” of the Nordic countries as being especially benign, cultured, and distinguished. The Smiling PolicemanIn his well-known essay Myth Today, Barthes analyses an image of a North African boy in uniform saluting the French flag on the front cover of a magazine. Barthes argues that by analysing the semiotic meaning of the image in two stages, one can identify the “myth”.The first level is the signifiers (what we see), a dark skinned boy, a uniform, a raised arm, a flag. The signified is our recognition of these as a North African boy raising his arm to the French flag. The second level of interpretation is the wider context in which we understand what we see: the greatness of France is signified in the depiction of one of her colonial subjects submitting to and glorifying the flag. That is to say, the myth generated by the image is the story of France as a great colonial and military nation.Now take a look at this image, which was distributed the world over in newspapers, online media, and in turn social media (Warren; Kolff). This image is interesting because it epitomises much of what is believed about Scandinavia (the new myths). If we approach the image through the semiotic lens of Barthes, we firstly describe what is seen in the picture (signifiers): a blonde policeman, a girl of dark complexion, a road in the countryside, a van in the distance, and some other people with backpacks on the side of the road. When we put these elements together in context, we understand that the image to be depicting a Danish policeman, blonde, smiling and handsome, playing with a Syrian refugee girl on an empty Danish highway, with her fellow refugees behind her.The second level of interpretation (the myth) is created by combining the elements into a story: A friendly police officer is playing with a refugee girl, which is unusual because policemen are commonly seen as authoritarian and unfriendly to illegal immigrants. This policeman is smiling. He is happy in his job. He is healthy, good-looking, and compassionate.This fits the image of Scandinavian men as good fathers (they have paternity leave, and often help equally with child rearing). The image confirms that the happiest people on earth would of course also have happy, friendly policemen. The belief that the Scandinavian social model is one to admire would appear to be endorsed.The fact that this is in a rural setting with green landscapes adds further to the notion of Nordic freshness, naturalness, environmentalism, and food that comes from the wild. The fact that the policeman is well-groomed, stylish, well-built, and handsome reinforces the notion that Scandinavia is a place of style and taste, where the good Viking gene pool produces fit and beautiful people.It makes sense that in a place with a focus on togetherness and the common good, refugees are also treated well. Just as the French image of a dark-skinned boy saluting the French flag sent out messages of French superiority, this image sends out messages of inherent Nordic goodness in a time where positive images of the European refugee crisis are few and far between.In a discursive discussion, one asks not only what meanings does this image convey, but why is this image chosen, distributed, shared, tweeted, and promoted over other images? What purpose does its proliferation serve? What is the historical context in which it is popularised? What is the cultural imagination/narrative that is served? In the current often depressing socio-political situation in Europe, people like to know that there is a place where compassion and play exists.Among other news stories of death, despair, and border protection, depictions of an idealised North can help calm anxieties by implying the existence of a place that is free of conflict. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen writes:The flood of journalistic and popular ethnographic explorations of the Nordic region in the UK is an expression, perhaps, of a search for a lost sense of identity, a nostalgic longing for an imagined past society more in tune with pre-Thatcherite welfarist values, by way of consuming, appropriating and exoticising proximate cultural identities such as the now much hyped Danish or Nordic utopias. (Nordic Noir, 6)In The Almost Nearly Perfect People, British writer Michael Booth wonders: “one thing in particular about this new-found love of all things Scandinavian … which struck me as particularly odd: considering all this positive PR, and with awareness of the so-called Nordic miracle at an all-time high, why wasn’t everyone flocking to live here [in Denmark]?” (7).In actuality not many people in the West are interested in living in the Nordic countries. Rather, as Barbara Goodwin writes: “utopias hold up a mirror to the fears and aspirations of the time in which they were written” (2). In other words, in an age of anxiety, where traditional norms and stabilities are shifting, to believe that there is a place where contemporary societies have found a way of living in happiness and togetherness provides a sense of hope. People are not flocking to live in Scandinavia because it is not in their interests to have their utopian ideals shattered by the reality that, though the North has a lot to offer, it is inevitably not a utopia (Sougaard-Nielsen, The Truth Is).UnderbellyParadoxically, in recent years, Scandinavia has become well known for its “Nordic Noir” crime fiction and television. In the documentary TV series Scandimania, British TV personality Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall travels through Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, exploring the culture, scenery, and food. He finds it curious that Denmark has become so famous for its sombre crime series, such as The Killing and The Bridge, because it seems so far removed from the Denmark he experiences riding around the streets of Copenhagen on his bike.Fearnley-Whittingstall ponders that one has to look hard to find the dark side of Denmark, and that perhaps it does not actually exist at all. This observation points to something essential. Even though millions of viewers worldwide have seen shows such as The Killing, which are known for their dark story lines, bleak urban settings, complex but realistic characters, progressive gender equality, and social commentary, the positive mythologising of Scandinavia remains so strong that it engenders a belief that the underbelly shown in Nordic Noir is perhaps entirely fictional.Stougaard-Nielsen (see also Pitcher, Consuming Race) argues that perhaps the British obsession with Nordic Noir (and this could be applied to other western countries) can be attributed to “a more appropriate white cosmopolitan desire to imagine rooted identities in an age of globalisation steeped in complex identity politics” (Nordic Noir, 8). That is to say that, for a segment of society which feels overwhelmed by contemporary multiculturalism, there may be a pleasure in watching a show that is predominantly populated by white Nordic protagonists, where the homes and people are stylish, and where the Nordic model of welfare and progressive thinking provides a rich identity source for white people as a symbolic point of origin.The watching/reading of Nordic Noir, as well as other preoccupations with all things Nordic, help build upon a mythological sense of whiteness that sets itself apart from our usual notions of race politics, by being an accepted form of longing for the North of bygone ages: a place that is progressive, moral, stylish, and imbued with aspirational ways of living, thinking, and being (Pitcher, Racial Politics).The image of the Danish police officer and the refugee girl fits this ideal of a progressive society where race relations are uncomplicated. The policeman who epitomises the Nordic ideal is in a position of power, but this is an authority which is benevolent. The girl is non-threatening in her otherness, because she is a child and female, and therefore does not fit the culturally dreaded Muslim/terrorist stereotype. In this constellation the two can meet beautifully.The reality, of course, is that the race relations and issues surrounding immigration in Denmark, and in other Nordic countries, are as complicated and often messy and hateful as they are in other countries. In Sweden, as Fearnley-Whittingstall touches upon in Scandimania, there are escalating problems with integration of the many new Swedes and growing inequalities in wealth. In Norway, the underlying race tensions became acutely topical in the aftermath of the 2011 massacre, where right-wing extremist Anders Breivik killed 77 people. Denmark has one of the harshest anti-immigration laws in Europe, laws that are continuously being tightened (Boserup); and whenever visiting Denmark I have been surprised to see how much space and time discussions about immigration and integration take up in the news and current affairs.If we contrast the previous image with the image above, taken within a similar timeframe on the same Danish highway, we can see the reality of Danish immigration policies. Here we are exposed to a different story. The scene and the location is the same, but the power dynamics have shifted from benign, peaceful, and playful to aggressive, authoritarian, and conflict ridden. A desperate father carries his daughter, determined to march on towards their destination of Sweden. The policeman is pulling his arm, attempting to detain the refugees so that they cannot go further, the goal being to deport the Syrians back to their previous place of detention, just over the border in Germany (Harticollis). While the previous image reflects the humanity of the refugee crisis, this image reflects the politics, policies, and to a large extent public opinion in Denmark, which is not refugee-friendly. This image, however, was not widely distributed, partly because it feeds into the same depressing narrative of an unsolvable refugee crisis seen so often elsewhere, and partly because it does not fit into the narrative of the infallible North. It could not be tweeted with the hashtag #Humanity, nor shared on Facebook with a smiley face and liked with an emoji heart.Another image from Denmark, in the form of a politically funded billboard, shows that there are deep-seated tendencies within Danish society that want to promote and retain a Denmark which adheres to its traditional values and ethnic whiteness. The image was displayed all over the country, at train stations, bus stops, and other public spaces when I visited in 2016. It was issued by Dansk Folkeparti (the Danish People’s Party); a party which is anti-immigration and which was until recently the country’s second largest party. The title says “Our Denmark”, while the byline cleverly plays with the double meaning of passe på: it can mean “there is so much we need to take care of”, but also “there is so much we need to beware of.” In other words, the white working-class family needs to take care of their Denmark, and beware of anyone who does not fit into this norm. Though hugely contested and criticised (Cremer; see a counter-reaction designed by opponents below), the fact that thinly veiled anti-immigration propaganda can be so readily distributed speaks of an underbelly in Danish society that is not made of the dark murder mysteries in The Killing, but rather of a quietly brewing distain for the foreigner that reigns within stylishly designed living rooms. ConclusionMyths are stories cultures tell and retell until they form a belief system that becomes a natural part of our collective narrative. For Barthes, these stories were intrinsically connected to our understanding of language and our ability to read images, films, artifacts, and popular culture more generally. To later cultural theorists, the notion of discursive formations expands this understanding, to see myth within a broader network of socio-political discourses placed within a certain place and time in history. When connected, small narratives (images, advertising, film, music, news stories, social media sharing, scientific evidence, etc.) come together to form a common narrative (the myth) about how things are and should be in relation to a particular topic. The culminating popularity of numerous Nordic themes (Nordic television/film, interior design, fashion, cuisine, architecture, lifestyle, sustainability, welfare system, school system, gender equality, etc.) has created a grand narrative of the Nordic countries as a type of utopia: one that shows the rest of the world that an egalitarian society of togetherness and progressive innovation is possible. This mythologisation serves to quell anxieties about the flux and uncertainty of contemporary times, and may also serve to legitimise a yearning for a simple, benign, and progressive whiteness, where we imagine Nordic families sitting peacefully at their beechwood dining tables, candles lit, playing board games. This is a projected yearning which is otherwise largely disallowed in today’s multicultural societies.ReferencesAnderson, Elizabeth. “The Most Prosperous Countries in the World, Based on Happiness and Financial Health.” The Telegraph, 2 Nov. 2015. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11966461/The-most-prosperous-countries-in-the-world-based-on-happiness-and-financial-health.html>.Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Vintage, 2000 [1957].———. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. London: Vintage, 2000 [1957].Booth, Michael. The Almost Nearly Perfect People. London: Jonathan Cape, 2014.Boserup, Rasmus Alenius. “Denmark’s Harsh New Immigration Law Will End Badly for Everyone.” Huffington Post. <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rasmus-alenius-boserup/denmark-immigration-law_b_9112148.html>.Bridge, The. (Danish: Broen.) Created by Hans Rosenfeldt. Sveriges Television and DR, 2013-present.Cleary, Paul. “Norway Is Proof That You Can Have It All.” The Australian, 15 July 2013. <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/norway-is-proof-that-you-can-have-it-all/news-story/3d2895adbace87431410e7b033ec84bf>.Colson, Thomas. “7 Reasons Denmark Is the Happiest Country in the World.” The Independent, 26 Sep. 2016. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/7-reasons-denmark-is-the-happiest-country-in-the-world-a7331146.html>.Cremer, Justin. “The Strangest Political Story in Denmark Just Got Stranger.” The Local, 19 May 2016. <https://www.thelocal.dk/20160519/strangest-political-story-in-denmark-just-got-stranger>.Dregni, Eric. “Why Is Norway the Happiest Place on Earth?” Star Tribune, 11 June 2017. <http://www.startribune.com/the-height-of-happy/427321393/#1>.Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin Books, 1998 [1976]. Gaiman, Neil. “Neil Gaiman Retells Classic Norse Mythology.” Conversations. Radio National 30 Mar. 2017.Goodwin, Barbara, ed. The Philosophy of Utopia. London: Frank Cass, 2001.Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, 1997.Hartocollis, Anemona. “Traveling in Europe’s River of Migrants.” New York Times, 9 Sep. 2015. <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/reporters-notebook/migrants/denmark-refugees-migrants>.Helliwell, J., R. Layard, and J. Sachs. World Happiness Report 2017. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2017.Kale, Sirin. “Women Are Now Pillaging Sperm Banks for Viking Babies.” Vice, 2 Oct. 2015. <https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/3dx9nj/women-are-now-pillaging-sperm-banks-for-viking-babies>.Killing, The. (Danish: Forbrydelsen.) Created by Søren Sveistrup. DR, 2007-2012.Kolff, Louise. “Part III: The Hunk & the Refugee.” Perspectra, 3 Dec. 2015. <https://perspectra.org/2015/12/03/danish-police-and-refugee-girl/>.Oxford Dictionaries. “Hygge.” <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hygge>.Oxford Dictionaries. “Myth.” <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/myth>.Pitcher, Ben. Consuming Race. London: Routledge, 2014.———. “The Racial Politics of Nordic Noir.” Mecetes, 9 April 2014. <http://mecetes.co.uk/racial-politics-nordic-noir/>.Scandimania. Featuring H. Fearnley-Whittingstall. Channel 4, 2014.Sougaard-Nielsen, Jacob. “Nordic Noir in the UK: The Allure of Accessible Difference.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8.1 (2016). 1 Oct. 2017 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/jac.v8.32704>.———. “The Truth Is, Scandinavia Is Neither Heaven nor Hell.” The Conversation, 19 Aug. 2014. <https://theconversation.com/the-truth-is-scandinavia-is-neither-heaven-nor-hell-30641>.Warren, Rossalyn. “The Touching Moment a Policeman Sat Down to Play with a Syrian Refugee.” BuzzFeed News, 15 Sep. 2015. <https://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/the-adorable-moment-a-policeman-sat-down-to-play-with-a-syri?utm_term=.qjzl2WEk7#.kgZXOp76M>.

Special Care NoticeThis article discusses trauma and violence inflicted upon the Indigenous peoples of Tasmania through the processes of colonisation. Content within this article may be distressing to some readers. IntroductionThis article looks briefly at the collection, consultation, and digital sharing of stories essential to the histories of the First Nations peoples of Australia. Focusing on materials held in Sydney, New South Wales two case studies—the object known as the Proclamation Board and the George Augustus Robinson Papers—explore how materials can be shared with Aboriginal peoples of the region now known as Tasmania. Specifically, the authors of this article (a Palawa man and an Australian woman of European descent) ask how can the idea of the privileging of Indigenous voices, within Eurocentric cultural collections, be transformed from rhetoric to reality? Moreover, how can we navigate this complex work, that is made even more problematic by distance, through the utilisation of knowledge networks which are geographically isolated from the collections holding stories crucial to Indigenous communities? In seeking to answer these important questions, this article looks at how cultural, emotional, and intellectual ownership can be divested from the physical ownership of a collection in a way that repatriates—appropriately and sensitively—stories of Aboriginal Australia and of colonisation. Holding Stories, Not Always Our OwnCultural institutions, including libraries, have, in recent years, been drawn into discussions centred on the notion of digital disruption and “that transformative shift which has seen the ongoing realignment of business resources, relationships, knowledge, and value both facilitating the entry of previously impossible ideas and accelerating the competitive impact of those same impossible ideas” (Franks and Ensor n.p.). As Molly Brown has noted, librarians “are faced, on a daily basis, with rapidly changing technology and the ways in which our patrons access and use information. Thus, we need to look at disruptive technologies as opportunities” (n.p.). Some innovations, including the transition from card catalogues to online catalogues and the provision of a wide range of electronic resources, are now considered to be business as usual for most institutions. So, too, the digitisation of great swathes of materials to facilitate access to collections onsite and online, with digitising primary sources seen as an intermediary between the pillars of preserving these materials and facilitating access for those who cannot, for a variety of logistical and personal reasons, travel to a particular repository where a collection is held.The result has been the development of hybrid collections: that is, collections that can be accessed in both physical and digital formats. Yet, the digitisation processes conducted by memory institutions is often selective. Limited resources, even for large-scale digitisation projects usually only realise outcomes that focus on making visually rich, key, or canonical documents, or those documents that are considered high use and at risk, available online. Such materials are extracted from the larger full body of records while other lesser-known components are often omitted. Digitisation projects therefore tend to be devised for a broader audience where contextual questions are less central to the methodology in favour of presenting notable or famous documents online only. Documents can be profiled as an exhibition separate from their complete collection and, critically, their wider context. Libraries of course are not neutral spaces and this practice of (re)enforcing the canon through digitisation is a challenge that cultural institutions, in partnerships, need to address (Franks and Ensor n.p.). Indeed, our digital collections are as affected by power relationships and the ongoing impacts of colonisation as our physical collections. These power relationships can be seen through an organisation’s “processes that support acquisitions, as purchases and as the acceptance of artefacts offered as donations. Throughout such processes decisions are continually made (consciously and unconsciously) that affect what is presented and actively promoted as the official history” (Thorpe et al. 8). While it is important to acknowledge what we do collect, it is equally important to look, too, at what we do not collect and to consider how we continually privilege and exclude stories. Especially when these stories are not always our own, but are held, often as accidents of collecting. For example, an item comes in as part of a larger suite of materials while older, city-based institutions often pre-date regional repositories. An essential point here is that cultural institutions can often become comfortable in what they collect, building on existing holdings. This, in turn, can lead to comfortable digitisation. If we are to be truly disruptive, we need to embrace feeling uncomfortable in what we do, and we need to view digitisation as an intervention opportunity; a chance to challenge what we ‘know’ about our collections. This is especially relevant in any attempts to decolonise collections.Case Study One: The Proclamation BoardThe first case study looks at an example of re-digitisation. One of the seven Proclamation Boards known to survive in a public collection is held by the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, having been purchased from Tasmanian collector and photographer John Watt Beattie (1859–1930) in May 1919 for £30 (Morris 86). Why, with so much material to digitise—working in a program of limited funds and time—would the Library return to an object that has already been privileged? Unanswered questions and advances in digitisation technologies, created a unique opportunity. For the First Peoples of Van Diemen’s Land (now known as Tasmania), colonisation by the British in 1803 was “an emotionally, intellectually, physically, and spiritually confronting series of encounters” (Franks n.p.). Violent incidents became routine and were followed by a full-scale conflict, often referred to as the Black War (Clements 1), or more recently as the Tasmanian War, fought from the 1820s until 1832. Image 1: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Call No.: SAFE / R 247.Behind the British combatants were various support staff, including administrators and propagandists. One of the efforts by the belligerents, behind the front line, to win the war and bring about peace was the production of approximately 100 Proclamation Boards. These four-strip pictograms were the result of a scheme introduced by Lieutenant Governor George Arthur (1784–1854), on the advice of Surveyor General George Frankland (1800–38), to communicate that all are equal under the rule of law (Arthur 1). Frankland wrote to Arthur in early 1829 to suggest these Proclamation Boards could be produced and nailed to trees (Morris 84), as a Eurocentric adaptation of a traditional method of communication used by Indigenous peoples who left images on the trunks of trees. The overtly stated purpose of the Boards was, like the printed proclamations exhorting peace, to assert, all people—black and white—were equal. That “British Justice would protect” everyone (Morris 84). The first strip on each of these pictogram Boards presents Indigenous peoples and colonists living peacefully together. The second strip 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 strips depict the repercussions for committing murder (or, indeed, any significant crime), with an Indigenous man hanged for spearing a colonist and a European man hanged for shooting an Aboriginal man. Both men executed in the presence of the Lieutenant Governor. The Boards, oil on Huon pine, were painted by “convict artists incarcerated in the island penal colony” (Carroll 73).The Board at the State Library of New South Wales was digitised quite early on in the Library’s digitisation program, it has been routinely exhibited (including for the Library’s centenary in 2010) and is written about regularly. Yet, many questions about this small piece of timber remain unanswered. For example, some Boards were outlined with sketches and some were outlined with 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). Could such a sketch or example of pouncing be seen beneath the surface layers of paint on this particular Board? What might be revealed by examining the Board more closely and looking at this object in different ways?An important, but unexpected, discovery was that while most of the pigments in the painting correlate with those commonly available to artists in the early nineteenth century there is one outstanding anomaly. X-ray analysis revealed cadmium yellow present in several places across the painting, including the dresses of the little girls in strip one, uniform details in strip two, and the trousers worn by the settler men in strips three and four (Kahabka 2). This is an extraordinary discovery, as cadmium yellows were available “commercially as an artist pigment in England by 1846” and were shown by “Winsor & Newton at the 1851 Exhibition held at the Crystal Palace, London” (Fiedler and Bayard 68). The availability of this particular type of yellow in the early 1850s could set a new marker for the earliest possible date for the manufacture of this Board, long-assumed to be 1828–30. Further, the early manufacture of cadmium yellow saw the pigment in short supply and a very expensive option when compared with other pigments such as chrome yellow (the darker yellow, seen in the grid lines that separate the scenes in the painting). This presents a clearly uncomfortable truth in relation to an object so heavily researched and so significant to a well-regarded collection that aims to document much of Australia’s colonial history. Is it possible, for example, the Board has been subjected to overpainting at a later date? Or, was this premium paint used to produce a display Board that was sent, by the Tasmanian Government, to the 1866 Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne? In seeking to see the finer details of the painting through re-digitisation, the results were much richer than anticipated. The sketch outlines are clearly visible in the new high-resolution files. There are, too, details unable to be seen clearly with the naked eye, including this warrior’s headdress and ceremonial scarring on his stomach, scars that tell stories “of pain, endurance, identity, status, beauty, courage, sorrow or grief” (Australian Museum n.p.). The image of this man has been duplicated and distributed since the 1830s, an anonymous figure deployed to tell a settler-centric story of the Black, or Tasmanian, War. This man can now be seen, for the first time nine decades later, to wear his own story. We do not know his name, but he is no longer completely anonymous. This image is now, in some ways, a portrait. The State Library of New South Wales acknowledges this object is part of an important chapter in the Tasmanian story and, though two Boards are in collections in Tasmania (the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston), each Board is different. The Library holds an important piece of a large and complex puzzle and has a moral obligation to make this information available beyond its metropolitan location. Digitisation, in this case re-digitisation, is allowing for the disruption of this story in sparking new questions around provenance and for the relocating of a Palawa warrior to a more prominent, perhaps even equal role, within a colonial narrative. Image 2: Detail, Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines, ca. 1828–1830. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Call No.: SAFE / R 247.Case Study Two: The George Augustus Robinson PapersThe second case study focuses on the work being led by the Indigenous Engagement Branch at the State Library of New South Wales on the George Augustus Robinson (1791–1866) Papers. In 1829, Robinson was granted a government post in Van Diemen’s Land to ‘conciliate’ with the Palawa peoples. More accurately, Robinson’s core task was dispossession and the systematic disconnection of the Palawa peoples from their Country, community, and culture. Robinson was a habitual diarist and notetaker documenting much of his own life as well as the lives of those around him, including First Nations peoples. His extensive suite of papers represents a familiar and peculiar kind of discomfort for Aboriginal Australians, one in which they are forced to learn about themselves through the eyes and words of their oppressors. For many First Nations peoples of Tasmania, Robinson remains a violent and terrible figure, but his observations of Palawa culture and language are as vital as they are problematic. Importantly, his papers include vibrant and utterly unique descriptions of people, place, flora and fauna, and language, as well as illustrations revealing insights into the routines of daily life (even as those routines were being systematically dismantled by colonial authorities). “Robinson’s records have informed much of the revitalisation of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture in the twentieth century and continue to provide the basis for investigations of identity and deep relationships to land by Aboriginal scholars” (Lehman n.p.). These observations and snippets of lived culture are of immense value to Palawa peoples today but the act of reading between Robinson’s assumptions and beyond his entrenched colonial views is difficult work.Image 3: George Augustus Robinson Papers, 1829–34. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, A 7023–A 7031.The canonical reference for Robinson’s archive is Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829–1834, edited by N.J.B. Plomley. The volume of over 1,000 pages was first published in 1966. This large-scale project is recognised “as a monumental work of Tasmanian history” (Crane ix). Yet, this standard text (relied upon by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers) has clearly not reproduced a significant percentage of Robinson’s Tasmanian manuscripts. Through his presumptuous truncations Plomley has not simply edited Robinson’s work but has, quite literally, written many Palawa stories out of this colonial narrative. It is this lack of agency in determining what should be left out that is most troubling, and reflects an all-too-familiar approach which libraries, including the State Library of New South Wales, are now urgently trying to rectify. Plomley’s preface and introduction does not indicate large tranches of information are missing. Indeed, Plomley specifies “that in extenso [in full] reproduction was necessary” (4) and omissions “have been kept to a minimum” (8). A 32-page supplement was published in 1971. A new edition, including the supplement, some corrections made by Plomley, and some extra material was released in 2008. But much continues to be unknown outside of academic circles, and far too few Palawa Elders and language revival workers have had access to Robinson’s original unfiltered observations. Indeed, Plomley’s text is linear and neat when compared to the often-chaotic writings of Robinson. Digitisation cannot address matters of the materiality of the archive, but such projects do offer opportunities for access to information in its original form, unedited, and unmediated.Extensive consultation with communities in Tasmania is underpinning the digitisation and re-description of a collection which has long been assumed—through partial digitisation, microfilming, and Plomley’s text—to be readily available and wholly understood. Central to this project is not just challenging the canonical status of Plomley’s work but directly challenging the idea non-Aboriginal experts can truly understand the cultural or linguistic context of the information recorded in Robinson’s journals. One of the more exciting outcomes, so far, has been working with Palawa peoples to explore the possibility of Palawa-led transcriptions and translation, and not breaking up the tasks of this work and distributing them to consultants or to non-Indigenous student groups. In this way, people are being meaningfully reunited with their own histories and, crucially, given first right to contextualise and understand these histories. Again, digitisation and disruption can be seen here as allies with the facilitation of accessibility to an archive in ways that re-distribute the traditional power relations around interpreting and telling stories held within colonial-rich collections.Image 4: Detail, George Augustus Robinson Papers, 1829–34. Image Credit: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, A 7023–A 7031.As has been so brilliantly illustrated by Bruce Pascoe’s recent work Dark Emu (2014), when Aboriginal peoples are given the opportunity to interpret their own culture from the colonial records without interference, they are able to see strength and sophistication rather than victimhood. For, to “understand how the Europeans’ assumptions selectively filtered the information brought to them by the early explorers is to see how we came to have the history of the country we accept today” (4). Far from decrying these early colonial records Aboriginal peoples understand their vital importance in connecting to a culture which was dismantled and destroyed, but importantly it is known that far too much is lost in translation when Aboriginal Australians are not the ones undertaking the translating. ConclusionFor Aboriginal Australians, culture and knowledge is no longer always anchored to Country. These histories, once so firmly connected to communities through their ancestral lands and languages, have been dispersed across the continent and around the world. Many important stories—of family history, language, and ways of life—are held in cultural institutions and understanding the role of responsibly disseminating these collections through digitisation is paramount. In transitioning from physical collections to hybrid collections of the physical and digital, the digitisation processes conducted by memory institutions can be—and due to the size of some collections is inevitably—selective. Limited resources, even for large-scale and well-resourced digitisation projects usually realise outcomes that focus on making visually rich, key, or canonical documents, or those documents considered high use or at risk, available online. Such materials are extracted from a full body of records. Digitisation projects, as noted, tend to be devised for a broader audience where contextual questions are less central to the methodology in favour of presenting notable documents online, separate from their complete collection and, critically, their context. Our institutions carry the weight of past collecting strategies and, today, the pressure of digitisation strategies as well. Contemporary librarians should not be gatekeepers, but rather key holders. In collaborating across sectors and with communities we open doors for education, research, and the repatriation of culture and knowledge. We must, always, remember to open these doors wide: the call of Aboriginal Australians of ‘nothing about us without us’ is not an invitation to collaboration but an imperative. Libraries—as well as galleries, archives, and museums—cannot tell these stories alone. Also, these two case studies highlight what we believe to be one of the biggest mistakes that not just libraries but all cultural institutions are vulnerable to making, the assumption that just because a collection is open access it is also accessible. Digitisation projects are more valuable when communicated, contextualised and—essentially—the result of community consultation. Such work can, for some, be uncomfortable while for others it offers opportunities to embrace disruption and, by extension, opportunities to decolonise collections. For First Nations peoples this work can be more powerful than any simple measurement tool can record. Through examining our past collecting, deliberate efforts to consult, and through digital sharing projects across metropolitan and regional Australia, we can make meaningful differences to the ways in which Aboriginal Australians can, again, own their histories.Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the Palawa peoples: the traditional custodians of the lands known today as Tasmania. The authors acknowledge, too, the Gadigal people upon whose lands this article was researched and written. We are indebted to Dana Kahabka (Conservator), Joy Lai (Imaging Specialist), Richard Neville (Mitchell Librarian), and Marika Duczynski (Project Officer) at the State Library of New South Wales. Sincere thanks are also given to Jason Ensor of Western Sydney University.ReferencesArthur, George. “Proclamation.” The Hobart Town Courier 19 Apr. 1828: 1.———. Proclamation to the Aborigines. 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