JFB-Media Analysis

Jean-Francois Bussiere                                                                                               12/04/15

This class helped me realize just how much photography is about managing our sense of loss. I took this picture of a frog while I was away camping last summer. I was only able to take it while holding the phone with only one hand because I had to hold my flashlight with my other hand considering that, given how dark it was when it was taken, the flash of the camera without the flashlight may not have been enough to “capture” the frog on its own. In my own way, I engaged in a form of “photographic safari that is replacing the gun safari.” (Sontag, 11) To treat the frog as ‘photographable’ (Bourdieu) can be a way to ‘participate in its mortality,’ (Sontag, 11) to acknowledge that if we do not behave ecologically today, we may regret the days when we could see frogs more directly than by looking at them on ancient photographs.

This is a selfie that I took in class after we had just finished listening to the lecture and participating in the class discussion on October 9^th, during week 5, right after our class that had dealt primarily with the nature of the carte-de-visite (Plunkett) and selfie (Shipley) as forms of social practice. Beyond borrowing from the genre of the ironic selfie because of the context that is provided to it by the story that accompanies it, this picture also represents a private observation of how seldom I had taken selfies prior to this class, having most typically directed my own photographic gaze outward before. Without the story, the picture on its own appears completely mundane.

This picture was taken by my boyfriend for me, also while I was away camping last summer. For many of us who exist as part of contemporary ‘phone culture’ so to speak, “Photographs will offer indisputable evidence that the trip was made, that the program was carried out, that fun was had.” (Sontag, 6) This picture can technically still be considered to count as a selfie if we acknowledge the idea that “the aesthetics of the selfie have evolved to such an extent that you no longer have to take the picture yourself or even be in it for it to be a selfie.” (Shipley, 405) Indeed, in this case, to take this particular picture of me myself would have been impossible. I can’t do a one-handed handstand.

This selfie was taken at the Place Bonaventure in the city of Montreal. It has been said that “photographers are most concerned with mirroring reality.” (Sontag, 4) In this case I tried to take advantage of the opportunity with which the reflective surface presented me at the time to create a selfie in which it would be, for the occasion, reality that would mirror the photographer instead, to turn the tables on the usual. You can see the skylights in the ceiling shining down from far above me.

I took inspiration from the Indian girls who took photos for “Creating Own Histories.” While they had to break “through the class, gender and age divides of access to technology” (Amrita De, 36) in a way I do not, I considered “gathering information about issues” (40) in my area through photography that “promises to speak the ‘truth’” (35) to document “the stories behind those pictures.” (34) Leaf blowers are an environmental plague, noise pollution culprits, and easily replaced by rakes, but validated by structural concerns. In attempting to take pictures of people using them between home and school, I gained a new appreciation for the girls’ efforts to “get over their real fear” (Amrita De, 44) as I used the camera “as a predatory weapon” (Sontag, 10) against them, to a limited extent. (I strove not to disrupt their work or draw attention)

This is a picture of my grandmother’s backyard: “A family’s photograph album is generally about the extended family…” (Sontag, 6) Given that my grandmother has now been deceased for about 8 years, it can definitely be said to be “all that remains of it.” (Sontag, 6) Photographs can be “means by which one could ensure against the losses of the past.” (hooks, 60) There used to be a set of swings there, but I no longer have access to a picture of it, nor of her. This photograph represents a missed opportunity, and a reminder not to miss them again.

This was only going to be a picture of a wreath made from autumn leaves taken in a restaurant somewhere. The contrast inherent in the use of autumn leaves, of which trees let go every year to signal the irretrievable passage of time, to create something intended to last for a longer period of time struck me as a means of “providing a defense against the passage of time,” (Bazin, 4) “rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.” (8) The symbolism of the wreath, inadvertently situated over my reflected head like a halo made of ‘fallen’ nature rather than of ‘elevated’ myth, drew my attention to how the “religious use” (Bazin, 5) of photography further extends the ‘life’ of the leaves itself.

This is a picture of a text that I accidentally received months ago because someone sent it to me by mistake at the wrong number. I did not recognize the number of the person who sent it, but I noticed that their area code was off from the code where I live by one number, probably explaining their mistake, but I removed it from the picture to protect the privacy of the people in question, whoever they may be. What sort of twisted story had I inadvertently been drawn into witnessing? I never replied to it, since it sounded as though any explanation that I was not the person in question would have been interpreted as a lie told by whoever this message was genuinely addressed to, who may never get it. Like a picture sold in a bazaar, we will never know the truth behind it, and are left to rebuild our own.

The “punctum” (Barthes, 27) of this picture for me was that, when I first glimpsed this sight through a store window, I was struck by how it could appear as either a live bather or a corpse, even though it was really a mannequin. It opened the “question of distinguishing truth from falsehood” (Batchen, 129) in photography, in which the subject “had to act as if dead” (130) in the first place. But what does it mean for us to mourn the former ‘truth’ of the photograph as an art form considering that the reality presented by photographs has always been constructed to begin with?

I took this picture before the beginning of one of my media genres classes earlier this semester. It had been left over from a previous class, and I liked that the teacher couldn’t bring himself to erase it, so I decided to “snatch it from the jaws of time” for posterity. The drawing board is an intentionally temporary form of communication, like Snapchat. (Oremus) In the context of a class that also taught us about wider media history and the work of Bourdieu, I found it interesting to note this concern for ‘lower’, alternate forms of communicative and aesthetic expression.

In the early days of photography, it was taken for granted by photographers, viewers and subjects alike that “only a slight movement of the subject’s head was enough to result in an unsightly blur.” (Batchen, 130) Talbot has also written about the occasions on which “in a small fraction of a second (people) change their positions so much, as to destroy the distinctness of the representation.” (42) By creating a distorted, ‘impossible’ image, we draw attention to the unexpectedly deceptive possibilities of photography, despite being typically seen as an ‘art of telling the truth.’

The Buddha is known for having taught that “All things are impermanent.” In the context of considering photography as part of a larger attempt by humankind to hold onto something that is always ultimately fleeting, a photograph of the Buddha himself seemed appropriate. Like Buddhism, photography has been “associated with death since the beginning,” and situated at the threshold between “the ‘fake’ and the ‘real.’” (Batchen, 129) This picture was taken inside of a hotel at a convention that I went to last year. I hesitated as to whether to take it or not, wondering whether I would still be able to take it the next year or not. This year, I was glad to have taken it last year, since the convention had already moved to another hotel, rendering taking a picture of it unfeasible further emphasizing the impermanence of this opportunity. Fittingly, one might say. Looking at an old photo, having become a different person, we bring our past selves back to life.

This is a picture of a statue of Jacques Cartier taken inside of a Montreal metro station. In a way, it can be seen as a “mythologizing of (Quebec as) a land whose primary function was to enchant the touring… as a means of imbricating cultural ideologies.” (Monteiro, 3) It reconstructs Quebec as a place that was ‘discovered’ by white men, just as American landmarks have been (Berger). However, there are those among us who would experience this as representing a colonizing influence in their lives, whose presence may seem to be erased by this.

Non-white voices have all too often been silenced with the complicity of photography. Whether by omission, as for the fact it took wood and chocolate to prompt the advancement in tone nuance that the photography of people of color had not (Roth, 119), or by cultural hijacking, such as through the systematic semantic colonization of the American landscape (Berger), this tendency has been unfortunately pervasive. Considering that Concordia attempts to provide a curriculum which is more inclusive of the concerns of First Nations people, among others, it seemed appropriate to commemorate their representation of this commitment in easily graspable visual form by taking a picture of it. It can be seen as “useful in the production of counterhegemonic representations.” (hooks, 60) providing a counterpoint to the prevalent narrative.

This picture was taken at an Ottawa museum in 2009, from the ‘Mythic Beasts’ exhibit. Taken with a real camera, not a phone, it is one of my crisper pictures. I was told I could take pictures before paying, but I was asked not to once inside. I insisted, and was eventually allowed to. It occurred to me that these myths had been part of the freely shared common heritage of various ancient cultures for centuries and that, in appropriating and monetizing them as cultural gatekeepers, they may have had shaky moral high ground.

Kuhn writes that “There can be no last word about my photograph, about any photograph.” (399) Just as in the case of her disagreement with her mother about the caption of a particular photograph (Kuhn, 397-398), photographs of moments that are densely interwoven into the emotional fabric of someone’s personal life could sometimes only be ‘decoded’ by someone who has access to private knowledge, sometimes not even by anyone. I have no idea who wrote this – I think it was scrawled on a metro wall or on a public building wall somewhere. While the chances of the person it was destined to ever seeing it seem infinitesimal at best, venting it out then and there granted someone, at some point, an opportunity for them “to deal with a knowledge that could not be spoken” (Kuhn, 400) somehow.

The use of photography by the authorities has been “central to the process of defining and regulating the criminal.” (Sekula, 7) In this case, this is a picture of a poster that was put up somewhere to rally the population in the opposite direction. There has been a growing push for cameras on police officers to regulate them in turn, and for the use of cameras by protestors against them. Thankfully, photography’s advantage does not flow in only one direction. Regrettably, while I considered doing so while taking this picture, I did not go to this particular protest… because I was afraid of enduring police brutality there. I felt guilty, but once was enough. I still have pictures of that too. I never sued but, while I don’t look at them often, they do give me a sense of control – serve an ‘evidentiary function.’

The ‘punctum’ of this picture for me lies in the story attached to it. I took this picture before the beginning of a performance that I attended with my family a year or two ago. Halfway through this performance, on the very same phone that I had used to take this picture just an hour or two before, someone I had tried to help as part of a suicide prevention online group went into emergency crisis mode. Chastised out of the theatre for striving to communicate with them online during the performance, during which phones were forbidden, I struggled to get the cops to their house before they did anything stupid. It worked, but they dissolved their friendship with me. Looking at this picture I remember the version of myself who took it, looking forward to the performance in blissful ignorance.

This picture of two fish statues spouting water at each other reminded me of the famous picture of the twins by Diane Arbus. Photography is uniquely suited to exploring our fascination with twin motifs as human beings in general. This is because the ‘reproducibility’ of photographs that Benjamin writes about already makes every photograph into the story of a copy of something, of a second version of something being made, almost the same, but just not quite, invoking our whole love/hate relationship with ‘cloning.’

We must not underestimate the role of the perspective of the photographer in reading what a photograph is meant to ‘say.’ At the same time, photographs capture very specific moments and, when taken at different times, can allow us to compare how things change with the passage of time. In these pictures from summer camp, the same sign, with a friendly appearance by day, takes on a creepy, horrific quality when photographed at night with a shaky phone and blurry text in the dark. Both pictures are ‘true.’

Bourdieu writes about how in small, closed communities, earlier photography was considered something not to be wasted on occasions that were not coded as ‘exceptional’ enough to warrant being considered ‘photographable.’ After all, people would say, what would be the point of taking a picture of something that you see every single day? Even before having read about this, one morning, I was prompted to stop and to take this picture of the short path and set of steps that leads down to Loyola campus from where I live. What was it that, in fact, prompted me to take a picture of something that I see every single day? I’m not sure. Something about the harmony of its composition appealed to me. Years from now, if my life is different, and I live somewhere else, I may want to remember these mornings.

Many may not initially notice the racial components in the American appropriation of the landscape described by Berger partly because some of it is concealed beneath our natural tendency as human beings to ‘see’ ourselves in the world around us, and to take pictures that validate our desire to see ourselves reflected. To a certain extent, we anthropomorphize the world around us as a matter of course, just like people lying in the grass looking up at clouds, or seeing patterns in shadows. Here we can see a box that has been put into a recycling bin cautiously peering out of its hideout while the ‘eyes’ formed by the two holes in its side scour the horizon to see if it is safe for them to come out of there. I think it saw me.

I took this picture going down Belmore on another school morning. The beauty of the way the light was hitting the falling leaves struck me in a way I just had to try to capture. Upon looking at the picture after the fact I was disappointed. All the technical elements were there, but the picture was missing that extra ‘something’ that had made me want to take the picture in the first place, did not convey the emotional truth of the moment for me. There is something to be said for how we use photography to deal with our sense of loss, to shed some light on our fallen leaves, to call back to an earlier established metaphor. We are usually not forced to choose between the two, although some may imply that we are, but while this is true, we must also remember that the moment should also always be experienced for what it is, because there will always be times when the lens will fail us, when the moment will be too elusive to capture.

Yet not all that we photograph must disappear so soon. Meet a clever, long-lived friend I made in at a pet store fittingly called Safari on a sound walk for an acoustic design class I took last term, posing for the camera. Here, the photograph celebrates the fact that he will probably outlive me.

 

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Hill and Wang, 1980, p. 1-27

Batchen, Geoffrey, “Ectoplasm,” Each Wild Idea, MIT Press, 2001, p. 128-144

Bazin, André, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” Film Quarterly, Vol 13, No 4 (Summer 1960) University of California Press, p. 4-9

Benjamin, Walter, “A Short History of Photography,” The Literarische Welt of 18.9., 25.9. and 2.10, 1931

Berger, Martin, “Landscape Photography and the White Gaze,” Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture, University of California Press, November 2005, p. 43-79

Bourdieu, Pierre, “The Cult of Unity and Cultivated Differences,” Photography: A Middle-brow Art, Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 19-39

De, Amrita, “Creating Own Histories,” Space and Culture, India, Vol 3 No 1, ACCB Publishing, England, June 2015, p. 30-47

hooks, bell, “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life,” Art on My Mind: Visual Politics, New York: The New Press, July 1^st 1995, p. 54-64

Kuhn, Annette, “Remembrance: The child I never was,” Jo Spence and Patricia Holland (eds.) Family Snaps (London, Virago, 1991) p. 395-401

Munroe, Randall, “Photos,” XKCD, http://xkcd.com/1314/

 

Monteiro, Stephen, “Inventing Scotland: Photography, Landscape, and National Identity,” Planning and Designing Sustainable and Resilient Landscapes, Springer Netherlands, April 12^th 2013, chapter 4, p. 1-15

Oremus, Will, “Is Snapchat Really Confusing, or Am I Just Old?” Slate, Jan 29^th 2015 7:10 pm

Plunkett, John, “Celebrity and Community: The Poetics of the Carte-de-visite,” Journal of Victorian Culture Vol 8 Issue 1, 2003, p. 55-79

Roth, Lorna, “Looking at Shirley, the Ultimate Norm: Color Balance, Image Technologies, and Cognitive Equity,” Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 34 Issue 1, 2009, p. 111-136

Sekula, Allan, “The Body and the Archive,” October, Vol 39 (Winter 1986) MIT Press, p. 3-64

Shipley, Jesse Weaver, “Selfie Love: Public Lives in an Era of Celebrity Pleasure, Violence, and Social Media,” American Anthropologist, Vol 117, No 2, Haverford College, June 2015, p. 403-413

Sontag, Susan, “In Plato’s Cave,” The New York Review of Books, October 18^th 1973, p. 1-19

Talbot, William Henry Fox, The Pencil of Nature, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, London, 1844, p. 1-64

This project examines the repercussions of the deployment of the Mosquito device by marketers and store owners. This contraption relies on the phenomenon of presbycusis, that is, loss of hearing that most people undergo as they age, to target the hearing ranges of everyone under the age of 25 so as to render spaces painfully inhospitable to them. My argument will be that this weaponization of sound represents a form of discrimination and assault against the youths that it is intended to ward off. Furthermore, that it may have unintended consequences that we would do better to take into account for all of the human population (and some not). It is an attempted solution elaborated from an atomistic point of view, isolating those who make use of it from any long-term considerations of its ethical implications or large-scale results for the world in which we all live, an engineering solution to a human problem. The Mosquito belongs in the trash bin of history, and we will need to come up with better, more human solutions to the problems that it was first invented in order to address.

The first argument in favor of the Mosquito is the claim that it is harmless. This cannot be true by definition – if it were truly harmless, it would not be effective. Its effectiveness hinges on its ability to cause harm. Its proponents claim they have determined that it is “not breaching human rights nor any environmental laws” (BBC News), while critics point out that “more money went into advertising these devices than actually determining their effect on our health (or health and change in behavioral patterns of other species, like e.g. dogs, cats, horses and birds).” (Information Security Stack Exchange) That sonic weaponry would not be considered a real source of assault has its roots in the “ocularcentric models of Western philosophy,” (Goodman, 9) even though “an assault does not necessarily need to leave a cut or a welt to cause harm… If pain cannot be attributed to a visible mark… it becomes anecdotal and difficult to legitimate.” (Akiyama, 456, 461) A petition against the use of the device at the Milford Haven Library urges us to see through this as “There is no medical evidence that it is safe for children under 16… So could damage young ears!” (38Degrees.org.uk) The reason for which there is no such medical evidence is that the most recent tests about the safety of prolonged exposure to ultrasounds were conducted three decades ago, and that most of the devices that emit such sounds today had not been invented when guidelines based on these tests were previously assessed. (Aynsley-Green, 3) When they are talking to worried skeptics, proponents of the Mosquito claim it cannot go over 75 decibels, yet when they are trying to sell the device to would-be users, they admit that it can be made to reach 85 decibels, 104, 108 or even higher than that. (World Heritage Encyclopedia, Legal Status/The Mosquito) This is significant because sounds over 80 decibels can cause “[d]iminished intellectual capacity, accelerated respiration and heartbeat, hypertension, slowed digestion, neurosis, altered diction” and the damage or even the destruction of the human eardrum. (Goodman, 10) By saying it would be harmless to be subjected to it for less than 10 minutes, even proponents are inadvertently admitting that exposure for more than 10 minutes could be harmful. (Akiyama, 463) High frequency sound devices can cause “disruption of the equilibrium, dizziness, headaches, nausea and impairment.” (World Heritage Encyclopedia, Health Effects) At best, the cost of “[t]rying to make sense of the world above the din” remains a “severely diminished level of mindfulness and well-being” and “In a cleaner, quieter mental environment, we may find our mood calming and depression lifting.” (Lasn & White)

Another problem with the Mosquito device is that it causes collateral damage because sound can be so “difficult to contain.” (Akiyama, 460) We have no data to determine the health risks of the device on those who are unable to hear it. (Aynsley-Green, 5) We do not know “if it can cause nausea or similar discomfort even to generations that wouldn’t be able to hear these noises (just because it’s beyond our hearing range, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a real physical effect on us), or indeed, if it can be considered safe to pregnant women and their unborns…” (Information Security Stack Exchange) Not only did a mother well over 25 have to have her child move away from her because he could not tolerate living next to just such a high frequency sound but she could even hear it herself, demonstrating that the Mosquito is less of a scalpel and more of a butcher knife. (Akiyama, 464) The lives of babies and children far too young for crime can be rendered intolerable if their home or school is located near sources of ultrasound, and they may lead animals astray as dog whistles would. (Aynsley-Green, 5) “Considering that animals are used in service to the perceptually impaired and other disabled individuals, I’m almost surprised an organization like the ADA hasn’t been all over this.” (Information Security Stack Exchange) The Mosquito also “has an adverse affect on people with mental health, chronic health and disabilities such as autism and hypersensitivity to noise,” or hyperacusis (38Degrees.org.uk) Those who suffer from hyperacusis will continue to hear ultrasounds throughout the course of their entire lives, never ‘earning’ their reprieve from this torment at any point as they age, rendering them forever unpersons under the new regime. That is also part of why “[t]here needs to be an outright ban on this device which affects not only teenagers, but also young children, babies and young people with disabilities.” (Finlay) To make matters even worse, “some such devices have various settings for crowd control of any age, too.” (Information Security Stack Exchange) In these cases, they are usually deployed against the homeless or against protestors, a mockery of class justice if not an outright declaration of class warfare, for one thing, and a blood-chilling threat against the right of assembly for freedom of expression of political dissenters, for another. (Akiyama, 468) Such encroachments against our rights and liberties must be carefully guarded against even as they crop up against groups to which we do not personally belong, because everything we give up sets a precedent that will make it easier for other rights and freedoms to be progressively given up until we have none left, and the onus to justify this must always be on their curtailers. Moreover, all the ‘successful’ Mosquito does, even in an ideal scenario, is to displace loiterers from one location to another, (Schneier) until they are adopted worldwide, which would only be desirable for its makers and sellers – and not for long.

“High-frequency rat repellants deployed on teenagers” are “objectionable” because they treat teenagers as though they are nothing more than another kind of rat. (Goodman, xvi) The Newport Community Safety Partnership, the Children’s Commissioner for England, Liberty, and the National Youth Agency, and the Committee on Culture, Science and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe have all rightly denounced the Mosquito as a violation of human rights, and even proponents have to recognize that “not all young people are involved in violence.” (World Heritage Encyclopedia, History/Legal Status/Support of the Mosquito) The inventor of this contraption claims that “As a father I realise the majority of young people are fun-loving and law abiding,” yet everything about what he did to young people everywhere by inventing it belies that claim. (BBC News) Even having tested this device on his own children somehow did not enable him to make the mental connection that a world in which every store owner uses the Mosquito is not a world in which he could not have sent his daughter to the shop because of teenagers – it is a world in which he could not have sent his daughter to the shop in the first place because of the device itself. Yet that his daughter would be deserving to go to the shop in his own mind also does not extend to the possibility that other teenagers may be deserving as well, hypocritically enough. Someone who thinks of you as a person does not compare you to vermin to sell their products to unprincipled, short-sighted store owners. (Aynsley-Green, 5) Is it not awfully convenient that the Mosquito constructs and isolates the very category of people that it targets, (Akiyama, 456, 457) and that children could be charged as adults without adult freedoms? (464) Has it not always been a form of criminal discrimination to treat people based not on what they do but on what they are? (Akiyama, 465) The fact of the matter is that “Young people have a right to assemble and socialise with their friends, without being treated as criminals.” (Finlay) They do not deserve to be raised “in captivity, cooped up indoors.” (Byron) The Mosquito does not reward teenagers for behaving well or give them any motivation for doing so, punishes them in advance for the crime of standing around, pushes the possibility that they may be able to earn trust outside of the boundaries of discussion, and creates a situation in which they may as well commit crimes anyway, since they will be treated the same either way. It does nothing to deter criminals over the age of 25, which still represent a sizeable portion of offenders, creating a false sense of security through unrealistic scapegoating. It may even punish those least likely to be offenders more, as “street punks might be less sensitive to these sounds simply because they probably wouldn’t care so much to lose their hearing abilities and rather stand next to the loudspeakers in loud concerts – to hear it better of course, while the ones it would work better on would probably be the quiet, library goer types.” (Information Security Stack Exchange)

It may be reassuring to imagine that youths are “always free to leave” (Akiyama, 463) “the area when they hear the sound.” (World Heritage Encyclopedia, Health Effects) Realistically, teenagers usually do not get to choose where they live, which schools or hospitals they go to, or where they go on errands – these are privileges that are reserved for adulthood, which is easy to forget by those who have been adults for long enough to have learned to take them for granted. The truth is that many youths will have “no option to move away from the environment” and will be forced into situations where they “cannot avoid long-term exposure.” (Aynsley-Green, 4, 5) Teen hooliganism does not happen in a vacuum, and cannot be reasonably addressed as though it did. We must engage with our youths personally to create a society in which there are spaces where they are encouraged to exist, because our own future depends on it. To exclude them “from shaping the cultural and social landscape and embracing their futures” (Byron) is a shortcut that would lead us right off a cliff.

Bibliography

38 Degrees, “Remove Mosquito Device/Audio Weapon From Milford Haven Library!” 2014-15, https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/remove-mosquito-device-audio-weapon-from-milford-haven-library

Akiyama, Mitchell, “Silent Alarm: The Mosquito Youth Deterrent and the Politics of Frequency,” Canadian Journal of Communication Vol 35 (3), McGill University, 2010, http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2261/2191

Aynsley-Green, Al, “Health Effects of Ultrasound in Air,” https://sites.google.com/site/hefua2/

BBC News, “Deal for anti-gang sonic device,” 14 May 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/4768213.stm

Byron, Tanya, “The fear of young people damages us all,” The Telegraph, 17 March 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/5007885/The-fear-of-young-people-damages-us-all.html

Finlay, Amadeus, “Children’s commissioner campaigns for ban on Mosquitoes: Human rights undermined by ‘sinister’ device,” The Journal: Scotland’s Student Newspaper, 26 February 2008, http://www.journal-online.co.uk/article/2908-childrens_commissioner_campaigns_for_ban_mosquitoes

Goodman, Steve. (Introductory excerpts). Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.xiii-xx; 5-13.

Information Security Stack Exchange, “High-frequency noise deterrents,” Questions, May 2013, http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/35194/high-frequency-noise-deterrents

Lasn & White, Kalle & Micah, “Ecology of the Mind: The Birth of a Movement,” Adbusters Magazine, 25 June 2010, https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/90/ecology-mind.html

Schneier, Bruce, “Low-Tech Loitering Countermeasure,” Schneier on Security, 6 August 2005, https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/08/low-tech_loiter.html

World Heritage Encyclopedia/World Public Library, http://www.netlibrary.net/article/WHEBN0003324864/The%20Mosquito

This project will consist of an examination of the ways in which three articles can assist me in evaluating The Link through the recommended method of participant observation. As a Concordia student myself, I will read through the current and a few back issues of The Link to gauge my own reaction to it, and possibly endeavor to obtain opinions about it from some of its other readers as well through face-to-face and/or online qualitative data gathering methodology. The goal will be to attempt to gain a better understanding of the extent to which The Link does or does not accurately represent the interests of the students of Concordia University in general. My conclusions must therefore depend on what students’ conception of their own interests may be.

In The A-Z of Social Research: Participant Observation, I learn that classical participant observation is in fact slightly differently categorized from what I have in mind. Classical participant observation refers to a process in which the researcher becomes integrated into another group for the given purpose of collecting data concerning it. Some researchers refer to the process performing research within a group which one was already a part of before deciding to do research on it as ‘observant participation’ (Thomson & Brewer, 3). The challenges that are presented by observant participation are also different from those that are presented by classical participant observation. For one thing, the danger of remaining too distant from the topic rather than becoming sufficiently immersed in the subjectivity of the people observed becomes virtually nil. However, it is the risk of becoming too close to the subject matter to be able to maintain the appropriate level of professional detachment to be able to stand back from the situation from an outsider’s point of view which becomes substantially increased (Thomson & Brewer, 4). Because of the inherent tendency toward individual example selection bias and because of the high level of subjectivity that must inherently be involved in its application, participant observation is sometimes criticized as a research method for its lack of objectivity in reporting data (Thomson & Brewer, 5). Taking one’s own bias into account and acknowledging it as one of a multiplicity of possible viewpoints on a situation can mitigate some of this up to a point. Considering the vantage point of the closeness developed by the participant observer, a single person’s perspective, seen for what it is, can still be better than no perspective at all (Thomson & Brewer, 6).

From Participant Observation: A Methodology for Human Studies, I take away the conditions under which the use of participant observation as a research method is considered to be appropriate: concern with insiders’ meanings and interactions, everyday observability, setting access, sufficient limits to be studied, appropriate questions, and relevance of qualitative data, all of which seem to apply to my intended observation of The Link (Jorgensen, 13). Jorgensen also emphasizes the interpretation and understanding of human existence, an open-ended, flexible inquiry process, an in-depth approach, the establishment and maintenance of relationships, and the use of direct observation (13-14). He sustains that the goal of participant observation is for the researcher to interact as seamlessly as possible with the rest of the environment studied, in which those who behave as participants are expected, therefore unobtrusive (Jorgensen, 16). I can potentially apply the knowledge that participant observers “gather data through casual conversations, in-depth, informal, and unstructured interviews, as well as formally structured interviews and questionnaires” (Jorgensen, 22) as part of defining a more set of precise methods with which to engage in my own process of data gathering for the remainder of this research project.

Finally, Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research confirms the importance and challenges of striking the proper balance between objectivity and subjectivity in participant observation (Angrosino, 2, 15). Moreover, it brings up the relevance of participant observation as part of a process in which questioning the boundaries between the authority of researchers and the subordination of their subjects is correlated with wider patterns of questioning the structures of power along the axes of gender (Angrosino, 7) and class (9). Getting a respondent’s ‘life history’ in an open-ended exchange is privileged over a more directed set of possibly leading interview prompts, which I would also do well to keep in mind when getting other students’ opinions about their student newspaper (Angrosino, 8). The text goes on to explain how ethnography is fundamentally field-based, personalized, multifactorial (triangulating), requiring a long-term commitment, inductive (explaining data, not testing theories), dialogic (encouraging feedback) and holistic (Angrosino, 15). It is recommended to submit one’s research results in the form of a narrative so as to draw in the reader’s attention. Such a narrative may take a realistic, confessional or impressionistic mode, and must first introduce and set the scene for the reader using ‘thick description’ before moving on to a proper analysis of the data which has been collected during the research process itself (Angrosino, 16).

Bibliography

(Angrosino, Michael, Doing Ethnographic and Observational Research, SAGE Publications, 2008)

(Jorgensen, Danny, Participant Observation: A Methodology for Human Studies, SAGE Publications, 1989)

(Thomson, Linda & Brewer, John, The A-Z of Social Research: Participant Observation, SAGE Publications, 2003)

(Satoshi Kon, Paprika, Madhouse, 2006)

They’ve finally done it. Ever since “technology has caused change,” it “has sparked worries that privacy is being threatened.” (Jarvis, 9) After what has been perceived as a rapid acceleration of this tendency over the course of the past couple of decades, we have finally reached a point in our society at which “Pretty soon not even your dreams may be private anymore.” (Nelson) As a matter of fact, a Japanese science research team has found a way to invent a machine that has the ability to record people’s dreams. (CTForecaster, Mick, 2013) While some are excited about the new technology’s potential for doing good, and scientists working on the dream recording machine have offered us reassurances that “The aim is not to interlope,” (Ghosh) other commenters have been less excited at the thought that “They’ve found a way to make even our dreams public fodder.” (Tomasso, 0:44) This essay will explore the social, political and economic ramifications of the introduction of this new technology into our media environment. Before giving a summary explanation of how such a machine would function from a more technical perspective, it will begin by explaining the merits of presently “considering, over the long-term, how the embedding of media technologies has consequences within the broad development of national cultures” (Couldry, 381) in terms of this new technology in particular. Beyond merely serving as a useful thought exercise to us for the time being, beginning to attempt to unravel some of the thorny issues which may someday arise after the dream recording machine will have become commonplace can prepare us to do a better job of doing so than ignoring it until those issues will have already been framed by others for us possibly can. This essay will further elaborate on speculative assessments of what the worst and best possible outcomes of the integration of the dream recording machine into society could be and of which set of criteria to orient society in the directions that may ultimately lead to the application of either set of parameters appear to be the likeliest so as to best inform our decisions regarding it.

On a basic level, it is undeniable that “Pushing technologies on society without thinking through their consequences is at least naïve, at worst dangerous…” (Corbett, quoting Chipcase) If our current media debates are any indication, political debates over new media have been shown to suffer when people in power who may not fully understand how the new technology interacts with the wider economic culture of situated individuals come up with policies and regulations around new media that lag behind the realities of their social and technical development. That is part of what makes it “salutary to consider the more distant consequences of our actions.” (Collins, 35) After all, what may seem like a good idea to an individual user on their own for a new technology’s use in the here and now may not seem like such a good idea if we think about what it would be like if everyone used it that way all over the world over a period of multiple decades, as we often have different ideas about what is ‘desirable’ and what is in fact ‘desired’ by us. We should definitely bear in mind that “envisioning near future scenarios might just help us reflect on the paths we want to take as a society.” (Pedro & Prado) While “we should not deny positives… such as educational and therapeutic applications” (Collins, 35) on the behalf of those who could stand to benefit from them, “Bad things could happen” (Jarvis, 3) if we disregard what was lost when “Ordinary people simply accepted the systems and worked within them without questioning their nature or boundaries.” (Feenberg, 3)

Only five years ago, the technology of the dream recording machine, as it was being developed by scientists at Oxford, was still at such an early stage that, for it to function, “subjects had to have electrodes surgically implanted deep inside their brain” and scientists thought “it is quite a jump from the limited results obtained in the study to talking about recording dreams.” (Ghosh) They believed that “it might be possible to monitor brain activity in this way without invasive surgery,” (Ghosh) but they did not know how to go about doing so in practice. It only took Japanese scientists three more years to figure out how to make this “pie-in-the-sky concept” (Corbett) into a reality, based on the principle that “brains react to ‘seeing’ objects with repeatable patterns that can be measured with MRI. If a machine can recognize the patterns well enough, it can reverse-engineer them… measuring their brain activity… to match it to one of the categories with a series of images…” (Robertson) In spite of this rapid advance, the dream recording machine is still in the ‘experimental stage’ (Lehman-Wilzig, 710) of development, as for the time being it has only been able to successfully recognize objects that are being dreamed about by the subjects with an accuracy rate from 50% (Mick, 2013) up to 60%, (Nelson) but it is projected that this percentage will rise in time. Until recently, an MRI machine has been a device that costs a million dollars and that weighs 11 tons, which would hardly make it affordable to most of us or practical for anyone to produce on any sort of mass scale, but more recent research has made it possible for scientists to miniaturize MRI machines so that they can cost $200,000 and weigh less than one ton. (Mick, 2012) While still ridiculously out of the reach of any but the upper class at this price and weight, we must also bear in minds that, if we go back far enough, computers were also absurdly cumbersome and onerous to an extent to which it was unimaginable that anyone but a corporation or government would ever be able to gain access to one, let alone that they would end up in almost every home. If Moore’s Law can be extended to other technology than computers such as to the MRI machines in question, the time that it may take for these barriers to access to yield to the siren song of the profits that could be made by anyone selling it to people who can afford it should be measurable not in terms of centuries but in terms of decades.

That being said, we should not underestimate the role that the first few years after a new technology’s introduction can have in shaping the first impression of it that its users will be likelier to get used to if it is framed for them in a way that makes it appear as inevitable that the social structure that exists around it would be shaped to encourage its use the specific way it does. (Feenberg, 6) There is a risk that whatever format is first presented to us will be that much easier to take for granted, to become naturalized as what it was determined to do and in the ways in which it comes to determine us, unless we gingerly keep in mind that we do not have to accept it ‘as is.’ Even if it remains voluntary, the decision to use or not to use the dream recording machine among those who will have access to it may come to be seen as a social signifier, just as deciding to use or not to choose to reveal aspects of one’s life to others using Facebook tends to send particular messages to others that may be received differently by different people. (Jarvis) The perceptions of dream recording machine use will partly be based on the models that have been established by the media that we already use, because “every new medium is influenced by older media and vice-versa,” and recorded dreams may only be viewable on existing platforms, just as “every new medium incorporates elements of previous media.” (Lehman-Wilzig, 711) The “increasing role of calculation and control” (Feenberg, 9) gives it a double appeal: as something ‘organic’ in a way that surpasses the numinous range of all calculated narratives, but also as a last bastion of unmediated experience over which people can now exert their control. What the dream recording machine provides us with is a new source of content to view on existing media, so it could be said to be piggybacking (Lehman-Wilzig, 711, 720-721) on all of their shoulders, which means that while it does sidestep the stage of being put in direct competition with established media, it becomes a factor that they can use in their competition against each other.

One possibility is that, with its initial high price of ownership, the dream recording machine will begin the same way that photography began, that is, as a medium with centralized ownership that users who could afford to do so went to visit to rent for a day so that they could take something away from it with them that said something to the world about them. If that’s so, there may emerge different corporations that offer dream recording services of various levels of prestige competing with each other with their own perks and drawbacks, and membership policies through which “Technologies enroll individuals in networks.” (Feenberg, 6) In the days of earlier photography, we only had to worry about the photographer and developer seeing our pictures if we otherwise wanted them to be private, but in today’s economic climate, it seems likely that dream recording corporations would keep their own copy of their clients’ dreams on hand, raising the question of “What is it that we need to keep private and why?” (Jarvis, 4) Since the reason for which advertisers partner up with social media these days is often to gather data so as to help them to gain an insight into the workings of the minds of their consumers, it must be safe to assume that the ability to figure out how to literally offer people the ‘car of their dreams’ will come to be seen as a hot commodity. That is why we must endeavor “to take account of the possibility that any narrative… may have unintended and undesired audiences.” (Couldry, 382) Facebook has already claimed ownership of media content simply for having been posted on their site by users, so there may come a time when we will have to fight copyright battles over the ownership of our own dreams. Services may appear that offer higher privacy than others, as some purportedly more private search engines currently do, so that people may share some of their dreams in private, but having the wrong dreams leaked could end a friendship, a relationship or a career, putting people in vulnerable positions to blackmail or revenge. Even politicians may become judged based on some of their dreams, whether they like it or not.

Ancient Egyptians may have believed dreams to have been messages from the gods, (Ghosh) but while for us today, dreams “are open to multiple interpretations, or indeed to being ignored,” (Couldry, 375) it is all too easy to slap a reductive, totalizing meaning on a complex and nuanced dream when we “are still letting plenty of ‘narrow assumptions’ sneak in…” (Pedro & Prado) It is the involuntary nature of the dream that gives it a sense of revealing more than it should, regardless of the intentions of the dreamer in real life, just as we are easily misled to trust polygraphs in spite of just how thoroughly their accuracy has been debunked. (American Psychological Association) In our current era of surveillance, corporations may collaborate with governmental agencies in providing them with a database of the population’s dreams, possibly to be sifted through by search engines in search of keywords that may warrant inclusion in databases of people whose dreams mark them as potential threats. Corporations may also keep dream recording machines for themselves so that they can use them to screen the employees that they interview as part of their psychometric evaluations. If we are judged based on our dreams publicly, lucid dreaming may become a staple life skill for professional survival, so that we can strive to appear at our best even in our dreams. It has been theorized at Oxford that lucid dreaming may lead to a sense of disconnection from reality, not only because it may appear lackluster in comparison to the possibilities offered by lucid dreams, but because they seem so real that waking life may become mistaken for a lucid dream, leading dreamers to take deadly actions in waking life believing that they are dreaming. (Green & Smyth, Health Warning) Another recourse that may be taken against such an invasion while circumventing the potential risks of lucid dreams may be that people will begin to ‘mod’ their dreams at the other end of the process, just as people do today for video games, (Kücklich) with the intent of correcting their dishonorable behavior in their dreams for public viewing after the fact. In a sense nightmares would become real as a result of being believed in, just as belief can be materialized through hyperstition. And as if the idea of a dream database for advertisers to mine so as to target their markets didn’t seem invasive enough, while they are not quite there yet, they are actually working on beaming advertisements directly into our dreams themselves as well. (DNews)

(Say that to the people from Inception, buddy)

So what do we stand to gain from the dream recording machine after all, if anything? Quite a bit, in spite of all this. First of all, we do not know for sure just how much of a hold on our dreams corporations and governments may end up having, as it is not a foregone conclusion but one that will be determined in part by decisions we make along the way, so “We should not expect a single answer to the question of how media transform the social.” (Couldry, 375) Like multi-user dungeons, dreams offer “a new environment for the construction and reconstruction of self” where we “can set the stage and define the rules,” (Turkle, 158) in “which you can play a role as close or as far away from your ‘real self’ as you choose” and in which “There is an unparalleled opportunity to play with one’s identity and to ‘try out’ new ones.” (159) While we can already tell each other about our dreams, we live in more of an ocular-centric culture than in an oral culture, and being made visible gives our personal histories a sense of reality that adds to their emotional credibility, granting us an opportunity to check our individual experiences against the zeitgeist to see what does and doesn’t hold up to closer scrutiny after all. (Couldry, 387) Dreamers may be “seen as leaving their ‘real’ lives and problems behind to lose themselves in the game space” but dreams “are not simple escapes from the real to the unreal,” (Turkle, 161) offering a “psychosocial moratorium” to “reassemble a sense of boundaries” (163) for “working through personal concerns” through “second chances” to “rework unresolved personal issues.” (159) If Jarvis talked about how jarring the contrast between casual and revolutionary tweets were on his timeline, if people were moved to action by the picture of that Syrian child, just imagine how jarring it could prove for the 1% to be subjected to the full emotional impact of seeing the nightmares and unfulfilled dreams of the underprivileged on their timelines. While a private dream may serve as a “reflection on personal and interpersonal issues,” shared dreams could focus “on larger social and cultural themes as well,” (Turkle, 160) combining “an environment infused with a postmodern ethos… with a constructionist ethos of ‘Build something, be someone.’” (166) In addition to its obvious psychotherapeutic and recreational potential, the machine’s potential has been pointed out in terms of giving a voice to people in comas, whose thoughts we could also use it to decipher. (Ghosh) Though our dreams would no longer “stay on the page,” the degree to which we bring our dreams into our lives should be our choice, and they should remain an emotional environment where we can choose our much we reveal about ourselves. (Turkle, 162-163) Significantly, we do not get to choose how to appear in our dreams by default, reversing the logic of customization of media which teaches us to expect control, therefore if we dream we are a different race, gender or class than we are in waking life, there is no one for us to blame for it but ourselves, so we may as well try to learn empathy from the experience while we can. (Condis) More than anything, the dream recording machine presents us with an unprecedented opportunity to finally understand why we human beings dream in the first place, the possible benefits of which may remain completely incalculable at this time. One day we may all have apps that allow us to record our dreams on our phones resting on our beds next to us at similar prices to other apps, or to tweet the dream we just had after falling asleep and waking up on the bus so that our friends and family can view them before we even reach our stop, and learn to accept our deepest emotional struggles as shared experiences.

Just as “Bell had no inkling of the ultimate real use of his telephone,” (Lehman-Wilzig, 714) it is also entirely possible that we will come up with social structures and uses around the dream recording machine that its inventors and distributors will have never imagined, and to which they will be the ones we will force to adapt. Rather than the Australian Dreamtime, more fittingly for a device that was invented by a Japanese research team, let us turn for a moment to the metaphor of the baku, a dream-eating tapir that children can call upon to devour their nightmares so as to protect them upon waking. It is said that “calling to the baku must be done sparingly, because if he remains hungry after eating one’s nightmare, he may also devour their hopes and desires as well, leaving them to leave an empty life.” (Wikipedia, “Baku”) By the same token, while we may not be sure whether the arrival of the dream recording machine represents a dream or a nightmare in and of itself, (Tomasso, 3:16) if we try too hard to extinguish our nightmares about it at any cost, it may be that our dreams will be swallowed up along with our nightmares as well, leaving us to live out empty lives ourselves. Whether or not such a sacrifice would truly be worth the tradeoff in the long run for the short-term benefits that it would grant us in return should at least give us pause. While the dream recording machine could die an early death as other technologies before it have, if it passes the early stages of introduction into society, it may become less of an issue of whether it exists or not than an issue of who has control over its social significance, so the best we can do is to be the humane, vigilant yet hopeful users and shapers we want to see in the world. The more we prepare for the worst while hoping for the best, the likelier the best possible outcome should be and, ultimately, it may not be the end of the world if it does turn out after all that “you can’t fight progress, no matter how strange it sounds.” (Collins, 36)

Bibliography

American Psychological Association, “The Truth About Lie Detectors (aka Polygraph Tests),” http://www.apa.org/research/action/polygraph.aspx

Collins, Nick. “Trading Faures: Virtual Musicians and Machine Ethics,” Leonardo Music Journal, Volume 21, 2011, pp. 35-40

Condis, Megan, “The Web is not a post-racial utopia,” Al Jazeera, May 24^th 2015, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/5/the-online-game-that-proves-the-web-is-not-a-post-racial-utopia.html

Corbett, Sara, “Can the Cellphone Help End Global Poverty?” The New York Times Magazine, April 13^th 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13anthropology-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Couldry, Nick, “Mediatization or mediation? Alternative understandings of the emergent space of digital storytelling.” New Media & Society, Vol 10.3, 2008: 373–391.

CTForecaster, “Japanese Dream Recording Machine – Update,” April 12^th 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQueU9a8URw

DNews, “Subliminal Ads Invade Your Sleep,” July 11^th 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taABCJ4Wllk

Feenberg, Andrew. “Agency and Citizenship in a Technological Society,” Lecture presented to the Course on Digital Citizenship, IT University of Copenhagen, 2011.

Ghosh, Pallab, “Dream recording device ‘possible’ researcher claims,” BBC News, October 27^th 2010, http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11635625

Green, Celia & Smyth, Tom, Lucid Dreams 0096, Em:t Records, January 1996 (posted by Atom Duja on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuQj1txL2Bs on November 6^th 2012)

Jarvis, Jeff. “Introduction: The Age of Publicness.” Simon and Schuster, 2011: 1-14; 157-162.

Kücklich, Julian, “Precarious Playbor,” The Fibreculture Journal, 2005, http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-025-precarious-playbour-modders-and-the-digital-games-industry/

Lehman-Wilzig, Sam and Cohen-Avigdor, Nava. “The natural life cycle of new media evolution.” New Media & Society, Vol 6.6, 2004: 707–730.

Mick, Jason, “Space-Ready MRI is 1/10^th the Price, Weight of Traditional MRI,” DailyTech, September 22^nd 2012, http://www.dailytech.com/SpaceReady+MRI+Machine+is+110th+the+Price+Weight+of+Traditional+MRI/article27757.htm

Mick, Jason, “Japanese Dream Machine Can Visualize Your Dreams With 50 Percent Accuracy,” DailyTech, April 7^th 2013, http://www.dailytech.com/Japanese+Dream+Machine+Can+Visualize+Your+Dreams+With+50+Percent+Accuracy/article30291.htm

Nelson, Bryan, “Scientists learn how to record your dreams and play them back to you,” Mother Nature Network, April 5^th 2013, http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/scientists-learn-how-to-record-your-dreams-and-play-them

Pedro, Oliveira, and Luiza Prado. “Questioning the ‘Critical’ in Speculative and Critical Design” Medium.com, February 4th, 2014. https://medium.com/a-parede/questioning-the-critical-in-speculative-critical-design-5a355cac2ca4

Pedro, Oliveira, and Luiza Prado. “A Cheat Sheet for a Non or Less Colonialist Speculative Design” Medium.com, September 10th 2014. https://medium.com/a-parede/cheat-sheet-for-a-non-or-less-colonialist-speculative-design-9a6b4ae3c465

Robertson, Adi, “Scientists turn dreams into eerie short films with an MRI scan,” The Verge, April 4^th 2013, http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/4/4184728/scientists-decode-dreams-with-mri-scan

Tomasso, Scott, “Video of Real Dream Recorded by New ‘Dream Machine,’” 10 Reasons Why Show, January 30^th 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFN0Si3ZvCY

Turkle, Sherry. “Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDs,” Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 Summer 1994: 158-167.

Wikipedia, “Baku,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baku_(spirit) (accessed at 2:49 am on Friday, December 11^th, 2015)

(picking up after the history of silent film: https://wordpress.com/post/bussiertranslation.wordpress.com/26)

The first ‘talkies’ in the early 1920’s represented a shift that demanded actors with verbal rather than physical skills. It was in 1926 that Jean Renoir first used the phrase ‘cinematic classicism’ (Hansen, 355). Developed since 1916-17, partly by Munsterberg, it was based on neo-formalist poetics, cognitive psychology, narrative dominance, linear narration around individual agency, decorum, proportion, harmony, tradition, mimesis, self-effacing craftsmanship, balance, beauty, and control of viewer response through intricate plots and emotional tensions (Hansen, 336, 338-339).

Classical cinema was strongly naturalized, passing itself off as timeless although culturally bound (Hansen, 339). Rather than a universal language, classical cinema offered a global vernacular of tropes for international movies to draw from specifically because the parameters for its reception were just as culturally bound as those for its production (Hansen, 340-341). Some saw cinema as another public sphere, a democratization of culture, a self-representation of the masses (Hansen, 342), while critics influenced by Althusser, Lacan, Marx and feminism deconstructed its naturalization of social constructs and its normalization of power relations, influencing viewers to take sides in biased ways and to take their identities for granted (335).

The post-studio era was characterized by a narrative shift articulated around showcasing the nascent prowess of CGI special effects (King). With the rising costs of production and a drop in theatre attendance with the prominence and diversification of the home market, producers became more risk-averse, relying on formulae to improve their chances of return on investment for fewer, bigger features. Low concept films drew less attention, hard to boil down into easily digestible paratexts for choosy audiences (Gray). High concepts were derided by critics but made fortunes, and could have original narratives (Wyatt).

Movies like Avatar rely on cultural appropriation, and there are always problematic elements to monetizing other cultures. However, it’s relevant to note that some First Nations peoples have praised it for representing their struggle in a relatable way to non-natives. Movies have borrowed from comics, video games and virtual reality, just as comics, video games and virtual reality have borrowed from movies as well.

Bibliography

Gray, Jonathan, “Coming Soon!: Hype, Intros, and Textual Beginnings,” in Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, New York: NYU Press, 2010, 47-79

Hansen, Miriam, “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism,” in Reinventing Film Studies, eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, London: Arnold, 2000, 332-350

King, Geoff, “Spectacle, Narrative, and the Spectacular Hollywood Blockbuster,” in Movie Blockbusters, ed. Julian Stringer, New York: Routledge, 2003, 114-127

Wyatt, Justin, “A Critical Redefinition: The Concept of High Concept,” in High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994, 1-22

Nike holds the distinction of simultaneously having one of the best and one of the worst reputations in the history of sportswear. For one thing, their commercial success over the past few decades speaks for itself in terms of financial results, indicating that, on some level, at least strictly from a business perspective, they must be doing something right. In order to distinguish the shoes they made from their competitors’ products, it was the goal of their founder to “create athletic shoes that functioned well for their specific task that he could be successful and one day lead an industry. He had a knack for craftsmanship and knowledge of quality that allowed him to feel confident in the product he was selling.” (Niederhauser, 7) For another, thanks to their multiple sponsorship deals with professional athletes over the years, “Winning and Nike are nearly synonyms as individuals from different generations have watched their favorite athletes wearing Nike shoes, apparel and equipment, many of whom have found abounding success.” (Niederhauser, 3)

In all fairness, they were some of the earliest advertisers who “began to experiment with portrayals of women that they thought would resonate with feminists” as they “began to realize more fully that there was not one role depiction that accurately reflected the majority of women” but that “the roles of women were more complex and variable.” (Wolburg & Grow, 3) It is after all important to remember in spite of “Nike’s masculine brand image” that, “In the early 1990s, a female point of view was rarely reflected in advertising” when “the almost exclusively female creative team from W+K created ads for the Nike women’s sub-brand that often challenged the social constructions of gender and sports,” much to their credit. (Grow, 2008) It was said that “the women’s brand, during the 1990s played a significant role in shifting the way females were represented in mediated images in the United States” (Grow, 2006, 2) and that “these advertising texts, bound in community, struggle against the gendered hegemonic, political and social framework that sought to constraint and often negate female experiences.” (20) Even Nike’s inveterate detractors explain that, in their own way, “it was Wieden & Kennedy, a boutique ad agency based on Portland, Oregon, that made Nike a feminist sneaker.” (Klein, 300)

That said, as even Nike’s president Phil Knight noted himself regarding his corporation’s marketing campaigns, “there’s a flipside to the emotions we generate,” (Klein, 287) and there have been some ways in which their attempts to sway the market to their advantage have been known to backfire unexpectedly at times, especially as the corporation entered the 21^st century. This is no longer limited to “debates over gender representations within the Nike women’s sub-brand.” (Grow, 2008) Nike’s consumers are now very well “aware that there are shortcomings with Nike” and that it “does not live up to its idealistic standards,” (Niederhauser, 4) perceiving them “as not being the most honest brand” due to “factors such as their lack of operations transparency, secret working conditions in third world countries, or a variety of other dishonest moments…” (3) People are now refusing thousands and even millions of dollars to star in their ads. (Klein, 302) It is never a good sign for your company when things have gotten so bad that someone can now say about it that a “company is flirting with a Nike-style public-relations meltdown,” (Klein, 308) and that everyone immediately knows exactly what they mean without needing any further clarification about it: it means that your company has become a byword.

This essay will examine the cultural values and appeals that permeate the semantic landscape of Nike’s advertising campaign, so as to connect them with Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence in terms of their American and Australian marketing campaigns. It will consider how Nike responded to the challenge posed by international marketing because of the discrepancy between the standardization and localization approaches of commercial adaptation, that is, by the balance to strike between the costs of adapting ads to local cultures for greater appeal versus those of relinquishing those specific appeals for short-term savings. In addition to this tradeoff, it may also prove enlightening to look at situations in which Nike’s ads seem to counterintuitively appeal to the opposite of the cultural values that ostensibly predominate in the particular national culture whose population they are targeting, because of the possibility of discrepancies between what is seen as ‘desirable’ and what is really ‘desired.’ It will assess how Nike has striven to manifest culture through signs, symbols, metaphors, images and music, the executional styles they employ, and the effectiveness of their global strategies.

Nike taps into the United States’ “Obsession with change, ‘new,’ and ‘better’” (Mooij, 103) considering that it has been said of them that “They had a fresh mindset, and knew that yesterday was gone, tomorrow was a new day and it was time to be relevant and up to speed with the change in the world.” (Niederhauser, 9) They are always racing against the clock trying to come up with the next big thing before anyone else sees it coming. While they remain officially non-denominational, they can be said to appeal to religion in the sense in which Nike “is the name of the Greek goddess of victory,” (Kazi, p.2 §12) and the “Importance of winning, power, success, and status” (Mooij, 104) and achievement that they live by verges on “a reverence for some transcendental meaning.” (163) It constitutes an attempt to respond to “a desire to be a part of something more in life.” (Niederhauser, 8) To the extent to which we think of sports as leisure, since “Nike is not a manufacturing company or even a shoe company; it is a sports company,” (Kazi, §6) they can be seen as emphasizing the American “Importance of leisure,” (Mooij, 104) although the Nike mentality seems to be to treat sports as seriously as work – and to treat work itself like you would treat team sports. This play/work complicates indulgence rating.

In the true spirit that is shared by capitalist enterprise and competitive team sports alike, Nike values whatever “allows the individual to compete more effectively.” (Mooij, 104) Taking into account how those responsible for their success “were more interested in the short-term profits” and how “The long-term destructive consequences of this gain and profit… was not considered,” (Kazi, p.2 §11) their “Short-term thinking” toward “the bottom line, success now rather than in the future” (Mooij, 103) also demonstrates their values’ American origin. For all of the “Humor, innovativeness, creativity,” “Hype, persuasive communication, and rhetoric” (Mooij, 104) for which their skilled marketing department has become renowned the world over, it is relevant to bear in mind that as a multi-national corporation Nike still has basically “one goal: short-term financial gain…” (Kazi, p.2 §8) While none of their manufacturers are in America, Nike expresses their country of origin appeal to American exceptionalism and patriotism (Mooij, 163) through the associations that they generate in the minds of their consumers with their numerous localized sponsorship deals. After all, what could be more American than Michael Jordan (Failure, Hanging, Revolution) and Bugs Bunny? (1992, 1993)

Nike’s business strategy embraces and relies on the free market notion of American “individualism in the marketplace.” (Mooij, 162) This is not incidental to the fact that, as far as their creative marketing team is concerned, “You’re not selling sneakers for Nike, you’re selling human potential.” (Grow, 19) The belief that “good fortune can happen to anyone at any time,” (Mooij, 163) but that people get “what they deserve as a consequence of their own individual actions,” (162) while superficially positive in its encouragement of ‘The Jogger’ to ‘Find Your Greatness,’ is conflated with the libertarian ideology of society as a meritocracy that legitimizes their business practices. This is consistent with the American drive toward the pursuit of independence as a cultural value and individualism as a cultural dimension (Mooij, 104) As part of their ‘Better For It’ campaign, Nike played into the American valuation of “free speech” (Mooij, 162) and “Expression of private opinions” (104) by allowing “women… to see… stories where they can… find their own voices reflected,” (Wolburg & Grow, 6) narratives that “function as living stories reflecting female experiences… of empowerment and community.” (Grow, 2008)

While Americans are supposed to value democracy, (Mooij, 163) which Nike counts on for its populist appeals, it is ironic that their entire production apparatus would rely for its dependable cheapness on being situated in a country in which collectivism and communism have trained the workforce to accept poor working conditions that Americans would never accept for themselves. Clearly, despite American universalistic thinking, encouraging China to become a more democratic society is not so urgent, possibly because American ethnocentrism also encourages them to consider their own interests first and foremost, and because they are served so well by the ongoing sacrifices of Chinese workers. (Mooij, 104) In spite of this, it is important to Nike, just as to America, to appear in a light that shows them as valuing equal opportunity, (Mooij, 104) so we get signifiers to that effect with “the first African-American model to appear in Nike women’s advertising, signifying Nike’s support for the empowerment of the African-American community as well.” (Grow, 9-10) This is simply good business common sense on Nike’s part, given how “various groups have gone to great lengths to leverage their demands for favorable depictions, even to the extent of boycotting products.” (Wolburg & Grow, 2)

On a surface level, Nike attempts to appeal to the American values of “concern for others” and “caring beyond the self,” (Mooij, 163) although their behavior as a corporation does not tend to bear this out in practice. The lyrics to Fly Like An Eagle, used as part of the movie Space Jam that was used to promote Nike shoes with the sponsorship of Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, claim that Nike wants to “Feed the babies Who don’t have enough to eat, Shoe the children With no shoes on their feet, House the people Livin’ in the street…” (The Steve Miller Band) In practice, of course, if Nike really wanted to do any of those things, it would be very easy for them to simply start by paying their own workers a living wage, so that they could buy food, shoes and housing for their children, but since the increase of Nike’s profits depends on their exploitation, it is more profitable for Nike to appear generous without all of that pesky giving. There is undeniably an element of risk in this kind of branding, since if listeners were truly motivated to try to do these things, they could trace these problems all the way back to their source as caused by Nike, who still “embraced the risk that was associated with each decision,” (Niederhauser, 7) as if they counted on general apathy in the culture to mitigate their enthusiasm.

They may market to women, but Nike does not adhere to a feminist ethics of care in real life, not by a long shot. It may seem surprising that Nike would have seen it fit to market to women in two strongly masculine cultures such as the United States and Australia, not to mention that they would have had such successful results in each case, but while their ads do represent women, they still rely on expounding values that largely correlate with traditionally masculine cultures. In masculine cultures it is easier for women to get by when adapting to traditionally masculine values than for men to get by when adapting to traditionally feminine values, so a paradox exists between the acceptance of ‘strong’ women and the rejection of feminine values. The closest to feminine values to which Nike has gotten has to have been their association with “nice, friendly people” (Mooij, 308) in some of their commercials such as Bo Diddley in ‘Bo Knows,’ Spike Lee in ‘Hanging,’ Charles Barkley in ‘I am not a role model’ and Michael Jordan in ‘Failure,’ ‘Hanging,’ ‘Revolution,’ in his ’92 and ’93 Bugs Bunny ads and in Space Jam.

Be that as it may, even this is somewhat of a stretch. In the United States, “Competition is viewed as a fundamental aspect of human nature” (Mooij, 97) and, as genuine as these sponsors’ friendliness may be, the reason for which viewers care that they would be friendly is that they would be rich, successful people in the first place, which is valued more in masculine cultures than in feminine cultures. (308) Nike’s 1995 Australian commercial could not make Nike’s valuation of masculine characteristics any more directly legible than when it literally goes into a discussion of what it is that ‘separates the men from the boys,’ enumerating sports injuries like so many battle scars brought back proudly from the front lines. Their ‘Keep the Ball Alive’ Australian ad epitomizes their masculine values perhaps more than any other, elevating the worth of competition above any consideration of safety, refusing to acknowledge the boundaries separating ‘the game’ from real life just as “Nike executives are like top sportsmen… They want to win… (which) seemed to sum up its whole approach to business.” (Kazi, §3) Their Australian national soccer team commercial brings the value that “Man must conquer nature” (Mooij, 104) to life in a spectacularly vivid way as athletes defeat wild animals against them in a sports match.

Rather than the masculinity/femininity axis, it makes more sense to conceptualize the deliberate, calculated ‘approachability’ of the athletes who Nike uses as sponsors from the perspective of a different cultural dimension: that of the low power distance index that the United States and Australia also share. The United States’ paradoxical relationship with ‘strong role differentiation’ (Mooij, 104) means that, while they enjoy ‘The Jogger’s’ success narrative in ‘Find Your Greatness’ and the powerful lowered to our level in ‘Bo Knows,’ ‘Failure,’ and ‘I am not a role model,’ the sponsors are only there to be ‘brought down’ as a sign that they have achieved celebrity status in the first place. On a basic level one could say the purpose of the sports competition is to separate those who win it from those who lose it, yet victory must seem attainable to the average consumer, not only as motivation to reach for higher status – with Nike’s assistance – but so that the victories of current sponsors will appear to have been legitimately earned. “Nike is perceived as the underdog in a market in which they are the juggernaut. This is because the underdog is typically a desirable position to root for.” (Niederhauser, 4)

Nike’s attempt to replace the collectivism of its early women’s ads with individualism proved fruitless and ephemeral, not counting on the value of the ‘desired.’ (Grow, 17 & Mooij, 272) With nearly 50% working women, (Bartos, 105) more working women than housewives, (107) half the housewives in Sydney and Melbourne planning to work, (112) and the highest proportions of career-oriented working women, (113) Australia is a good place to advertise a feminist sneaker, and its value match with the U.S. makes some level of standardization safer. Their Australian ‘Instant Karma’ ad is simply their American version cut in half, their Nike Plus ad seems specific to their country but employs American cultural artifacts, and their Air Max ad takes advantage of the Australian appreciation for humorous advertising, (Mooij, 322) although their own national soccer team being used does remain part of their localization efforts as well. Their Australian Lunar Glide ad, while suitable to a low-context culture for its explanatory style, seems to attempt to assuage an uncertainty avoidance that Australia does not possess.

The attributes are the shoes’ aerodynamic design, their benefits are speed, comfort and confidence, and their values are of course victory at all costs. Knowing that American students are encouraged to think critically, (Mooij, 104) Nike has attempted to ‘pre-jam’ their ads to appear ‘with it’ with ‘the kids,’ so to speak – to manifest culture. (Klein, 298) Having successively borrowed ‘Revolution,’ ‘Instant Karma,’ Bo Diddley, Spike Lee and William S Burroughs for their ads, Nike seems to believe that there are no shoes that a hijacked countercultural artifact cannot sell. (Klein, 301) The swoosh, similar to a checkmark symbolizing achievement itself, was fittingly “designed by a university student attending a class taught by… Phil Knight… (who) got the symbol that would revolutionize [Nike… She] got $35,” (Kazi, §2) making her the first in a long line of women that the ‘feminist’ sneaker CEO would exploit for his own personal gain. There were also viewers who responded to Space Jam badly, seeing it as cheapening the attachment that they had developed for its characters to have them reduced to the status of unscrupulous shoe salesmen. Basically Nike treats the counterculture as insubstantial and instrumental, as if nothing in it could possibly have a problem with anything they do.

Nike’s favorite executional style is celebrity transfer, which they use in ‘Bo Knows,’ (Bo Diddley) Bugs Bunny 1992 and 1993, ‘Failure,’ ‘Revolution,’ (Michael Jordan) ‘Hanging,’ (Spike Lee) Air Max, ‘I am not a role model,’ (Charles Barkley) Australia 1995 (Wayne Carey) and, of course, Ronaldo, Messi and Rooney, so that the “image of the sports star is transferred to the sports shoes…” (Mooij, 310) Nike employs vignettes in ‘Revolution,’ ‘Instant Karma,’ and ‘William S Burroughs,’ (Mooij, 321) humor in the Bugs Bunny ads, ‘Hanging,’ Air Max, ‘Better For It,’ and Space Jam, (322) lifestyle transfer with ‘The Jogger’ and ‘Better For it,’ (308-309) and product message for Nike + and Lunar Glide. They use play or act around the product for Keep the Ball Alive and Australian soccer, and they use imagination and special effects for Bugs Bunny, Australian soccer, Nike + and Space Jam. (Mooij, 323-324) Celebrity transfer serves Nike well with successful athletes, but it can also backfire if athletes should behave in a way that is deemed unbecoming. (Niederhauser, 4)

Most of Nike’s ads can safely afford to be fully standardized. Not only do their values match those of Australia specifically, but they have a bit of a country of origin appeal going with the American dream, as sold by Nike. Still, since other countries will not share their national pride, the efforts that they do put into adapting some of their ads more specifically to the target culture in question are probably easily worth the trouble, especially considering that Nike can certainly afford the expense at the time given how much it already has and how much profit they may represent in the long run.

Appendix: Just Drop It

The idea is to target Australian women in particular, both as an extension of Nike’s already extensively renowned feminist sneaker campaign and as a continuation of their efforts to adapt their American advertising campaign for the benefit of their Australian audiences. Animated humanoid animals as imagination and visual effects executional styles have also served Nike well in the past, and have established a normalized presence as part of their presented brand image to consumers. Tapping into Australian myth for localization purposes could be integrated with the ‘triumph from the ground up’ ladder-climbing narrative based on the merit of effort, low power distance, and masculine determination to succeed. With the right protagonist thrown in, borrowing from the semantic field of nature for effect, it could also be possible to accessorily emphasize the ‘desired’ feminine and cultural value of caring about and protecting one’s own. Here is an experiment of what could result:

A female, humanoid bear comes jogging through the outback. Maybe she’s a graphically elaborate, well-shaded old school cartoon like in Space Jam, although it might be better if she is completely computer animated altogether to make her appear more realistically, seamlessly integrated with her environment. “Do you know what separates a real Australian from a tourist?” One of Nike’s famous voice-overs comes on over her labored breathing as the camera zooms in on her focused glare. “Here, we know the truth about drop bears.” Drop bears are a prank played on tourists by Australians, a fantasy beast meant to scare off tourists as Australians laugh knowingly while proving their ‘toughness’ for being used to them. “First of all, drop bears are real.” She is wearing a fully-fledged jogging outfit, complete with fitbit. “Have you heard that bears are slow animals?” We see the landscape change behind her two or three times, symbolizing as she jogs through the shifts that she has run fast enough to pass through all of these different environments as part of a single run, emphasizing her speed and endurance. “Drop bears aren’t.” We see her drink from her water bottle dramatically. “Have you heard that bears are heavy, out of shape animals?” She puts her bottle back and continues jogging, even more determined than before. “Drop bears aren’t.” We see her jogging with a smaller, female bear child next to her. “They start small.” A threatening-looking figure seems to be waiting for them in ambush behind a corner, possibly armed. “But if you get between a drop bear and her cub…” The screen goes black as the bears turn the corner, and a brutal roar and the sound of a falling man screaming are heard. “… She’ll drop you, mate.” Growling is heard over the logo.

Bibliography

Bartos, Rena, “Women as an Advertising Target: An International Overview,” International Advertising: Realities and Myths, SAGE Publications, p. 103-115, 2000

Grow, Jean M. “Stories of Community: The First Ten Years of Nike Women’s Advertising,” American Journal of Semiotics, Volume 22, No 1-4, 2006

Grow, Jean M. “The Gender of Branding: Early Nike Women’s Advertising a Feminist Antenarrative” Women’s Studies in Communication. Fall 2008, Vol. 31 Issue 3, p 312-343.

Kazi, Tasnim B. “Superbrands, Globalization, and Neoliberalism: Exploring Causes and Consequences of the Nike Superbrand” Student Pulse, 2011, VOL. 3 NO. 12

Klein, Naomi. “Culture Jamming: Ads Under Attack.” No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2000. 279-309 (287-288, 291, 295, 297-298, 300-302, 308)

Mooij, Marieke. (2014). Global marketing and advertising: Understanding cultural paradoxes (4th edition). Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, Inc.

Neiderhauser, James Elmer, “How Nike’s Leadership Affects Brand Image Internally and Externally,” UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research XVI (2013) (Introduction)

Wolburg, Joyce M. & Grow, Jean M. “Selling Truth: How Nike’s Advertising to Women Claimed a Contested Reality” The Advertising Educational Foundation, 2006

Ads

1989 Nike commercial “Bo Knows” (RARE biker chicks version) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXVAiFBEpwA

1992 – Nike – Michael Jordan & Bugs Bunny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc61UtYUgbs

1993 – Nike – Michael Jordan & Bugs Bunny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2URMB4NGbo8

Best Nike Find Your Greatness Commercial – The Jogger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JnYcuRW_qo

Michael Jordan “Failure” Nike Commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45mMioJ5szc

Michael Jordan, John McEnroe Nike TV Commercial “Revolution” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMXhtFik-vI

Michael Jordan & Spike Lee “Hanging” Commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tylGvnY-C8c

Nike Air Max (Australian ad) 1993 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR4YXsUn5VA

Nike Commercial – Australia 1995 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDb04RSA9Kc

Nike commercial – Instant Karma https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB49FHuR_rQ (US) AND Nike Ad 1992 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqjTc-VA8iw (Australia)

Nike Commercial: Keep The Ball Alive (Australia) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLdP0rnqbBs

Nike football Australia national soccer team ronaldo messi rooney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrlKHrrTVaU

Nike “I am not a role model” commercial w/Charles Barkley – 1993 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gqk4WPnrpM

Nike + (Plus) Commercial Australia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJL56texolY

Nike Women – Better For It https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF_HqZrrx0c

The Athlete’s Foot Australia – Nike Lunar Glide TV Ad Oct 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybf-ecfbDOk

William S Burroughs Nike Commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oIT8rhRRs4

The very first visual effects company that I, having lived in Quebec all my life, remember having known about was Technicolor. For one thing, I knew them from the Warner Bros cartoons I watched as a child and, for another, from their Quebec French version of the Simpsons, a renowned triumph of localization tailored to our provincial tastes and cultural references in ways that radically differed from the European French version (http://www.doublage.qc.ca/p.php?i=162&idmovie=3103). Based on the expression ‘dreaming in color,’ as referring to wishful thinking, I remember an early cartoon character telling another they were ‘dreaming in Technicolor,’ although I can’t place which at the time. I even first used ‘Technicolor’ as a generic expression for visual effects companies in general before learning to know better (This is not always good mind you – for example Dolby has gone to great lengths to avoid becoming used as a ‘generic’ [Grainge] – but it does remain telling). Recently they have also set their sights on Asterix through Mikros, another notable staple of Quebec childhood viewing (Keslassy), which is an important stage during which to form lifelong positive associations of viewership. This essay will explore the role of Technicolor as a visual effects business operating partly in Quebec as well as abroad and in which ways it represents a decision of strategic importance for them to do so specifically.

While a name such as Technicolor does adequately conjure up the focus on visual effects that have brought the company its main claim to fame to this day, it also makes it easy to overlook that they would offer services such as adapting versions of television shows for multiple languages, subtitling for the hearing impaired, and marketing services to producers as well (http://www.technicolor.com/en/solutions-services/entertainment-services/creative-houses/technicolor-montreal/versioning-and-content-preparation). Moreover, they rent equipment (www.quebecfilmsourcebook.com, 151), offer distribution services (205), and their Montreal sound technician has received due accolades for some of his local work just last year (http://www.technicolor.com/en/who-we-are/press-news-center/news/canadian-screen-awards-2014-technicolor-montreal-celebrates-best-overall-sound-nomination). That said, Technicolor’s reputation concerning visual effects has effectively become a part of visual effects history itself, given the role that they played in the early propagation of RGB display (Prince, 71). Now a century old, Technicolor has had a long time during which to establish their legitimacy in the public mind. Starting during the classical era of film as defined by Hansen, they were known for their effects work for The Wizard of Oz (Prince, 78), Gone With The Wind (80), Quo Vadis (http://www.imdb.com/list/ls000387977/), and Ben-Hur (80), before going on with the Godfather 2, Toy Story (http://movies.wikia.com/wiki/Technicolor), Twister (74), and Pearl Harbor (67-68). With a focus on the high concept as described by Wyatt (Cohen, 2014), an involvement in popular franchises such as True Blood (Brousseau-Pouliot) and X-Men (Cohen, 2013), and a colorist director who just left the team that worked on Cameron’s Avatar to work with them and bring its advances to his new employers (Giardina), they clearly have an eye looking toward the future as well.

This provides us a point of entry into both of the related issues of the labor situation of workers for special effects companies in general and of the role of Technicolor’s presence in Quebec in particular. Caldwell reminds us that, when high-ranking members of production crews make statements about their work in the industry, we must remember to take into account the wider context, underlying implications and vested interests at play that may guide our reading of these statements so that we may read them beneath the surface level at which they are being presented to us. It only makes sense that the same would be true for postproduction as well, especially since so many movies’ success now hinge upon the quality of the impact of their frequently unrecognized work (Turnock). For example, when the newly appointed Sarnoff and Montrealer Gagnon (Johns) talk about the importance of being “flexible” (Cohen, 2013) and of having to be able to manage a large postproduction company “as though it were a small business,” (Brousseau-Pouliot), what we, as viewers, may brush off as innocuous may be read differently by effects workers themselves. In such cases, it must be understood that these statements can possibly be connected to the notorious instability of the working conditions of ‘below the line’ crew such as effects workers (Deuze). By always having one foot out the door, Technicolor discourages some of its special effects workers from getting ‘uppity’ by asking for too much. While being based in Quebec provides them with unique marketing opportunities that they would probably rather not relinquish if they can avoid it, the company as a whole could survive its departure from here if a situation occurred in which the benefits of their stay were to become outpaced by its costs, whereas some of their laid off workers may not fare as well.

What then to make of Kimball’s departure from Cameron’s team to join Technicolor (Giardina)? Cameron has long used his movies as spearheads to showcase new special effects technology that had never been tested before, and used the credit that he has taken for their success to add prestige to the persona as a technological innovator that he has been busily building around himself (Acland). With such shifts in employers, while they may dilute some of their employers’ brands by making them less exclusive, effects workers not only level the playing field by redistributing technology that can benefit a wider amount of viewers and employers. They also make the most of the experience that they have earned and make up for some of their work’s instability by using it to latch onto new opportunities. While we are not quite there yet, there may come a day when effects workers expecting to receive the recognition that they deserve for the work they do can no longer be said to be ‘dreaming in Technicolor.’

Bibliography

Acland, Charles R, “The End of James Cameron’s Quiet Years,” in International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume 6, Media Studies Futures, ed. Kelly Gates, London, Blackwell Press, 2013, 269-295

Brousseau-Pouliot, Vincent, “Claude Gagnon: le maître d’hôtel de Technicolor,” La Presse, October 14^th 2012 http://affaires.lapresse.ca/economie/medias-et-telecoms/201210/12/01-4582843-claude-gagnon-le-maitre-dhotel-de-technicolor.php

Caldwell, John, “Introduction: Industrial Reflexivity,” in Production Culture, Durham: Duke UP, 2008, 1-37, Notes p. 374-387

Cohen, David S, “Technicolor’s Sarnoff on Visual Effects: ‘We’ve Always Been an Industry in Turmoil’,” Variety, September 23^rd 2013 http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/technicolor-opens-montreal-post-facility-adds-vfx-jobs-1200663102/

Cohen, David S, “Technicolor To Acquire Visual Effects Studio Mr. X,” Variety, June 9^th 2014 http://variety.com/2014/biz/news/technicolor-1201216540/

Deuze, Mark, “Film and Television Production,” in Media Work, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007, 171-200

Doublage.qc.ca http://www.doublage.qc.ca/p.php?i=162&idmovie=3103

Giardina, Carolyn, “’Avatar’ Colorist Skip Kimball Joins Technicolor (Exclusive),” Hollywood Reporter, May 14^th 2012, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/avatar-colorist-skip-kimball-joins-323995

Grainge, Paul, “Dolby and the Unheard History of Technical Trademarks,” in Brand Hollywood: Selling Entertainment in a Global Media Age, New York: Routledge, 2008, 88-106

Hansen, Miriam, “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism,” in Reinventing Film Studies, eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, London: Arnold, 2000, 332-350

Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/list/ls000387977/

Johns, Nikara, “Tim Sarnoff To Head New Division at Technicolor,” Variety, March 12^th 2014, http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/tim-sarnoff-to-head-new-division-at-technicolor-1201129668/

Keslassy, Elsa, “Technicolor Acquires French Post-Prod Facility Mikros,” Variety, April 8^th 2015 http://variety.com/2015/biz/global/technicolor-acquires-french-post-prod-facility-mikros-1201468390/

Moviepedia http://movies.wikia.com/wiki/Technicolor

Prince, Stephen, “Painting With Light,” in Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2012, 56-98, Notes p. 232-237

Quebec Film and Television Council www.quebecfilmsourcebook.com

Savoie, Nicole, “Versioning and Content Preparation,” Technicolor, http://www.technicolor.com/en/solutions-services/entertainment-services/creative-houses/technicolor-montreal/versioning-and-content-preparation

Technicolor Montreal, February 28^th 2014 http://www.technicolor.com/en/who-we-are/press-news-center/news/canadian-screen-awards-2014-technicolor-montreal-celebrates-best-overall-sound-nomination

Turnock, Julie, “The Expanded Blockbuster” and “The Buck Stops at Optical,” in Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of 1970’s Blockbuster Aesthetics, New York: Columbia UP, 2015, 105-145, Notes p. 298-307

Wyatt, Justin, “A Critical Redefinition: The Concept of High Concept,” in High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994, 1-22

(SPOILERS for Undertale!!!)

This essay will trace the origins of a YouTube video based on an independent game, Undertale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4ru4QCIZS0. Despite being about a game, the video takes advantage of being of YouTube to accomplish what it does, in a way that couldn’t exist without YouTube. The game breaks the fourth wall, (Pereira, 3) and YouTube extends its ability to. It interrogates notions of identity, ethics and the real. We’ll examine fan and critical responses to it, analyze its content, and consider its place in the subcultures that it appeals to.

There are three endings: neutral, pacifist and genocide. It gives players “responsibility for participating in decision-making,” (Feenberg, 5) by “teach(ing) us to be good while giving us the freedom not to.” (Pereira) Here the villain, a believer in kill-or-be-killed who is ‘aware’ of being in a game, pauses while taunting the genocidal player to insult the YouTube viewer for wanting to see the results of violence without getting their hands dirty. It is jarring despite, or perhaps because, monsters at the opposite end of the spectrum of ‘realism’ than Hatsune Miku, who make no attempt to appear ‘realistic’ in their design whatsoever, would so blatantly “question the boundaries between the material and the virtual” (McLeod, 2) without uncanny valley aesthetics.

Like the visitors to the Darwin exhibit divided over the ‘reality’ of the turtle (Turkle, 3), some of the commenters show uncertainty about whether or not the video was made by the creator of the game or a fan. While none of the game’s events are ‘real,’ whether they have been programmed by the creator or by a modder somehow grants them a different degree of ‘reality’ for fans. Himself a modder, the developer created the game in the Earthbound engine, while altering both the mechanics and interactivity in radical ways that “enhanced the established technical systems while subverting their original design.” (Feenberg, 5) The monster who asks if anime is real because she has learned all she knows about humans from anime is a warning about inferring too much about what is the ‘real’ from its representations, especially about alien others.

On just this topic, following a long tradition of moral panic, Pat Robertson advised a mother who worried after finding ‘demonic images’ from the game on her daughter’s phone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-27GFE9IJQ&feature=youtu.be) that the game was just “a phase that individuals and groups ‘go through,’” (Couldry, 388-389) saying that “Those things are filled with violence and brutality.” His associate adds that “sometimes it’s about being cool with your friends.” A game hailed as ‘the game where you don’t have to kill anyone’, in which you can ‘not only fight monsters, but understand/befriend them,’ whose ending made a professional game reviewer cry (Croshaw), and whose skeleton was voted 3^rd least spooky in gaming (Pereira) seems like a bad target – aside from the part about being cool with your friends. Despite the single play, players engage with the monsters’ ‘humanness,’ (McLeod, 6) forming informal communities around sharing fanart, discussing what the characters mean to them, often encouraging the pacifist run or admitting they couldn’t complete the genocide run because they got too attached, but the single play is integral to the ‘ethics is when no one is looking’ premise.

It is fitting Robertson would segue into a rant about queers, polyamorous and transfolk as the downfall of society. In our post-Gamergate world, Undertale’s protagonist is intentionally “of ambiguous age, gender and ethnicity” (http://undertale.wikia.com/wiki/Frisk) to facilitate identification for anyone. You can date a male and a female monster (in a register for all ages), neither caring which gender you are, with the female leaving you for another female monster, who both “offer a positive challenge to identity stereotypes.” (McLeod, 9) Significantly, when they say they want to be ‘just friends,’ you do become their friends. Subverting the convention of romantic partners as rewards, being ‘friendzoned’ is represented as a victory. (Grayson) Many monsters have issues with depression or social anxiety that you can help them resolve. The game encourages acceptance of otherness and alien-ness in just the way that Robertson fears – just not the violence of which he accuses it. The interview’s place on YouTube gives players of the game an opportunity to respond in comments, almost functioning as an alternate kind of public sphere.

In-world, long ago, the First Human fell in the underworld, befriended the monster prince Asriel, died, and was buried by Asriel, who was then killed by humans believing Asriel had killed the human, prompting the monster king to separate human and monster worlds and to kill intruding humans. Eerily, if you reset, returning monsters understand ‘saving’ and ‘remember’ being killed. The monster queen Toriel tried to protect and teach all previous Humans as her own children. Rather than Turkle’s humans filling voids with machines, here this electronic ‘being’ reaches out to the player, asking them to replace the electronic child she lost and to restore peace to her world, believing that if she keeps giving people second chances, they will do their best to live up to it. The villain, with the power to save their own game, turns out to be another player bored with the neutral/pacifist runs who did the genocide run for ‘completion,’ uncaring about ‘unreal’ monsters. After the pacifist run the monsters beg you not to reset to let them keep peace.

Undertale doesn’t treat the biases of gaming as inevitable (Feenberg, 6) but “facilitates a series of ‘second chances.’” (Turkle, 159) While “We should not expect a single answer to the question of how media transform the social” (Couldry, 375) and “There is no way of manipulating an entire people into changing its desires,” (Feenberg, 13) it is also true that “objects do not simply do things for us, they do things to us… to our ways of seeing ourselves and others.” (Turkle, 1) If violent video games must be examined as to whether they encourage real violence, we should be able to consider that a gaming mentality that “transcends the rules we have come to take for granted” (Kücklich, The Future of Modding) by rewarding our “desire to nurture” (Turkle, 2) may “prove invaluable in dealing with the challenges society will face.” (Kücklich) It seems like a step in a better direction that a major developer may not have risked.

Bibliography

Couldry, Nick, “Mediatization or mediation? Alternative understandings of the emergent space of digital storytelling.” New Media & Society, Vol 10.3, 2008: 373–391.

CrankyConstruct, “Golly, Matt. – (TBFP Undertale Reset),” Oct 11^th 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4ru4QCIZS0

Croshaw, Ben “Yahtzee,” “Undertale May Be This Year’s Best Written Game,” The Escapist: Extra Punctuation, Oct 27^th 2015, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/14860-Undertale-for-Best-Written-Game-2015#&gid=gallery_4930&pid=1

Feenberg, Andrew. “Agency and Citizenship in a Technological Society,” Lecture presented to the Course on Digital Citizenship, IT University of Copenhagen, 2011.

Fox, Toby, Undertale, September 15^th 2015

Grayson, Nathan, “When Video Game Romances End In Rejection,” Kotaku, Nov 5^th 2015, http://kotaku.com/when-video-game-romances-end-in-rejection-1740634218

Kücklich, Julian. “FCJ-025 Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry.” The Fibreculture Journal: Digital Media + Networks + Transdisciplinary Critique, issue 5: precarious labour, December 5, 2005. Web. http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-025-precariousplaybour-modders-and-the-digital-games-industry/

Pereira, Clint, “7 Creepiest Fourth Wall Breaks In Video Games,” GameSkinny, Oct 31^st 2015, http://www.gameskinny.com/nhb97/7-creepiest-fourth-wall-breaks-in-video-games

Pereira, Clint, “10 Least Spooky Skeletons In Games,” GameSkinny, http://www.gameskinny.com/luvgs/10-least-spooky-skeletons-in-games/9#slidetop

Pereira, Clint, “Undertale teaches us to be good while giving us the freedom not to,” GameSkinny, Sep 26^th 2015, http://www.gameskinny.com/k3hfm/undertale-teaches-us-to-be-good-while-giving-us-the-freedom-not-to

Turkle, Sherry. “A Nascent Robotics Culture: New Complicities for Companionship,” AAAI Technical Report Series, 2006. http://web.mit.edu/sturkle/www/pdfsforstwebpage/ST_Nascent%20Robotics%20Culture.pdf

The Official 700 Club, “Bring It On-Line: Images on Cell Phone,” Nov 3^rd 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-27GFE9IJQ&feature=youtu.be

Turkle, Sherry. “Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality: Playing in the MUDs,” Mind, Culture, and Activity. Vol. 1, No. 3 Summer 1994: 158-167.

http://undertale.wikia.com/wiki/Frisk

Longtemps avant la période vers la fin du XIX^ème ayant succédé au Second Empire, au XV^ème siècle, le Marteau aux sorcières d’Heinrich Kramer a servi de point de référence aux hommes pour essayer de débusquer la source de l’élément insaisissable, la cause de l’influence corruptrice qu’ils croyaient que les femmes exerçaient sur eux, imaginant leur règne sur un monde invisible. Dans la vie de tous les jours, c’étaient surtout les hommes qui avaient le pouvoir, mais comme tous ceux qui profitent d’un déséquilibre de pouvoir pour l’instant, ils étaient tourmentés par la hantise que ce pouvoir leur serait enlevé, par la force inconnue que les femmes semblaient tout de même avoir de diriger leurs actes, et faisaient d’elles des divinités souterraines et vengeresses. Le concept de la femme fatale, comme la classification de films en tant que films noirs, a été suffisamment poussé en France au cours de la période de la Troisième République pour en devenir culturellement définie au point que nous prenons aujourd’hui pour acquis le fait que ces expressions ont été lexicalisées en anglais courant sous leur forme française, par défaut.

D’un côté, nous pouvons revenir encore bien plus tôt que le Marteau pour voir ces tendances commencer à se former dans la littérature et les arts en général, remontant jusqu’aux sources de la mythologie gréco-romaine antique dans laquelle nymphes et sirènes servaient déjà à cimenter l’association des femmes avec la tentation destructrice et la symbolique de l’eau et du son. D’un autre côté, la période de la fin du XIX^ème et du début du XX^ème était également dotée de caractéristiques particulières, associées à la révolution industrielle, qui ont encouragé les hommes à se servir de la mythologie comme de ce que Foucault appellerait un dispositif, comme d’une ‘digue’ pour contenir tous les aspects des femmes qui ‘débordaient’ de leur canal. Différents auteurs ont reflété par leur écriture différentes approches pour tenter de fournir une ‘explication’ mythologique de la femme fatale, variant en fonction des centres d’intérêts qui les avaient menés à l’écriture au départ.

Certains auteurs ont démonisé la femme, la présentant soit comme n’atteignant pas le bien promis à leur sujet par la mythologie, soit comme s’inscrivant dans un courant de mythologie négative censée servir d’avertissement à leur sujet, mais en tous les cas prenant pour acquis une mythologie dérivée de la femme, une tentative d’extraire sa réalité sous-jacente en termes compréhensibles. D’autres écrivains ont si totalement séparé la femme de sa mythologie qu’ils ont, par leur écriture, démontré que la mythologie reliée à la femme est dotée d’un pouvoir totalement indépendant de celui qui se rattache à la femme réelle, de sorte à ce qu’elle puisse en certains cas s’y substituer complètement et mener les hommes à la folie sans qu’aucune femme ne doive même être présente. Finalement, d’autres auteurs ont semblé percevoir que la mythologie n’était pas seulement dérivée de la femme, mais que c’étaient en fait parfois les hommes qui construisaient cette mythologie par eux-mêmes, de manière à tenter d’en faire dériver les femmes réelles sans vraiment les consulter par la suite, pour le meilleur et pour le pire de ce que ça pouvait donner.

Baudelaire et Zola peuvent être comptés parmi les auteurs appartenant à la première de ces catégories. Baudelaire compare volontiers « les déesses, les nymphes » (1863-1869, p. 11) qui « had harmful as well as life-enhancing powers… » (March, 1998, p. 537) aux « filles entretenues ». (Baudelaire, p. 12) Si la femme, pour Baudelaire, peut être à la fois « comme Dieu » (1863-1869, p. 21) mais « dénuée de spiritualité » (25), c’est que celle-ci est représentée comme prenant la place de Dieu, comme remplaçant le rôle que Dieu est censé jouer pour l’homme mais, implicitement, sans sa légitimité, seulement par force d’attraction pour l’esprit masculin, de façon ‘satanique’. (26) Au mieux, la femme est seulement louangée comme étant celle « par qui les artistes et les poètes composent leurs plus délicats bijoux » (Baudelaire, 1863-1869, p. 21), mais il est incapable de les concevoir comme des artistes ou des poètes elles-mêmes, s’imaginant qu’elles « font semblant d’écouter » (24) et qu’elles n’ont « rien à communiquer ». (21) C’est par le baromètre de son effet sur l’homme que la femme est ici jugée, chez qui elle suscite une curiosité pour qui elle est « devenue une passion fatale, irrésistible! » (Baudelaire, 1863-1869, p. 8)

On pourrait facilement reconnaître la figure de Nana telle que présentée par Zola dans la description de Baudelaire d’une « idole stupide… enchanteresse, qui tient les destinées et les volontés suspendues à ses regards ». (Baudelaire, 1863-1869, p. 21) Sa ‘vengeance des gueux’ sur scène fait d’elle « a ‘remarkable harlot,’ who begins ‘at the bottom’ but works her way ‘up’ » (Jancovich, 2011, 108) soit une de ces filles « [é]mergeant d’un monde inférieur, fières d’apparaître enfin au soleil » qui « existent bien plutôt pour le plaisir de l’observateur que pour leur plaisir propre ». (Baudelaire, 1863-1869, p. 25) Nana représente une interrogation de la même nature que la question de Baudelaire au sujet de ce qui différencie et rapproche la comédienne du poète ou de la courtisane, et formule d’une manière semblable les attentes envers les femmes quant à l’effet qu’elles devraient chercher à avoir. (Baudelaire, 1863-1869, p. 25-26) Les femmes fatales comme Nana « ont continuée d’être associées à la dépendance plutôt qu’à l’indépendance » (Jancovich, 2011, p. 100) et Nana est également « obsessed with her own image and dependent on the adoration of her fans » (110), une « siren » (March, 1998, p. 703-704) qui « sexually manipulates men in her search for the most financially advantageous partnership. » (Jancovich, 2011, p. 103) La femme fatale en tant qu’usurpatrice divine est le mieux représentée dans l’« Olympe de carton » (Zola, 1880, p. 18) de Nana, dans lequel Diane devient « une raillerie même du personnage » (19), Vulcain devient « le dieu des cocus » (20) et l’auteur exprime son regret pour « [c]e carnaval des dieux, l’Olympe traîné dans la boue, toute une religion, toute une poésie bafouées… » (28)

Si on regarde la situation d’un point de vue féminin, on peut d’un côté voir comme une prise de pouvoir positive par une femme un tel assaut contre les structures mythologiques même qui soit les démonisent, soit les placent sur des piédestaux inatteignables. D’un autre côté, le fait que Zola déplore qu’il « n’y aura bientôt plus d’honnêtes femmes au théâtre» (1880, p. 24) implique qu’il ne représente pas nécessairement par Nana la femme en général, du moins pas intentionnellement, quoique l’usage du mot ‘nana’ rende justement cette question plus floue. De cette manière, on peut lire la résistance de Zola à ce que représente le personnage de Nana comme un effet de sa fonction comme symbole de tout ce qu’il y avait de pourri dans le Second Empire et comme une réaction contre l’objectification des femmes éclipsant l’attention portée à leur talent, de façon conséquente à ses réactions partagées à différentes Vénus. Une telle hypothèse a le mérite de s’inscrire davantage dans la tradition de conscience sociale établie par Zola dans son œuvre, mais demeure informatrice quant aux mythes relatifs aux femmes qui étaient disponibles à son époque desquels il prenait pour acquis qu’il pouvait puiser afin de faire le mieux passer ses messages. Il est intéressant de noter qu’il blâme la pièce de ne pas atteindre la hauteur sacrée d’une histoire antique dont le message était déjà, au départ, que « mortal and immortal alike was open to the power and pain of love » (March, 1998, p. 106-109), qu’il n’y avait point de refuge divin hors des griffes de l’égarement amoureux.

D’autres auteurs, comme Maupassant et Huysmans, ont pourtant exploré des situations dans lesquelles un homme tombait amoureux si dévoué d’un mythe associé à la femme qu’il l’aimait sans femme même. C’est parce que l’homme de La Chevelure est « possédé par le désir des femmes d’autrefois » (Maupassant, 1884, p. 803) qu’il finit par tomber amoureux non pas d’une femme réelle, mais du mythe personnel qu’il se forge autour d’une femme ayant vécu longtemps auparavant à partir de ce qui lui reste d’elle dans le présent. En renversement de l’objectification de la femme présentée dans Nana par Zola, Maupassant procède plutôt à une féminisation de l’objet. Il s’agit ici d’un objet qui « vous séduit, vous trouble, vous envahit comme ferait un visage de femme », l’homme parlant de la « lune de miel du collectionneur avec le bibelot qu’il vient d’acheter » qui « va le contempler avec une tendresse d’amant. » (Maupassant, 1884, p. 804) L’emploi du terme « religieusement » (Maupassant, 1884, p. 804) n’est pas non plus un hasard car, comme pour une religion, c’est de toute l’histoire que l’homme se raconte à lui-même autour de ce qui lui est présenté et qui lui devient associé que provient son attachement émotionnel, et la tentative de résister à la perte qui le motive à croire que « Les morts reviennent! » (Maupassant, 1884, p. 806) Il est instructif de comparer la chevelure en tant que « la seule partie vivante de sa chair qui ne dût point pourrir » (Maupassant, 1884, p. 805) à la mort de Nana en pourrissant justement, soulignant contraste du refus par l’homme de la ‘femme en tant que mortelle’ que Zola exposait en elle. Qu’il parle de la chevelure « comme si quelque chose de l’âme fût resté caché dedans » (Maupassant, 1884, p. 805) rappelle le passage de Swann au sujet de « la croyance celtique que les âmes de ceux que nous avons perdus sont captives dans quelque être inférieur… une chose inanimée… elles ont vaincu la mort et reviennent vivre avec nous. » (Proust, 1913, p. 32) Enfin, il est pertinent de remarquer qu’il parle du « ruisseau charmant de cheveux » (Maupassant, 1884, p. 805) qu’il « buvait » et dans lequel il « noyait » ses yeux, continuant la métaphore aquatique établie par les nymphes (Baudelaire, 26) et par « Vénus naissant des flots ». (Zola, 1880, p. 37)

Le concept de la femme fatale qui allait se perpétuer par la suite dans le film noir allait emprunter, tout comme Huysmans, à l’histoire biblique du personnage légendaire de Salomé, la femme fatale par excellence. (Jancovich, 2011, p. 110-111) Les peintures de Salomé et la mythologie que des Esseintes y rattache deviennent pour lui une instance de sublimation, une situation dans laquelle, avec son enfermement loin des risques de cœur par crainte d’être blessé ou déçu, il tombe amoureux d’objets représentant ce que la femme pourrait être, non pas malgré mais parce qu’elle n’est pas réelle, donc à l’épreuve des déceptions. Elle est représentée « comme un grand scarabée » (Flaubert, 1877), « ainsi que des insectes splendides aux élytres éblouissants » (Huysmans, 1884, p. 68), appartenant donc à la fois à un registre animalier dans lequel la femelle est aussi dangereuse que colorée, donc d’une puissance qui inverse les structures patriarcales, et à un registre orientaliste de la spiritualité égyptienne qui externalise l’interdit. (70-71) Dans la même veine gréco-romaine qu’auparavant, elle est aussi comparée à Hélène, (Huysmans, 1884, p. 70) dont le rôle d’avoir ‘lancé milles vaisseaux’ la place aussi indirectement dans le champ sémantique de l’eau. (March, 1998, p. 358-365)

Des Esseintes veut une femme qui lui impose le respect dans un monde qui lui a appris à la mépriser, une femme qui le pousse vers le diable quand son époque le pousse vers Dieu, qui le pousse vers l’extérieur de lui-même si tout ce qui lui fait défaut dans le monde réel ne le poussait pas vers l’intérieur, qui l’approche comme un homme approcherait une femme, aussi « à rebours » que lui. Mais son époque et son monde ne permettent pas selon lui à une telle femme d’exister, donc il se réfugie dans le rêve de ce qu’elle avait dû être, dans le pouvoir immortel de Salomé de « réveiller les sens assoupis du vieil Hérode » (Huysmans, 1884, p. 68) tout comme il aurait lui-même besoin d’être éveillé de sa léthargie. Son insistance à faire jouer à comédie à sa ventriloque avec sa chimère et son sphinx est révélatrice de son narcissisme, c’est-à-dire de sa perte en lui-même, encore une fois associée avec l’eau (March, 1998, p. 519-520), puisqu’il se laisse gagner par l’émotion de son mythe sans même remarquer la femme réelle à côté de lui qui ne partage pas du tout son enthousiasme. (Huysmans, 1884, p. 132-133) Le sphinx représente également la foule qu’il fuit en s’enfermant et la féminité qu’il redoute :

‘Crowds are like the sphinx of ancient fable; it is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them…’ the female Sphinx, the ‘strangling one’, who was so called because she strangled all those who could not answer her riddle: female sexuality, womanhood out of control, lost nature, loss of identity. (Wilson, 1991, p. 7)

Maeterlinck et Proust, quant à eux, nous présentent des scénarios dans lesquels l’absurdité de l’imposition de la mythologie sur les personnages féminins réels dans leurs histoires par le monde extérieur est la plus visible et indéniable. Le symbolisme dans Pelléas et Mélisande prédomine à un tel point que, si on l’approche d’un point de vue terre à terre telle une histoire comme une autre, elle apparaît seulement au lecteur comme complètement invraisemblable. Volontairement déracinée de Paris, il s’agit d’une pièce qui n’est que ‘fin de siècle’ dans sa réaction contre ce que c’était que d’être ‘fin de siècle.’ Cependant, c’est le lien sémantique entre la femme fatale et l’eau qui y est renforcé le plus. Après que les servantes aient lavé le seuil (Maeterlinck, 1892, p. 6) avec « toute l’eau du déluge » (7), on découvre Mélisande comme le soleil se lève sur la mer (7), tout comme le soleil se couchera sur la mer quand elle mourra. (86) On la découvre en train de pleurer au bord d’une fontaine, elle menace de se jeter à l’eau, (Maeterlinck, 1982, p. 8-9) elle y plonge ses cheveux (20) et ses cheveux « inondent » Pelléas « jusqu’au cœur ». (43)

Il est pertinent de noter à ce sujet que Luce Irigaray « claims that fluids have been associated with female corporealities… and have thus resisted logical apprehension and adequate representation » et que « sound waves have been routinely figured… as feminized, unruly, and in need of technological control ». (Rodgers, 2012, p. 158) La sirène ailée noyée devient avec le temps la sirène amphibie, une qui meurt dans l’eau, l’autre qui y vit, mais toutes deux vivent pour le désordre par le chant. Mélisande n’est cependant « not presented as evil ». (Jancovich, 2011, p. 103) Non seulement Golaud est-il présenté comme irrationnel mais, en fait, c’est comme si ce qui arrivait entre elle et Pelléas faisait partie du cycle des saisons, comme si le sacrifice qui leur est imposé par la structure mythologique qui leur est appliquée était une partie tout aussi indissociable de la marche du monde naturel que le sacrifice des dieux agricoles Yarilo et Morana. Ce qui est inévitable ne peut pas être de leur faute. En fait, c’est comme si l’intemporalité de la pièce même était un commentaire de l’extérieur sur le fait que cette structure narrative a tellement été répétée, tellement imitée par la réalité qui l’a imitée elle-même, qu’elle en devient virtuellement ‘incontournable.’ C’est justement l’effet ‘forcé’ de la pièce qui, paradoxalement, le dénaturalise.

Dans Swann, notons premièrement le nom – Swann – littéralement, un cygne, un oiseau dont le haut du corps est au-dessus de l’eau alors que le bas de son corps en est en-dessous, à mi-chemin entre les créatures volantes et nageantes, comme une créature de la mythologie gréco-romaine. La petite phrase de Vinteuil y est décrite comme un « clapotement liquide » et une « agitation des flots ». (Proust, 1913, p. 153) La jalousie de Swann est comparée à « une pieuvre qui jette une première, puis une seconde, puis une troisième amarre ». (Proust, 1913, p. 208) Proust nous dit directement que, pour Swann, l’image d’Odette en est une « entre beaucoup d’autres images de femmes dans des rêveries ». (145) Entre l’air et l’eau, Swann est entre le conscient et l’inconscient, et dérive son image de l’Odette réelle d’un « monde de rêves ». (Proust, 1913, p. 164) Bien qu’on puisse sentir une pitié, peut-être même un peu de sympathie pour son égarement, c’est l’aspect représentatif du fait qu’il soit surtout de sa faute de s’être construit une image aussi abstraite de sa femme fatale qui nous intéresse ici. Plutôt que la femme ‘révélée’ par la mythologie, ou la femme à qui on reproche de ne pas s’y conformer, c’est ici l’homme qui construit sa mythologie qui l’égare autour de la femme, reflétant ainsi bien davantage ses propres craintes et désirs que la femme réelle elle-même, et c’est l’attention portée à la réalité qui est valorisée au-dessus de la mythologie. Il s’agit là d’un revirement significatif.

À l’époque de la révolution industrielle ayant coïncidé avec le Second Empire, avec la transition de l’aristocratie à la bourgeoisie, les villes offraient une nouvelle liberté aux femmes et les présomptions faites par les hommes à leur sujet affectaient la planification urbaine en fonction de ce qu’ils s’imaginaient être la place que la femme devait occuper dans la société. (Wilson, 1991, p. 6) Pour Baudelaire, la femme « représente bien la sauvagerie dans la civilisation » (1863-1869, p. 25), tout comme pour des Esseintes, « women have become an irruption in the city, a symptom of disorder, and a problem: the Sphinx in the city ». (Wilson, 1991, p. 9) La ville est donc conçue comme devant devenir un endroit ‘endigué’ et sec, où le désordre du chant des sirènes est facilement ‘canalisé,’ et les conceptions littéraires sont un des moyens employés à cet effet. On voit la ligne trop mince entre ce qu’il prendrait à Venise pour devenir l’Atlantide pour accepter les risques du désordre représentés par la femme fatale. L’amour de Swann le convainc finalement que « l’idéal est inaccessible » (Proust, 1913, p. 163), mais le résultat du sien suggère aussi au lecteur que l’idéal n’est peut-être pas non plus toujours souhaitable – que le parfait peut être l’ennemi du bon, et que de placer la mythologie au-dessus de la réalité peut être de placer la charrue avant les bœufs.

Bibliographie

Baudelaire, Charles, Le peintre de la vie moderne, 1863-1869, https://moodle.concordia.ca/moodle/pluginfile.php/1881515/mod_resource/content/1/BAUDELAIRE_Choix%20de%20textes_FLIT%20319.pdf

Flaubert, Gustave, « Hérodias », Trois contes, 1877

Foucault, Michel, L’histoire de la sexualité, Éditions Gallimard, 1976

Huysmans, Joris-Karl, À rebours, Charpentier, mai 1884, http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/%C3%80_rebours

Jancovich, Mark, « ‘Vicious Womanhood’: Genre, The Femme Fatale and Postwar America », Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Spring 2011, Vol. 20 Issue 1, 100-114, http://www.filmstudies.ca/journal/pdf/cjfs-20-1-jancovich-femme-fatale-america.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jarilo

Kramer, Heinrich, Malleus Maleficarum, 1486, http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/downloads/MalleusAcrobat.pdf

March, Jenny, Cassell’s Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Cassell & Co, London, 1998

Maeterlinck, Maurice, Pelléas et Mélisande, 1892, https://moodle.concordia.ca/moodle/pluginfile.php/1877174/mod_resource/content/2/MAETERLINCK_Pell%C3%A9as%20et%20M%C3%A9lisande%20%281892%29.pdf

Maupassant, « La Chevelure », Les contes de Guy de Maupassant, 1884, https://moodle.concordia.ca/moodle/pluginfile.php/1896298/mod_resource/content/1/Choix%20de%20contes%20de%20Maupassant_FLIT%20319.pdf

Proust, Marcel, « Un amour de Swann », 1913, http://www.franceinfo.us/03_books/books/proust-swann.pdf

Rodgers, Tara, “Choose Your Own Adventure,” Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol. 37, 155-161, University of Maryland, 2012, http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/2521/2293

Wilson, Elizabeth. (1991). The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women. Ch.1- Into the Labyrinth. (1-11). Berkeley: University of California Press, https://mercury.concordia.ca/articles/3157713.25089/1.PDF

Zola, Émile, Nana, Georges Charpentier, 1880, http://www.pitbook.com/textes/pdf/nana.pdf

Whether philosophies or religions, throughout traditional Chinese history, Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism moved together and bounced off each other. Although perhaps not in competition with each other in the way in which we would mean it here in the West, there were sufficient differences between them for the occasional clash to occur. However, similarities between them, as well as a sort of resident open-minded pragmatism, also contributed, given their relative proximity and constant interaction, to cause them to draw heavily from one another from time to time. Before getting more deeply into that, some modicum of knowledge of their basic tenets is required, obviously. So let’s get right to it, shall we?

Confucianism concerns itself primarily with sociopolitical matters. Actually, Confucius spent his life travelling China looking for a ruler who would listen to his advice. After his death, disciples of his students recorded his thoughts in a series of books, lessons and classics. So despite not fidning a ruler to advise while he was alive, Confucius ended up advising a myriad of rulers from beyond the grave. According to Confucianism, government is basically an ethical problem. The way to recognize ethical behavior is by observing the behavior of the ancients, since everything good has already happened before, in the Golden Age of the past, and duplicating what they did. In this way, the power of the moral example of the ruler will extend to his people who, being therefore virtuous, as a result from their confidence in their ruler, will exhibit self-control, thus require minimal effort in the way of ruling. Five hierarchical relationships are supposed to define society: those of parent and child, husband and wife, older and younger siblings, ruler and citizen, friend and friend. Fulfilling these roles and maintaining a clear-cut distinction between them is the key to social harmony. People’s titles should reflect the way they act, and vice-versa, so if people (such as rulers) stop behaving in the way that their title requires them to, others have a right and even a duty to rebel and treat deviants the way they’d treat what they act makes them (to wit: when an appointed ruler acts like a scoundrel, people have a right and duty to treat him like a scoundrel…). The best English translation of the man who follows the Confucian “virtues”, such as ritual (li) and humanity/benevolence (ren) is the “gentleman”. A concern of the followers of Confucius he did not explore is human nature, so two schools of thought developed afterwards on the subject. Mencius believed human nature to be good, but tainted beyond recognition and in need of cultivation, whereas Hsun Tzu believed it (to be) an evil in need of correction, going so far as to accept coercion as an effective means of achieving this, even though Confucius himself disliked the concept of law, believing that people should be good of their own accord. In any case, the emphasis was on education.

Daoism is said to have been invented by a man named Lao Zi (who may never have existed) around 500 B.C.. Zhuang Zhou later took his teachings even further from society and culture, and more towards nature and personal endeavors. The main concept of Daoism is, quite fittingly, the Dao, which means “Path”. The exact nature of it can’t be explained in words but only through personal experience. One aspect of it is the understanding, millenia before Einstein, that everything is relative, which makes language inadequate, names limiting and distinctions, an illusion. It requires a total, unquestioning acceptance of the immutable laws of nature, and frowns upon forcing oneself to commit unnatural actions. It praises the concept what it calls the “uncarved block”, that is, of human being untouched by culture or society, in primeval simplicity. Therefore, it emphasizes the freedom of the individual to remain in that state and express itself truthfully – there is no art, dance, writing or music in China without Daoism. Since education modifies humanity, and furthermore words are misleading compared to experience, the Daoists who don’t altogether shun it are at least duly suspicious of the false sense of knowledge it can bring. Zhuang Zhou wrote of a wheelwright, for example, criticizing book learning, who learned his craft by hand alone and couldn’t transmit it. He also used the spaces between the spokes of wheels as an example of the importance of nothingness, and the dream of being a butterfly as an example of relativity. Sociopolitically speaking, a Daoist ruler should get out of the way and let people happen.

Initially, Confucianism and Daoism didn’t really hit it off so great, since the latter first arose as a reaction to the former, to give back freedom to the responsible, individuality to the dutiful and creativity to the copycat. Society, bound too closely together, was suffocating unto itself. However, it would also fall apart if its threads were spread too thin. This is why, instead of merely remaining in diametrical opposition with each other, they ended up becoming the complementary elements of a balanced lifestyle. Both were socially oriented and vastly preferred farmers to merchants, but for different reasons. Confucius appreciated the former’s social contribution, Daoists his possible self-reliance and simple living. Both hated merchants. Obvious clash on education.

Enter Buddhism. Inspired from Hinduism, it offed Brahma and atman and offered an escape from samsara by getting enough (good?) karma to achieve Nirvana. Buddha taught that all life is suffering caused by desire which can be eliminated by following the eightfold path. T’ien t’ai was a philosophical, all-englobing sect that appealed to intellectuals; Ching tu, more peasantly, was devotional, emphasizing the mumbling repetition of “namu amida butsu” until you accidentally hit the spot with a sincere one; Ch’an, meditative, heavily Daosized, emphasized sudden or progressive enlightenment through meditation and the student/teacher relationships as well as “koans” to stun the mind beyond rational thought.

Now, Confucians hated asceticism, self-mutilation (head shaving) (since they thought a person’s body belonged to that person’s parents), cremation, celibacy (no filial piety), begging (not a productive member of society), selfishness (caring about one’s own salvation as opposed to social concerns), alienness and novelty (Buddhism was recent & Indian & if it was so great then how come the Chinese ancients hadn’t thought of it first?). They were further appalled by the notions of moral relativity & wealthy Tang Buddhist monks. However, the metaphysical aspects appealed to them and were eventually integrated into Neo-Confucianism, much like Ch’an is a combination of Daoism and Buddhism. Confucianism & Daoism already “played off of” each other as previously described.
Confucianism had a tremendous impact on traditional China. From its inception onward, no period/era/dynasty escaped from some modicum of Confucian influence in its various political, social, economic, diplomatic and cultural aspects. This will be in semi-chronological order.

Now, Confucius always, or at least somewhat often, went back to the duke of Zhou as a moral example he claimed to have been inspired from and, whether he’d been so virtuous as said or not, Confucius’ word was accepted itself as truth by many, so that’s mostly how he must’ve been remembered. So even though he couldn’t actually do anything about the actual events during that period, since he wasn’t around yet back then, he must’ve at least affected the historical records of it, which are all we have to know it by, after all.

Confucius himself showed up just before the Early Han, with his notions of government as an ethical problem, the power of moral example, the Golden Age of the past, role differentiation, the rectification of names, the five relationships, the right to rebel, the gentleman and… the study of human nature and emphasis on education were mostly a late addition from Mencius and Hsun Tzu, who obviously probably wouldn’t have written squat if it hadn’t been for Confucius, or at the very least couldn’t have benefited from pretending to rest the whole of their teachings upon his authority by claiming them to be interpretation of his words.

The Era of Division suffered from a decline in Confucianism, in which people turned more to a search of natural harmony at the expense of social conventions.

The first emperor of the Early Han really didn’t think much of pompous Confucian scholars at first, but quickly found the teachings of Confucius to be a very useful body of learning to legitimize his dynasty and insure the faithfulness of his ministers. Emperor Wu exhibited a generous patronage of Confucianism by establishing the civil service examination system. Around this time, Confucians developed the notion that art should be used solely as a vehicle with which to convey moral messages, never a mere exercise in aesthetics. They never failed to criticize the eunuchs, who by their very nature took the cherished Confucian principles of filial piety and trampled them underfoot. The Classic of Filial Piety would continue to influence China to this very day, since it may be at least partly, and perhaps even largely, responsible for the fact that Mao didn’t manage to destroy the family as the basic social unit to replace it with the loyalty to government. The Lessons for Women remained an obstacle to the emancipation of women in China, let alone a feminist Chinese movement, all the way to the previous century and maybe even this very one that we’re in right now. Coercitive Legalist applications of Confucian principles, instilled in the Late Han may have dismayed Confucius himself, since he saw need for law as weakness (the need, not the law), but the other parts of his teachings nonetheless inspired them.

A ruler, in the Tang, did have a Confucian advisor, but, although he listened to him in matters of moral issues, didn’t let them take part in important decisions. However, since this was also the period of Buddhist persecutions, it may also be said to have been influenced by Confucius, since Buddhists had long grated on Confucian nerves.

The Song saw a Confucian revival blooming, the funding of governmental universities as well as private academics, and the putting together of Neo-Confucianism, which integrated some key concepts of Daoism and Buddhism even as it tried to distinguish itself from them. Around that time, the expression that a true Confucian was “first to worry aout the world’s troubles and last in enjoying its pleasures” came into being, further reinforcing the notion of the individual’s responsibilities towards society. Confucian charities were created.

Not only didn’t the Mongol hordes’ invasion of China during the Yuan not put a damper on Confucianism, but Khubilai Khan, son of Gengis, promoted Confucian officials to high posts, accepted to receive advice from Confucian scholars and even went so far as to have his son educated in a Confucian manner. A following ruler, Bayan, banned the civil service examination service, but it was later reinstated by Toghto. However, Mongols and non-Chinese allies of theirs were given simplified examinations, which gave them an unfair advantage. Despite the fact that eunuch power and merchant trade enraged Confucians, they flourished nonetheless, the era even going so far as spawning eunuch schools, which must have seemed like an oxymoron from a Confucian viewpoint.

The individualistic Ming saw Confucians confronted to the problem of living in a distinctly non-Confucian age. Wang Yangming, a philosopher, said that if teachings were good, who cared if Confucius hadn’t said them? and if they were bad, even if Confucius had said them, we shouldn’t follow them. The doctrine of pure criticism cost many people their lives. Madly loyal officials suffered torture from despots in the name of Confucian ideals. Contrariwise, philosophers criticized the supremacy of family values and defended selfishness.

Some began to see Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism as three complementary parts of one syncretic doctrine. Emperor Taizu practically abolished the antiauthoritarian teachings of Mencius but they were brought back by Cheng Zu, who furthermore funded a literary treasure and instilled more frequent examinations.

A “Confucian Legalist” Emperor, Xiaodong, abolished eunuch power, forbade private academies, sponsored great construction projects and generally ruled his people with an iron fist in the name of Confucius.

In the Qing, under the Manchus, philosophers criticized universal Confucian-inspired despotism by saying environmental circumstances were more relevant to behavior than fixed teachings. Although surprisingly well-disposed towards law for Confucians, they really mostly put their faith in education.

(Written from memory for an exam based on classes by Martin Singer)