Journal articles on the topic 'Winnipeg wolf'

Abstract Feminist perspectives have strongly influenced the fairy-tale rewritings of the past decades, but the intersection of gender with other identity markers deserves more attention. This article applies the conclusions of Sylvia Henneberg’s critical examination of age and gender in fairy tales to Gillian Cross’s Wolf (1990), an award-winning rewriting of “Red Riding Hood.” While Wolf presents Nan, the counterpart of Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, as a determined and cunning older woman at first, in the course of the novel, the narrative lapses into the ageist stereotypes of the ineffectual crone and the wise old mentor.

Carnivore populations are declining globally due to range contraction, persecution and prey depletion. One consequence of these patterns is increased range and niche overlap with other carnivores, and thus an elevated potential for competitive exclusion. Here, we document competition between an endangered canid, the Ethiopian wolf (EW), and the newly discovered African wolf (AW) in central Ethiopia. The diet of the ecological specialist EW was dominated by rodents, whereas the AW consumed a more diverse diet also including insects and non-rodent mammals. EWs used predominantly intact habitat, whereas AWs used mostly areas disturbed by humans and their livestock. We observed 82 encounters between the two species, of which 94% were agonistic. The outcomes of agonistic encounters followed a territory-specific dominance pattern, with EWs dominating in intact habitat and AWs in human-disturbed areas. For AWs, the likelihood of winning encounters also increased with group size. Rodent species consumed by EWs were also available in the human-disturbed areas, suggesting that these areas could be suitable habitat for EWs if AWs were not present. Increasing human encroachment not only affects the prey base of EWs, but also may impact their survival by intensifying competition with sympatric AWs.

In the wolf spider Hygrolycosa rubrofasciata, males court females by drumming dry leaves with their abdomen. Females prefer to mate with the most actively drumming males, and courtship drumming activity is also positively correlated with male viability. However, body mass of the males seems to have only a minor, if any, effect on female choice or male viability. There is also no correlation between male body mass and courtship drumming activity. We studied the effect of body mass and courtship drumming activity on the outcome of agonistic encounters between male H. rubrofasciata. For this purpose, males and females were randomly placed in a plastic arena, where male courtship drumming activity and agonistic encounters were recorded. Large differences in body mass and drumming activity between two rivals seemed to independently increase the probability of the larger or more active males winning. We conclude that while courtship drumming activity affects the fighting success of the males, and body mass more so, male–male interactions may not be of major importance in sexual selection of H. rubrofasciata.

This article demonstrates the queer potential and pleasure produced by the character Fiyero in Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s Wicked (2003). I mobilize two primary frameworks to examine Fiyero’s queerness; the first half of the article views Fiyero in the context of queer theories of temporality and utopia, while the second half is interested in the deep cultural history of gay men’s relationships with Broadway musicals. This analysis produces both theoretical and historical implications of Fiyero’s character as I explore how his representation disrupts heteronormative rituals and aspects of the social order, as well as how he produces a valuable figure for the communities of gay men that have historically developed around musical theatre. The queer possibility of Wicked’s women has been examined extensively in past scholarship – particularly through the insights of Stacy Wolf – and this article expands upon this previous work to account for the role of Fiyero in the musical and the queer possibilities he produces.

Film technology has become an increasingly prominent component of theatre design. In the practice of Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage it may support what has been described as a ‘pizza style’ of presentation, in which disparate techniques and modes of presentation are used to disturb conventional ideas of narrative, context, and textual authority, while in the work of Motionhouse it creates a language of dance as circus. The longstanding collaboration between film designer Ravi Deepres and choreographer Wayne McGregor presents an alternative model, at once highly composed as narrative and based on meticulous research into textual evidence. In this interview with David Roberts, Deepres charts the evolution of his work with McGregor up to their award-winning Woolf Works, showing how a genuinely collaborative artistic process and attention to the graphic possibilities of different film technologies have transformed our understanding of the role of design in devised performance. Ravi Deepres is Professor of Moving Image and Photography at Birmingham City University. For the past nineteen years he has designed shows in collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor. Their most recent success, Woolf Works, won the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production and re-opened at La Scala Milan in April 2019. David Roberts is Professor of English at Birmingham City University. His recent publications include George Farquhar: A Migrant Life Reversed (Bloomsbury, 2018), and he is currently working on a new edition of Congreve's The Way of the World.

Smart and Wolfe (2003) assessed the concurrent contribution of leadership and human resources to Major League Baseball (MLB) team performance. They found that player resources (defense/pitching and offence/batting) explained 67% of the variance in winning percentage, whereas leadership explained very little (slightly more than 1%) of the variance. In discussing the minimal contribution of leadership to their results, the authors suggested that future studies expand their operationalization of leadership. That is what is done in this study. Finding that the expanded operationalization has limited effect in explaining the contribution of leadership, we take an alternative tack in attempting to understand leadership in MLB. In addition, we estimate a production frontier (based on offensive and defensive resources), determine the efficiency of MLB managers relative to that frontier, and investigate the extent to which manager efficiency can be explained by manager characteristics. Finally, manager characteristics are related to manager compensation.

Peter of Sicily, a Byzantine high official from the times of Basil I, intended to warn the Archbishop of Bulgaria against certain heretics, known as the Paulicians, as he learned during his mission to Tefrike about their plans of sending their missionaries there. His writings are regarded as the most competent source of information on the history and doctrine of the Paulicians. He also described some of their leaders, including Sergius himself. According to Peter, it was a woman with whom Sergius had had an affair who made him the devil’s tool. He accepted the name of Tychicos and passed himself off as a disciple of Paul the Apostle. For 34 years he was the leader of the Paulicians. Peter admits that Sergius was successful in winning followers and at the same time, besides making false statements, accuses him of selling Christians into slavery to barbarians and of collaboration with the Muslims. In the end, however, he was supposed to have an argument with another heresiarch, Baanes, which would lead to a break among the Paulicians. Sergius is colourfully described as an enemy of the Cross, a voice of impiety, a lover of darkness and a wolf in sheep’s clothing, who skilfully pretends to be a man of virtue but has deceived many. Although he himself was murdered in 834/835, his work was continued by disciples of his.

Virginia Woolf is one of the modernist writers who write Mrs. Dalloway for which Michael Cunningham has taken Virginia’s life story into his novel, The Hours that characterized Laura Brown who reads Mrs. Dalloway. Cunningham’s literary work which foregrounds the uncertainty of sexual orientation, confusion, and difficulty of identity is suitable with postmodernism’s conventions and is valid in both Woolf's and Cunningham's novels. There have been studies conducted by the scholars in terms of various technical aspects, such as narrative, design, and structure. The other topics comprise the equivalence of characters, the parallelism of scenes, and the borrowing of themes and symbolism, in order to demonstrate the effects of the adaptation process. This paper focuses on Laura Brown’s inner conflicts which are connected to postmodernism features. From the quotations in the novel, this paper showcases the novel’s analysis based on Ihab Hassan’s theory of postmodernism’s indeterminacy and irony. It is found that Laura Brown’s inner conflicts are shown from her efforts of being a good wife for Dan. She is trying hard to answer her own question whether or not she loves her husband. Ironically, the perfect status of being a wife of a soldier who takes part in winning the World War II, a woman with a perfect family, as well as a woman living a good life, do not make her happy. Mrs. Dalloway has inspired her to find her true happiness, her former self that has disappeared.

Andrew Wilson, published as A.N. Wilson, is a British writer of fiction, non-fiction and journalism. Beginning his career as an acclaimed comic novelist in the late 1970s, his work has since embraced literary biography, history, and novels that have moved beyond comedy to encompass faith and historical settings. In 2007 his novel Winnie and Wolf was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize; his most recent work is the acclaimed literary biography The Mystery of Charles Dickens.Nick Turner conducted the interview with Andrew Wilson by email in April 2020, focusing on the Andrew Wilson’s diverse writing interests, the work of Iris Murdoch, his new book on Dickens, the appeal of the Victorian age, and the writers that have inspired him in the past.

Last week I heard an interview with the American playwright Edward Albee. His award-winning play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe, is enjoying a second time around on the New York stage. In the course of the interview, Albee made a comment that confirmed my own belief about the arts. He said: "To put us in greater contact with our possibilities. . . this is the function of art." This idea of "possibilities" has always shaped the core of my beliefs about the nature of Music Therapy. It's a recurring theme. And in the increasingly inhibited parameters of clinical notions, represented by the likes of evidence-based decision making under the influence of the Cochrane Collaboration, it's good to remember the art of our work.

The concept of the public intellectual is yet to be well engaged in Nigerian scholarship. While it has been implied in many critical works on writers, activists, journalists, lawyers, and others, the concept of the public intellectual has not been exclusively engaged to study historic and current Nigerian public figures. In this article, although much of it is an interview with the award-winning and prolific Nigerian playwright, academic, former Artistic Director of the National Troupe, and Director General of the Nigerian National Theatre, Ahmed Yerima, I briefly establish the public intellectual history in Nigeria before engaging the playwright on this subject and interrogating his status as a public intellectual or cultural critic. During the course of the interview, Yerima also touches on other subjects facing Nigeria and the intersection between one of his plays, Abobaku (2015), and Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman (1975).

Статья посвящена одному из циклов нартовского эпоса осетин – циклу Сослана / Созырыко. Сюжетно-мотивный состав цикла Сослана разнообразен и многовариантен. Некоторые сюжеты можно считать типическими: рождение героя из камня, закалка, воспитание в подводном царстве, борьба с великанами, добывание жены, путешествие в загробный мир. Однако некоторые мотивы встречаются только в цикле Сослана. Так, например, закалку у небесного кузнеца Курдалагона проходят многие герои, однако только Сослан был закален в волчьем молоке. Основной нарративный материал в цикле Сослан отражает следующие мотивы и сюжеты: рождение Сослана из оплодотворенного или Уастырджи, или Сайнаг-алдаром, или пастухом камня на берегу реки; закалка Сослана в волчьем молоке; дары небожителей Сослану и нартам; Сослан спасает от гибели Уруз- мага; Сослан ищет сильнейшего; женитьба Сослана; Сослан терпит поражение и с его спины срезают полоску кожи; Сослан заставляет нартовских невесток сшить ему шубу из скальпов и усов убитых им мужей; Сослан захватывает крепость Гори / Хыз; Сослан отгоняет стада нартов на земли сыновей Тара, которых одолевает хитростью; Сослан притворяется мертвым, чтобы ввести в заблуждение врага; Сослан побывал в Царстве мертвых. В одних сюжетах Сослан выступает в роли культурного героя, в других – выпол- няет социальные функции (предводителя в походах), в третьих – отражаются инициаци- онные мифы, в которых Сослан выступает в роли инициируемого. The article is devoted to one of the cycles of the Narts’ epic of the Ossetians – Soslan / Sozyryko cycle. The subject-motive composition of the cycle of Soslan is diverse and multivariate. Some plots can be considered typical: the birth of a hero made of stone, hardening, being raised in the underwater kingdom, the struggle with giants, winning a wife, a journey into the underworld. However, some motifs are found only in Soslan cycle. For example, many heroes were hardened by the celestial blacksmith Kurdalagon, but only Soslan was tempered in wolf ’s milk. The main narrative material in Soslan cycle reflects the following motifs and plots: the birth of Soslan from the stone fertilized by either Wastirdji, Sainag-aldar or a shepherd on the bank of a river; hardening of Soslan in wolf ’s milk, gifts of the celestials to Soslan and Narts; rescuing Uruzmag; Soslan is looking for the strongest; Soslan’s marriage; Soslan suffers defeat and a strip of skin is cut off from his back; Soslan makes Narta’s daughters-in-law sew him a fur coat from the scalps and the whiskers of the husbands killed by him; Soslan captures the fortress of Gori / Hyz; Soslan takes the herds of the Narts to graze them on the lands of the sons of Tara, whom he overcomes by cunning; Soslan pretends to be dead in order to mislead the enemy; he visits the kingdom of the dead. In some plots Soslan acts as a cultural hero, in others - performs social functions (leader in campaigns), the third group of plots reflect initiation myths in which Soslan is the subject of initiation.

Greetings Everyone,The news for this new year’s issue consists mainly of a list of a major children’s literature awards that have been announced, as well as a few upcoming conferences.AWARDS2017 ALSC (Association for Library Service to Children) Book and Media Award WinnersJohn Newberry MedalThe Girl Who Drank the Moon Written by Kelly Barnhill and published by Algonquin Young Readers, an imprint of Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, a division of Workman PublishingNewberry Honour BooksFreedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan written and illustrated by Ashley Bryan and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing DivisionThe Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog written by Adam Gidwitz, illustrated by Hatem Aly and published by Dutton Children's Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLCWolf Hollow written by Lauren Wolk and published by Dutton Children's Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLCRandolph Caldecott MedalRadiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat illustrated by Javaka Steptoe, written by Javaka Steptoe and published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.Caldecot Honour BooksDu Iz Tak? illustrated and written by Carson Ellis, and published by Candlewick PressFreedom in Congo Square illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and published by Little Bee Books, an imprint of Bonnier Publishing GroupLeave Me Alone! illustrated and written by Vera Brosgol and published by Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited PartnershipThey All Saw a Cat illustrated and written by Brendan Wenzel and published by Chronicle Books LLCLaura Ingalls Wilder AwardNikki Grimes -- Her award-winning works include “Bronx Masquerade,” recipient of the Coretta Scott King Author Award in 2003, and “Words with Wings,” the recipient of a Coretta Scott King Author Honor in 2014. Grimes is also the recipient of the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award in 2016 and the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children in 2006.2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor AwardNaomi Shihab Nye will deliver the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture.Mildred L. Batchelder AwardCry, Heart, But Never Break - Originally published in Danish in 2001 as “Græd blot hjerte,” the book was written by Glenn Ringtved, illustrated by Charolotte Pardi, translated by Robert Moulthrop and published by Enchanted Lion Books.Batchelder Honour BooksAs Time Went By published by NorthSouth Books, Inc., written and illustrated by José Sanabria and translated from the German by Audrey HallOver the Ocean published by Chronicle Books LLC, written and illustrated by Taro Gomi and translated from the Japanese by Taylor NormanPura Belpre (Author) AwardJuana & Lucas written by Juana Medina, is the Pura Belpré Author Award winner. The book is illustrated by Juana Medina and published by Candlewick PressPura Belpre (Illustrator) AwardLowriders to the Center of the Earth illustrated by Raúl Gonzalez, written by Cathy Camper and published by Chronicle Books LLCAndrew Carnegie MedalRyan Swenar Dreamscape Media, LLC, producer of “Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music”Theodor Seuss Geisel AwardWe Are Growing: A Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! Book written by Laurie Keller. The book is published by Hyperion Books for Children, an imprint of Disney Book GroupRobert F. Sibert Informational Book MedalMarch: Book Three written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin and illustrated by Nate Powell, published by Top Shelf Productions, an imprint of IDW Publishing, a division of Idea and Design Works LLC Stonewall Book Awards - ALA Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT)Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature AwardIf I Was Your Girl written by Meredith Russo and published by Flatiron BooksMagnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Hammer of Thor written by Rick Riordan and published by Disney Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book GroupHonor BooksPride: Celebrating Diversity & Community written by Robin Stevenson and published by Orca Book PublishersUnbecoming written by Jenny Downham and published by Scholastic Inc. by arrangement with David Fickling BooksWhen the Moon Was Ours written by Anna-Marie McLemore and published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press2017 Children’s Literature Association Phoenix AwardsPhoenix Award 2017Wish Me Luck by James Heneghan Farrar Straus Giroux, 1997Phoenix Honor Books 2017Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman HarperCollins, 1997Habibi by Naomi Shihab Nye Simon & Schuster, 19972017 Phoenix Picture Book AwardTell Me a Season by Mary McKenna Siddals & Petra Mathers Clarion Books, 1997One Grain of Rice: A Mathematical Tale by Demi Scholastic, 1997 CONFERENCESMarchSerendipity 2017: From Beginning to End (Life, Death, and Everything In Between) The Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable Mar. 4, 2017 | 8am to 3:30 pm | UBC Ike Barber LibraryJuneChildren’s Literature Association ConferenceHosted by the University of South Florida June 22-24, 2017 Tampa, FL Hilton Tampa Downtown Hotel Conference Theme: Imagined FuturesJulyInternational Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) Congress 2017 – Toronto July 29 - August 2, 2017 Keele Campus, York University The Congress theme is “Possible & Impossible Children: Intersections of Children’s Literature & Childhood Studies." That is all for this issue. Best wishes!Hanne Pearce, Communication Editor

In the contemporary era, media spectacle organizes and mobilizes economic life, political conflict, social interactions, culture, and everyday life. My recently published book Media Spectacle explores a profusion of developments in hi-tech culture, media-driven society, and spectacle politics. Spectacle culture involves everything from film and broadcasting to Internet cyberculture and encompasses phenomena ranging from elections to terrorism and to the media dramas of the moment. For ‘Logo’, I am accordingly sketching out briefly a terrain I probe in detail in the book from which these examples are taken.1 During the past decades, every form of culture and significant forms of social life have become permeated by the logic of the spectacle. Movies are bigger and more spectacular than ever, with high-tech special effects expanding the range of cinematic spectacle. Television channels proliferate endlessly with all-day movies, news, sports, specialty niches, re-runs of the history of television, and whatever else can gain an audience. The rock spectacle reverberates through radio, television, CDs, computers networks, and extravagant concerts. The Internet encircles the world in the spectacle of an interactive and multimedia cyberculture. Media culture excels in creating megaspectacles of sports championships, political conflicts, entertainment, "breaking news" and media events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the Death of Princess Diana, or the sex or murder scandal of the moment. Megaspectacle comes as well to dominate party politics, as the political battles of the day, such as the Clinton sex scandals and impeachment, the 36 Day Battle for the White House after Election 2000, and the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent Terror War. These dramatic media passion plays define the politics of the time, and attract mass audiences to their programming, hour after hour, day after day. The concept of "spectacle" derives from French Situationist theorist Guy Debord's 1972 book Society of the Spectacle. "Spectacle," in Debord's terms, "unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena" (Debord 1970: #10). In one sense, it refers to a media and consumer society, organized around the consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles. Spectacles are those phenomena of media culture which embody contemporary society's basic values, and dreams and nightmares, putting on display dominant hopes and fears. They serve to enculturate individuals into its way of life, and dramatize its conflicts and modes of conflict resolution. They include sports events, political campaigns and elections, and media extravaganzas like sensational murder trials, or the Bill Clinton sex scandals and impeachment spectacle (1998-1999). As we enter a new millennium, the media are becoming ever more technologically dazzling and are playing an increasingly central role in everyday life. Under the influence of a postmodern image culture, seductive spectacles fascinate the denizens of the media and consumer society and involve them in the semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, a semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, and drama, which deeply influence thought and action. For Debord: "When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present day society" (#18). Today, however, I would maintain it is the multimedia spectacle of sight, sound, touch, and, coming to you soon, smell that constitutes the multidimensional sense experience of the new interactive spectacle. For Debord, the spectacle is a tool of pacification and depoliticization; it is a "permanent opium war" (#44) which stupefies social subjects and distracts them from the most urgent task of real life -- recovering the full range of their human powers through creative praxis. The concept of the spectacle is integrally connected to the concept of separation and passivity, for in passively consuming spectacles, one is separated from actively producing one's life. Capitalist society separates workers from the products of their labor, art from life, and consumption from human needs and self-directing activity, as individuals passively observe the spectacles of social life from within the privacy of their homes (#25 and #26). The situationist project by contrast involved an overcoming of all forms of separation, in which individuals would directly produce their own life and modes of self-activity and collective practice. Since Debord's theorization of the society of the spectacle in the 1960s and 1970s, spectacle culture has expanded in every area of life. In the culture of the spectacle, commercial enterprises have to be entertaining to prosper and as Michael J. Wolf (1999) argues, in an "entertainment economy," business and fun fuse, so that the E-factor is becoming major aspect of business.2 Via the "entertainmentization" of the economy, television, film, theme parks, video games, casinos, and so forth become major sectors of the national economy. In the U.S., the entertainment industry is now a $480 billion industry, and consumers spend more on having fun than on clothes or health care (Wolf 1999: 4).3 In a competitive business world, the "fun factor" can give one business the edge over another. Hence, corporations seek to be more entertaining in their commercials, their business environment, their commercial spaces, and their web sites. Budweiser ads, for instance, feature talking frogs who tell us nothing about the beer, but who catch the viewers' attention, while Taco Bell deploys a talking dog, and Pepsi uses Star Wars characters. Buying, shopping, and dining out are coded as an "experience," as businesses adopt a theme-park style. Places like the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues are not renowned for their food, after all; people go there for the ambience, to buy clothing, and to view music and media memorabilia. It is no longer good enough just to have a web site, it has to be an interactive spectacle, featuring not only products to buy, but music and videos to download, games to play, prizes to win, travel information, and "links to other cool sites." To succeed in the ultracompetitive global marketplace, corporations need to circulate their image and brand name so business and advertising combine in the promotion of corporations as media spectacles. Endless promotion circulates the McDonald’s Golden Arches, Nike’s Swoosh, or the logos of Apple, Intel, or Microsoft. In the brand wars between commodities, corporations need to make their logos or “trademarks” a familiar signpost in contemporary culture. Corporations place their logos on their products, in ads, in the spaces of everyday life, and in the midst of media spectacles like important sports events, TV shows, movie product placement, and wherever they can catch consumer eyeballs, to impress their brand name on a potential buyer. Consequently, advertising, marketing, public relations and promotion are an essential part of commodity spectacle in the global marketplace. Celebrity too is manufactured and managed in the world of media spectacle. Celebrities are the icons of media culture, the gods and goddesses of everyday life. To become a celebrity requires recognition as a star player in the field of media spectacle, be it sports, entertainment, or politics. Celebrities have their handlers and image managers to make sure that their celebrities continue to be seen and positively perceived by publics. Just as with corporate brand names, celebrities become brands to sell their Madonna, Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, or Jennifer Lopez product and image. In a media culture, however, celebrities are always prey to scandal and thus must have at their disposal an entire public relations apparatus to manage their spectacle fortunes, to make sure their clients not only maintain high visibility but keep projecting a positive image. Of course, within limits, “bad” and transgressions can also sell and so media spectacle contains celebrity dramas that attract public attention and can even define an entire period, as when the O.J. Simpson murder trials and Bill Clinton sex scandals dominated the media in the mid and late 1990s. Entertainment has always been a prime field of the spectacle, but in today's infotainment society, entertainment and spectacle have entered into the domains of the economy, politics, society, and everyday life in important new ways. Building on the tradition of spectacle, contemporary forms of entertainment from television to the stage are incorporating spectacle culture into their enterprises, transforming film, television, music, drama, and other domains of culture, as well as producing spectacular new forms of culture such as cyberspace, multimedia, and virtual reality. For Neil Gabler, in an era of media spectacle, life itself is becoming like a movie and we create our own lives as a genre like film, or television, in which we become "at once performance artists in and audiences for a grand, ongoing show" (1998: 4). On Gabler’s view, we star in our own "lifies," making our lives into entertainment acted out for audiences of our peers, following the scripts of media culture, adopting its role models and fashion types, its style and look. Seeing our lives in cinematic terms, entertainment becomes for Gabler "arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time--a force so overwhelming that it has metastasized into life" to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish between the two (1998: 9). As Gabler sees it, Ralph Lauren is our fashion expert; Martha Stewart designs our sets; Jane Fonda models our shaping of our bodies; and Oprah Winfrey advises us on our personal problems.4 Media spectacle is indeed a culture of celebrity who provide dominant role models and icons of fashion, look, and personality. In the world of spectacle, celebrity encompasses every major social domain from entertainment to politics to sports to business. An ever-expanding public relations industry hypes certain figures, elevating them to celebrity status, and protects their positive image in the never-ending image wars and dangers that a celebrity will fall prey to the machinations of negative-image and thus lose celebrity status, and/or become figures of scandal and approbation, as will some of the players and institutions that I examine in Media Spectacle (Kellner 2003). Sports has long been a domain of the spectacle with events like the Olympics, World Series, Super Bowl, World Soccer Cup, and NBA championships attracting massive audiences, while generating sky-high advertising rates. These cultural rituals celebrate society's deepest values (i.e. competition, winning, success, and money), and corporations are willing to pay top dollar to get their products associated with such events. Indeed, it appears that the logic of the commodity spectacle is inexorably permeating professional sports which can no longer be played without the accompaniment of cheerleaders, giant mascots who clown with players and spectators, and raffles, promotions, and contests that feature the products of various sponsors. Sports stadiums themselves contain electronic reproduction of the action, as well as giant advertisements for various products that rotate for maximum saturation -- previewing environmental advertising in which entire urban sites are becoming scenes to boost consumption spectacles. Arenas, like the United Center in Chicago, America West Arena in Phoenix, on Enron Field in Houston are named after corporate sponsors. Of course, after major corporate scandals or collapse, like the Enron spectacle, the ballparks must be renamed! The Texas Ranger Ballpark in Arlington, Texas supplements its sports arena with a shopping mall, office buildings, and a restaurant in which for a hefty price one can watch the athletic events while eating and drinking.5 The architecture of the Texas Rangers stadium is an example of the implosion of sports and entertainment and postmodern spectacle. A man-made lake surrounds the stadium, the corridor inside is modeled after Chartes Cathedral, and the structure is made of local stone that provides the look of the Texas Capitol in Austin. Inside there are Texas longhorn cattle carvings, panels of Texas and baseball history, and other iconic signifiers of sports and Texas. The merging of sports, entertainment, and local spectacle is now typical in sports palaces. Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, Florida, for instance, "has a three-level mall that includes places where 'fans can get a trim at the barber shop, do their banking and then grab a cold one at the Budweiser brew pub, whose copper kettles rise three stories. There is even a climbing wall for kids and showroom space for car dealerships'" (Ritzer 1998: 229). Film has long been a fertile field of the spectacle, with "Hollywood" connoting a world of glamour, publicity, fashion, and excess. Hollywood film has exhibited grand movie palaces, spectacular openings with searchlights and camera-popping paparazzi, glamorous Oscars, and stylish hi-tech film. While epic spectacle became a dominant genre of Hollywood film from early versions of The Ten Commandments through Cleopatra and 2001 in the 1960s, contemporary film has incorporated the mechanics of spectacle into its form, style, and special effects. Films are hyped into spectacle through advertising and trailers which are ever louder, more glitzy, and razzle-dazzle. Some of the most popular films of the late 1990s were spectacle films, including Titanic, Star Wars -- Phantom Menace, Three Kings, and Austin Powers, a spoof of spectacle, which became one of the most successful films of summer 1999. During Fall 1999, there was a cycle of spectacles, including Topsy Turvy, Titus, Cradle Will Rock, Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, and Magnolia, with the latter featuring the biblical spectacle of the raining of frogs in the San Fernando Valley, in an allegory of the decadence of the entertainment industry and deserved punishment for its excesses. The 2000 Academy Awards were dominated by the spectacle Gladiator, a mediocre film that captured best picture award and best acting award for Russell Crowe, thus demonstrating the extent to which the logic of the spectacle now dominates Hollywood film. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular films of 2001 are also hi-tech spectacle, such as Moulin Rouge, a film spectacle that itself is a delirious ode to spectacle, from cabaret and the brothel to can-can dancing, opera, musical comedy, dance, theater, popular music, and film. A postmodern pastiche of popular music styles and hits, the film used songs and music ranging from Madonna and the Beatles to Dolly Parton and Kiss. Other 2001 film spectacles include Pearl Harbor, which re-enacts the Japanese attack on the U.S. that propelled the country to enter World War II, and that provided a ready metaphor for the September 11 terror attacks. Major 2001 film spectacles range from David Lynch’s postmodern surrealism in Mulholland Drive to Steven Spielberg’s blending of his typically sentimental spectacle of the family with the formalist rigor of Stanley Kubrick in A.I. And the popular 2001 military film Black-Hawk Down provided a spectacle of American military heroism which some critics believed sugar-coated the actual problems with the U.S. military intervention in Somalia, causing worries that a future U.S. adventure by the Bush administration and Pentagon would meet similar problems. There were reports, however, that in Somalian cinemas there were loud cheers as the Somalians in the film shot down the U.S. helicopter, and pursued and killed American soldiers, attesting to growing anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world against Bush administration policies. Television has been from its introduction in the 1940s a promoter of consumption spectacle, selling cars, fashion, home appliances, and other commodities along with consumer life-styles and values. It is also the home of sports spectacle like the Super Bowl or World Series, political spectacles like elections (or more recently, scandals), entertainment spectacle like the Oscars or Grammies, and its own spectacles like breaking news or special events. Following the logic of spectacle entertainment, contemporary television exhibits more hi-tech glitter, faster and glitzier editing, computer simulations, and with cable and satellite television, a fantastic array of every conceivable type of show and genre. TV is today a medium of spectacular programs like The X-Files or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and spectacles of everyday life such as MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, or the globally popular Survivor and Big Brother series. Real life events, however, took over TV spectacle in 2000-2001 in, first, an intense battle for the White House in a dead-heat election, that arguably constitutes one of the greatest political crimes and scandals in U.S. history (see Kellner 2001). After months of the Bush administration pushing the most hardright political agenda in memory and then deadlocking as the Democrats took control of the Senate in a dramatic party re-affiliation of Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, the world was treated to the most horrifying spectacle of the new millennium, the September 11 terror attacks and unfolding Terror War that has so far engulfed Afghanistan and Iraq. These events promise an unending series of deadly spectacle for the foreseeable future.6 Hence, we are emerging into a new culture of media spectacle that constitutes a novel configuration of economy, society, politics, and everyday life. It involves new cultural forms, social relations, and modes of experience. It is producing an ever-proliferating and expanding spectacle culture with its proliferating media forms, cultural spaces, and myriad forms of spectacle. It is evident in the U.S. as the new millennium unfolds and may well constitute emergent new forms of global culture. Critical social theory thus faces important challenges in theoretically mapping and analyzing these emergent forms of culture and society and the ways that they may contain novel forms of domination and oppression, as well as potential for democratization and social justice. Works Cited Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1967. Gabler, Neil. Life the Movie. How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Kellner, Douglas. Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. Thousand Oaks, Cal. and London: Sage, 1998. Wolf, Michael J. Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces are Transforming Our Lives. New York: Times Books, 1999. Notes 1 See Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 2 Wolf's book is a detailed and useful celebration of the "entertainment economy," although he is a shill for the firms and tycoons that he works for and celebrates them in his book. Moreover, while entertainment is certainly an important component of the infotainment economy, it is an exaggeration to say that it drives it and is actually propelling it, as Wolf repeatedly claims. Wolf also downplays the negative aspects of the entertainment economy, such as growing consumer debt and the ups and downs of the infotainment stock market and vicissitudes of the global economy. 3 Another source notes that "the average American household spent $1,813 in 1997 on entertainment -- books, TV, movies, theater, toys -- almost as much as the $1,841 spent on health care per family, according to a survey by the US Labor Department." Moreover, "the price we pay to amuse ourselves has, in some cases, risen at a rate triple that of inflation over the past five years" (USA Today, April 2, 1999: E1). The NPD Group provided a survey that indicated that the amount of time spent on entertainment outside of the home –- such as going to the movies or a sport event – was up 8% from the early to the late 1990s and the amount of time in home entertainment, such as watching television or surfing the Internet, went up 2%. Reports indicate that in a typical American household, people with broadband Internet connections spend 22% more time on all-electronic media and entertainment than the average household without broadband. See “Study: Broadband in homes changes media habits” (PCWORLD.COM, October 11, 2000). 4 Gabler’s book is a synthesis of Daniel Boorstin, Dwight Macdonald, Neil Poster, Marshall McLuhan, and other trendy theorists of media culture, but without the brilliance of a Baudrillard, the incisive criticism of an Adorno, or the understanding of the deeper utopian attraction of media culture of a Bloch or Jameson. Likewise, Gabler does not, a la cultural studies, engage the politics of representation, or its economics and political economy. He thus ignores mergers in the culture industries, new technologies, the restructuring of capitalism, globalization, and shifts in the economy that are driving the impetus toward entertainment. Gabler does get discuss how new technologies are creating new spheres of entertainment and forms of experience and in general describes rather than theorizes the trends he is engaging. 5 The project was designed and sold to the public in part through the efforts of the son of a former President, George W. Bush. Young Bush was bailed out of heavy losses in the Texas oil industry in the 1980s by his father's friends and used his capital gains, gleaned from what some say as illicit insider trading, to purchase part-ownership of a baseball team to keep the wayward son out of trouble and to give him something to do. The soon-to-be Texas governor, and future President of the United States, sold the new stadium to local taxpayers, getting them to agree to a higher sales tax to build the stadium which would then become the property of Bush and his partners. This deal allowed Bush to generate a healthy profit when he sold his interest in the Texas Rangers franchise and to buy his Texas ranch, paid for by Texas tax-payers (for sources on the scandalous life of George W. Bush and his surprising success in politics, see Kellner 2001 and the further discussion of Bush Jr. in Chapter 6). 6 See Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kellner, Douglas. "Engaging Media Spectacle " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>. APA Style Kellner, D. (2003, Jun 19). Engaging Media Spectacle . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>

In post-socialist China, gender norms are marked by rising divorce rates (Kleinman et al.), shifting attitudes towards sex (Farrer; Yan), and a growing commercialisation of sex (Zheng). These phenomena have been understood as indicative of market reforms unhinging past gender norms. In the socialist period, the radical politics of the time moulded women as gender neutral even as state policies emphasised their feminine roles in maintaining marital harmony and stability (Evans). These ideas around domesticity bear strong resemblance to pre-socialist understandings of womanhood and family that anchored Chinese society before the Communists took power in 1949. In this pre-socialist understanding, women were categorised into a hierarchy that defined their rights as wives, mothers, concubines, and servants (Ebrey and Watson; Wolf and Witke). Women who transgressed these categories were regarded as potentially dangerous and powerful enough to break up families and shake the foundations of Chinese society (Ahern). This paper explores the extent to which understandings of Chinese femininity have been reconfigured in the context of China’s post-1979 development, particularly after the 2000s.The popular television dramas Chinese Style Divorce (2004, Divorce), Dwelling Narrowness (2009, Dwelling), and Divorce Lawyers (2014, Lawyers) are set against this socio-cultural backdrop. The production of these shows is regulated by the China State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT), who has the power to grant or deny production and distribution permits. Post-production, the dramas are sold to state-owned television stations for distribution (Yu 36). Haiqing Yu summarises succinctly the state of Chinese media: “Chinese state manipulation and interference in the media market has seen the party-state media marketized but not weakened, media control decentralized but not reduced, and the media industry commercialized but not privatized” (42). Shot in one of the biggest cities in Shandong, Qingdao, Divorce focuses on Doctor Song Jianping and his schoolteacher wife Lin Xiaofeng and the conflicts between Song and Lin, who quits her job to become a stay-at-home mom after her husband secures a high-paying job in a foreign-invested hospital. Lin becomes paranoid and volatile, convinced that their divorced neighbour Xiao Li is having an affair with Song. Refusing to explain the situation, Song is willing to give her a divorce but fights over guardianship of their son. In the end, it is unconfirmed whether they reconcile or divorce. Divorce was recognised as TV Drama of the Year in 2004 and the two leads also won awards for their acting. Reruns of the show continue to air. According to Hui Faye Xiao, “It is reported that many college students viewed this TV show as a textbook on married life in urban settings” (118). Dwelling examines the issue of skyrocketing housing prices and the fates of the Guo sisters, Haizao and Haiping, who moved from rural China to the competitive economically advanced metropolis. Haiping is obsessed with buying an apartment while her younger sister becomes the mistress of a corrupt official, Song Siming. Both sisters receive favours from Song, which leads to Haiping’s success in purchasing a home. However, Haizao is less fortunate. She has a miscarriage and her uterus removed while Song dies in a car accident. Online responses from the audience praise Dwelling for its penetrating and realistic insights into the complex web of familial relationships navigated by Chinese people living in a China under transformation (Xiao, “Woju”). Dwelling was taken off the air when a SARFT official criticised the drama for violating state-endorsed “cultural standards” in its explicit discussions of sex and negative portrayals of government officials (Hung, “State” 156). However, the show continued to be streamed online and it has been viewed and downloaded more than 100 million times (Yu 34). In Lawyers, Luo Li and Chi Haidong are two competing divorce lawyers in Beijing who finally tie the knot. Chi was a happily married man before catching his wife with her lover. Newly divorced, he moves into the same apartment building as Luo and the drama focuses on a series of cases they handle, most of which involve extramarital affairs. Lawyers has been viewed more than 1.6 billion times online (v.qq.com) and received the China Huading award for “favourite television drama” in 2015. Although these dramas contain some conventional elements of domestic melodramas, such as extramarital affairs and domestic disputes, they differ from traditional Chinese television dramas because they do not focus on the common trope of fraught mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationships.Centred on the politics of family ethics, these hugely popular dramas present the transformation in gender norms as a struggle between post-socialist and pre-socialist understandings of femininity. On the one hand, these dramas celebrate the emergence of a post-socialist femininity that is independent, economically successful, and sexually liberated, epitomising this new understanding of womanhood in the figures of single women and mistresses. On the other hand, the dramas portray these post-socialist women in perpetual conflict with wives and mothers who propound a pre-socialist form of femininity that is sexually conservative and defined by familial relationships, and is economically less viable in the market economy. Focusing on depictions of femininity in these dramas, this paper offers a comparative analysis into the extent to which gender norms have been reconfigured in post-socialist China. It approaches these television dramas as a pedagogical device (Brady) and pays particular attention to the ways through which different categories of women interrogated their rights as single women, mistresses, wives, and mothers. In doing so, it illuminates the politics through which a liberal post-socialist femininity unleashed by market transformation is controlled in order to protect the integrity of the family and maintain social order. Post-Socialist Femininity Unleashed: Single Women and Mistresses A woman’s identity is inextricably linked to her marital status in Chinese society. In pre-socialist China, women relied on men as providers and were expected to focus on contributing to her husband’s family (Ebrey and Watson; Wolf and Witke). This pre-socialist positioning of women within the private realm of the family, though reinterpreted, continued to resonate in the socialist period when women were expected to fulfil marital obligations as wives and participate in the public domain as revolutionaries (Evans). While the pressure to marry has not disappeared in post-socialist China, as the derogatory term “leftover women” (single women over the age of 27) indicates, there are now more choices for single women living in metropolitan cities who are highly educated and financially independent. They can choose to remain single, get married, or become mistresses. Single women can be regarded as a threat to wives because the only thing holding them back from becoming mistresses is their morals. The 28-year-old “leftover woman” Luo Li (Lawyers) is presented as morally superior to single women who choose to become mistresses (Luo Meiyuan and Shi Jiang) and therefore deserving of a happy ending because she breaks up with her boss as soon as she discovers he is married. Luo Li quits to set up a law firm with her friend Tang Meiyu. Both women are beautiful, articulate, intelligent, and sexually liberated, symbolising unleashed post-socialist femininity. Part of the comic relief in Lawyers is the subplot of Luo’s mother trying to introduce her to “eligible” bachelors such as the “PhD man” (Episodes 20–21). Luo is unwilling to lower her standards to escape the stigma of being a “leftover woman” and she is rewarded for adhering to her ideals in the end when she convinces the marriage-phobic Chi Haidong to marry her after she rejects a marriage proposal from her newly divorced ex-lover. While Luo Li refuses to remain a mistress, many women do not subscribe to her worldview. Mistresses have existed throughout Chinese history in the form of concubines and courtesans. A wealthy and powerful man was expected to have concubines, who were usually from lower socio-economic backgrounds (Ebrey and Watson; Liu). Mistresses, now referred to as xiaosan, have become a heated topic in post-socialist China where they are regarded as having the power to destroy families by transgressing moral boundaries. Some argue that the phenomenon is a result of the market-driven economy where women who desire a financially stable life use their sexuality to seek rich married men who lust for younger mistresses as symbols of power. Ruth Y.Y. Hung characterises the xiaosan phenomenon as a “horrendous sex trade [that is] a marker of neoliberal market economies in the new PRC” (“Imagination” 100). A comparison of the three dramas reveals a transformation in the depiction of mistresses over the last decade. While Xiao Li (Divorce) is never “confirmed” as Song Jianping’s mistress, she flirts with him and crosses the boundaries of a professional relationship, posing a threat to the stability of Song’s family life. Although Haizao (Dwelling) is university-educated and has a stable, if low-paying job, she chooses to break up with her earnest caring fiancé to be the mistress of the middle-aged Song Siming who offers her material benefits in the form of “loans” she knows she will never be able to repay, a fancy apartment to live in, and other “gifts” such as dining at expensive restaurants and shopping at big malls. While the fresh-faced Haizao exhibits a physical transformation after becoming Song’s mistress, demonstrated through her newly permed hair coupled with an expensive red coat, mistresses in Lawyers do not change in this way. Dong Dahai’s mistress, the voluptuous Luo Meiyuan is already a successful career woman who flaunts her perfect makeup, long wavy hair, and body-hugging dresses (Episodes 12–26). She exudes sexual confidence but her relationship is not predicated on receiving financial favours in return for sexual ones. She tells Dong’s wife that the only “third person” in a relationship is the “unloved” one (Episode 15). Another mistress who challenges old ideas of the power dynamic of the rich man and financially reliant young woman is the divorced Shi Jiang, Tang Meiyu’s former classmate, who becomes the mistress of Tang’s husband (Cao Qiankun) without any moral qualms, even though she knows that her friend is pregnant with his child. A powerful businesswoman, Shi is the owner of a high-end bar that Cao frequents after losing his job. Unable to tell his wife the truth, he spends most days wandering around and is unable to resist Shi’s advances because she claims to have loved him since their university days and that she understands him. In this relationship, Shi has taken on the role traditionally assigned to men: she is the affluent powerful one who is able to manipulate the downtrodden unemployed man by “lending” him money in his time of need, offering him a job at her bar (Episode 17), and eventually finding him a new job through her connections (Episodes 23–24). When Cao leaves home after Tang finds out about the affair, Shi provides him with a place to stay (Episode 34). Because the viewers are positioned to root for Tang due to her role as the female lead’s best friend, Shi is immediately set up as one of the villains, although she is portrayed in a more sympathetic light after she reveals to Cao that she was forced to give up her son to her ex-husband in America (who cheated on her) in order to finalise her divorce (Episode 29).The portrayal of different mistresses in Lawyers signals a transformation in the representation of gender compared to Divorce and Dwelling, because the women are less naïve than Haizao, financially well-off because of their business acumen, and much more outspoken and determined to fight for what they want. On the surface these women are depicted as more liberated and free from gender hierarchies and sexual oppression. Hung describes xiaosan as “an active if constrained agent . . . whose new mode of life has become revealingly defensible and publicly acceptable in socioeconomic terms that reflect the moral changes that follow economic reforms” (“State” 166). However, the closure of these storylines suggest that although more complex reasons for becoming a mistress have been explored in the new drama, mistresses are still regarded as a threat to social stability and therefore punished, challenging Hung’s argument about the “acceptability” of mistresses in post-socialist China. Post-Socialist Femininity Restrained: Wives and MothersCountering these liberal forms of post-socialist femininity are portrayals of righteous wives and exemplary mothers. These depictions articulate a moral positioning grounded in pre-socialist and socialist understandings of a woman’s place in Chinese society. These portrayals of moral women check the transgressive powers of single women and mistresses with the potential to break families up. More importantly, they remind the audience of desired gender norms that retain the integrity of the family and anchor a society undergoing rapid transformation.The three dramas portray wives who are stridently righteous in their confrontations with women they perceive as a threat to their families. These women find moral justification for the violence they inflict on transgressors from cultural understandings of their rights as wives. Lin Xiaofeng (Divorce) repeatedly challenges Xiao Li to explain the “logic” underlying her actions when she discovers that Xiao accompanied Song Jianping to a wedding (Episode 14). The “logic” Lin refers to is a cultural understanding that it is her right as wife to accompany Song to public events and not Xiao’s. By transgressing this moral boundary, Xiao accords Lin the moral authority to cast doubt on her abilities as a doctor in a public confrontation. It also provides moral justification for Lin to slap Xiao when she suggests that Lin is an embarrassment to her husband, an argument that underscores Lin’s failure and challenges her moral authority as wife. Jiang Miaomiao (Dwelling) draws on similar cultural understandings when she appears at the apartment Haizao shares with Song Siming (Episode 33). Jiang positions herself in the traditional role of a wife as a household manager (Ebrey) whose responsibilities include paying Song’s mistresses. She puts Haizao into a subordinate position by arguing that since Haizao is less than a mistress and slightly better than a prostitute, she is not worth the money Song has given her. When Haizao refuses to return the money a tussle ensues, causing Haizao to have a miscarriage. Likewise, Miao Jinxiu (Lawyers) draws on similar cultural understandings of a wife’s position when she laments popular arguments that depict mistresses such as Luo Meiyuan as usurping the superior position of wives like herself who are less attractive and able to navigate the market economy. Miao describes these arguments as “inverting black into white” (Episode 19). She publicly humiliates Luo by throwing paint on her at a charity event (Episode 17) and covers Luo’s car with posters labelling Luo a “slut,” “prostitute,” and “shameless” (Episode 18). Miao succeeds in “winning” her husband back. The public violence Miao inflicts on Luo and her success in protecting her marriage are struggles to reinforce the boundaries defining the categories of wife and mistress as these limits become increasingly challenged in China. In contrast to the violent strategies that Lin, Jiang, and Miao adopt, Tang Meiyu resists Shi Jiang’s destructive powers by reminding her errant husband of the emotional warmth of their family. She asks him, “Do you still remember telling me what the nicest sound is at home?” For Cao, the best sounds are Tang’s laughter, their baby’s cries, the sound of the washing machine, and the flushing of their leaky toilet (Episode 43). The couple reconciles and even wins a lottery that cements their “happy ending.” By highlighting the warmth of their family, Tang reminds Cao of her rightful place as wife, restrains Shi from breaking up the couple, and protects the integrity of the family. It is by drawing on deeply entrenched cultural understandings of the rights of wives that these women find the moral authority to challenge, restrain, and control the transgressive powers of mistresses and single women. The dramas’ portrayals of mothers further reinforce the sense that there is a need to restrain liberal forms of post-socialist femininity embodied by errant daughters who transgress the moral boundaries of the family. Lin Xiaofeng’s mother (Divorce) assumes the role of the forgiving wife and mother. She not only forgives Lin’s father for having an affair but raises Lin, her husband’s love child, as her own (Episode 23). On her deathbed, she articulates the values underlying her acceptance of this transgression, namely that one needs to be “a little kinder, more tolerant, and a little muddleheaded” when dealing with matters of the family. Her forgiveness bears fruit in the form of the warm companionship and support she enjoys with Lin’s father. This sends a strong pedagogical message to the audience that it is possible for a marriage to remain intact if one is willing to forgive. In contrast, Haizao’s mother (Dwelling) adopts the role of the disciplinary mother. She attempts to beat Haizao with a coat hanger when she finds out that her daughter is pregnant with Song Siming’s child (Episode 31). She describes Haizao’s decision as “the wrong path” and is emphatic that abortion is the only way to right this wrong. She argues that abortion will allow her daughter to start life anew in a relationship she describes as “open and aboveboard,” which will culminate in marriage. When Haizao rejects her mother’s disciplining, her lover dies in a car accident and she has a miscarriage. She loses her ability to speak for two months after these double tragedies and pays the ultimate price, losing her reproductive abilities. Luo Li’s mother (Lawyers), Li Chunhua, extends this pedagogical approach by adopting the role of public counsellor as a talk show host. Li describes Luo’s profession as “wicked” because it focuses on separating the family (Episode 9). Instead, she promotes reconciliation as an alternative. She counsels couples to remain together by propounding traditional family values, such as the need for daughters-in-law to consider the filial obligations of sons when managing their relationship with their mothers-in-law (Episode 25). Her rising ratings and the effectiveness of her strategy in bringing estranged couples like Miao Jinxiu and Dong Dahai back together (Episode 26) challenges the transgressive powers of mistresses by preventing the separation of families. More importantly, as with Haizao’s and Lin’s mothers, the moral force of Li’s position and the alternatives to divorce that she suggests draw on pre-socialist and socialist understandings of family values that underscore the sanctity of marriage to the audience. By reminding errant daughters of deeply embedded cultural standards of what it means to be a woman in Chinese society, these mothers are moral exemplars who restrain the potentiality of daughters becoming mistresses. ConclusionMarket reforms have led to a transformation in understandings of womanhood in post-socialist China. Depictions of mistresses and single women as independent, economically successful, and sexually liberated underscores the emergence of liberal forms of post-socialist femininity. Although adept at navigating the new market economy, these types of post-socialist women threaten the integrity of the family and need to be controlled. Moral arguments articulated by wives and mothers restrain the potentially destructive powers of post-socialist womanhood by drawing on deeply embedded understandings of the rights of women shaped in pre-socialist China. It is by disciplining liberal forms of post-socialist femininity such that they fit back into deeply embedded gender hierarchies that social order is restored. By illuminating the moral politics undergirding relationships between women in post-socialist China, the dramas discussed underscore the continued significance of television as a pedagogical device through which desired gender norms are popularised. These portrayals of the struggles between liberal forms of post-socialist femininity and conservative pre-socialist understandings of womanhood as lived in everyday life serve to communicate the importance of protecting the integrity of the family and maintaining social stability in order for China to continue to pursue development. ReferencesAhern, Emily. “The Power and Pollution of Chinese Women.” Women in Chinese Society. Eds. Margery Wolf et al. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1975. 193–214. Brady, Anne-Marie. Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. China Huading Award. “Top 100 TV Series Satisfaction Survey.” 9 Aug. 2015. Chinese Style Divorce. Writ. Wang Hailing. Dir. 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Introduction Many destinations promote culinary encounters. Foods and beverages, and especially how these will taste in situ, are being marketed as niche travel motivators and used in destination brand building across the globe. While initial usage of the term culinary tourism focused on experiencing exotic cultures of foreign destinations by sampling unfamiliar food and drinks, the term has expanded to embrace a range of leisure travel experiences where the aim is to locate and taste local specialities as part of a pleasurable, and hopefully notable, culinary encounter (Wolf). Long’s foundational work was central in developing the idea of culinary tourism as an active endeavor, suggesting that via consumption, individuals construct unique experiences. Ignatov and Smith’s literature review-inspired definition confirms the nature of activity as participatory, and adds consuming food production skills—from observing agriculture and local processors to visiting food markets and attending cooking schools—to culinary purchases. Despite importing almost all of its foodstuffs and beverages, including some of its water, Singapore is an acknowledged global leader in culinary tourism. Horng and Tsai note that culinary tourism conceptually implies that a transferal of “local or special knowledge and information that represent local culture and identities” (41) occurs via these experiences. This article adds the act of reading to these participatory activities and suggests that, because food writing forms an important component of Singapore’s suite of culinary tourism offerings, taste contributes to the cultural experience offered to both visitors and locals. While Singapore foodways have attracted significant scholarship (see, for instance, work by Bishop; Duruz; Huat & Rajah; Tarulevicz, Eating), Singapore food writing, like many artefacts of popular culture, has attracted less notice. Yet, this writing is an increasingly visible component of cultural production of, and about, Singapore, and performs a range of functions for locals, tourists and visitors before they arrive. Although many languages are spoken in Singapore, English is the national language (Alsagoff) and this study focuses on food writing in English. Background Tourism comprises a major part of Singapore’s economy, with recent figures detailing that food and beverage sales contribute over 10 per cent of this revenue, with spend on culinary tours and cookery classes, home wares such as tea-sets and cookbooks, food magazines and food memoirs additional to this (Singapore Government). This may be related to the fact that Singapore not only promotes food as a tourist attraction, but also actively promotes itself as an exceptional culinary destination. The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) includes food in its general information brochures and websites, and its print, television and cinema commercials (Huat and Rajah). It also mounts information-rich campaigns both abroad and inside Singapore. The 2007 ‘Singapore Seasons’ campaign, for instance, promoted Singaporean cuisine alongside films, design, books and other cultural products in London, New York and Beijing. Touring cities identified as key tourist markets in 2011, the ‘Singapore Takeout’ pop-up restaurant brought the taste of Singaporean foods into closer focus. Singaporean chefs worked with high profile locals in its kitchen in a custom-fabricated shipping container to create and demonstrate Singaporean dishes, attracting public and media interest. In country, the STB similarly actively promotes the tastes of Singaporean foods, hosting the annual World Gourmet Summit (Chaney and Ryan) and Pacific Food Expo, both attracting international culinary professionals to work alongside local leaders. The Singapore Food Festival each July is marketed to both locals and visitors. In these ways, the STB, as well as providing events for visitors, is actively urging Singaporeans to proud of their food culture and heritage, so that each Singaporean becomes a proactive ambassador of their cuisine. Singapore Food Writing Popular print guidebooks and online guides to Singapore pay significantly more attention to Singaporean food than they do for many other destinations. Sections on food in such publications discuss at relative length the taste of Singaporean food (always delicious) as well as how varied, authentic, hygienic and suited-to-all-budgets it is. These texts also recommend hawker stalls and food courts alongside cafés and restaurants (Henderson et al.), and a range of other culinary experiences such as city and farm food tours and cookery classes. This writing describes not only what can be seen or learned during these experiences, but also what foods can be sampled, and how these might taste. This focus on taste is reflected in the printed materials that greet the in-bound tourist at the airport. On a visit in October 2013, arrival banners featuring mouth-watering images of local specialities such as chicken rice and chilli crab marked the route from arrival to immigration and baggage collection. Even advertising for a bank was illustrated with photographs of luscious-looking fruits. The free maps and guidebooks available featured food-focused tours and restaurant locations, and there were also substantial free booklets dedicated solely to discussing local delicacies and their flavours, plus recommended locations to sample them. A website and free mobile app were available that contain practical information about dishes, ingredients, cookery methods, and places to eat, as well as historical and cultural information. These resources are also freely distributed to many hotels and popular tourist destinations. Alongside organising food walks, bus tours and cookery classes, the STB also recommends the work of a number of Singaporean food writers—principally prominent Singapore food bloggers, reviewers and a number of memoirists—as authentic guides to what are described as unique Singaporean flavours. The strategies at the heart of this promotion are linking advertising to useful information. At a number of food centres, for instance, STB information panels provide details about both specific dishes and Singapore’s food culture more generally (Henderson et al.). This focus is apparent at many tourist destinations, many of which are also popular local attractions. In historic Fort Canning Park, for instance, there is a recreation of Raffles’ experimental garden, established in 1822, where he grew the nutmeg, clove and other plants that were intended to form the foundation for spice plantations but were largely unsuccessful (Reisz). Today, information panels not only indicate the food plants’ names and how to grow them, but also their culinary and medicinal uses, recipes featuring them and the related food memories of famous Singaporeans. The Singapore Botanic Gardens similarly houses the Ginger Garden displaying several hundred species of ginger and information, and an Eco(-nomic/logical) Garden featuring many food plants and their stories. In Chinatown, panels mounted outside prominent heritage brands (often still quite small shops) add content to the shopping experience. A number of museums profile Singapore’s food culture in more depth. The National Museum of Singapore has a permanent Living History gallery that focuses on Singapore’s street food from the 1950s to 1970s. This display includes food-related artefacts, interactive aromatic displays of spices, films of dishes being made and eaten, and oral histories about food vendors, all supported by text panels and booklets. Here food is used to convey messages about the value of Singapore’s ethnic diversity and cross-cultural exchanges. Versions of some of these dishes can then be sampled in the museum café (Time Out Singapore). The Peranakan Museum—which profiles the unique hybrid culture of the descendants of the Chinese and South Indian traders who married local Malay women—shares this focus, with reconstructed kitchens and dining rooms, exhibits of cooking and eating utensils and displays on food’s ceremonial role in weddings and funerals all supported with significant textual information. The Chinatown Heritage Centre not only recreates food preparation areas as a vivid indicator of poor Chinese immigrants’ living conditions, but also houses The National Restaurant of Singapore, which translates this research directly into meals that recreate the heritage kopi tiam (traditional coffee shop) cuisine of Singapore in the 1930s, purposefully bringing taste into the service of education, as its descriptive menu states, “educationally delighting the palate” (Chinatown Heritage Centre). These museums recognise that shopping is a core tourist activity in Singapore (Chang; Yeung et al.). Their gift- and bookshops cater to the culinary tourist by featuring quality culinary products for sale (including, for instance, teapots and cups, teas, spices and traditional sweets, and other foods) many of which are accompanied by informative tags or brochures. At the centre of these curated, purchasable collections are a range written materials: culinary magazines, cookbooks, food histories and memoirs, as well as postcards and stationery printed with recipes. Food Magazines Locally produced food magazines cater to a range of readerships and serve to extend the culinary experience both in, and outside, Singapore. These include high-end gourmet, luxury lifestyle publications like venerable monthly Wine & Dine: The Art of Good Living, which, in in print for almost thirty years, targets an affluent readership (Wine & Dine). The magazine runs features on local dining, gourmet products and trends, as well as international epicurean locations and products. Beautifully illustrated recipes also feature, as the magazine declares, “we’ve recognised that sharing more recipes should be in the DNA of Wine & Dine’s editorial” (Wine & Dine). Appetite magazine, launched in 2006, targets the “new and emerging generation of gourmets—foodies with a discerning and cosmopolitan outlook, broad horizons and a insatiable appetite” (Edipresse Asia) and is reminiscent in much of its styling of New Zealand’s award-winning Cuisine magazine. Its focus is to present a fresh approach to both cooking at home and dining out, as readers are invited to “Whip up the perfect soufflé or feast with us at the finest restaurants in Singapore and around the region” (Edipresse Asia). Chefs from leading local restaurants are interviewed, and the voices of “fellow foodies and industry watchers” offer an “insider track” on food-related news: “what’s good and what’s new” (Edipresse Asia). In between these publications sits Epicure: Life’s Refinements, which features local dishes, chefs, and restaurants as well as an overseas travel section and a food memories column by a featured author. Locally available ingredients are also highlighted, such as abalone (Cheng) and an interesting range of mushrooms (Epicure). While there is a focus on an epicurean experience, this is presented slightly more casually than in Wine & Dine. Food & Travel focuses more on home cookery, but each issue also includes reviews of Singapore restaurants. The bimonthly bilingual (Chinese and English) Gourmet Living features recipes alongside a notable focus on food culture—with food history columns, restaurant reviews and profiles of celebrated chefs. An extensive range of imported international food magazines are also available, with those from nearby Malaysia and Indonesia regularly including articles on Singapore. Cookbooks These magazines all include reviews of cookery books including Singaporean examples – and some feature other food writing such as food histories, memoirs and blogs. These reviews draw attention to how many Singaporean cookbooks include a focus on food history alongside recipes. Cookery teacher Yee Soo Leong’s 1976 Singaporean Cooking was an early example of cookbook as heritage preservation. This 1976 book takes an unusual view of ‘Singaporean’ flavours. Beginning with sweet foods—Nonya/Singaporean and western cakes, biscuits, pies, pastries, bread, desserts and icings—it also focuses on both Singaporean and Western dishes. This text is also unusual as there are only 6 lines of direct authorial address in the author’s acknowledgements section. Expatriate food writer Wendy Hutton’s Singapore Food, first published in 1979, reprinted many times after and revised in 2007, has long been recognised as one of the most authoritative titles on Singapore’s food heritage. Providing an socio-historical map of Singapore’s culinary traditions, some one third of the first edition was devoted to information about Singaporean multi-cultural food history, including detailed profiles of a number of home cooks alongside its recipes. Published in 1980, Kenneth Mitchell’s A Taste of Singapore is clearly aimed at a foreign readership, noting the variety of foods available due to the racial origins of its inhabitants. The more modest, but equally educational in intent, Hawkers Flavour: A Guide to Hawkers Gourmet in Malaysia and Singapore (in its fourth printing in 1998) contains a detailed introductory essay outlining local food culture, favourite foods and drinks and times these might be served, festivals and festive foods, Indian, Indian Muslim, Chinese, Nyonya (Chinese-Malay), Malay and Halal foods and customs, followed with a selection of recipes from each. More contemporary examples of such information-rich cookbooks, such as those published in the frequently reprinted Periplus Mini Cookbook series, are sold at tourist attractions. Each of these modestly priced, 64-page, mouthwateringly illustrated booklets offer framing information, such as about a specific food culture as in the Nonya kitchen in Nonya Favourites (Boi), and explanatory glossaries of ingredients, as in Homestyle Malay Cooking (Jelani). Most recipes include a boxed paragraph detailing cookery or ingredient information that adds cultural nuance, as well as trying to describe tastes that the (obviously foreign) intended reader may not have encountered. Malaysian-born Violet Oon, who has been called the Julia Child of Singapore (Bergman), writes for both local and visiting readers. The FOOD Paper, published monthly for a decade from January 1987 was, she has stated, then “Singapore’s only monthly publication dedicated to the CSF—Certified Singapore Foodie” (Oon, Violet Oon Cooks 7). Under its auspices, Oon promoted her version of Singaporean cuisine to both locals and visitors, as well as running cookery classes and culinary events, hosting her own television cooking series on the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, and touring internationally for the STB as a ‘Singapore Food Ambassador’ (Ahmad; Kraal). Taking this representation of flavor further, Oon has also produced a branded range of curry powders, spices, and biscuits, and set up a number of food outlets. Her first cookbook, World Peranakan Cookbook, was published in 1978. Her Singapore: 101 Meals of 1986 was commissioned by the STB, then known as the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board. Violet Oon Cooks, a compilation of recipes from The FOOD Paper, published in 1992, attracted a range of major international as well as Singaporean food sponsors, and her Timeless Recipes, published in 1997, similarly aimed to show how manufactured products could be incorporated into classic Singaporean dishes cooked at home. In 1998, Oon produced A Singapore Family Cookbook featuring 100 dishes. Many were from Nonya cuisine and her following books continued to focus on preserving heritage Singaporean recipes, as do a number of other nationally-cuisine focused collections such as Joyceline Tully and Christopher Tan’s Heritage Feasts: A Collection of Singapore Family Recipes. Sylvia Tan’s Singapore Heritage Food: Yesterday’s Recipes for Today’s Cooks, published in 2004, provides “a tentative account of Singapore’s food history” (5). It does this by mapping the various taste profiles of six thematically-arranged chronologically-overlapping sections, from the heritage of British colonialism, to the uptake of American and Russia foods in the Snackbar era of the 1960s and the use of convenience flavoring ingredients such as curry pastes, sauces, dried and frozen supermarket products from the 1970s. Other Volumes Other food-themed volumes focus on specific historical periods. Cecilia Leong-Salobir’s Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire discusses the “unique hybrid” (1) cuisine of British expatriates in Singapore from 1858 to 1963. In 2009, the National Museum of Singapore produced the moving Wong Hong Suen’s Wartime Kitchen: Food and Eating in Singapore 1942–1950. This details the resilience and adaptability of both diners and cooks during the Japanese Occupation and in post-war Singapore, when shortages stimulated creativity. There is a centenary history of the Cold Storage company which shipped frozen foods all over south east Asia (Boon) and location-based studies such as Annette Tan’s Savour Chinatown: Stories Memories & Recipes. Tan interviewed hawkers, chefs and restaurant owners, working from this information to write both the book’s recipes and reflect on Chinatown’s culinary history. Food culture also features in (although it is not the main focus) more general book-length studies such as educational texts such as Chew Yen Fook’s The Magic of Singapore and Melanie Guile’s Culture in Singapore (2000). Works that navigate both spaces (of Singaporean culture more generally and its foodways) such Lily Kong’s Singapore Hawker Centres: People, Places, Food, provide an consistent narrative of food in Singapore, stressing its multicultural flavours that can be enjoyed from eateries ranging from hawker stalls to high-end restaurants that, interestingly, that agrees with that promulgated in the food writing discussed above. Food Memoirs and Blogs Many of these narratives include personal material, drawing on the author’s own food experiences and taste memories. This approach is fully developed in the food memoir, a growing sub-genre of Singapore food writing. While memoirs by expatriate Singaporeans such as Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan’s A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family, produced by major publisher Hyperion in New York, has attracted considerable international attention, it presents a story of Singapore cuisine that agrees with such locally produced texts as television chef and food writer Terry Tan’s Stir-fried and Not Shaken: A Nostalgic Trip Down Singapore’s Memory Lane and the food memoir of the Singaporean chef credited with introducing fine Malay dining to Singapore, Aziza Ali’s Sambal Days, Kampong Cuisine, published in Singapore in 2013 with the support of the National Heritage Board. All these memoirs are currently available in Singapore in both bookshops and a number of museums and other attractions. While underscoring the historical and cultural value of these foods, all describe the unique flavours of Singaporean cuisine and its deliciousness. A number of prominent Singapore food bloggers are featured in general guidebooks and promoted by the STB as useful resources to dining out in Singapore. One of the most prominent of these is Leslie Tay, a medical doctor and “passionate foodie” (Knipp) whose awardwinning ieatŸishootŸipost is currently attracting some 90,000 unique visitors every month and has had over 20,000 million hits since its launch in 2006. An online diary of Tay’s visits to hundreds of Singaporean hawker stalls, it includes descriptions and photographs of meals consumed, creating accumulative oral culinary histories of these dishes and those who prepared them. These narratives have been reorganised and reshaped in Tay’s first book The End of Char Kway Teow and Other Hawker Mysteries, where each chapter tells the story of one particular dish, including recommended hawker stalls where it can be enjoyed. Ladyironchef.com is a popular food and travel site that began as a blog in 2007. An edited collection of reviews of eateries and travel information, many by the editor himself, the site features lists of, for example, the best cafes (LadyIronChef “Best Cafes”), eateries at the airport (LadyIronChef “Guide to Dining”), and hawker stalls (Lim). While attesting to the cultural value of these foods, many articles also discuss flavour, as in Lim’s musings on: ‘how good can chicken on rice taste? … The glistening grains of rice perfumed by fresh chicken stock and a whiff of ginger is so good you can even eat it on its own’. Conclusion Recent Singapore food publishing reflects this focus on taste. Tay’s publisher, Epigram, growing Singaporean food list includes the recently released Heritage Cookbooks Series. This highlights specialist Singaporean recipes and cookery techniques, with the stated aim of preserving tastes and foodways that continue to influence Singaporean food culture today. Volumes published to date on Peranakan, South Indian, Cantonese, Eurasian, and Teochew (from the Chaoshan region in the east of China’s Guangdong province) cuisines offer both cultural and practical guides to the quintessential dishes and flavours of each cuisine, featuring simple family dishes alongside more elaborate special occasion meals. In common with the food writing discussed above, the books in this series, although dealing with very different styles of cookery, contribute to an overall impression of the taste of Singapore food that is highly consistent and extremely persuasive. This food writing narrates that Singapore has a delicious as well as distinctive and interesting food culture that plays a significant role in Singaporean life both currently and historically. It also posits that this food culture is, at the same time, easily accessible and also worthy of detailed consideration and discussion. 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Acknowledgements Research to complete this article was supported by Central Queensland University, Australia, under its Outside Studies Program (OSPRO) and Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre (LTERC). An earlier version of part of this article was presented at the 2nd Australasian Regional Food Networks and Cultures Conference, in the Barossa Valley in South Australia, Australia, 11–14 November 2012. The delegates of that conference and expert reviewers of this article offered some excellent suggestions regarding strengthening this article and their advice was much appreciated. All errors are, of course, my own.

Introduction: Game Culture and GenderAs texts with the potential to help mediate specific forms of identity, video games are rich and complex sites for analysis. A tendency, however, still exists in scholarship to treat video games as just another kind of text, and work that explores the expression of masculine identity persists in drawing from cinematic analysis without proper consideration of game design and how these games are played (Triana). For example, insights from studies into horror cinema may illuminate the relationship between players and game systems in survival horror video games (Habel & Kooyman), but further study is needed to explore how people interact with the game.This article aims to build towards a scholarly definition of the term “Power Fantasy”, a concept that seems well established in wider discourse but is not yet well theorised in the scholarly literature. It does so through a case of the most recent reboot of Doom (2016), a game that in its original incarnation established an enduring tradition for high-action Power Fantasy. In the first-person shooter game Doom, the player fills the role of the “Doom Guy”, a faceless hero who shuttles between Earth and Hell with the sole aim of eviscerating demonic hordes as graphically as possible.How, then, do we begin to theorise the kind of automediation that an iconic game text like Doom facilitates? Substantial work has been done to explore player identification in online games (see Taylor; Yee). Shaw (“Rethinking”) suggests that single-player games are unexplored territory compared to the more social spaces of Massively Multiplayer Online games and other multiplayer experiences, but it is important to distinguish between direct identification with the avatar per se and the ways in which the game text mediates broader gender constructions.Abstract theorisation is not enough, though. To effectively understand this kind of automediation we also need a methodology to gain insights into its processes. The final part of this article, therefore, proposes the analysis of “Let’s Play” videos as a kind of gender identity performance which gives insight into the automediation of dominant masculine gender identities through Power Fantasy video games like Doom. This reflexive performance works to denaturalise gender construction rather than reinforce stable hegemonic identities.Power Fantasy and Gender IdentityPower Fantasy has become an established trope in online critiques and discussions of popular culture. It can be simply defined as “character imagines himself taking revenge on his bullies” (TVTropes). This trope takes on special resonance in video games, where the players themselves live out the violent revenge fantasy in the world of the game.The “power fantasy” of games implies escapism and meaninglessness, evoking outsize explosions and equally outsized displays of dominance. A “power gamer” is one who plays with a single-minded determination to win, at the expense of nuance, social relationships between players, or even their own pleasure in play. (Baker)Many examples apply this concept of Power Fantasy in video games: from God of War to Metroid: Prime and Grand Theft Auto, this prevalent trope of game design uses a kind of “agency mechanics” (Habel & Kooyman) to convince the player that they are becoming increasingly skilful in the game, when in reality the game is simply decreasing in difficulty (PBS Digital Studios). The operation of the Power Fantasy trope is also gendered; in a related trope known as “I Just Want To Be a Badass”, “males are somewhat more prone to harbour [the] wish” to feel powerful (TVTropes). More broadly, even though the game world is obviously not real, playing it requires “an investment in and commitment to a type of masculine performance that is based on the Real (particularly if one is interested in ‘winning’, pummelling your opponent, kicking ass, etc.)” (Burrill 2).Indeed, there is a perceived correlation (if not causation) between the widespread presence of Power Fantasy video games and how “game culture as it stands is shot through with sexism, racism, homophobia, and other biases” (Baker). Golding and van Deventer undertake an extended exploration of this disconcerting side of game culture, concluding that games have “become a venue for some of the more unsophisticated forms of patriarchy” (213) evidenced in the highly-publicised GamerGate movement. This saw an alignment between the label of “gamer” and extreme misogyny, abuse and harassment of women and other minorities in the industry.We have, then, a tentative connection between dominant gameplay forms based on high skill that may be loosely characterised as “Power Fantasy” and some of the most virulent toxic gender expressions seen in recent times. More research is needed to gain a clearer understanding of precisely what Power Fantasy is. Baker’s primary argument is that “power” in games can also be characterised as “power to” or “power with”, as well as the more traditional “power over”. Kurt Squire uses the phrase “Power Fantasy” as a castaway framing for a player who seeks an alternative reward to the usual game progression in Sid Meier’s Civilisation. More broadly, much scholarly work concerning gameplay design and gender identity has been focussed on the hot-button question of videogame violence and its connection to real-world violence, a question that this article avoids since it is well covered elsewhere. Here, a better understanding of the mediation of gender identity through Power Fantasy in Doom can help to illuminate how games function as automedia.Auto-Mediating Gender through Performance in Doom (2016) As a franchise, Doom commands near-incomparable respect as a seminal text of the first-person shooter genre. First released in 1993, it set the benchmark for 3D rendered graphics, energetic sound design, and high-paced action gameplay that was visceral and deeply immersive. It is impossible to mention more recent reboots without recourse to its first seminal instalment and related game texts: Kim Justice suggests a personal identification with it in a 29-minute video analysis entitled “A Personal History of Demon Slaughter”. Doom is a cherished game for many players, possibly because it evokes memories of “boyhood” gaming and all its attendant gender identity formation (Burrill).This identification also arises in livestreams and playthroughs of the game. YouTuber and game reviewer Markiplier describes nostalgically and at lengths his formative experiences playing it (and recounts a telling connection with his father who, he explains, introduced him to gaming), saying “Doom is very important to me […] this was the first game that I sat down and played over and over and over again.” In contrast, Wanderbots confesses that he has never really played Doom, but acknowledges its prominent position in the gaming community by designating himself outside the identifying category of “Doom fan”. He states that he has started playing due to “gushing” recommendations from other gamers. The nostalgic personal connection is important, even in absentia.For the most part, the critical and community response to the 2016 version of Doom was approving: Gilroy admits that it “hit all the right power chords”, raising the signature trope in reference to both gameplay and music (a power chord is a particular technique of playing heavy metal guitar often used in heavy metal music). Doom’s Metacritic score is currently a respectable 85, and, the reception is remarkably consistent between critics and players, especially for such a potentially divisive game (Metacritic). Commentators tend to cite its focus on its high action, mobility, immersion, sound design, and general faithfulness to the spirit of the original Doom as reasons for assessments such as “favourite game ever” (Habel). Game critic Yahtzee’s uncharacteristically approving video review in the iconic Zero Punctuation series is very telling in its assessment of the game’s light narrative framing:Doom seems to have a firm understanding of its audience because, while there is a plot going on, the player-character couldn’t give a half an ounce of deep fried shit; if you want to know the plot then pause the game and read all the fluff text in the character and location database, sipping daintily from your pink teacup full of pussy juice, while the game waits patiently for you to strap your bollocks back on and get back in the fray. (Yahtzee)This is a strident expression of the gendered expectations and response to Doom’s narratological refusal, which is here cast as approvingly masculine and opposed to a “feminine” desire for plot or narrative. It also feeds into a discourse which sees the game as one which demands skill, commitment, and an achievement orientation cast within an exclusivist ideology of “toxic meritocracy” (Paul).In addition to examining reception, approaches to understanding how Doom functions as a “Power Fantasy” or “badass” trope could take a variety of forms. It is tempting to undertake a detailed analysis of its design and gameplay, especially since these feed directly into considerations of player interaction. This could direct a critical focus towards gameplay design elements such as traversal and mobility, difficulty settings, “glory kills”, and cinematic techniques in the same vein as Habel and Kooyman’s analysis of survival horror video games in relation to horror cinema. However, Golding and van Deventer warn against a simplistic analysis of decontextualized gameplay (29-30), and there is a much more intriguing possibility hinted at by Harper’s notion of “Play Practice”.It is useful to analyse a theoretical engagement with a video game as a thought-experiment. But with the rise of gaming as spectacle, and particularly gaming as performance through “Let’s Play” livestreams (or video on demand) on platforms such as TwitchTV and YouTube, it becomes possible to analyse embodied performances of the gameplay of such video games. This kind of analysis allows the opportunity for a more nuanced understanding of how such games mediate gender identities. For Judith Butler, gender is not only performed, it is also performative:Because there is neither an “essence” that gender expresses or externalizes nor an objective ideal to which gender aspires, and because gender is not a fact, the various acts of gender create the idea of gender, and without those acts, there would be no gender at all. (214)Let’s Play videos—that show a player playing a game in real time with their commentary overlaying the on screen action—allow us to see the performative aspects of gameplay. Let’s Plays are a highly popular and developing form: they are not simple artefacts by any means, and can be understood as expressive works in their own right (Lee). They are complex and multifaceted, and while they do not necessarily provide direct insights into the player’s perception of their own identification, with sufficient analysis and unpacking they help us to explore both the construction and denaturalisation of gender identity. In this case, we follow Josef Nguyen’s analysis of Let’s Plays as essential for expression of player identity through performance, but instead focus on how some identity construction may narrow rather than expand the diversity range. T.L. Taylor also has a monograph forthcoming in 2018 titled Watch Me Play: Twitch and the Rise of Game Live Streaming, suggesting the time is ripe for such analysis.These performances are clear in ways we have already discussed: for example, both SplatterCat and Markiplier devote significant time to describing their formative experiences playing Doom as a background to their gameplay performance, while Wanderbots is more distanced. There is no doubt that these videos are popular: Markiplier, for example, has attracted nearly 5 million views of his Doom playthrough. If we see gameplay as automediation, though, these videos become useful artefacts for analysis of gendered performance through gameplay.When SplatterCat discovers the suit of armor for the game’s protagonist, Doom Guy, he half-jokingly remarks “let us be all of the Doom Guy that we can possibly be” (3:20). This is an aspirational mantra, a desire for enacting the game’s Power Fantasy. Markiplier speaks at length about his nostalgia for the game, specifically about how his father introduced him to Doom when he was a child, and he expresses hopes that he will again experience “Doom’s original super-fast pace and just pure unadulterated action; Doom Guy is a badass” (4:59). As the action picks up early into the game, Markiplier expresses the exhilaration and adrenaline that accompany performances of this fastpaced, highly mobile kind of gameplay, implying that he is becoming immersed in the character and, by performing Doom Guy, inhabiting the “badass” role and thus enacting a performance of Power Fantasy:Doom guy—and I hope I’m playing Doom guy himself—is just the embodiment of kickass. He destroys everything and he doesn’t give a fuck about what he breaks in the process. (8:45)This performance of gender through the skilled control of Doom Guy is, initially, unambiguously mediated as Power Fantasy: in control, highly skilled, suffused with Paul’s ‘toxic meritocracy. A similar sentiment is expressed in Wanderbots’ playthrough when the player-character dispenses with narrative/conversation by smashing a computer terminal: “Oh I like this guy already! Alright. Doom Guy does not give a shit. It’s like Wolf Blascowicz [sic], but like, plus plus” (Wanderbots). This is a reference to another iconic first-person shooter franchise, Wolfenstein, which also originated in the 1980s and has experienced a recent successful reboot, and which operates in a similar Power Fantasy mode. This close alignment between these two streamers’ performances suggests significant coherence in both genre and gameplay design and the ways in which players engage with the game as a gendered performative space.Nonetheless, there is no simple one-to-one relationship here—there is not enough evidence to argue that this kind of gameplay experience leads directly to the kind of untrammelled misogyny we see in game culture more broadly. While Gabbiadini et al. found evidence in an experimental study that a masculinist ideology combined with violent video game mechanics could lead to a lack of empathy for women and girls who are victims of violence, Ferguson and Donnellan dispute this finding based on poor methodology, arguing that there is no evidence for a causal relationship between gender, game type and lack of empathy for women and girls. This inconclusiveness in the research is mirrored by an ambiguity in the gendered performance of males playing through Doom, where the Power Fantasy is profoundly undercut in multiple ways.Wanderbots’ Doom playthrough is literally titled ‘I have no idea what I’m Dooming’ and he struggles with particular mechanics and relatively simple progression tools early in the game: this reads against masculinist stereotypes of superior and naturalised gameplay skill. Markiplier’s performance of the “badass” Doom Guy is undercut at various stages: in encountering the iconic challenge of the game, he mentions that “I am halfway decent… not that good at video games” (9:58), and on the verge of the protagonist’s death he admits “If I die this early into my first video I’m going to be very disappointed, so I’m going to have to kick it up a notch” (15:30). This suggests that rather than being an unproblematic and simple expression of male power in a fantasy video game world, the gameplay performances of Power Fantasy games are ambiguous and contested, and not always successfully performed via the avatar. They therefore demonstrate a “kind of gender performance [which] will enact and reveal the performativity of gender itself in a way that destabilizes the naturalized categories of identity and desire” (Butler 211). This cuts across the empowered performance of videogame mastery and physical dominance over the game world, and suggests that the automediation of gender identity through playing video games is a complex phenomenon urgently in need of further theorisation.ConclusionUltimately, this kind of analysis of the mediation of hegemonic gender identities is urgent for a cultural product as ubiquitous as video games. The hyper-empowered “badass” digital avatars of Power Fantasy video games can be expected to have some shaping effect on the identities of those who play them, evidenced by the gendered gameplay performance of Doom briefly explored here. This is by no means a simple or unproblematic process, though. 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