Journal articles: 'Closed caption television' – Grafiati (2024)

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In China, closed caption is the latest technology standard separating the caption from the image. In current digital television system, it is an urgent issue to be resolved that how to implement the real-time transmission of closed caption with its host video. This paper proposed a kind of closed caption and its representation method. It also designed a closed caption data structure based on XML and provided a solution about how to package XML file and XML Schema file into MXF files.

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Whereas entertainment has featured negatively in the broader NBN debate currently occurring in Australia, within the disability sector it has been recognised as revolutionary. Government, industry and technical analysts describe digital television, particularly that delivered via broadband, as potentially enabling to people with vision and hearing impairments through the more widespread provision of accessibility features such as audio description and closed captions. This article interrogates the approach to accessibility taken by two case studies of broadband-based television: Netflix and catch-up TV. Netflix, which is not officially available in Australia, is often presented as the future of television, while catch-up services provide an example of the current broadband-based television paradigm in this country. Although accessibility features may be available on broadcast television or DVD release, each of these forms of broadband-based television has either previously (Netflix) or currently (catch-up) stripped accessible functions to stream online. The discussion reflects on both activist interventions of people with disability and the industry standards.

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This study was undertaken to create an Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus; ABB) ethogram during hibernation and to describe the time budget of hibernating behaviours in ABB. Seven captive adult ABB were included in the study and began hibernation between October and December. Data were collected for three consecutive years (2013–2015) during ABB hibernation (total 169 days) using closed-circuit television. During the study, we observed 21 distinct behaviours in hibernating ABB (4 least active and 17 active behaviours). Five bears started hibernation less than seven days after feeding cessation, and by the end of one week, all bears hibernated. The most commonly observed behaviour was “sleep curling inside nest”, and “nest maintenance” was the second most common behaviour. Among the active behaviours, “sitting in the nest”, “change stance”, “drinking and eating” were mostly shown as documented during the observation times. Our results provide new insights into the hibernating behaviours of ABB.

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The dual sensory loss of hearing and sight results in the most isolating of handicapping conditions. Technological advances to meet this challenge have come from both the blindness and deafness fields. Provision of information in the form of paper braille slows information flow because of length of preparation time. Access to weather or daily news, for example, has required the ability to hear the broadcast. Closed-captioning for the hearing impaired population has converted sound to print within four to six seconds after the audio signal is transmitted, but the system requires that the broadcast be seen. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) has been awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop and test a prototype device to make closed-captioned television available to deaf-blind people The Braille TeleCaption System, with an output available in braille and large print, is being tested at the Helen Keller National Center. Existing and new technology makes real-time viewing of news, weather, and entertainment accessible to deaf-blind persons.

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The case study of a Norwegian deaf boy with severe reading disorder is described. In spite of average and above-average performance on standardized tests, adequate motivation, and the fact that the reading instruction was adapted to the signing environment of the deaf students, on entering the 5th grade at 11 years of age, the boy was functionally illiterate. A holistic approach to writing instruction was initiated, based on process-oriented writing, Norwegian sign language, drawings, and word processing augmented with a word prediction system called PAL. This approach managed to get writing within his zone of proximal development, that is, it made it possible to provide him with writing assignments that he could learn to complete. With appropriate help and guidance from the teachers, the student himself actively acquired reading and writing skills, which he now uses independently for schoolwork and self-initiated writing activities, as well for as reading newspapers and closed-captioned television programs.

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The serval (Leptailurus serval) is a small African felid that is well represented in zoos and often serves as an animal ambassador in encounter programs with zoo visitors. The impact on serval welfare in relation to such programs has not been investigated to date, and the aim of this study was to assess short-term welfare effects of varying levels of visitor interaction in two captive servals. Weekly blocks of four different treatments were imposed three times on each animal over 12 weeks, and the treatments involved (1) Presentations (serval undertaking a routine training session in a designated presentation space, typically attracting high visitor numbers), (2) Behind-the-scenes (BTS, a close encounter allowing a small group of visitors to interact closely with the cat in its enclosure), (3) Presentations and BTS combined, and (4) No visitor interaction. Serval activity budgets as well as behavioural diversity were created from behaviours observed from Close Circuit Television (CCTV) footage during four daily recording sessions per animal over three consecutive days per treatment, using instantaneous scan sampling every 60 s. Individual faecal samples were collected daily to monitor changes in faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGM) concentration. Results indicate that the mean number of scans with stereotypic pacing was significantly reduced (p = 0.01) during Treatments 1 and 3, when cats participated in presentations only, or the two activities combined. Conversely, a significant reduction in behavioural diversity (p < 0.001) was observed when cats participated in Treatment 3, i.e., cats expressed fewer behaviours when interaction with visitors was more frequent. FGM concentrations did not vary significantly with treatment (p > 0.05). Given the reduction in stereotypic pacing, these findings suggest that involvement in an encounter program appears to exert an overall positive short-term welfare effect on the individual servals in this study. Although a reduction in behavioural diversity was not considered a negative welfare effect in the short term, potential long-term negative welfare effects resulting from a more frequent encounter program could not be ruled out in the present study.

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When Malcolm Fraser opened The Australian Captioning Centre in 1982, he emphasised the importance of changing technology in improving the provision of captions:there is always going to be new technology coming forward, there will always be better ways of doing it if you wait a while. This has been delayed a long while already and I don't believe that there is any excuse for further delay by the ABC or by commercial stations on the grounds of technology.New captioning technologies are coming forward at a rapid pace. In the time we have been preparing this issue, Facebook announced it would offer users the ability to have live videos captioned, a group of fansubbers in the Netherlands were found to be engaging in illegal activities (see Hollier et al this issue), the Australian copyright Act was amended to allow the creation of accessible versions of content to address any form of disability, and The National Center for Accessible Media in the US launched a free Caption and Description Editing Tool (CADET) following a crowd funding campaign.Captions are most often associated with making audiovisual content accessible to people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing; however, with technological advancements, people are increasingly finding mainstream benefits for captions, whether as a learning tool in education, or to capture the attention of Facebook users quickly scrolling through their news feeds, or to watch television in a crowded or noisy area such as bars and gyms. Captions have also taken on a central role in popular memes, social media, and Web-based creativity. Historically, the mainstream benefits of captions have been integral to their increasingly widespread availability (Downey). This issue of M/C seeks to investigate the changing uses of captions in media and culture.We begin with a feature article from Catherine Burwell exploring the use of captions in Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+) news videos created in response to Facebook’s autoplay feature. Analysing two recent AJ+ videos, Burwell shows how captions add new layers of meaning to the already multimodal form of the video, and how they change the way that news stories are communicated. The broader role that captions play in audience engagement, branding, and profit-making extends these textual interpretations, and the paper ends with a brief enquiry into the implications of captions for our understanding of literacy in an age of constantly shifting media.Melissa Merchant, Katie Ellis and Natalie Latter offer a historical progression of the availability of captions on television—using the cooking genre as their case study—to identify three stages of caption availability and quality. These can be broadly summarised as early yet inconsistent captions, captions becoming more widely available and accurate—often as a direct result of activism and legislation—but not yet fully verbatim, and verbatim captions as adopted within mainstream augmentative uses.Mike Kent, Katie Ellis and Gwyneth Peaty take up the shifting concept of literacy and the potential uses of mainstreaming captions to consider what happens when captioned online university lectures are made available to the entire student population. Their article reports findings of research assessing the usefulness of captioned recorded lectures as a mainstream learning tool to determine their usefulness in enhancing inclusivity and learning outcomes for the disabled, international, and broader student population.Beth Haller’s essay reflects on the Switched at Birth all American Sign Language (ASL) episode Uprising to consider what happens when captions are opened to and utilised by the majority of the population. The US cable television show Switched at Birth (2011-2017) broke new ground within mass media by hiring numerous deaf actors and allowing those actors to perform using sign language rather than vocalizing English. The show’s honouring of Deaf culture and language reflects a new openness from television executives toward integrating more people with a variety of visible and invisible physical embodiments, such as hearing loss, into television content. This article looks at the cultural inclusivity fostered by the show. Gwyneth Peaty’s article likewise considers the interplay between silence, sound, and text in the horror film Hush (2016). Within this film, deafness is utilised as a source of tension and empowerment for the main character, and offers a reworking of the ‘Final Girl’ trope in horror. Text and captioning are subtly woven into the film, and function to create character development and narrative cohesion. The use of both sound and silence in this film also convey complexities in audience and text relationships.While Haller and Peaty offer some contemporary examples of captions and reflect on the ways ASL and captioning can be used in new and innovative ways in audio visual media, Scott Hollier, Katie Ellis and Mike Kent argue commercial providers are not always meeting their legislative or best practice requirements in the provision of captions. Their paper explores an interesting mix of activism, volunteer effort, and hacking whereby Netflix users compile instructions to allow users to upload their own captions and make content accessible by essentially hacking into secret caption files in the Netflix media player. They conceive of this user-generated practice as a conflation of the hacker and the acknowledged digital influencer, but caution that copyright restrictions may drive this practice of sharing information for accessibility underground.Katy Galiardi brings together two key concerns explored throughout this issue—social justice for people with disability and the use of captions in online communication. The paper redefines Facebook comments as a form of cultural captioning to explore critiques and examples of what disability activists describe as inspiration p*rn. The paper offers critique and analysis of the ways comments on an Autism Speaks Facebook post about a young man with autism fit the inspiration p*rn narrative. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses of comments on this post, this paper argues language use and over-disclosure are two contributing factors to the discrimination inherent within inspiration p*rn.Nicole Erin Morse also considers the role of captions in social media but with a focus on Instagram. Within social media visibility campaigns, selfie captions usually work to produce coherent identity categories, linking disparate selfies together through hashtags. Furthering visibility politics, such selfie captions claim that authentic identities can be made visible through selfies and can be described and defined by these captions. However, selfie captions by the trans-artist Alok Vaid-Menon challenge the assumption that selfies and their captions can make authentic identity legible. Through hashtags, emojis, and punning text, Vaid-Menon’s selfie captions interrogate visibility politics from within one of visibility politics most popular contemporary tools, demonstrating how social media can be used to theorise representation.The final paper in this issue by Katie Ellis, Mike Kent and Kathryn Locke explores a discrepancy between the provision of captions and audio description on Australian broadcast television and video on demand. While audio description as a technology, like captions, was developed in the 1960s, it remains largely absent from current Australian television. In the current media climate of multiple platform and content delivery options, it was envisaged that television would become more accessible. However, despite multiple audio description trials on both broadcast and catch-up television, and an increase in political and advocate attention, the availability of audio description is still nowhere near the level of captions.“To caption” is to take, catch, seize, capture, subtitle, title, and/or translate. The articles collected in this issue demonstrate the increasing potential of captions to augment communication and highlight a range of emerging issues, practices, and focal points. The use of captions as a vital accessibility feature for people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing is acknowledged throughout all of the papers. The role of captions in activist efforts of people with disability is also emphasised—from criticisms of inspiration p*rn, to hacking the back end of Netflix, to recent calls to raise the importance of audio description to the level of captions in the Australian Broadcasting Act (1992). The mainstream use of captions to augment visual imagery, memes, television, and video is also recognised throughout this issue as a vital tool for expression, identity formation, and personalised learning styles. Collectively, these articles demonstrate the changing uses of captions in media and culture, examining the ways they are also increasingly used by larger portions of the population.AcknowledgmentsThe editors acknowledge the support of the Curtin University Teaching Excellence Development Fund in the development of this issue. We also offer our sincerest thanks to the referees who shared their time and insight and particularly those who were also contributors. ReferencesDowney, Greg. “Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest: From Minority Media Accessibility to Mainstream Educational Technology.” Info 9.2–3 (2007): 69–82.Fraser, Malcolm. “Address at the Opening of the Caption Centre Sydney.” PM Transcripts 13 Sep. 1982. 14 June 2017 <http://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/release/transcript-5907>.

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While the television cooking genre has evolved in numerous ways to withstand competition and become a constant feature in television programming (Collins and College), it has been argued that audience demand for televisual cooking has always been high because of the daily importance of cooking (Hamada, “Multimedia Integration”). Early cooking shows were characterised by an instructional discourse, before quickly embracing an entertainment focus; modern cooking shows take on a more competitive, out of the kitchen focus (Collins and College). The genre has continued to evolve, with celebrity chefs and ordinary people embracing transmedia affordances to return to the instructional focus of the early cooking shows. While the television cooking show is recognised for its broad cultural impacts related to gender (Ouellette and Hay), cultural capital (Ibrahim; Oren), television formatting (Oren), and even communication itself (Matwick and Matwick), its role in the widespread adoption of television captions is significantly underexplored. Even the fact that a cooking show was the first ever program captioned on American television is almost completely unremarked within cooking show histories and literature.A Brief History of Captioning WorldwideWhen captions were first introduced on US television in the early 1970s, programmers were guided by the general principle to make the captioned program “accessible to every deaf viewer regardless of reading ability” (Jensema, McCann and Ramsey 284). However, there were no exact rules regarding captioning quality and captions did not reflect verbatim what was said onscreen. According to Jensema, McCann and Ramsey (285), less than verbatim captioning continued for many years because “deaf people were so delighted to have captions that they accepted almost anything thrown on the screen” (see also Newell 266 for a discussion of the UK context).While the benefits of captions for people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing were immediate, its commercial applications also became apparent. When the moral argument that people who were D/deaf or hard of hearing had a right to access television via captions proved unsuccessful in the fight for legislation, advocates lobbied the US Congress about the mainstream commercial benefits such as in education and the benefits for people learning English as a second language (Downey). Activist efforts and hard-won legal battles meant D/deaf and hard of hearing viewers can now expect closed captions on almost all television content. With legislation in place to determine the provision of captions, attention began to focus on their quality. D/deaf viewers are no longer just delighted to accept anything thrown on the screen and have begun to demand verbatim captioning. At the same time, market-based incentives are capturing the attention of television executives seeking to make money, and the widespread availability of verbatim captions has been recognised for its multimedia—and therefore commercial—applications. These include its capacity for information retrieval (Miura et al.; Agnihotri et al.) and for creative repurposing of television content (Blankinship et al.). Captions and transcripts have been identified as being of particular importance to augmenting the information provided in cooking shows (Miura et al.; Oh et al.).Early Captions in the US: Julia Child’s The French ChefJulia Child is indicative of the early period of the cooking genre (Collins and College)—she has been described as “the epitome of the TV chef” (ray 53) and is often credited for making cooking accessible to American audiences through her onscreen focus on normalising techniques that she promised could be mastered at home (ray). She is still recognised for her mastery of the genre, and for her capacity to entertain in a way that stood out from her contemporaries (Collins and College; ray).Julia Child’s The French Chef originally aired on the US publicly-funded Public Broadcasting System (PBS) affiliate WBGH from 1963–1973. The captioning of television also began in the 1960s, with educators creating the captions themselves, mainly for educational use in deaf schools (Downey 70). However, there soon came calls for public television to also be made accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing—the debate focused on equality and pushed for recognition that deaf people were culturally diverse (Downey 70).The PBS therefore began a trial of captioning programs (Downey 71). These would be “open captions”—characters which were positioned on the screen as part of the normal image for all viewers to see (Downey 71). The trial was designed to determine both the number of D/deaf and hard of hearing people viewing the program, as well as to test if non-D/deaf and hard of hearing viewers would watch a program which had captions (Downey 71). The French Chef was selected for captioning by WBGH because it was their most popular television show in the early 1970s and in 1972 eight episodes of The French Chef were aired using open—albeit inconsistent—captions (Downey 71; Jensema et al. 284).There were concerns from some broadcasters that openly captioned programs would drive away the “hearing majority” (Downey 71). However, there was no explicit study carried out in 1972 on the viewers of The French Chef to determine if this was the case because WBGH ran out of funds to research this further (Downey 71). Nevertheless, Jensema, McCann and Ramsey (284) note that WBGH did begin to re-broadcast ABC World News Tonight in the 1970s with open captions and that this was the only regularly captioned show at the time.Due to changes in technology and fears that not everyone wanted to see captions onscreen, television’s focus shifted from open captions to closed captioning in the 1980s. Captions became encoded, with viewers needing a decoder to be able to access them. However, the high cost of the decoders meant that many could not afford to buy them and adoption of the technology was slow (Youngblood and Lysaght 243; Downey 71). In 1979, the US government had set up the National Captioning Institute (NCI) with a mandate to develop and sell these decoders, and provide captioning services to the networks. This was initially government-funded but was designed to eventually be self-sufficient (Downey 73).PBS, ABC and NBC (but not CBS) had agreed to a trial (Downey 73). However, there was a reluctance on the part of broadcasters to pay to caption content when there was not enough evidence that the demand was high (Downey 73—74). The argument for the provision of captioned content therefore began to focus on the rights of all citizens to be able to access a public service. A complaint was lodged claiming that the Los Angeles station KCET, which was a PBS affiliate, did not provide captioned content that was available elsewhere (Downey 74). When Los Angeles PBS station KCET refused to air captioned episodes of The French Chef, the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness (GLAD) picketed the station until the decision was reversed. GLAD then focused on legislation and used the Rehabilitation Act to argue that television was federally assisted and, by not providing captioned content, broadcasters were in violation of the Act (Downey 74).GLAD also used the 1934 Communications Act in their argument. This Act had firstly established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and then assigned them the right to grant and renew broadcast licenses as long as those broadcasters served the ‘‘public interest, convenience, and necessity’’ (Michalik, cited in Downey 74). The FCC could, argued GLAD, therefore refuse to renew the licenses of broadcasters who did not air captioned content. However, rather than this argument working in their favour, the FCC instead changed its own procedures to avoid such legal actions in the future (Downey 75). As a result, although some stations began to voluntarily caption more content, it was not until 1996 that it became a legally mandated requirement with the introduction of the Telecommunications Act (Youngblood and Lysaght 244)—too late for The French Chef.My Kitchen Rules: Captioning BreachWhereas The French Chef presented instructional cooking programming from a kitchen set, more recently the food genre has moved away from the staged domestic kitchen set as an instructional space to use real-life domestic kitchens and more competitive multi-bench spaces. The Australian program MKR straddles this shift in the cooking genre with the first half of each season occurring in domestic settings and the second half in Iron Chef style studio competition (see Oren for a discussion of the influence of Iron Chef on contemporary cooking shows).All broadcast channels in Australia are mandated to caption 100 per cent of programs aired between 6am and midnight. However, the 2013 MKR Grand Final broadcast by Channel Seven Brisbane Pty Ltd and Channel Seven Melbourne Pty Ltd (Seven) failed to transmit 10 minutes of captions some 30 minutes into the 2-hour program. The ACMA received two complaints relating to this. The first complaint, received on 27 April 2013, the same evening as the program was broadcast, noted ‘[the D/deaf community] … should not have to miss out’ (ACMA, Report No. 3046 3). The second complaint, received on 30 April 2013, identified the crucial nature of the missing segment and its effect on viewers’ overall enjoyment of the program (ACMA, Report No. 3046 3).Seven explained that the relevant segment (approximately 10 per cent of the program) was missing from the captioning file, but that it had not appeared to be missing when Seven completed its usual captioning checks prior to broadcast (ACMA, Report No. 3046 4). The ACMA found that Seven had breached the conditions of their commercial television broadcasting licence by “failing to provide a captioning service for the program” (ACMA, Report No. 3046 12). The interruption of captioning was serious enough to constitute a breach due, in part, to the nature and characteristic of the program:the viewer is engaged in the momentum of the competitive process by being provided with an understanding of each of the competition stages; how the judges, guests and contestants interact; and their commentaries of the food and the cooking processes during those stages. (ACMA, Report No. 3046 6)These interactions have become a crucial part of the cooking genre, a genre often described as offering a way to acquire cultural capital via instructions in both cooking and ideological food preferences (Oren 31). Further, in relation to the uncaptioned MKR segment, ACMA acknowledged it would have been difficult to follow both the cooking process and the exchanges taking place between contestants (ACMA, Report No. 3046 8). ACMA considered these exchanges crucial to ‘a viewer’s understanding of, and secondly to their engagement with the different inter-related stages of the program’ (ACMA, Report No. 3046 7).An additional complaint was made with regards to the same program broadcast on Prime Television (Northern) Pty Ltd (Prime), a Seven Network affiliate. The complaint stated that the lack of captions was “Not good enough in prime time and for a show that is non-live in nature” (ACMA, Report No. 3124 3). Despite the fact that the ACMA found that “the fault arose from the affiliate, Seven, rather than from the licensee [Prime]”, Prime was also found to also have breached their licence conditions by failing to provide a captioning service (ACMA, Report No. 3124 12).The following year, Seven launched captions for their online catch-up television platform. Although this was a result of discussions with a complainant over the broader lack of captioned online television content, it was also a step that re-established Seven’s credentials as a leader in commercial television access. The 2015 season of MKR also featured their first partially-deaf contestant, Emilie Biggar.Mainstreaming Captions — Inter-Platform CooperationOver time, cooking shows on television have evolved from an informative style (The French Chef) to become more entertaining in their approach (MKR). As Oren identifies, this has seen a shift in the food genre “away from the traditional, instructional format and towards professionalism and competition” (Oren 25). The affordances of television itself as a visual medium has also been recognised as crucial in the popularity of this genre and its more recent transmedia turn. That is, following Joshua Meyrowitz’s medium theory regarding how different media can afford us different messages, televised cooking shows offer audiences stylised knowledge about food and cooking beyond the traditional cookbook (Oren; ray). In addition, cooking shows are taking their product beyond just television and increasing their inter-platform cooperation (Oren)—for example, MKR has a comprehensive companion website that viewers can visit to watch whole episodes, obtain full recipes, and view shopping lists. While this can be viewed as a modern take on Julia Child’s cookbook success, it must also be considered in the context of the increasing focus on multimedia approaches to cooking instructions (Hamada et al., Multimedia Integration; Cooking Navi; Oh et al.). Audiences today are more likely to attempt a recipe if they have seen it on television, and will use transmedia to download the recipe. As Oren explains:foodism’s ascent to popular culture provides the backdrop and motivation for the current explosion of food-themed formats that encourages audiences’ investment in their own expertise as critics, diners, foodies and even wanna-be professional chefs. FoodTV, in turn, feeds back into a web-powered, gastro-culture and critique-economy where appraisal outranks delight. (Oren 33)This explosion in popularity of the web-powered gastro culture Oren refers to has led to an increase in appetite for step by step, easy to access instructions. These are being delivered using captions. As a result of the legislation and activism described throughout this paper, captions are more widely available and, in many cases, now describe what is said onscreen verbatim. In addition, the mainstream commercial benefits and uses of captions are being explored. Captions have therefore moved from a specialist assistive technology for people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing to become recognised as an important resource for creative television viewers regardless of their hearing (Blankinship et al.). With captions becoming more accessible, accurate, financially viable, and mainstreamed, their potential as an additional television resource is of interest. As outlined above, within the cooking show genre—especially with its current multimedia turn and the demand for captioned recipe instructions (Hamada et al., “Multimedia Integration”, “Cooking Navi”; Oh et al.)—this is particularly pertinent.Hamada et al. identify captions as a useful technology to use in the increasingly popular educational, yet entertaining, cooking show genre as the required information—ingredient lists, instructions, recipes—is in high demand (Hamada et al., “Multimedia Integration” 658). They note that cooking shows often present information out of order, making them difficult to follow, particularly if a recipe must be sourced later from a website (Hamada et al., “Multimedia Integration” 658-59; Oh et al.). Each step in a recipe must be navigated and coordinated, particularly if multiple recipes are being completed at the same times (Hamada, et al., Cooking Navi) as is often the case on cooking shows such as MKR. Using captions as part of a software program to index cooking videos facilitates a number of search affordances for people wishing to replicate the recipe themselves. As Kyeong-Jin et al. explain:if food and recipe information are published as linked data with the scheme, it enables to search food recipe and annotate certain recipe by communities (sic). In addition, because of characteristics of linked data, information on food recipes can be connected to additional data source such as products for ingredients, and recipe websites can support users’ decision making in the cooking domain. (Oh et al. 2)The advantages of such a software program are many. For the audience there is easy access to desired information. For the number of commercial entities involved, this consumer desire facilitates endless marketing opportunities including product placement, increased ratings, and software development. Interesting, all of this falls outside the “usual” parameters of captions as purely an assistive device for a few, and facilitates the mainstreaming—and perhaps beginnings of acceptance—of captions.ConclusionCaptions are a vital accessibility feature for television viewers who are D/deaf or hard of hearing, not just from an informative or entertainment perspective but also to facilitate social inclusion for this culturally diverse group. The availability and quality of television captions has moved through three stages. These can be broadly summarised as early yet inconsistent captions, captions becoming more widely available and accurate—often as a direct result of activism and legislation—but not yet fully verbatim, and verbatim captions as adopted within mainstream software applications. This paper has situated these stages within the television cooking genre, a genre often remarked for its appeal towards inclusion and cultural capital.If television facilitates social inclusion, then food television offers vital cultural capital. While Julia Child’s The French Chef offered the first example of television captions via open captions in 1972, a lack of funding means we do not know how viewers (both hearing and not) actually received the program. However, at the time, captions that would be considered unacceptable today were received favourably (Jensema, McCann and Ramsey; Newell)—anything was deemed better than nothing. Increasingly, as the focus shifted to closed captioning and the cooking genre embraced a more competitive approach, viewers who required captions were no longer happy with missing or inconsistent captioning quality. The was particularly significant in Australia in 2013 when several viewers complained to ACMA that captions were missing from the finale of MKR. These captions provided more than vital cooking instructions—their lack prevented viewers from understanding conflict within the program. Following this breach, Seven became the only Australian commercial television station to offer captions on their web based catch-up platform. While this may have gone a long way to rehabilitate Seven amongst D/deaf and hard of hearing audiences, there is the potential too for commercial benefits. Caption technology is now being mainstreamed for use in cooking software applications developed from televised cooking shows. These allow viewers—both D/deaf and hearing—to access information in a completely new, and inclusive, way.ReferencesAgnihotri, Lalitha, et al. “Summarization of Video Programs Based on Closed Captions.” 4315 (2001): 599–607.Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Investigation Report No. 3046. 2013. 26 Apr. 2017 <http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Diversity%20Localism%20and%20Accessibility/Investigation%20reports/Word%20document/3046%20My%20Kitchen%20Rules%20Grand%20Final%20docx.docx>.———. Investigation Report No. 3124. 2014. 26 Apr. 2017 <http://www.acma.gov.au/~/media/Diversity%20Localism%20and%20Accessibility/Investigation%20reports/Word%20document/3124%20NEN%20My%20Kitchen%20Rules%20docx.docx>.Blankinship, E., et al. “Closed Caption, Open Source.” BT Technology Journal 22.4 (2004): 151–59.Collins, Kathleen, and John Jay College. “TV Cooking Shows: The Evolution of a Genre”. Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture (7 May 2008). 14 May 2017 <http://www.flowjournal.org/2008/05/tv-cooking-shows-the-evolution-of-a-genre/>.Downey, Greg. “Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest: From Minority Media Accessibility to Mainstream Educational Technology.” The Journal of Policy, Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunications, Information and Media 9.2/3 (2007): 69–82. DOI: 10.1108/14636690710734670.Hamada, Reiko, et al. “Multimedia Integration for Cooking Video Indexing.” Advances in Multimedia Information Processing-PCM 2004 (2005): 657–64.Hamada, Reiko, et al. “Cooking Navi: Assistant for Daily Cooking in Kitchen.” Proceedings of the 13th Annual ACM International Conference on Multimedia. ACM.Ibrahim, Yasmin. “Food p*rn and the Invitation to Gaze: Ephemeral Consumption and the Digital Spectacle.” International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP) 6.3 (2015): 1–12.Jensema, Carl J., Ralph McCann, and Scott Ramsey. “Closed-Captioned Television Presentation Speed and Vocabulary.” American Annals of the Deaf 141.4 (1996): 284–292.Matwick, Kelsi, and Keri Matwick. “Inquiry in Television Cooking Shows.” Discourse & Communication 9.3 (2015): 313–30.Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.Miura, K., et al. “Automatic Generation of a Multimedia Encyclopedia from TV Programs by Using Closed Captions and Detecting Principal Video Objects.” Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (2006): 873–80.Newell, A.F. “Teletext for the Deaf.” Electronics and Power 28.3 (1982): 263–66.Oh, K.J. et al. “Automatic Indexing of Cooking Video by Using Caption-Recipe Alignment.” 2014 International Conference on Behavioral, Economic, and Socio-Cultural Computing (BESC2014) (2014): 1–6.Oren, Tasha. “On the Line: Format, Cooking and Competition as Television Values.” Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies 8.2 (2013): 20–35.Ouellette, Laurie, and James Hay. “Makeover Television, Governmentality and the Good Citizen.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 471–84.ray, krishnendu. “Domesticating Cuisine: Food and Aesthetics on American Television.” Gastronomica 7.1 (2007): 50–63.Youngblood, Norman E., and Ryan Lysaght. “Accessibility and Use of Online Video Captions by Local Television News Websites.” Electronic News 9.4 (2015): 242–256.

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This paper examines the way that language attempts to categorize and control bodies through the space of closed captioning. The paper examines three different incidents of closed captioned in television sex scenes to argue that queering and cripping provide a framework to examine how the rhetorical choices in closed captioning reflect larger anxieties over bodies engaged in pleasure in a space coded as "disabled." In considering closed captioning as a space coded as "disabled" what is made caption-visible (and what is not) can enforce a dual binary of heterosexuality/abe-bodiedness against queer/disabled. This dual binary is examined in three different case studies, Scandal, Queer as Folk, and Orange is the New Black; all 3 examples provide an overview of how closed captioning has performed ideological work which has largely gone unnoticed. This paper intervenes into the scholarly work which positions closed captioning as just a federal mandate or technological advancement. Instead, we should be looking at closed captioning as a series of rhetorical choices. By examining captioning, we can see the limits of defining, categorizing, and containing bodies and sex through language and disrupt ideas of normalcy which are being enacted in the space of closed captioning.

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Writing in the American Annals of the Deaf in 1931, Emil S. Ladner Jr, a Deaf high school student, predicted the invention of words on screen to facilitate access to “talkies”. He anticipated:Perhaps, in time, an invention will be perfected that will enable the deaf to hear the “talkies”, or an invention which will throw the words spoken directly under the screen as well as being spoken at the same time. (Ladner, cited in Downey Closed Captioning)This invention would eventually come to pass and be known as captions. Captions as we know them today have become widely available because of a complex interaction between technological change, volunteer effort, legislative activism, as well as increasing consumer demand. This began in the late 1950s when the technology to develop captions began to emerge. Almost immediately, volunteers began captioning and distributing both film and television in the US via schools for the deaf (Downey, Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest). Then, between the 1970s and 1990s Deaf activists and their allies began to campaign aggressively for the mandated provision of captions on television, leading eventually to the passing of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act in the US in 1990 (Ellis). This act decreed that any television with a screen greater than 13 inches must be designed/manufactured to be capable of displaying captions. The Act was replicated internationally, with countries such as Australia adopting the same requirements with their Australian standards regarding television sets imported into the country. As other papers in this issue demonstrate, this market ultimately led to the introduction of broadcasting requirements.Captions are also vital to the accessibility of videos in today’s online and streaming environment—captioning is listed as the highest priority in the definitive World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guideline’s (WCAG) 2.0 standard (W3C, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0”). This recognition of the requirement for captions online is further reflected in legislation, from both the US 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) (2010) and from the Australian Human Rights Commission (2014).Television today is therefore much more freely available to a range of different groups. In addition to broadcast channels, captions are also increasingly available through streaming platforms such as Netflix and other subscription video on demand providers, as well as through user-generated video sites like YouTube. However, a clear discrepancy exists between guidelines, legislation and the industry’s approach. Guidelines such as the W3C are often resisted by industry until compliance is legislated.Historically, captions have been both unavailable (Ellcessor; Ellis) and inadequate (Ellis and Kent), and in many instances, they still are. For example, while the provision of captions in online video is viewed as a priority across international and domestic policies and frameworks, there is a stark contrast between the policy requirements and the practical implementation of these captions. This has led to the active development of a solution as part of an ongoing tradition of user-led development; user-generated captions. However, within disability studies, research around the agency of this activity—and the media savvy users facilitating it—has gone significantly underexplored.Agency of ActivityInformation sharing has featured heavily throughout visions of the Web—from Vannevar Bush’s 1945 notion of the memex (Bush), to the hacker ethic, to Zuckerberg’s motivations for creating Facebook in his dorm room in 2004 (Vogelstein)—resulting in a wide agency of activity on the Web. Running through this development of first the Internet and then the Web as a place for a variety of agents to share information has been the hackers’ ethic that sharing information is a powerful, positive good (Raymond 234), that information should be free (Levey), and that to achieve these goals will often involve working around intended information access protocols, sometimes illegally and normally anonymously. From the hacker culture comes the digerati, the elite of the digital world, web users who stand out by their contributions, success, or status in the development of digital technology. In the context of access to information for people with disabilities, we describe those who find these workarounds—providing access to information through mainstream online platforms that are not immediately apparent—as the disability digerati.An acknowledged mainstream member of the digerati, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, articulated a vision for the Web and its role in information sharing as inclusive of everyone:Worldwide, there are more than 750 million people with disabilities. As we move towards a highly connected world, it is critical that the Web be useable by anyone, regardless of individual capabilities and disabilities … The W3C [World Wide Web Consortium] is committed to removing accessibility barriers for all people with disabilities—including the deaf, blind, physically challenged, and cognitively or visually impaired. We plan to work aggressively with government, industry, and community leaders to establish and attain Web accessibility goals. (Berners-Lee)Berners-Lee’s utopian vision of a connected world where people freely shared information online has subsequently been embraced by many key individuals and groups. His emphasis on people with disabilities, however, is somewhat unique. While maintaining a focus on accessibility, in 2006 he shifted focus to who could actually contribute to this idea of accessibility when he suggested the idea of “community captioning” to video bloggers struggling with the notion of including captions on their videos:The video blogger posts his blog—and the web community provides the captions that help others. (Berners-Lee, cited in Outlaw)Here, Berners-Lee was addressing community captioning in the context of video blogging and user-generated content. However, the concept is equally significant for professionally created videos, and media savvy users can now also offer instructions to audiences about how to access captions and subtitles. This shift—from user-generated to user access—must be situated historically in the context of an evolving Web 2.0 and changing accessibility legislation and policy.In the initial accessibility requirements of the Web, there was little mention of captioning at all, primarily due to video being difficult to stream over a dial-up connection. This was reflected in the initial WCAG 1.0 standard (W3C, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0”) in which there was no requirement for videos to be captioned. WCAG 2.0 went some way in addressing this, making captioning online video an essential Level A priority (W3C, “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0”). However, there were few tools that could actually be used to create captions, and little interest from emerging online video providers in making this a priority.As a result, the possibility of user-generated captions for video content began to be explored by both developers and users. One initial captioning tool that gained popularity was MAGpie, produced by the WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) (WGBH). While cumbersome by today’s standards, the arrival of MAGpie 2.0 in 2002 provided an affordable and professional captioning tool that allowed people to create captions for their own videos. However, at that point there was little opportunity to caption videos online, so the focus was more on captioning personal video collections offline. This changed with the launch of YouTube in 2005 and its later purchase by Google (CNET), leading to an explosion of user-generated video content online. However, while the introduction of YouTube closed captioned video support in 2006 ensured that captioned video content could be created (YouTube), the ability for users to create captions, save the output into one of the appropriate captioning file formats, upload the captions, and synchronise the captions to the video remained a difficult task.Improvements to the production and availability of user-generated captions arrived firstly through the launch of YouTube’s automated captions feature in 2009 (Google). This service meant that videos could be uploaded to YouTube and, if the user requested it, Google would caption the video within approximately 24 hours using its speech recognition software. While the introduction of this service was highly beneficial in terms of making captioning videos easier and ensuring that the timing of captions was accurate, the quality of captions ranged significantly. In essence, if the captions were not reviewed and errors not addressed, the automated captions were sometimes inaccurate to the point of hilarity (New Media Rock Stars). These inaccurate YouTube captions are colloquially described as craptions. A #nomorecraptions campaign was launched to address inaccurate YouTube captioning and call on YouTube to make improvements.The ability to create professional user-generated captions across a variety of platforms, including YouTube, arrived in 2010 with the launch of Amara Universal Subtitles (Amara). The Amara subtitle portal provides users with the opportunity to caption online videos, even if they are hosted by another service such as YouTube. The captioned file can be saved after its creation and then uploaded to the relevant video source if the user has access to the location of the video content. The arrival of Amara continues to provide ongoing benefits—it contains a professional captioning editing suite specifically catering for online video, the tool is free, and it can caption videos located on other websites. Furthermore, Amara offers the additional benefit of being able to address the issues of YouTube automated captions—users can benefit from the machine-generated captions of YouTube in relation to its timing, then download the captions for editing in Amara to fix the issues, then return the captions to the original video, saving a significant amount of time when captioning large amounts of video content. In recent years Google have also endeavoured to simplify the captioning process for YouTube users by including its own captioning editors, but these tools are generally considered inferior to Amara (Media Access Australia).Similarly, several crowdsourced caption services such as Viki (https://www.viki.com/community) have emerged to facilitate the provision of captions. However, most of these crowdsourcing captioning services can’t tap into commercial products instead offering a service for people that have a video they’ve created, or one that already exists on YouTube. While Viki was highlighted as a useful platform in protests regarding Netflix’s lack of captions in 2009, commercial entertainment providers still have a responsibility to make improvements to their captioning. As we discuss in the next section, people have resorted extreme measures to hack Netflix to access the captions they need. While the ability for people to publish captions on user-generated content has improved significantly, there is still a notable lack of captions for professionally developed videos, movies, and television shows available online.User-Generated Netflix CaptionsIn recent years there has been a worldwide explosion of subscription video on demand service providers. Netflix epitomises the trend. As such, for people with disabilities, there has been significant focus on the availability of captions on these services (see Ellcessor, Ellis and Kent). Netflix, as the current leading provider of subscription video entertainment in both the US and with a large market shares in other countries, has been at the centre of these discussions. While Netflix offers a comprehensive range of captioned video on its service today, there are still videos that do not have captions, particularly in non-English regions. As a result, users have endeavoured to produce user-generated captions for personal use and to find workarounds to access these through the Netflix system. This has been achieved with some success.There are a number of ways in which captions or subtitles can be added to Netflix video content to improve its accessibility for individual users. An early guide in a 2011 blog post (Emil’s Celebrations) identified that when using the Netflix player using the Silverlight plug-in, it is possible to access a hidden menu which allows a subtitle file in the DFXP format to be uploaded to Netflix for playback. However, this does not appear to provide this file to all Netflix users, and is generally referred to as a “soft upload” just for the individual user. Another method to do this, generally credited as the “easiest” way, is to find a SRT file that already exists for the video title, edit the timing to line up with Netflix, use a third-party tool to convert it to the DFXP format, and then upload it using the hidden menu that requires a specific keyboard command to access. While this may be considered uncomplicated for some, there is still a certain amount of technical knowledge required to complete this action, and it is likely to be too complex for many users.However, constant developments in technology are assisting with making access to captions an easier process. Recently, Cosmin Vasile highlighted that the ability to add captions and subtitle tracks can still be uploaded providing that the older Silverlight plug-in is used for playback instead of the new HTML5 player. Others add that it is technically possible to access the hidden feature in an HTML5 player, but an additional Super Netflix browser plug-in is required (Sommergirl). Further, while the procedure for uploading the file remains similar to the approach discussed earlier, there are some additional tools available online such as Subflicks which can provide a simple online conversion of the more common SRT file format to the DFXP format (Subflicks). However, while the ability to use a personal caption or subtitle file remains, the most common way to watch Netflix videos with alternative caption or subtitle files is through the use of the Smartflix service (Smartflix). Unlike other ad-hoc solutions, this service provides a simplified mechanism to bring alternative caption files to Netflix. The Smartflix website states that the service “automatically downloads and displays subtitles in your language for all titles using the largest online subtitles database.”This automatic download and sharing of captions online—known as fansubbing—facilitates easy access for all. For example, blog posts suggest that technology such as this creates important access opportunities for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Nevertheless, they can be met with suspicion by copyright holders. For example, a recent case in the Netherlands ruled fansubbers were engaging in illegal activities and were encouraging people to download pirated videos. While the fansubbers, like the hackers discussed earlier, argued they were acting in the greater good, the Dutch antipiracy association (BREIN) maintained that subtitles are mainly used by people downloading pirated media and sought to outlaw the manufacture and distribution of third party captions (Anthony). The fansubbers took the issue to court in order to seek clarity about whether copyright holders can reserve exclusive rights to create and distribute subtitles. However, in a ruling against the fansubbers, the court agreed with BREIN that fansubbing violated copyright and incited piracy. What impact this ruling will have on the practice of user-generated captioning online, particularly around popular sites such as Netflix, is hard to predict; however, for people with disabilities who were relying on fansubbing to access content, it is of significant concern that the contention that the main users of user-generated subtitles (or captions) are engaging in illegal activities was so readily accepted.ConclusionThis article has focused on user-generated captions and the types of platforms available to create these. It has shown that this desire to provide access, to set the information free, has resulted in the disability digerati finding workarounds to allow users to upload their own captions and make content accessible. Indeed, the Internet and then the Web as a place for information sharing is evident throughout this history of user-generated captioning online, from Berner-Lee’s conception of community captioning, to Emil and Vasile’s instructions to a Netflix community of captioners, to finally a group of fansubbers who took BRIEN to court and lost. Therefore, while we have conceived of the disability digerati as a conflation of the hacker and the acknowledged digital influencer, these two positions may again part ways, and the disability digerati may—like the hackers before them—be driven underground.Captioned entertainment content offers a powerful, even vital, mode of inclusion for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Yet, despite Berners-Lee’s urging that everything online be made accessible to people with all sorts of disabilities, captions were not addressed in the first iteration of the WCAG, perhaps reflecting the limitations of the speed of the medium itself. This continues to be the case today—although it is no longer difficult to stream video online, and Netflix have reached global dominance, audiences who require captions still find themselves fighting for access. Thus, in this sense, user-generated captions remain an important—yet seemingly technologically and legislatively complicated—avenue for inclusion.ReferencesAnthony, Sebastian. “Fan-Made Subtitles for TV Shows and Movies Are Illegal, Court Rules.” Arstechnica UK (2017). 21 May 2017 <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/fan-made-subtitles-for-tv-shows-and-movies-are-illegal/>.Amara. “Amara Makes Video Globally Accessible.” Amara (2010). 25 Apr. 2017. <https://amara.org/en/ 2010>.Berners-Lee, Tim. “World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Launches International Web Accessibility Initiative.” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) (1997). 19 June 2010. <http://www.w3.org/Press/WAI-Launch.html>.Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic (1945). 26 June 2010 <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1969/12/as-we-may-think/3881/>.CNET. “YouTube Turns 10: The Video Site That Went Viral.” CNET (2015). 24 Apr. 2017 <https://www.cnet.com/news/youtube-turns-10-the-video-site-that-went-viral/>.Downey, Greg. Closed Captioning: Subtitling, Stenography, and the Digital Convergence of Text with Television. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 2008.———. “Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest: From Minority Media Accessibility to Mainstream Educational Technology.” Info: The Journal of Policy, Regulation and Strategy for Telecommunications, Information and Media 9.2/3 (2007): 69–82.Ellcessor, Elizabeth. “Captions On, Off on TV, Online: Accessibility and Search Engine Optimization in Online Closed Captioning.” Television & New Media 13.4 (2012): 329-352. <http://tvn.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/10/24/1527476411425251.abstract?patientinform-links=yes&legid=sptvns;51v1>.Ellis, Katie. “Television’s Transition to the Internet: Disability Accessibility and Broadband-Based TV in Australia.” Media International Australia 153 (2014): 53–63.Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. “Accessible Television: The New Frontier in Disability Media Studies Brings Together Industry Innovation, Government Legislation and Online Activism.” First Monday 20 (2015). <http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6170>.Emil’s Celebrations. “How to Add Subtitles to Movies Streamed in Netflix.” 16 Oct. 2011. 9 Apr. 2017 <https://emladenov.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/how-to-add-subtitles-to-movies-streamed-in-netflix/>.Google. “Automatic Captions in Youtube.” 2009. 24 Apr. 2017 <https://googleblog.blogspot.com.au/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html>.Jaeger, Paul. “Disability and the Internet: Confronting a Digital Divide.” Disability in Society. Ed. Ronald Berger. Boulder, London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012.Levey, Steven. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. North Sebastopol: O’Teilly Media, 1984.Media Access Australia. “How to Caption a Youtube Video.” 2017. 25 Apr. 2017 <https://mediaaccess.org.au/web/how-to-caption-a-youtube-video>.New Media Rock Stars. “Youtube’s 5 Worst Hilariously Catastrophic Auto Caption Fails.” 2013. 25 Apr. 2017 <http://newmediarockstars.com/2013/05/youtubes-5-worst-hilariously-catastrophic-auto-caption-fails/>.Outlaw. “Berners-Lee Applies Web 2.0 to Improve Accessibility.” Outlaw News (2006). 25 June 2010 <http://www.out-law.com/page-6946>.Raymond, Eric S. The New Hacker’s Dictionary. 3rd ed. Cambridge: MIT P, 1996.Smartflix. “Smartflix: Supercharge Your Netflix.” 2017. 9 Apr. 2017 <https://www.smartflix.io/>.Sommergirl. “[All] Adding Subtitles in a Different Language?” 2016. 9 Apr. 2017 <https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/32l8ob/all_adding_subtitles_in_a_different_language/>.Subflicks. “Subflicks V2.0.0.” 2017. 9 Apr. 2017 <http://subflicks.com/>.Vasile, Cosmin. “Netflix Has Just Informed Us That Its Movie Streaming Service Is Now Available in Just About Every Country That Matters Financially, Aside from China, of Course.” 2016. 9 Apr. 2017 <http://news.softpedia.com/news/how-to-add-custom-subtitles-to-netflix-498579.shtml>.Vogelstein, Fred. “The Wired Interview: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg.” Wired Magazine (2009). 20 Jun. 2010 <http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/06/mark-zuckerberg-speaks/>.W3C. “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.” W3C Recommendation (1999). 25 Jun. 2010 <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/>.———. “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.” 11 Dec. 2008. 21 Aug. 2013 <http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/>.WGBH. “Magpie 2.0—Free, Do-It-Yourself Access Authoring Tool for Digital Multimedia Released by WGBH.” 2002. 25 Apr. 2017 <http://ncam.wgbh.org/about/news/pr_05072002>.YouTube. “Finally, Caption Video Playback.” 2006. 24 Apr. 2017 <http://googlevideo.blogspot.com.au/2006/09/finally-caption-playback.html>.

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IntroductionWithin Australia, the approach taken to the ways in which disabled people access television is heavily influenced by legislation and activism from abroad. This is increasingly the case as television moves to online modes of distribution where physical and legislative boundaries are more fluid. While early investigations of the intersections between television and the concept of abroad focused on the impacts of representation and national reputation (Boddy), the introduction of new media technologies saw a shifting focus towards the impact and introduction of new media technologies. Drawing on Chan’s definition of media internationalisation as “the process by which the ownership, structure, production, distribution, or content of a country’s media is influenced by foreign media interests, culture and markets” (Chan 71), this article considers the impacts of legislative and advocacy efforts abroad on Australian television audiences with disabilities accessing subscription Video on Demand (VOD).Subscription (VOD) services have caused a major shift in the way television is used and consumed in Australia. Prior to 2015, there was a small subscription VOD industry operating out of this country. Providers such as Quickflix had limited content and the bulk of VOD services used by Australians related to catch-up television, user-generated videos on YouTube or Vimeo, or accessing Netflix US illegally through virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy services (Ryall; Lombato and Meese). VOD is distinct in that it is generally streamed over Internet-based online services and is not linear, giving viewers the opportunity to watch the video at any time once the programme is available. Unlike broadcast television, there is no particular government or corporate entity controlling the creation of VOD. These services take advantage of the time-shifted convenience of the medium. In addition, VOD is typically not terrestrial, traversing national boundaries and challenging audience expectations and legislative boundaries. This research is concerned with the subscriber model of VOD in Australia where subscribers pay a fee to gain access to large collections of content.This internationalising of television has also offered the opportunity for people with disabilities that previously excluded them from the practice of television consumption, to participate in this national pastime. On an international level, audio description is becoming more available on VOD than it is on broadcast television, thus allowing disabled people access to television. This article situates the Australian approach to VOD accessibility within a broader international framework to question whether the internationalisation of television has affected the ways in which of content is viewed, both at legislative and public levels. While providers are still governed by national regulations, these regulations are influenced by international legislation. Further, the presence and success of advocacy groups to agitate for change has exacerbated the way accessibility is viewed and defined in Australia. The role of the Accessible Netflix Project, in conjunction with changes in the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) in the USA, has not only reframed accessibility discourse in the US, but also, as companies such as Netflix move abroad, has potentially stimulated a shift in media accessibility standards in Australia.We focus in particular on the impact of three new services – Netflix Australia, Stan, and Presto Entertainment—which entered the Australian market in 2015. At the time, Australia was described as having entered the “streaming wars” and consumers were predicted to be the beneficiaries (Tucker). Despite international moves to improve the accessibility of VOD for disabled consumers, via legislation and advocacy, none of these providers launched with an accessibility policy in place. Even closed captions, whose provision on Australian broadcast television had been mandated via the broadcasting services act since the early 1990s, were conspicuously absent. The absence of audio description was less surprising. With the exception of a 12-week trial on the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in 2012 and a follow up trial on iView in 2015, audio description has never been available to Australian people who are vision impaired.The findings and methodology of this article are based on research into disability and streaming television in Australia, conducted in 2015 and 2016. Funded by the Australian Communications and Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), the 12-month project reviewed national and international policy; surveyed 145 people with disability; and conducted interviews with media professionals, policy advisors, accessibility advocates, and disabled Australian VOD consumers.Accessibility Abroad Impacting on Local Accessibility: The Netflix ModelDespite the lack of a clear accessibility policy, Netflix is in front in terms of accessibility, with captions available for most content. Audio description for some content became available in April 2015 shortly after its Australian launch. The introduction of this accessibility feature has been directly attributed to the advocacy efforts of the Accessible Netflix Project, an international online movement operating out of the US and advocating for improved accessibility of VOD in the US and abroad (Ellis & Kent). Similarly, Chris Mikul, author of Access on Demand, was interviewed as part of this research. He told us that Netflix’s provision of captions was due to the impacts of legislation in the USA, namely the CVAA. The CVAA, which we discuss later in the paper, while having no jurisdiction in Australia, has improved the availability of captions by mandating accessibility abroad. As a result, accessible content is imported into the Australian market. When Netflix introduced audio description on its original programming, the VOD provider described the access feature as an option customers could choose, “just like choosing the soundtrack in a different language” (Wright). However, despite successful trials, other VOD providers have not introduced audio description as a way to compete with Netflix, and there is no legislation in place regarding the provision of audio description in Australia. People with disability, including people with vision impairments, do use VOD and continue to have particular unmet access needs. As the Netflix example illustrates, both legislation and recognition of people with a disability as a key audience demographic will result in a more accessible television environment.Impact of International LegislationThe accessibility of VOD in Australia has been impacted upon by international legislation in three key ways: through comparative bench-marks, or industry expectations; via user-led expectations and awareness of differing policies and products; and also through the introduction of international providers onto the Australian VOD market, and the presence of parallel-import VOD services. While international VOD providers such as Netflix and iTunes have officially launched in Australia, Australian consumers, both prior to and after the official availability, often access the parallel USA versions of such services. Lombato and Meese theorise that the delays in content launches between the US and Australia, and the limitations caused by licensing agreements (reducing the content availability) have prompted the continued use of Netflix US and a “kind of transnational shop-front hopping” (126). This is significant for VOD content accessibility as it emphasises the effect of, and disparities in national legislation, whereby the same company provides accessible content only in locations in which it is subject to legal requirements. Our analysis of international policy regarding the accessibility of VOD has found a varied approach—from a complete absence of accessibility regulations (New Zealand), to a layering of policy through disability discrimination acts alongside new media laws (USA). Additionally, this need to address convergence and new media in media accessibility regulation is currently a subject being discussed at government levels in some countries, primarily in the UK (ATVOD). However, outside of the USA, there remains either a lack of accessibility policies for media, new or old—as is the case in Singapore—or a lack of policies that facilitate accessibility for the VOD market—such as in Australia where a level of accessibility is required for broadcasters and subscription television but not VOD.While these changes and advancements in accessibility are taking place abroad, the space that online businesses occupy is fluid. The accessibility requirements of physical spaces cross national boundaries, and operate across multiple media and technologies, and thus, multiple media laws. For example, Australian television broadcasters are subject to some captioning requirements, yet VOD is not. Furthermore, catch-up VOD services provided by mainstream Australian television broadcasters are not subject to these laws. While legislation that accommodates convergence and the new digital media landscape is logical (ACMA) there remain few examples globally that have made changes to reflect accessibility requirements in this context. The CVAA in the US is perhaps the most effective to date, specifically addressing the issue of access to modern communications for people with disability.The CVAA and CaptioningThe CVAA seeks to ensure that “accessibility laws enacted in the 1980s and 1990s are brought up to date with 21st century technologies, including new digital, broadband, and mobile innovations” (FCC). The CVAA is designed to be forward-thinking and evolve with changing technologies (Varley). As such, the Act has been distinctive in its approach to accessibility for Internet protocol delivered video programming, including VOD. While full accessibility requirements, such as the inclusion of audio description are not addressed, the Act is considered to be the most accessible globally in its requirements for captioning of all content—specifically, English and Spanish—across cable, broadcast, satellite, and VOD content. VOD apps, plug-ins and devices are also required to implement the complete captioning capabilities, with specific requirements for personalised presentation, colour, size, and fonts. This requirement is applied to video programming distributors and to video programming owners. Indeed, programmers are expected to provide captioning compliance certificates, and distributors are required to report a failure to do so. Quality standards have also been established, with an emphasis not simply on the presence of captioning, but also on accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and appropriate placement of captions. Despite an absence of similar legislation locally, the impacts of these foreign interests will penetrate the Australian market.In Australia, the example set by the CVAA has warranted recommendations by the ACMA and Media Access Australia. In a recent interview, Chris Mikul reinforced the position that, in order for the accessibility of VOD to improve in Australia, a similar Act is needed to the one established in the US. According to Mikul, “The CVAA in the US bridges the gap to some extent with captioning, although it doesn’t venture into online audio description. […] We need something like the CVAA here” (Mikul).Beyond the impact of the CVAA on US VOD programming, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (1990) has been significant in the developing captioning requirements of the CVAA. In 2010, disability advocates seeking more accessible VOD services attempted to prosecute Netflix under the ADA. The National Association for the Deaf (NAD) argued that Netflix discriminated against those with a hearing impairment by not providing closed captions for all content. At this time, the CVAA did not include captioning requirements for VOD providers. Instead, it was argued that online businesses should be considered as a “place” of publication accommodation, and thus subject to the same standards and anti-discrimination laws. Netflix settled out of court in 2012, agreeing to caption 100% of its content by 2014 (Mullin; Wolford). However, a Federal Appeals Court later ruled that Netflix was not a place of public accommodation and therefore did not have to comply with the ruling (Hattem). Notably, during the case Netflix also argued that it should not be required to provide captions, as it was abiding by CVAA requirements at that time.Accessibility Activism and AdvocacyAdvocates for accessibility, such as the NAD, have impacted not only on the legislative framework for VOD in the USA, but also on the international public perception and expectation of accessibility. It is important to note that many of the help forums generated by international VOD providers mix customers from multiple countries, establishing a global space in which requirements, expectations and perceptions are shared. These spaces generate a transnational accessibility, providing an awareness of what provisions are being made in other countries, and where they are not. Orrego-Carmona conducted a study on subtitling for the purpose of language translation and found the globalisation of audio-visual content and international media flows have impacted on the public view of subtitling. Indeed, this finding can be extended to subtitling for people with disability. In the help forums for VOD providers, users identified an awareness of other more accessible media environments (such as whether companies provided closed captions in other countries), the impact of legislation in other countries on accessibility, and how or if international media companies were replicating accessibility standards transnationally. Social media campaigns, instigated in both the UK and the US are significant examples of consumer and public-led activism for accessibility. “LOVEFiLM hates deaf people”, #subtitleit, launched by the Action on Hearing Loss group in the UK, and #withcaptions, were all effective online campaigns launched by individuals and disability activist groups. In early 2014, comedian Mark Thomas, as part of his show 100 Acts of Minor Dissent, placed two large posters at the entrance to the offices of Amazon UK stating "LOVEFiLM hates deaf people." A subsequent petition through change.com attracted 15154 signatures, asking for rental DVDs that were subtitled to be listed, and all streamed content to be subtitled (https://www.change.org/p/lovefilm-amazon-prime-video-amazon-uk-please-list-your-subtitled-rental-dvds-and-subtitle-your-streamed-content). A year later, Amazon increased the subtitling of its content to 40 percent. As of June 2015 the company was working towards 100% subtitling. The petition turned its attention to Sky On Demand, initiated by Jamie Danjoux, a 17-year-old boy with hearing loss (https://www.change.org/p/sky-enable-subtitles-for-ondemand), has attracted 6556 signatures. The social media campaigns #subtitleit and #withcaptions similarly aimed to target both VOD providers and the government, with the aim for both consistent and compulsory captioning across all VOD content. While UK legislation is yet to specifically address VOD captioning, the subject of accessibility and VOD is currently being debated at policy level. It was also successful in gaining commitments from Sky and BT TV to improve subtitles for their VOD and catch-up VOD programming.In the USA, The Accessible Netflix Project and founder Robert Kingett have been significant advocates for the inclusion of audio description on Netflix and other US VOD providers. Further, while the Accessible Netflix Project has a focus on the United States, its prominence and effectiveness has facilitated awareness of the accessibility of VOD transnationally, and the group internally monitors and comments on international examples. This group was integral in persuading Netflix to provide audio descriptions, a move that has impacted on the level of accessibility worldwide.These advocacy efforts abroad have not only included Australian audiences via their invitations to participate in transnational online spaces, but their success also has direct impact on the availability of captions and audio description imported to Australian video on demand consumers. ConclusionThe national borders of television have always been permeable—with content from abroad influencing programming and culture. However, within Australia, borders have been erected around the television culture with long wait times between shows airing abroad and locally. In addition, licencing deals between overseas distributors and pay television have delayed the introduction of VOD until 2015. That year saw the introduction of three VOD providers to the Australian television landscape: Stan, Presto Entertainment, and Netflix Australia. With the introduction of VOD, it is not only international content that has altered television consumption. Overseas providers have established a firm place in the Australia television marketplace. Even before the formal launch of overseas VOD providers, disabled users were accessing content from providers such as Netflix USA via VPNs and tunnelling services, illustrating both the clear demand for VOD content, and demonstrating the multiple ways in which international legislation and provider approaches to accessibility have permeated the Australian television industry.The rapid increase of ways in which we watch television has increased its accessibility. The nature of video on demand—streamed online and nonlinear—means that the content accessed is no longer as restricted by space, time and television. Audiences are able to personalise and modify access, and can use multiple devices, with multiple assistive technologies and aids. This increasingly accessible environment is the result of legislative and advocacy efforts originating in other countries. Efforts to improve captions and introduce audio description, while not originating in Australia, have seen improvements to the availability of accessibility features for disabled Australian television audiences. To return to Chan’s definition of media internationalisation with which we began this article, a concern with television accessibility while not originating in Australia, has taken place due to the influence of “foreign media interests, culture and markets” (Chan 71).However, despite the increased potential for full accessibility, there remains deficits. Captions and audio description, the two main features that support the playback of online video content in an accessible way, are not consistently provided. There are no clear, applicable legislative requirements for VOD accessibility in Australia. This must change. Based on our research, change at government, industry and advocacy levels are required in order for VOD in Australia to become fully accessible. Legislation needs to be introduced that requires a minimum level of accessibility, including audio description accessibility, on broadcast television and VOD. Further, governments should work to ensure that PWD are aware of the accessibility features that are provided across all media. For VOD providers, it should be recognised that a significant portion of the consumer base could be PWD, or their families and friends may wish to share in the activity of VOD. Establishing an understanding of the different accessibility requirements may come from hiring specialised accessibility consultants to make platforms accessible and useable for PWD. For consumers of VOD and advocates of accessibility, participation in advocacy efforts that encourage and demand that VOD providers improve accessibility options have been shown to increase accessibility abroad, and should be applied to the Australian context.ReferencesACMA. Australian Government. Converged Legislative Frameworks: International Approaches. Jul. 2011. 1 Aug. 2016 <http://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/Library/researchacma/Occasional-papers/coverged-legislative-frameworks-international-approaches>.ATVOD. Provision of Video on Demand Access Services: A Report on the Level of Provision by On Demand. UK: The Authority for Television on Demand, 18 Dec. 2015. 13 May 2016 <http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/broadcast/on-demand/accesseuropean/AS_survey_report_2015.pdf>.Boddy, William. "U.S. Television Abroad: Market Power and National Introspection." Quarterly Review of Film and Video 15.2 (1994): 45-55.Chan, Joseph Man. "Media Internationalization in China: Processes and Tensions." Journal of Communication 44.3 (1994): 70-88.Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. "Accessible Television: The New Frontier in Disability Media Studies Brings Together Industry Innovation, Government Legislation and Online Activism." First Monday 20 (2015). <http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6170>.FCC. 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) 2010. USA: Federal Communications Commission. 27 May 2016 <https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/21st-century-communications-and-video-accessibility-act-cvaa>.Hattem, Julian. “Court: Netflix Doesn’t Have to Comply with Disability Law.” The Hill, 3 Apr. 2015. 20 Aug. 2015 <http://thehill.com/policy/technology/237829-court-netflix-doesnt-have-to-comply-with-disability-law>.Lombato, Roman, and James Meese, eds. “Australia: Circumnavigation Goes Mainstream.” Geoblocking and Global Video Culture. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2016.Media Access Australia. “Policy and Expectations: What You Can Expect on Free-to-air Television.” Australia: Media Access Australia, 2013. 27 May 2016 <http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/tv-video/policy-and-expectations>.Mullin, Joe. “Netflix Settles with Deaf-Rights Group, Agrees to Caption All Videos by 2014.” Arstechnica 11 Oct. 2012. 1 Jan. 2014 <http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/netflix-settles-with-deaf-rights-group-agrees-to-caption-all-videos-by-2014/>.Orrego-Carmona, Daniel. “Subtitling, Video Consumption and Viewers.” Translation Spaces 3 (2014): 51-70.Ryall, Jenni. “How Netflix Is Dominating Australia from Abroad.” Mashable Australia 14 Jul. 2014. 14 Sep. 2016 <http://mashable.com/2014/07/14/how-netflix-is-dominating-australia-from-abroad/#kI9Af70FngqW>.Tucker, Harry. “Netflix Leads the Streaming Wars, Followed by Foxtel’s Presto.” News.com.au 24 Jun. 2015. 18 May 2016 <http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/tv/netflix-leads- the-streaming-wars-followed-by-foxtels-presto/news story/7adf45dcd7d9486ff47ec5ea5951287f>.Unites States Government. Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. 27 May 2016 <http://www.ada.gov/pubs/adastatute08.htm>.Varley, Alex. “New Access for a New Century: We Sit Down with Karen Peltz Strauss.” Media Access Australia 28 Aug. 2013. 27 May 2016 <http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/australian-policy-and-legislation/new-access-for-a- new-century>.Wolford, Josh. “Netflix Will Caption All Streaming Videos by 2014, per Settlement.” WebProNews, 11 Oct. 2012. 1 Jan. 2014 <http://www.webpronews.com/netflix-will-caption-all-streaming-videos-by-2014-per-settlement-2012-10/>.Wright, Tracey. “Netflix Begins Audio Description for Visually Impaired.” Netflix, 14 Apr. 2015. 5 June 2016 <http://blog.netflix.com/2015/04/netflix-begins-audio-description-for.html>.

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This article offers a way of thinking about closed captioning that goes beyond <em>quality</em> (narrowly defined in current style guides in terms of visual design) to consider captioning as a rhetorical and interpretative practice that warrants further <em>analysis</em> and <em>criticism</em> from scholars in the humanities and social sciences. A rhetorical perspective recasts quality in terms of how genre, audience, context, and purpose shape the captioning act. Drawing on a range of Hollywood movies and television shows, this article addresses a set of topics that are central to an understanding of the effectiveness, significance, and reception of captions: overcaptioning, undercaptioning, subtitles vs. captions, the manipulation of time, non-speech information, series awareness, and the backchannel.

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IntroductionIn 2013, Facebook introduced autoplay video into its newsfeed. In order not to produce sound disruptive to hearing users, videos were muted until a user clicked on them to enable audio. This move, recognised as a competitive response to the popularity of video-sharing sites like YouTube, has generated significant changes to the aesthetics, form, and modalities of online video. Many video producers have incorporated captions into their videos as a means of attracting and maintaining user attention. Of course, captions are not simply a replacement or translation of sound, but have instead added new layers of meaning and changed the way stories are told through video.In this paper, I ask how the use of captions has altered the communication of messages conveyed through online video. In particular, I consider the role captions have played in news reporting, as online platforms like Facebook become increasingly significant sites for the consumption of news. One of the most successful producers of online news video has been Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+). I examine two recent AJ+ news videos to consider how meaning is generated when captions are integrated into the already multimodal form of the video—their online reporting of Australian versus US healthcare systems, and the history of the Black Panther movement. I analyse interactions amongst image, sound, language, and typography and consider the role of captions in audience engagement, branding, and profit-making. Sean Zdenek notes that captions have yet to be recognised “as a significant variable in multimodal analysis, on par with image, sound and video” (xiii). Here, I attempt to pay close attention to the representational, cultural and economic shifts that occur when captions become a central component of online news reporting. I end by briefly enquiring into the implications of captions for our understanding of literacy in an age of constantly shifting media.Multimodality in Digital MediaJeff Bezemer and Gunther Kress define a mode as a “socially and culturally shaped resource for meaning making” (171). Modes include meaning communicated through writing, sound, image, gesture, oral language, and the use of space. Of course, all meanings are conveyed through multiple modes. A page of written text, for example, requires us to make sense through the simultaneous interpretation of words, space, colour, and font. Media such as television and film have long been understood as multimodal; however, with the appearance of digital technologies, media’s multimodality has become increasingly complex. Video games, for example, demonstrate an extraordinary interplay between image, sound, oral language, written text, and interactive gestures, while technologies such as the mobile phone combine the capacity to produce meaning through speaking, writing, and image creation.These multiple modes are not simply layered one on top of the other, but are instead “enmeshed through the complexity of interaction, representation and communication” (Jewitt 1). The rise of multimodal media—as well as the increasing interest in understanding multimodality—occurs against the backdrop of rapid technological, cultural, political, and economic change. These shifts include media convergence, political polarisation, and increased youth activism across the globe (Herrera), developments that are deeply intertwined with uses of digital media and technology. Indeed, theorists of multimodality like Jay Lemke challenge us to go beyond formalist readings of how multiple modes work together to create meaning, and to consider multimodality “within a political economy and a cultural ecology of identities, markets and values” (140).Video’s long history as an inexpensive and portable way to produce media has made it an especially dynamic form of multimodal media. In 1974, avant-garde video artist Nam June Paik predicted that “new forms of video … will stimulate the whole society to find more imaginative ways of telecommunication” (45). Fast forward more than 40 years, and we find that video has indeed become an imaginative and accessible form of communication. The cultural influence of video is evident in the proliferation of video genres, including remix videos, fan videos, Let’s Play videos, video blogs, live stream video, short form video, and video documentary, many of which combine semiotic resources in novel ways. The economic power of video is evident in the profitability of video sharing sites—YouTube in particular—as well as the recent appearance of video on other social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.These platforms constitute significant “sites of display.” As Rodney Jones notes, sites of display are not merely the material media through which information is displayed. Rather, they are complex spaces that organise social interactions—for example, between producers and users—and shape how meaning is made. Certainly we can see the influence of sites of display by considering Facebook’s 2013 introduction of autoplay into its newsfeed, a move that forced video producers to respond with new formats. As Edson Tandoc and Julian Maitra write, news organisations have had been forced to “play by Facebook’s frequently modified rules and change accordingly when the algorithms governing the social platform change” (2). AJ+ has been considered one of the media companies that has most successfully adapted to these changes, an adaptation I examine below. I begin by taking up Lemke’s challenge to consider multimodality contextually, reading AJ+ videos through the conceptual lens of the “attention economy,” a lens that highlights the profitability of attention within digital cultures. I then follow with analyses of two short AJ+ videos to show captions’ central role, not only in conveying meaning, but also in creating markets, and communicating branded identities and ideologies.AJ+, Facebook and the New Economies of AttentionThe Al Jazeera news network was founded in 1996 to cover news of the Arab world, with a declared commitment to give “voice to the voiceless.” Since that time, the network has gained global influence, yet many of its attempts to break into the American market have been unsuccessful (Youmans). In 2013, the network acquired Current TV in an effort to move into cable television. While that effort ultimately failed, Al Jazeera’s purchase of the youth-oriented Current TV nonetheless led to another, surprisingly fruitful enterprise, the development of the digital media channel Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+). AJ+ content, which is made up almost entirely of video, is directed at 18 to 35-year-olds. As William Youmans notes, AJ+ videos are informal and opinionated, and, while staying consistent with Al Jazeera’s mission to “give voice to the voiceless,” they also take an openly activist stance (114). Another distinctive feature of AJ+ videos is the way they are tailored for specific platforms. From the beginning, AJ+ has had particular success on Facebook, a success that has been recognised in popular and trade publications. A 2015 profile on AJ+ videos in Variety (Roettgers) noted that AJ+ was the ninth biggest video publisher on the social network, while a story on Journalism.co (Reid, “How AJ+ Reaches”) that same year commented on the remarkable extent to which Facebook audiences shared and interacted with AJ+ videos. These stories also note the distinctive video style that has become associated with the AJ+ brand—short, bold captions; striking images that include photos, maps, infographics, and animations; an effective opening hook; and a closing call to share the video.AJ+ video producers were developing this unique style just as Facebook’s autoplay was being introduced into newsfeeds. Autoplay—a mechanism through which videos are played automatically, without action from a user—predates Facebook’s introduction of the feature. However, autoplay on Internet sites had already begun to raise the ire of many users before its appearance on Facebook (Oremus, “In Defense of Autoplay”). By playing video automatically, autoplay wrests control away from users, and causes particular problems for users using assistive technologies. Reporting on Facebook’s decision to introduce autoplay, Josh Constine notes that the company was looking for a way to increase advertising revenues without increasing the number of actual ads. Encouraging users to upload and share video normalises the presence of video on Facebook, and opens up the door to the eventual addition of profitable video ads. Ensuring that video plays automatically gives video producers an opportunity to capture the attention of users without the need for them to actively click to start a video. Further, ensuring that the videos can be understood when played silently means that both deaf users and users who are situationally unable to hear the audio can also consume its content in any kind of setting.While Facebook has promoted its introduction of autoplay as a benefit to users (Oremus, “Facebook”), it is perhaps more clearly an illustration of the carefully-crafted production strategies used by digital platforms to capture, maintain, and control attention. Within digital capitalism, attention is a highly prized and scarce resource. Michael Goldhaber argues that once attention is given, it builds the potential for further attention in the future. He writes that “obtaining attention is obtaining a kind of enduring wealth, a form of wealth that puts you in a preferred position to get anything this new economy offers” (n.p.). In the case of Facebook, this offers video producers the opportunity to capture users’ attention quickly—in the time it takes them to scroll through their newsfeed. While this may equate to only a few seconds, those few seconds hold, as Goldhaber predicted, the potential to create further value and profit when videos are viewed, liked, shared, and commented on.Interviews with AJ+ producers reveal that an understanding of the value of this attention drives the organisation’s production decisions, and shapes content, aesthetics, and modalities. They also make it clear that it is captions that are central in their efforts to engage audiences. Jigar Mehta, former head of engagement at AJ+, explains that “those first three to five seconds have become vital in grabbing the audience’s attention” (quoted in Reid, “How AJ+ Reaches”). While early videos began with the AJ+ logo, that was soon dropped in favour of a bold image and text, a decision that dramatically increased views (Reid, “How AJ+ Reaches”). Captions and titles are not only central to grabbing attention, but also to maintaining it, particularly as many audience members consume video on mobile devices without sound. Mehta tells an editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab:we think a lot about whether a video works with the sound off. Do we have to subtitle it in order to keep the audience retention high? Do we need to use big fonts? Do we need to use color blocking in order to make words pop and make things stand out? (Mehta, qtd. in Ellis)An AJ+ designer similarly suggests that the most important aspects of AJ+ videos are brand, aesthetic style, consistency, clarity, and legibility (Zou). While questions of brand, style, and clarity are not surprising elements to associate with online video, the matter of legibility is. And yet, in contexts where video is viewed on small, hand-held screens and sound is not an option, legibility—as it relates to the arrangement, size and colour of type—does indeed take on new importance to storytelling and sense-making.While AJ+ producers frame the use of captions as an innovative response to Facebook’s modern algorithmic changes, it makes sense to also remember the significant histories of captioning that their videos ultimately draw upon. This lineage includes silent films of the early twentieth century, as well as the development of closed captions for deaf audiences later in that century. Just as he argues for the complexity, creativity, and transformative potential of captions themselves, Sean Zdenek also urges us to view the history of closed captioning not as a linear narrative moving inevitably towards progress, but as something far more complicated and marked by struggle, an important reminder of the fraught and human histories that are often overlooked in accounts of “new media.” Another important historical strand to consider is the centrality of the written word to digital media, and to the Internet in particular. As Carmen Lee writes, despite public anxieties and discussions over a perceived drop in time spent reading, digital media in fact “involve extensive use of the written word” (2). While this use takes myriad forms, many of these forms might be seen as connected to the production, consumption, and popularity of captions, including practices such as texting, tweeting, and adding titles and catchphrases to photos.Captions, Capture, and Contrast in Australian vs. US HealthcareOn May 4, 2017, US President Donald Trump was scheduled to meet with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in New York City. Trump delayed the meeting, however, in order to await the results of a vote in the US House of Representatives to repeal the Affordable Care Act—commonly known as Obama Care. When he finally sat down with the Prime Minister later that day, Trump told him that Australia has “better health care” than the US, a statement that, in the words of a Guardian report, “triggered astonishment and glee” amongst Trump’s critics (Smith). In response to Trump’s surprising pronouncement, AJ+ produced a 1-minute video extending Trump’s initial comparison with a series of contrasts between Australian government-funded health care and American privatised health care (Facebook, “President Trump Says…”). The video provides an excellent example of the role captions play in both generating attention and creating the unique aesthetic that is crucial to the AJ+ brand.The opening frame of the video begins with a shot of the two leaders seated in front of the US and Australian flags, a diplomatic scene familiar to anyone who follows politics. The colours of the picture are predominantly red, white and blue. Superimposed on top of the image is a textbox containing the words “How does Australia’s healthcare compare to the US?” The question appears in white capital letters on a black background, and the box itself is heavily outlined in yellow. The white and yellow AJ+ logo appears in the upper right corner of the frame. This opening frame poses a question to the viewer, encouraging a kind of rhetorical interactivity. Through the use of colour in and around the caption, it also quickly establishes the AJ+ brand. This opening scene also draws on the Internet’s history of humorous “image macros”—exemplified by the early LOL cat memes—that create comedy through the superimposition of captions on photographic images (Shifman).Captions continue to play a central role in meaning-making once the video plays. In the next frame, Trump is shown speaking to Turnbull. As he speaks, his words—“We have a failing healthcare”—drop onto the screen (Image 1). The captions are an exact transcription of Trump’s awkward phrase and appear centred in caps, with the words “failing healthcare” emphasised in larger, yellow font. With or without sound, these bold captions are concise, easily read on a small screen, and visually dominate the frame. The next few seconds of the video complete the sequence, as Trump tells Turnbull, “I shouldn’t say this to our great gentleman, my friend from Australia, ‘cause you have better healthcare than we do.” These words continue to appear over the image of the two men, still filling the screen. In essence, Trump’s verbal gaffe, transcribed word for word and appearing in AJ+’s characteristic white and yellow lettering, becomes the video’s hook, designed to visually call out to the Facebook user scrolling silently through their newsfeed.Image 1: “We have a failing healthcare.”The middle portion of the video answers the opening question, “How does Australia’s healthcare compare to the US?”. There is no verbal language in this segment—the only sound is a simple synthesised soundtrack. Instead, captions, images, and spatial design, working in close cooperation, are used to draw five comparisons. Each of these comparisons uses the same format. A title appears at the top of the screen, with the remainder of the screen divided in two. The left side is labelled Australia, the right U.S. Underneath these headings, a representative image appears, followed by two statistics, one for each country. For example, the third comparison contrasts Australian and American infant mortality rates (Image 2). The left side of the screen shows a close-up of a mother kissing a baby, with the superimposed caption “3 per 1,000 births.” On the other side of the yellow border, the American infant mortality rate is illustrated with an image of a sleeping baby superimposed with a corresponding caption, “6 per 1,000 births.” Without voiceover, captions do much of the work of communicating the national differences. They are, however, complemented and made more quickly comprehensible through the video’s spatial design and its subtly contrasting images, which help to visually organise the written content.Image 2: “Infant mortality rate”The final 10 seconds of the video bring sound back into the picture. We once again see and hear Trump tell Turnbull, “You have better healthcare than we do.” This image transforms into another pair of male faces—liberal American commentator Chris Hayes and US Senator Bernie Sanders—taken from a MSNBC cable television broadcast. On one side, Hayes says “They do have, they have universal healthcare.” On the other, Sanders laughs uproariously in response. The only added caption for this segment is “Hahahaha!”, the simplicity of which suggests that the video’s target audience is assumed to have a context for understanding Sander’s laughter. Here and throughout the video, autoplay leads to a far more visual style of relating information, one in which captions—working alongside images and layout—become, in Zdenek’s words, a sort of “textual performance” (6).The Black Panther Party and the Textual Performance of Progressive PoliticsReports on police brutality and Black Lives Matters protests have been amongst AJ+’s most widely viewed and shared videos (Reid, “Beyond Websites”). Their 2-minute video (Facebook, Black Panther) commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party, viewed 9.5 million times, provides background to these contemporary events. Like the comparison of American and Australian healthcare, captions shape the video’s structure. But here, rather than using contrast as means of quick visual communication, the video is structured as a list of five significant points about the Black Panther Party. Captions are used not only to itemise and simplify—and ultimately to reduce—the party’s complex history, but also, somewhat paradoxically, to promote the news organisation’s own progressive values.After announcing the intent and structure of the video—“5 things you should know about the Black Panther Party”—in its first 3 seconds, the video quickly sets in to describe each item in turn. The themes themselves correspond with AJ+’s own interests in policing, community, and protest, while the language used to announce each theme is characteristically concise and colloquial:They wanted to end police brutality.They were all about the community.They made enemies in high places.Women were vocal and active panthers.The Black Panthers’ legacy is still alive today.Each of these themes is represented using a combination of archival black and white news footage and photographs depicting Black Panther members, marches, and events. These still and moving images are accompanied by audio recordings from party members, explaining its origins, purposes, and influences. Captions are used throughout the video both to indicate the five themes and to transcribe the recordings. As the video moves from one theme to another, the corresponding number appears in the centre of the screen to indicate the transition, and then shrinks and moves to the upper left corner of the screen as a reminder for viewers. A musical soundtrack of strings and percussion, communicating a sense of urgency, underscores the full video.While typographic features like font size, colour, and placement were significant in communicating meaning in AJ+’s healthcare video, there is an even broader range of experimentation here. The numbers 1 to 5 that appear in the centre of the screen to announce each new theme blink and flicker like the countdown at the beginning of bygone film reels, gesturing towards the historical topic and complementing the black and white footage. For those many viewers watching the video without sound, an audio waveform above the transcribed interviews provides a visual clue that the captions are transcriptions of recorded voices. Finally, the colour green, used infrequently in AJ+ videos, is chosen to emphasise a select number of key words and phrases within the short video. Significantly, all of these words are spoken by Black Panther members. For example, captions transcribing former Panther leader Ericka Huggins speaking about the party’s slogan—“All power to the people”—highlight the words “power” and “people” with large, lime green letters that stand out against the grainy black and white photos (Image 3). The captions quite literally highlight ideas about oppression, justice, and social change that are central to an understanding of the history of the Black Panther Party, but also to the communication of the AJ+ brand.Image 3: “All power to the people”ConclusionEmploying distinctive combinations of word and image, AJ+ videos are produced to call out to users through the crowded semiotic spaces of social media. But they also call out to scholars to think carefully about the new kinds of literacies associated with rapidly changing digital media formats. Captioned video makes clear the need to recognise how meaning is constructed through sophisticated interpretive strategies that draw together multiple modes. While captions are certainly not new, an analysis of AJ+ videos suggests the use of novel typographical experiments that sit “midway between language and image” (Stöckl 289). Discussions of literacy need to expand to recognise this experimentation and to account for the complex interactions between the verbal and visual that get lost when written text is understood to function similarly across multiple platforms. In his interpretation of closed captioning, Zdenek provides an insightful list of the ways that captions transform meaning, including their capacity to contextualise, clarify, formalise, linearise and distill (8–9). His list signals not only the need for a deeper understanding of the role of captions, but also for a broader and more vivid vocabulary to describe multimodal meaning-making. Indeed, as Allan Luke suggests, within the complex multimodal and multilingual contexts of contemporary global societies, literacy requires that we develop and nurture “languages to talk about language” (459).Just as importantly, an analysis of captioned video that takes into account the economic reasons for captioning also reminds us of the need for critical media literacies. AJ+ videos reveal how the commercial goals of branding, promotion, and profit-making influence the shape and presentation of news. As meaning-makers and as citizens, we require the capacity to assess how we are being addressed by news organisations that are themselves responding to the interests of economic and cultural juggernauts such as Facebook. In schools, universities, and informal learning spaces, as well as through discourses circulated by research, media, and public policy, we might begin to generate more explicit and critical discussions of the ways that digital media—including texts that inform us and even those that exhort us towards more active forms of citizenship—simultaneously seek to manage, direct, and profit from our attention.ReferencesBezemer, Jeff, and Gunther Kress. “Writing in Multimodal Texts: A Social Semiotic Account of Designs for Learning.” Written Communication 25.2 (2008): 166–195.Constine, Josh. “Facebook Adds Automatic Subtitling for Page Videos.” TechCrunch 4 Jan. 2017. 1 May 2017 <https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/04/facebook-video-captions/>.Ellis, Justin. “How AJ+ Embraces Facebook, Autoplay, and Comments to Make Its Videos Stand Out.” Nieman Labs 3 Aug. 2015. 28 Apr. 2017 <http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/08/how-aj-embraces-facebook-autoplay-and-comments-to-make-its-videos-stand-out/>.Facebook. “President Trump Says…” Facebook, 2017. <https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/954884227986418/>.Facebook. “Black Panther.” Facebook, 2017. <https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/820822028059306/>.Goldhaber, Michael. “The Attention Economy and the Net.” First Monday 2.4 (1997). 9 June 2013 <http://firstmonday.org/article/view/519/440>.Herrera, Linda. “Youth and Citizenship in the Digital Age: A View from Egypt.” Harvard Educational Review 82.3 (2012): 333–352.Jewitt, Carey.”Introduction.” Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. Ed. Carey Jewitt. New York: Routledge, 2009. 1–8.Jones, Rodney. “Technology and Sites of Display.” Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. Ed. Carey Jewitt. New York: Routledge, 2009. 114–126.Lee, Carmen. “Micro-Blogging and Status Updates on Facebook: Texts and Practices.” Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media. Eds. Crispin Thurlow and Kristine Mroczek. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2011. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795437.001.0001.Lemke, Jay. “Multimodality, Identity, and Time.” Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. Ed. Carey Jewitt. New York: Routledge, 2009. 140–150.Luke, Allan. “Critical Literacy in Australia: A Matter of Context and Standpoint.” Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 43.5 (200): 448–461.Oremus, Will. “Facebook Is Eating the Media.” National Post 14 Jan. 2015. 15 June 2017 <http://news.nationalpost.com/news/facebook-is-eating-the-media-how-auto-play-videos-could-put-news-websites-out-of-business>.———. “In Defense of Autoplay.” Slate 16 June 2015. 14 June 2017 <http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/06/autoplay_videos_facebook_twitter_are_making_them_less_annoying.html>.Paik, Nam June. “The Video Synthesizer and Beyond.” The New Television: A Public/Private Art. Eds. Douglas Davis and Allison Simmons. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977. 45.Reid, Alistair. “Beyond Websites: How AJ+ Is Innovating in Digital Storytelling.” Journalism.co 17 Apr. 2015. 13 Feb. 2017 <https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/beyond-websites-how-aj-is-innovating-in-digital-storytelling/s2/a564811/>.———. “How AJ+ Reaches 600% of Its Audience on Facebook.” Journalism.co. 5 Aug. 2015. 13 Feb. 2017 <https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/how-aj-reaches-600-of-its-audience-on-facebook/s2/a566014/>.Roettgers, Jank. “How Al Jazeera’s AJ+ Became One of the Biggest Video Publishers on Facebook.” Variety 30 July 2015. 1 May 2017 <http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/how-al-jazeeras-aj-became-one-of-the-biggest-video-publishers-on-facebook-1201553333/>.Shifman, Limor. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.Smith, David. “Trump Says ‘Everybody’, Not Just Australia, Has Better Healthcare than US.” The Guardian 5 May 2017. 5 May 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/05/trump-healthcare-australia-better-malcolm-turnbull>.Stöckl, Hartmut. “Typography: Visual Language and Multimodality.” Interactions, Images and Texts. Eds. Sigrid Norris and Carmen Daniela Maier. Amsterdam: De Gruyter, 2014. 283–293.Tandoc, Edson, and Maitra, Julian. “New Organizations’ Use of Native Videos on Facebook: Tweaking the Journalistic Field One Algorithm Change at a Time. New Media & Society (2017). DOI: 10.1177/1461444817702398.Youmans, William. An Unlikely Audience: Al Jazeera’s Struggle in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.Zdenek, Sean. Reading Sounds: Closed-Captioned Media and Popular Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.Zou, Yanni. “How AJ+ Applies User-Centered Design to Win Millennials.” Medium 16 Apr. 2016. 7 May 2017 <https://medium.com/aj-platforms/how-aj-applies-user-centered-design-to-win-millennials-3be803a4192c>.

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IntroductionIn a 2013 press release issued by Blind Citizens Australia, the advocacy group announced they were lodging a human rights complaint against the Australian government and the ABC over the lack of audio description available on the public broadcaster. Audio description is a track of narration included between the lines of dialogue which describes important visual elements of a television show, movie or performance. Audio description is broadly recognised as an essential feature to make television accessible to audiences who are blind or vision impaired (Utray et al.). Indeed, Blind Citizens Australia maintained that audio description was as important as captioning on Australian television:people who are blind have waited too long and are frustrated that audio description on television remains indefinitely beyond our reach. Our Deaf or hearing impaired peers have always seen great commitment from the ABC, but we continue to feel like second class citizens.While audio description as a technology was developed in the 1960s—around the same time as captions (Ellis, “Netflix Closed Captions”)—it is not as widely available on television and access is therefore often considered to be out of reach for this group. As a further comparison, in Australia, while the provision of captions was mandated in the Broadcasting Services Act (BSA) 1992 and television sets had clear Australian standards regarding their capability to display captions, there is no legislation for audio description and no consistency regarding the ability of television sets sold in Australia to display them (Ellis, “Television’s Transition”). While as a technology, audio description is as old as captioning it is not as widely available on television. This is despite the promise of technological advancements to facilitate its availability. For example, Cronin and King predicted that technological change such as the introduction of stereo sound on television would facilitate a more widespread availability of audio description; however, this has not eventuated. Similarly, in the lead up to the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting in Australia, government policy documents predicted a more widespread availability of audio description as a result of increased bandwidth available via digital television (Ellis, “Television’s Transition”). While these predictions paved way for an audio description trial, there has been no amendment to the BSA to mandate its provision.Audio description has been experienced on Australian broadcast television in 2012, but only for a 14-week trial on ABC1. The trial report, and feedback from disability groups, identified several technical impediments and limitations which effected the experience of audio described content during this trial, including: the timing of the trial during a period in which the transition from analogue to digital television was still occurring (creating hardware compatibility issues for some consumers); the limitations of the “ad hoc” approach undertaken by the ABC and manual implementation of audio description; and the need for upgraded digital receivers (ABC “Trial of Audio Description”, 2). While advocacy groups acknowledged the technical complexities involved, the expected stakeholder discussions that were due to be held post-trial, in part to attempt to resolve the issues experienced, were never undertaken. As a result of the lack of subsequent commitments to providing audio description, in 2013 advocacy group Blind Citizens Australia lodged their formal complaints of disability discrimination against the ABC and the Federal Government. Since the 2012 trial on ABC1, the ABC’s catch-up portal iView instigated another audio description trial in 2015. Through the iView trial it was further confirmed that audio description held considerable benefits for people with a vision impairment. They also demonstrated that audio description was technically feasible, with far less ‘technical difficulties’ than the experience of the 2012 broadcast-based trial. Over the 15 month trial on ABC iView 1,305 hours of audio described content was provided and played 158, 277 times across multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, the Freeview app and desktop computers (ABC, “ABC iView Audio Description Trial”).Yet despite repeated audio description trials and the lodgement of discrimination complaints, there remains no audio description on Australian broadcast television. Similarly, whereas 55 per cent of DVDs released in Australia have captions, only 25 per cent include an audio description track (Media Access Australia). At the time of writing, the only audio description available on Australian television is on Netflix Australia, a subscription video on demand provider.This article seeks to highlight the importance of television access for people with disability, with a specific focus on the provision of audio description for people with vision impairments. Research consistently shows that despite being a visual medium, people with vision impairments watch television at least once a day (Cronin and King; Ellis, “Netflix Closed Captions”). However, while television access has been a priority for advocates for people who are Deaf and hard of hearing (Downey), audiences advocating audio description are only recently making gains (Ellis, “Netflix Closed Captions”; Ellis and Kent). These gains are frequently attributed to technological change, particularly the digitisation of television and the introduction of subscription video on demand where users access television content online and are not constrained by broadcast schedules. This transformation of how we access television is also considered in the article, again with a focus on the provision–or lack thereof—of audio description.This article also reports findings of research conducted with Australians with disabilities accessing the emerging video on demand environment in 2016. The survey was run online from January to February 2016. Survey respondents included people with disability, their families, and carers, and were sourced through disability organisations and community groups as well as via disability-focused social media. A total of 145 people completed the survey and 12 people participated in follow-up interviews. Insights were gained into both how people with disability are currently using video on demand and their anticipated usage of services. Of note is that most subscription video on demand services (Netflix Australia, Stan, and Presto) had only been introduced in Australia in the year before the survey being carried out, with only Foxtel Play and Quickflix having been in operation for some time prior to that.Finally, the article ends by looking at past and current advocacy in this area, including a discussion on existing—albeit, to date, limited—political will.Access to Television for People with DisabilitiesTelevision can be disabling in different ways for people with impairments, yet several accessibility features exist to translate information. For example, people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing may require captions, while people with vision impairments prefer to make use of audio description (Alper et al.). Similarly, people with mobility and dexterity impairments found the transition to digital broadcasting difficult, particularly with relation to set top box set up (Carmichael et al.). As Joshua Robare has highlighted, even legislation has generally favoured the inclusion of audiences with hearing impairments, while disregarding those with vision impairments. Similarly, much of the literature in this area focuses on the provision of captions—a vital accessibility feature for people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing. Consequently, research into accessibility to television for a diversity of impairments, going beyond hearing impairments, remains deficient.In a study of Australian audiences with disability conducted between September and November 2013—during the final months of the analogue to digital simulcast period of Australian broadcast television—closed captions, clean audio, and large/colour-coded remote control keys emerged as the most desired access features (see Ellis, “Digital Television Flexibility”). Audio description barely registered in the top five. In a different study conducted two years ago/later, when disabled Australian audiences of video on demand were asked the same question, captions continued to dominate at 63.4 per cent; however, audio description was also seen to be a necessary feature for almost one third of respondents (see Ellis et al., Accessing Subcription Video).Robert Kingett, founder of the Accessible Netflix Project, participated in our research and told us in an interview that video on demand providers treat accessibility as an “afterthought”, particularly for blind people whom most don’t think of as watching television. Yet research dating back to the 1990s shows almost 100 per cent of people with vision impairments watch television at least once a day (Cronin & King). Statistically, the number of Australians who identify as blind or vision impaired is not insignificant. Vision Australia estimates that over 357,000 Australians have a vision impairment, while one in five Australians have a disability of some form. With an ageing population, this number is expected to grow exponentially in the next ten years (Australian Network on Disability). Kingett therefore describes this lack of accessibility as evidence video on demand is “stuck in the dark ages”, and advocates that people with vision impairments do use video on demand and therefore continue to have unmet access needs.Video on Demand—Transforming TelevisionSubscription video on demand services have caused a major shift in the way television is used and consumed in Australia. Prior to 2015, there was a small subscription video on demand industry in this country. However, in 2015, following the launch of Netflix Australia, Stan, and Presto, Australia was described as having entered the “streaming wars” (Tucker) where consumers would benefit from the increased competition. As Netflix gained dominance in the video on demand market internationally, people with disability began to recognise the potential this service could have in transforming their access to television.For example, the growing availability of video on demand services continues to provide disruptive change to the way in which consumers enjoy information and entertainment. While traditional broadcast television has provided great opportunities for participation in news, events, and popular culture, both socially and in the workplace, the move towards video on demand services has seen a notable decline in traditional television viewing habits, with online continuing to increase at the expense of Australian free-to-air programming (C-Scott).For the general population, this always-on, always-available, and always-shareable nature of video on demand means that the experience is both convenient and instant. If a television show is of interest to friends and family, it can be quickly shared through popular social media with others, allowing everyone to join in the experience. For people with disability, the ability to both share and personalise the experience of television is critical to the popularity of video on demand services for this group. This gives them not only the same benefits as others but also ensures that people with disability are not unintentionally excluded from participation—it allows people with disability the choice as to whether or not to join in. However, exclusion from video on demand is a significant concern for people with disability due to the lack of accessibility features in popular subscription services. The lack of captions, audio description, and interfaces that do not comply with international Web accessibility standards are resulting in many people with disability being unable to fully participate in the preferred viewing platforms of family and friends.The impact of this expands beyond the consumption patterns of audiences, shifting the way the audience is defined and conceptualised. With an increasing distribution of audience attention to multiple channels, products, and services, the ability to, and strategies for, acquiring a large audience has changed (Napoli). As audience attention is distributed, it is broken up, into smaller, fragmented groups. The success, therefore, of a new provider may be to amass a large audience through the aggregation of smaller, niche audiences. This theory has significance for consumers who require audio description because they represent a viable target group. In this context, accessibility is reframed as a commercial opportunity rather than a cost (Ellis, “Netflix Closed Captions”).However, what this means for future provision of audio description in Australia is still unclear. Chris Mikul from Media Access Australia, author of Access on Demand, was interviewed as part of this research. He told us that the complete lack of audio description on local video on demand services can be attributed to the lack of Australian legislation requiring it. In an interview as part of this research he explained the central issue with audio description in this country as “the lack of audio description on broadcast TV, which is shocking in a world context”.International providers fare only slightly better. Robert Kingett established the Accessible Netflix Project in 2013 with the stated aim of advocating for the provision of audio description on Netflix. Netflix, despite a lack of a clear accessibility policy, are seen as being in front in terms of overall accessibility—captions are available for most content. However, the provision of audio description was initially not considered to be of such importance, and Netflix were initially against the idea, citing technical difficulties. Nevertheless, in 2015—shortly after their Australian launch—they did eventually introduce audio description on original programming, describing the access feature as an option customers could choose, “just like choosing the soundtrack in a different language” (Wright). However, despite such successful trials, the issue in the Australian market remains the absence of legislation mandating the provision of audio description in Australia and the other video on demand providers have not introduced audio description to compete with Netflix. As the Netflix example illustrates, both legislation and recognition of people with disability as a key audience demographic will result in a more accessible television environment for this group.Currently, it is debatable as to whether this increasingly competitive market, the shifting perception of audience attraction and retention, and the entry of multiple international video on demand providers, has influenced how accessibility is viewed, both for broadcast television and video on demand. Although there is some evidence for an increasing consideration of people with disability as “valid” consumers—take, for example, the iView audio description trial, or the inclusion of audio description by Netflix—our research indicates accessibility is still inconsistently considered, designed for, and applied by current providers.Survey Response: Key Issues Regarding AccessibilityRespondents were asked to provide an overall impression of video on demand services, and to tell us about their positive and negative experiences. Analysis of 68 extended responses, and the responses provided by the interview participants, identified a lack of availability of accessibility features such as audio description as a key problem. What our results indicate is that while customers with a disability are largely accommodating of the inaccessibility of providers—they use their own assistive technology to access content—they are keenly aware of the provisions that could be made. As one respondent put it:they could do a lot better: talking menus, spoken sub titles, and also spoken messages on screen.However, many expressed low expectations due to the continued absence of audio description on broadcast television:so, the other thing is, my expectations are quite low because of years of not having audio descriptions. I have slightly different expectations to other people.This reflection is important in considering both the shifting expectations regarding video on demand providers but also the need for a clear communication of what features are available so that providers can cater to—and therefore capture—niche markets.The survey identified captioning as the main accessibility problem of video on demand services. However, this may not accurately reflect the need for other accessibility features such as audio description. Rather, it may be indicative that this feature is often the only choice given to consumers. As, Chris Mikul identified, “the only disability being catered for to any great extent is deafness/hearing impairment”. Kingett agreed, noting:people who are deaf and hard of hearing are placed way before the rest because captions are beyond easy and cheap to create now. Please, there’s even companies that people use to crowd source captions so companies don’t have to do it anymore. This all came about because the deaf community has [banded] together … to achieve a cause. I know audio description isn’t as cheap to make as captions but, by these companies’ budgets that’s like dropping a penny.Advocacy and Political WillAs noted above, it has been argued by some that accessibility features that address vision impairments have been neglected. The reason behind this is twofold—the perception that this disability is experienced by a minority of the population and that, because blind people “don’t watch television”, it is not an important accessibility feature. This points towards a need for both disability advocacy and political will by politicians to introduce legislation. As one survey respondent identified, the reality is that, in Australia, neither politicians nor people with vision impairments have yet to address the issue on audio description in an organised or sustained way:we have very little audio described content available in Australia. We don’t have the population of blind people nor the political will by politicians to force providers to provide for us.However, Blind Citizens Australia—the coalition of television audiences with vision impairments who lodged the human rights complaint against the government and the ABC—suggest the tide is turning. Whereas advocates for people with vision impairments have traditionally focused on access to the workforce, the issue of television accessibility is increasingly gaining attention, particularly as a result of international activist efforts and the move towards video on demand (see Ellis and Kent).For example, Kingett’s Accessible Netflix Project in the US is considered one of the most successful accessibility movements towards the introduction of audio description. While its members are predominantly US-based, it does include several Australian members and continues to cover Netflix Australia’s stance on audio description, and be covered by Australian media and organisations (including Media Access Australia and Life Hacker). When Netflix launched in Australia, Kingett encouraged Australians to become more involved in the project (Ellis and Kent).However, despite the progress towards mandating of audio description in parliament and the resolution of efforts made by advocacy groups (including Vision Australia and Blind Citizens Australia), the status of audio description remains uncertain. Whilst some support has been gained—specifically through motions made by Senator Siewert and the ABC iView audio description trials—significant change has been slow. For example, conciliation discussions are still ongoing regarding the now four-year-old complaint brought against the ABC and the Federal Government by Blind Citizens Australia. Meanwhile, although the Senate supported Senator Siewert’s motion to change the Broadcasting Services Act to include audio description, the Act has yet to be amended.The results of multiple ABC trials of audio description remain in discussion. Whilst the recently released report on the findings of the April 2015—July 2016 iView trial states that the “trial has identified that those who utilised the audio description service found it a valuable enhancement to their media engagement and their social interactions” (ABC, “ABC iView Audio Description Trial” 18), it also cautioned that “any move to introduce AD services in Australia would have budgetary implications for the broadcasters in a constrained financial environment” and “broader legislative implications” (ABC, “ABC iView Audio Description Trial” 18). Indeed, although the trial was considered “successful”—in that experiences by users were generally positive and the benefits considerable (Media Access Australia, “New Report”)—the continuation of audio description on iView alone was clarified as representing “a systemic failure to provide people who are blind or have low vision with basic access to television now, given that iView is out of reach for many people in the blindness and low vision community” (Media Access Australia, “New Report”). Indeed, the relatively low numbers of plays of audio described content during the trial (158, 277 plays, representing 0.58% of total program plays on iView) were likely a result of a lack of access to smartphones or Internet technology, prohibitive data speeds and/or general Internet costs, all factors which affect the accessibility of video on demand significantly more for people with disability (Ellis et al., “Access for Everyone?”).On a more positive note, the culmination of advocacy pressure, the ABC iView trial, political attention, and increasing academic literature on the accessibility of Australian media has resulted in the establishment of an Audio Description Working Group by the government. This group consists of industry representatives, advocacy group representatives, academics, and “consumer representatives”. The aims of the group are to: identify options to sustainably increase access to audio description services; identify any impediments to the implementation of audio description; provide expert advice on audio description implementation options; and develop a report on the findings due at the end of 2017.ConclusionIn the absence of audio description, people who are blind or vision impaired report a less satisfying television experience (Cronin and King; Kingett). However, with each technological advancement in the delivery of television, from stereo sound to digital television, this group has held hopes for a more accessible experience. The reality, however, has been a continued lack of audio description, particularly in broadcast television.Several commentators have compared the provision of audio description with closed captioning. They find that audio description is not as widely available, and reflect this is likely a result of lack of legislation (Robare; Ellis, “Digital Television Flexibility”)—for example, in the Australian context, whereas the provision of captions is mandated in the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, audio description is not. As a result, there have been limited trials of audio description in this country and inconsistent standards in how to display it. As discussed throughout this paper, people with vision impairments and their allies therefore often draw on the example of the widespread “acceptance” of captions to make the case that audio description should also be more widely available.However, following the introduction of subscription video on demand in Australia, and particularly Netflix, the issue of audio description is receiving greater attention. It has been argued that video on demand has transformed television, particularly the ways in which television is accessed. Video on demand could also potentially transform the way we think about accessibility for audiences with disability. While captions are a well-established accessibility feature facilitating television access for people with a range of disabilities, video on demand is raising the profile of the importance of audio description for audiences with vision impairments.ReferencesABC. “Audio Description Trial on ABC Television: Report to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy”. Dec. 2012. 8 Apr. 2017 <https://www.communications.gov.au/sites/g/files/net301/f/ABC-Audio-Description-Trial-Report2.pdf>.ABC. “ABC iView Audio Description Trial: Final Report to The Department of Communications and the Arts.” Oct. 2016. 6 Apr. 2017 <https://www.communications.gov.au/documents/final-report-trial-audio-description-abc-iview>.Alper, Meryl, et al. “Reimagining the Good Life with Disability: Communication, New Technology, and Humane Connections.” Communication and the Good Life. Ed. H. Wang. New York: Peter Lang, 2015.Australian Network on Disability. “Disability Statistics.” Mar. 2017. 30 Apr. 2017 <https://www.and.org.au/pages/disability-statistics.html>.Blind Citizens Australia. Government and ABC Fail to Deliver on Accessible TV for Australia’s Blind. Submission. 10 July 2013. 1 May 2017 <http://bca.org.au/submissions/>.C-Scott, Marc. “The Battle for Audiences as Free-TV Viewing Continues Its Decline.” Mumbrella 22 Apr. 2016. 24 May 2016 <https://mumbrella.com.au/the-battle-for-audiences-as-free-tv-viewing-continues-its-decline-362010>.Carmichael, Alex, et al. “Digital Switchover or Digital Divide: A Prognosis for Useable and Accessible Interactive Digital Television in the UK.” Universal Access in the Information Society 4 (2006): 400–16.Cronin, Barry J., and Sharon Robertson King. “The Development of the Descriptive Video Services.” National Center to Improve Practice in Special Education through Technology, Media and Materials. Sep. 1998. 8 May 2014 <https://www2.edc.org/NCIP/library/v&c/Cronin.htm>.Downey, G. “Constructing Closed-Captioning in the Public Interest: From Minority Media Accessibility to Mainstream Educational Technology.” Info 9.2–3 (2007): 69–82.Ellis, Katie. “Digital Television Flexibility: A Survey of Australians with Disability.” Media International Australia 150 (2014): 96.———. “Netflix Closed Captions Offer an Accessible Model for the Streaming Video Industry, But What about Audio Description?” Communication, Politics & Culture 47.3 (2015).———. “Television’s Transition to the Internet: Disability Accessibility and Broadband-Based TV in Australia.” Media International Australia 153 (2014): 53–63.Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. “Accessible Television: The New Frontier in Disability Media Studies Brings Together Industry Innovation, Government Legislation and Online Activism.” First Monday 20 (2015). <http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6170>.Ellis, Katie, et al. Accessing Subscription Video on Demand: A Study of Disability and Streaming Television in Australia. Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. Aug. 2016. <https://accan.org.au/grants/current-grants/1066-accessing-video-on-demand-a-study-of-disability-and-streaming-television>.Ellis, Katie, et al. “Access for Everyone? Australia’s ‘Streaming Wars’ and Consumers with Disabilities.” Continuum (2017, publication pending).Kingett, Robert. “The Accessible Netflix Project Advocates Taking Steps to Ensure Netflix Accessibility for Everyone.” 2014. 30 Jan. 2014 <https://netflixproject.wordpress.com>.Media Access Australia. “Statistics on DVD Accessibility in Australia.” 2012. 21 Nov. 2014 <https://mediaaccess.org.au/dvds/Statistics%20on%20DVD%20accessibility%20in%20Australia>.———. “New Report on the Trial of A.D. on ABC iView.” 7 Mar. 2017. 30 Apr. 2017 <https://mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/television/new-report-on-the-trial-of-ad-on-abc-iview>.Napoli, Philip M., ed. Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.Robare, Joshua S. “Television for All: Increasing Television Accessibility for the Visually Impaired through the FCC’s Ability to Regulate Video Description Technology.” Federal Communications Law Journal 63.2 (2011): 553–78.Tucker, Harry. “Netflix Leads the Streaming Wars, Followed by Foxtel’s Presto.” News.com.au 24 June 2016. 18 May 2016 <http://www.news.com.au/technology/home-entertainment/tv/netflix-leads-the-streaming-wars-followed-by-foxtels-presto/news-story/7adf45dcd7d9486ff47ec5ea5951287f>.Utray, Francisco, et al. “Monitoring Accessibility Services in Digital Television.” International Journal of Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (2012): 9.

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Esta pesquisa piloto de recepção discute a questão da legendagem de campanhas políticas e de propagandas de anúncios publicitários na televisão brasileira sob a ótica de informantes surdos da cidade de Fortaleza. A problemática da pesquisa é: qual a visão dos surdos na cidade de Fortaleza quanto à legendagem de campanhas políticas e de propagandas de anúncios publicitários na TV, atualmente? A pesquisa pode ser definida como exploratória e qualitativa, baseada na análise e na interpretação de fatos por meio de observação, questionários e relatos, tendo seus dados analisados indutivamente. Os participantes são duas informantes surdas, ambas professoras, uma universitária e a outra de uma escola pública de surdos. Por meio de relatos retrospectivos filmados elas apresentaram sua visão acerca das referidas legendagens oferecidas pela televisão brasileira atualmente. Segundo elas, as legendas e a janela de Libras são importantes para os surdos terem acesso à informação, mas essas técnicas ainda não traduzem suficientemente as informações auditivas e visuais das programações. Dentre os problemas detectados estão: cor da fonte; legendas closed caption consideradas longas e rápidas; e poluição visual na tela. As informantes também se mostram insatisfeitas com as legendas pop-on e roll-up, em geral utilizadas na TV, afirmando que precisam ser melhoradas.

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IntroductionThe horror film Hush (2016) has attracted attention since its release due to the uniqueness of its central character—a deaf–mute author who lives in a world of silence. Maddie Young (Kate Siegel) moves into a remote cabin in the woods to recover from a breakup and finish her new novel. Aside from a cat, she is alone in the house, only engaging with loved ones via online messaging or video chats during which she uses American Sign Language (ASL). Maddie cannot hear nor speak, so writing is her primary mode of creative expression, and a key source of information for the audience. This article explores both the presence and absence of text in Hush, examining how textual “captions” of various kinds are both provided and withheld at key moments. As an author, Maddie battles the limits of written language as she struggles with writer’s block. As a person, she fights the limits of silence and isolation as a brutal killer invades her retreat. Accordingly, this article examines how the interplay between silence, text, and sound invites viewers to identify with the heroine’s experience and ultimate triumph.Hush is best described as a slasher—a horror film in which a single (usually male) killer stalks and kills a series of victims with relentless determination (Clover, Men, Women). Slashers are about close, visceral killing—blood and the hard stab of the knife. With her big brown eyes and gentle presence, quiet, deaf Maddie is clearly framed as a lamb to slaughter in the opening scenes. Indeed, throughout Hush, Maddie’s lack of hearing is leveraged to increase suspense and horror. The classic pantomime cry of “He’s behind you!” is taken to dark extremes as the audience watches a nameless man (John Gallagher Jr.) stalk the writer in her isolated house. She is unable to hear him enter the building, unable to sense him looming behind her. Neither does she hear him killing her friend outside on the porch, banging her body loudly against the French doors.And yet, despite her vulnerability, she rises to the challenge. Fighting back against her attacker using a variety of multisensory strategies, Maddie assumes the role of the “Final Girl” in this narrative. As Carol Clover has explained, the Final Girl is a key trope of slasher films, forming part of their essential structure. While others in the film are killed, “she alone looks death in the face; but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued (ending A) or to kill him herself (ending B)” (Clover, Her Body, Himself). However, reviews and discussions of Hush typically frame Maddie as a Final Girl with a difference. Adding disability into the equation is seen as “revolutionising” the trope (Sheppard) and “updating the Final Girl theory” for a new age (Laird). Indeed, the film presents its Final Girl as simultaneously deaf and powerful—a twist that potentially challenges the dynamics of the slasher and representations of disability more generally.My Weakness, My StrengthThe opening sequence of Hush introduces Maddie’s deafness through the use of sound, silence, and text. Following an establishing shot sweeping over the dark forest and down to her solitary cottage, the film opens to warm domesticity. Close-ups of onion, eggs, and garlic being prepared are accompanied by clear, crisp sounds of crackling, bubbling, slicing, and frying. The camera zooms out to focus on Maddie, busy at her culinary tasks. All noises begin to fade. The camera focuses on Maddie’s ear as audio is eliminated, replaced by silence. As she continues to cook, the audience experiences her world—a world devoid of sound. These initial moments also highlight the importance of digital communication technologies. Maddie moves smoothly between devices, switching from laptop computer to iPhone while sharing instant messages with a friend. Close-ups of these on-screen conversations provide viewers with additional narrative information, operating as an alternate form of captioning from within the diegesis. Snippets of text from other sources are likewise shown in passing, such as the author’s blurb on the jacket of her previous novel. The camera lingers on this book, allowing viewers to read that Maddie suffered hearing loss and vocal paralysis after contracting bacterial meningitis at 13 years old. Traditional closed captioning or subtitles are thus avoided in favour of less intrusive forms of expositional text that are integrated within the plot.While hearing characters, such as her neighbour and sister, use SimCom (simultaneous communication or sign supported speech) to communicate with her, Maddie signs in silence. Because the filmmakers have elected not to provide captions for her signs in these moments, a—typically non-ASL speaking—hearing audience will inevitably experience disruptions in comprehension and Maddie’s conversations can therefore only be partially understood. This allows for an interesting role reversal for viewers. As Katherine A. Jankowski (32) points out, deaf and hard of hearing audiences have long expressed dissatisfaction with accessing the spoken word on television and film due to a lack of closed captioning. Despite the increasing technological ease of captioning digital media in the 21st century, this barrier to accessibility continues to be an ongoing issue (Ellis and Kent). The hearing community do not share this frustrating background—television programs that include ASL are captioned to ensure hearing viewers can follow the story (see for example Beth Haller’s article on Switched at Birth in this special issue). Hush therefore inverts this dynamic by presenting ASL without captions. Whereas silence is used to draw hearing viewers into Maddie’s experience, her periodic use of ASL pushes them out again. This creates a push–pull dynamic, whereby the hearing audience identify with Maddie and empathise with the losses associated with being deaf and mute, but also realise that, as a result, she has developed additional skills that are beyond their ken.It is worth noting at this point that Maddie is not the first Final Girl with a disability. In the 1967 thriller Wait until Dark, for instance, Audrey Hepburn plays Susy Hendrix, a blind woman trapped in her home by three crooks. Martin F. Norden suggests that this film represented a “step forward” in cinematic representations of disability because its heroine is not simply an innocent victim, but “tough, resilient, and resourceful in her fight against the criminals who have misrepresented themselves to her and have broken into her apartment” (228). Susy’s blindness, at first presented as a source of vulnerability and frustration, becomes her strength in the film’s climax. Bashing out all the lights in the apartment, she forces the men to fight on her terms, in darkness, where she holds the upper hand. In a classic example of Final Girl tenacity, Susy stabs the last of them to death before help arrives. Maddie likewise uses her disability as a tactical advantage. An enhanced sense of touch allows her to detect the killer when he sneaks up behind her as she feels the lightest flutter upon the hairs of her neck. She also wields a blaring fire alarm as a weapon, deafening and disorienting her attacker, causing him to drop his knife.The similarities between these films are not coincidental. During an interview, director Mike Flanagan (who co-wrote Hush with wife Siegel) stated that they were directly informed by Wait until Dark. When asked about the choice to make Maddie’s character deaf, he explained that “it kind of happened because Kate and I were out to dinner and we were talking about movies we liked. One of the ones that we stumbled on that we both really liked was Wait Until Dark” (cited in Thurman). In the earlier film, director Terence Young used darkness to blind the audience—at times the screen is completely black and viewers must listen carefully to work out what is happening. Likewise, Flanagan and Siegel use silence to effectively deafen the audience at crucial moments. The viewers are therefore forced to experience the action as the heroines do.You’re Gonna Die Screaming But You Won’t Be HeardHorror films often depend upon sound design for impact—the most mundane visuals can be made frightening by the addition of a particular noise, effect, or tune. Therefore, in the context of the slasher genre, one of the most unique aspects of Hush is the absence of the Final Girl’s vocalisation. A mute heroine is deprived of the most basic expressive tool in the horror handbook—a good scream. “What really won me over,” comments one reviewer, “was the fact that this particular ‘final girl’ isn’t physically able to whinge or scream when in pain–something that really isn’t the norm in slasher/home invasion movies” (Gorman). Yet silence also plays an important part in this genre, “when the wind stops or the footfalls cease, death is near” (Whittington 183). Indeed, Hush’s tagline is “silence can be killer.”The arrival of the killer triggers a deep kind of silence in this particular film, because alternative captions, text, and other communicative techniques (including ASL) cease to be used or useful when the man begins terrorising Maddie. This is not entirely surprising, as the abject failure of technology is a familiar trope in slasher films. As Clover explains, “the emotional terrain of the slasher film is pretechnological” (Her Body, Himself, 198). In Hush, however, the focus on text in this context is notable. There is a sense that written modes of communication are unreliable when it counts. The killer steals her phone, and cuts electricity and Internet access to the house. She attempts to use the neighbours’ Wi-Fi via her laptop, but does not know the password. Quick thinking Maddie even scrawls backwards messages on her windows, “WON’T TELL. DIDN’T SEE FACE,” she writes in lipstick, “BOYFRIEND COMING HOME.” In response, the killer simply removes his mask, “You’ve seen it now” he says. They both know there is no boyfriend. The written word has shifted from being central to Maddie’s life, to largely irrelevant. Text cannot save her. It is only by using other strategies (and senses) that Maddie empowers herself to survive.Maddie’s struggles to communicate and take control are integral to the film’s unfolding narrative, and co-writer Siegel notes this was a conscious theme: “A lot of this movie is … a metaphor for feeling unheard. It’s a movie about asserting yourself and of course as a female writer I brought a lot to that.” In their reflection on the limits of both verbal and written communication, the writers of Hush owe a debt to another source of inspiration—Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. Season four, episode ten, also called Hush, was first aired on 14 December 1999 and features a critically acclaimed storyline in which the characters all lose their ability to speak. Voices from all over Sunnydale are stolen by monstrous fairytale figures called The Gentlemen, who use the silence to cut fresh hearts from living victims. Their appearance is heralded by a morbid rhyme:Can’t even shout, can’t even cry The Gentlemen are coming by. Looking in windows, knocking on doors, They need to take seven and they might take yours. Can’t call to mom, can’t say a word, You’re gonna die screaming but you won’t be heard.The theme of being “unheard” is clearly felt in this episode. Buffy and co attempt a variety of methods to compensate for their lost voices, such as hanging message boards around their necks, using basic text-to-voice computer software, and drawing on overhead projector slides. These tools essentially provide the captions for a story unfolding in silence, as no subtitles are provided. As it turns out, in many ways the friends’ non-verbal communication is more effective than their spoken words. Patrick Shade argues that the episode:celebrates the limits and virtues of both the nonverbal and the verbal. … We tend to be most readily aware of verbal means … but “Hush” stresses that we are embodied creatures whose communication consists in more than the spoken word. It reminds us that we have multiple resources we regularly employ in communicating.In a similar way, the film Hush emphasises alternative modes of expression through the device of the mute Final Girl, who must use all of her sensory and intellectual resources to survive. The evening begins with Maddie at leisure, unable to decide how to end her fictional novel. By the finale she is clarity incarnate. She assesses each real-life scene proactively and “writes” the end of the film on her own terms, showing that there is only one way to survive the night—she must fight.Deaf GainIn his discussion of disability and cinema, Norden explains that the majority of films position disabled people as outsiders and “others” because “filmmakers photograph and edit their work to reflect an able-bodied point of view” (1). The very apparatus of mainstream film, he argues, is designed to embody able-bodied experiences and encourage audience identification with able-bodied characters. He argues this bias results in disabled characters positioned as “objects of spectacle” to be pitied, feared or scorned by viewers. In Hush, however, the audience is consistently encouraged to identify with Maddie. As she fights for her life in the final scenes, sound fades away and the camera assumes a first-person perspective. The man is above, choking her on the floor, and we look up at him through her eyes. As Maddie’s groping hand finds a corkscrew and jabs the spike into his neck, we watch his death through her eyes too. The film thus assists viewers to apprehend Maddie’s strength intimately, rather than framing her as a spectacle or distanced “other” to be pitied.Importantly, it is this very core of perceived vulnerability, yet ultimate strength, that gives Maddie the edge over her attacker in the end. In this way, Maddie’s disabilities are not solely represented as a space of limitation or difference, but a potential wellspring of power. Hence the film supports, to some degree, the move to seeing deafness as gain, rather than loss:Deafness has long been viewed as a hearing loss—an absence, a void, a lack. It is virtually impossible to think of deafness without thinking of loss. And yet Deaf people do not often consider their lives to be defined by loss. Rather, there is something present in the lives of Deaf people, something full and complete. (Bauman and Murray, 3)As Bauman and Murray explain, the shift from “hearing loss” to “deaf gain” involves focusing on what is advantageous and unique about the deaf experience. They use the example of the Swiss national snowboarding team, who hired a deaf coach to boost their performance. The coach noticed they were depending too much on sound and used earplugs to teach a multi-sensory approach, “the earplugs forced them to learn to depend on the feel of the snow beneath their boards [and] the snowboarder’s performance improved markedly” (6). This idea that removing sound strengthens other senses is a thread that runs throughout Hush. For example, it is the loss of hearing and speech that are credited with inspiring Maddie’s successful writing career and innovative literary “voice”.Lennard J. Davis warns that framing people as heroic or empowered as a result of their disabilities can feed counterproductive stereotypes and perpetuate oppressive systems. “Privileging the inherent powers of the deaf or the blind is a form of patronizing,” he argues, because it traps such individuals within the concept of innate difference (106). Disparities between able and disabled people are easier to justify when disabled characters are presented as intrinsically “special” or “noble,” as this suggests inevitable divergence, rather than structural inequality. While this is something to keep in mind, Hush skirts the issue by presenting Maddie as a flawed, realistic character. She does not possess superpowers; she makes mistakes and gets injured. In short, she is a fallible human using what resources she has to the best of her abilities. As such, she represents a holistic vision of a disabled heroine rather than an overly glorified stereotype.ConclusionHush is a film about the limits of text, the gaps where language is impossible or insufficient, and the struggle to be heard as a woman with disabilities. It is a film about the difficulties surrounding both verbal and written communication, and our dependence upon them. The absence of closed captions or subtitles, combined with the use of alternative “captioning”—in the form of instant messaging, for instance—grounds the narrative in lived space, rather than providing easy extra-textual solutions. It also poses a challenge to a hearing audience, to cross the border of “otherness” and identify with a deaf heroine.Returning to the discussion of the Final Girl characterisation, Clover argues that this is a gendered device combining both traditionally feminine and masculine characteristics. The fluidity of the Final Girl is constant, “even during that final struggle she is now weak and now strong, now flees the killer and now charges him, now stabs and is stabbed, now cries out in fear and now shouts in anger” (Her Body, Himself, 221). Men viewing slasher films identify with the Final Girl’s “masculine” traits, and in the process find themselves looking through the eyes of a woman. In using a deaf character, Hush suggests that an evolution of this dynamic might also occur along the dis/abled boundary line. Maddie is a powerful survivor who shifts between weak and strong, frightened and fierce, but also between disabled and able. This portrayal encourages the audience to identify with her empowered traits and in the process look through the eyes of a disabled woman. Therefore, while slashers—and horror films in general—are not traditionally associated with progressive representations of disabilities, this evolution of the Final Girl may provide a fruitful topic of both research and filmmaking in the future.ReferencesBauman, Dirksen, and Joseph J. Murray. “Reframing: From Hearing Loss to Deaf Gain.” Trans. Fallon Brizendine and Emily Schenker. Deaf Studies Digital Journal 1 (2009): 1–10. <http://dsdj.gallaudet.edu/assets/section/section2/entry19/DSDJ_entry19.pdf>.Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1992.———. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Representations 20 (1987): 187–228.Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso, 1995.Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. Disability and New Media. New York: Routledge, 2011.Gorman, H. “Hush: Film Review.” Scream Horror Magazine (2016) <http://www.screamhorrormag.com/hush-film-review/>.Jankowski, Katherine A. Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric. Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1997.Laird, E.E. “Updating the Final Girl Theory.” Medium (2016) <https://medium.com/@TheFilmJournal/updating-the-final-girl-theory-b37ec0b1acf4>.Norden, M.F. Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1994.Shade, Patrick. “Screaming to Be Heard: Community and Communication in ‘Hush’.” Slayage 6.1 (2006). <http://www.whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/shade_slayage_6.1.pdf>.Sheppard, D. “Hush: Revolutionising the Final Girl.” Eyes on Screen (2016). <https://eyesonscreen.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/hush-revolutionising-the-final-girl/>.Thurman, T. “‘Hush’ Director Mike Flanagan and Actress Kate Siegel on Their New Thriller!” Interview. Bloody Disgusting (2016). <http://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3384092/interview-hush-mike-flanagan-kate-siegel/>.Whittington, W. “Horror Sound Design.” A Companion to the Horror Film. Ed. Harry M. Benshoff. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2014: 168–185.

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An event occurred recently in the world of professional sports in North America which may have set a precedent for superstar (celebrity) retirement and celebrity/fan interaction in the future. The event was hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky's last National Hockey League game, played between the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins (with Gretzky a member of the former), a Sunday 'matinee' contest at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. An event occurred recently in the world of professional sports in North America which may have set a precedent for superstar (celebrity) retirement and celebrity/fan interaction in the future. The event was hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky's last National Hockey League game, played between the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins (with Gretzky a member of the former), a Sunday 'matinee' contest at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. What makes this particular event unique is that the game itself (which, if not for Gretzky's retirement, would have been of little interest, since the Rangers were long since eliminated from the playoffs) was virtually 'staged' as a component of Gretzky's retirement ceremony, and indeed resembled a television entertainment special, musical and/or theatrical program in every way. So, every facet of this, one of the last regular season games, was focussed on "The Great One", as he is known to his adoring fans. This is where the pivotal part comes: Gretzky announced his long- speculated retirement, that his last game would be this match, just several days beforehand (in most cases of note, for obvious reasons, this announcement comes after the season ends). This of course sent the media into a frenzy to prepare for what Gretzky himself referred to as a final "celebration", which would honour not only himself, but also involve in an 'intimate' setting those players, coaches, etc. (professional hockey and other sports figures alike; Mario Lemieux, former leader of the Pittsburgh team and former team-mate Mark Messier as the "greatest players he has played against and with"), celebrities from the world of music (Bryan Adams sang the Canadian national anthem) and screen (Christopher Reeve) whom Gretzky considers friends and influences in his life -- and of course his wife, actress Janet Jones, their three children, and parents. And let's not forget the devoted fans and audience, providing the necessary backdrop for it all. What was to be, then, your run-of-the-mill, pre-play-off regular season meaningless hockey game was transformed into an entertainment spectacle, complete with pre-game ceremonies of presentations by his buddies, former and present team-mates, gifts (the usual icons of North-American status excess) of a Jaguar (or Mercedes?), and a massive "high- definition" television set. The network television lead-in confirmed that this was to be "Wayne's day", with highlight reels of his 20-year career in the NHL and his earlier days on the backyard pond. These snippets were even interspersed throughout the breaks in the action during the game, along with short interviews with Wayne's friends in the audience, which by the way inevitably offered the same synopsis: "he was great for the game, but he was also great off the ice." It is this 'off the ice' congeniality/patience with the fans (and media) which has added immensely to his popularity, and has guaranteed that many "billions more will be served" at McDonald's. Perhaps what made this whole spectacle most interesting, however, was the hockey game itself, which seemed something of an afterthought lost in all the hoopla surrounding it. Colour commentator Harry Neal remarked after a period and a half or so of play that it was a "no-hitter", but stopped short of using 'boring' as an adjective. This of course was no accident given the circ*mstances: Gretzky was a gifted player who relied on skating and playmaking rather than hitting, and who was against fighting in the NHL -- it was obvious that the players on both teams were catering to Gretzky's wishes in honour of this, his last game. They were not going to spoil his 'party', and no-one laid a hand on him, much less each other, during the course of the action. Even Matthew Barnaby, Pittsburgh's noted 'dirty' player was uncharacteristically polite throughout. Indeed, how could they not be on their best behaviour, given that they were as much a part of the pre-game ceremonies as everyone else (the whole Pittsburgh team was seen to 'clap' their sticks against the ice in appreciation after each presentation to Gretzky). The net effect of it all was that everyone could not help but be in awe of "The Great One", who was characteristically humble and gracious throughout it all. By extension this also had the effect of making the play of the game much more 'tentative', where normally aggressive players were seen to compromise their styles in order to 'accommodate' Wayne. In a game which is normally brutally physical and sometimes downright violent (concussions are not uncommon) this particular contest was definitely out of place, more akin to an all-star game where players are careful to avoid bodychecking and injury. But unlike an all-star game because of this tentativeness, it was also low-scoring; short of capping off a 'scripted' ending with Wayne scoring the winner, it was the captain of Pittsburgh who decided the contest into overtime (which was probably appropriate lest the drama seem a little too 'given'). Playing the devil's advocate, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if one of the opposing players had really 'had it in' for Gretzky, and realising that this was his last chance to make a little history of his own had taken the liberty to 'take Wayne out'. But then that sort of behaviour simply wouldn't have been tolerated on either side, and it was likely no coincidence that there were no grudges between these two teams (for this game at least). Closing ceremonies were appropriately tearful and long, with Wayne making repeated return appearances/encores to skate around the ice acknowledging the fans and players alike, the highlight reels again, and finally the last intimate interview and press conference. To me, the upshot of it all is this: to my knowledge, no other sports figure has demonstrated the power to 'tailor', if you will, a regularly scheduled contest such that the arena was utilised as a 'stage', with players from both teams willing 'actors', including the audience, of course, in order to provide Wayne with the type of send-off that he would (as 'director') have wished for. And what Wayne wanted was a "celebration" for everyone, hence it was no accident that his retirement announcement came before the season ended. The timing in the 'lull' between the regular season and the playoffs was also perfect. Here I believe we have a case of that 'blurring' or "slipping" between reality and fiction, or fantasy which Marshall refers to in a previous M/C article (b. 8). For what was created in fact was a 'staging', involving an altering of normal player/player and fan/player interaction, such that in the player/player interaction, the staging consisted of an oscillation between how the game is normally played in the minds of the players and an 'acted' version of this in order to accommodate "Wayne's World". The result was a rather unique version of the fastest and arguably the most dangerous of team sports -- truly, a celebrity version. In terms of the fan/player interaction, that 'oscillation' was present here as well, whereby cheering for a team inevitably was dominated by cheering for a single player (thus how the game is normally watched versus watching Wayne's game). The game itself had indeed become meaningless and was transformed into a Gretzky entertainment special; thus it was that the chant "Gretzky, Gretzky" which came up regularly, in order to spur "The Great One" on to his last goal at MSG (as it turned out, he managed an assist). The "slippage" was occurring at this level also, as fan participation reached new heights such that the collective consciousness of encouragement for Wayne provided an idyllic setting for the feature; they had become a part of the film, along with the Gretzky family in the stands, cheering him after every shift, and the distance between hero/player and audience was lessened by Gretzky's acknowledgments (something that simply wouldn't happen, at least to this degree, in a normal game). Fans always like to think that they have some influence on the players and the outcome of the game; in this case that influence was magnified as a sharing of a part of Wayne Gretzky's life. They had become a part of Wayne's movie. The 'slippage' had occurred on a grand scale. To be sure, a sporting contest is entertainment, but this event had 'slipped' into a theatrical contest for all, player and fan included. Everyone was in the picture; the normally fiercely competitive player interaction was tempered, and the fan involvement moved a notch closer to the ice surface. To conclude, I believe that these 'virtual movies' will become more commonplace as both fan/player interaction demand and player as celebrity status increase. For the player/celebrity, it's a way to go out with a 'bang' and satisfy a number of demands in one convenient package. For the fan, it's a step closer to that craved intimacy with their hero, another escape from the confines of the reality of the mundane, only closer yet to that elusive illusory ideal. Thus we will have willing 'actors' in these retirement dramas, where a sports contest is fundamentally altered to an emphasis on sentiment value, an opportunity for a collective 'feel-good' experience where everyone wins -- except for those who come to watch a good hockey game, or whatever the sports 'feature' of the future may be. References P. David Marshall. "The Fiction of Public Life." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.1 (1999). 13 June 1999 <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9902/life.php>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Riddell. "Wayne's World: The Making of a Hockey Movie." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php>. Chicago style: David Riddell, "Wayne's World: The Making of a Hockey Movie," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Riddell. (1999) Wayne's world: the making of a hockey movie. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php> ([your date of access]).

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Viagra, Pfizer's diamond blue shaped pill for erectile difficulties, has spawned thousands of jokes - just check out the internet and you'll be amazed by the variety (from vaguely amusing to downright nasty). Greeting and birthday cards have also latched onto Viagramania ("Potent"). The idea of an erection on demand and/or an erection which won't let you down or, in fact, go down, has captured our popular imagination. Size is still an issue but the erect penis now seems to be the primary focus of humour. A decade ago penile size and erection jokes were popular but with the advent of Viagra in 1998 the number of Viagra jokes has increased exponentially. And the internet and greeting cards aren't the only sites to find Viagra jokes; talk show hosts of all varieties tell them (Jay Leno apparently told 944 Viagra jokes between 1998 and 2002) ("Potent"), presenters at the Oscars tell them (Whoopi Goldberg, for example), and all manner of television characters tell them (from Homer Simpson to Ben and Susan on My Family). David Brinkley (head of Pfizer Inc.'s Team Viagra) expected Viagra might inspire some jokes. ("Potent") He thought they would help destigmatise erectile dysfunction and get people talking about it. But after a year of jokes he changed his mind and suggested that jokes are part of the effect that "turns guys off … Who's going to stand up and admit they have this condition that everybody's laughing at?"("Potent") It is not surprising, therefore, that Pfizer's advertisem*nts for Viagra tell us that erectile dysfunction is not a joke. It is, in fact, portrayed as a serious medical condition which affects the health and happiness of millions of men and couples world wide. And Viagra is offered as the means to fix or cure this problem. Consider the following television ad for Viagra which ran in New Zealand in late 2001 - 2002: The scene opens with a stand-up comedian telling jokes in a club. He is just finishing a joke and everyone is laughing. Then he says, "Seriously, I find it fascinating what people won't admit to. How many of you older guys usually wear glasses but aren't wearing them tonight? Hey pal, own up, you just drank your finger bowl." The audience laughs. The comedian continues, "Okay, who's thinning a bit on top? It's called middle age guys." The audience laughs. "Okay, here's one. How many of you guys have a problem getting an erection?" Silence. The camera pans many uneasy faces. The comedian fills the silence, "That's amazing because I read that nearly half of guys over 40 have that very problem. But hey, no one in this audience. Look's like I'm the only one." He raises his hand. Slowly other men in the audience also raise their hands. Then the punch line, "you see, with a bit of effort you can get them up." Laughter and clapping follow. The ad closes with a voice over of a picture of a Viagra tablet which tells us that erectile difficulties are a physical (medical) problem and the caption "you are not alone." This ad is worth reflecting on in light of Brinkley's comment above. One could suggest that this ad was produced to "encourage" men to "stand up and admit they have this condition" (Brinkley) even though it continues to be the butt of jokes. The use of a stand-up comedian in a night club is an interesting way to address, and attempt to challenge, the Viagra-as-joke phenomenon. The ad sets up the 'problem,' both erectile dysfunction and erectile dysfunction-as-joke, and then offers a 'solution' (admitting you have erectile dysfunction ("ED" hereafter) which is a "serious medical condition" and is nothing to be ashamed of, and also not a joke, and then of course taking Viagra). With the Viagra phenomenon we have what Andre Jansson (23) calls "commercial intertextuality," and Hirschman, Scott and Wells (48) refer to as media culture talking back to ads and vice versa. This involves a dialogue of sorts between texts promoting ED/Viagra-as-joke and those promoting ED/Viagra-as-not-joke. Let's consider an over simplified example: Pfizer produces and markets a pill for ED; popular cultural representations of Viagra-as-joke proliferate; documentaries like The Rise and Rise of Viagra present ED as a "serious medical problem"; Viagra jokes continue to proliferate on the internet and talk shows; Pfizer produces an ad set in a comedy club. In this realm of commercial intertextuality we have a fascinating struggle over meanings around the medicalization of male sexuality, masculinities and, one could add, the status of the erect penis. In pre-Viagra days a penis that wouldn't rise to the occasion was considered a joke. A man who 'couldn't get it up' was not performing heteronormative masculinity adequately and was a potential object of humour. This humour stemmed from shame, inadequacy and fear. This was, therefore, something a man would not admit to (as represented in the comedy club ad). With Viagra, a solution to this 'condition' is available and this facilitates the re-instalment of erections, penetrative sex and, in theory, heteronormative masculinity. Yet the Viagra-assisted erection is also the object of jokes. Thus, it is joke material if a man 'can't get it up' and also joke material if he can! Why is performing heteronormative masculinity through producing an erection for penetrative sex such subject for humour? As stated earlier, Brinkley expected a few jokes, but can't understand why the jokes keep on coming. Let's explore this by looking at the some jokes. Did you hear the one about the new Viagra for computers? It turns your floppy disk into a hard drive. Did you hear the one about Viagra coffee? One cup and you're up all night. Did you hear the one about the 85 year old man in hospital who was given Viagra with his hot chocolate at night? The chocolate made him sleep and the Viagra stopped him rolling out of bed. Like hundreds of other jokes the first one is about Viagra but not about a male erection. It does however allude to the process of transforming a "floppy" object into a "hard" object, which is what Viagra is meant to do for the male penis. The second joke refers to being "up all night," that is, an erection and/or being awake all night. And the third joke is about an erection but not penetrative sex. This is somewhat similar to a greeting card image of an erection of a dead man which won't allow the coffin lid to close. It seems to be the penis 'out of control' which underpins many of these jokes. Rather than an erection on demand or an erection which won't let you down - it is the erection which won't go down (or the out of control penis) which is the focus of humour. Contemporary western thought is underpinned by binary oppositions or dualisms, for example, masculinity is aligned with rationality and the mind or, to put this another way, of being in control of/over the body (Bordo; Gatens). It is femininity which is associated with the body, with emotion and, in particular, the leaky, out of control body (See, for example, Shildrick.) Although erections are representative of (and central to) hegemonic masculinity (for example, the very notion of the phallus), it is the erection which is out of control or the excessive erection which seems to be spurring much of the humour in Viagra jokes. Presumably the Viagra penis remains erect after penetrative sex and/or bounces back up, and is therefore anomalous. This penis is no longer useful except as an object which draws attention to itself or as something which can be used for non-sexual purposes (for example, stopping someone falling out of bed). In both cases the Viagra penis makes a spectacle of itself and of the masculine norm of being in control and hidden (which is essential to the power of the phallus). Although men do talk about the penis as having a 'mind of its own' with respect to 'rising to the occasion' in inappropriate situations (Potts), the Viagra-penis has a mind of its own in quite a different sense. Here it is the Viagra which is the 'mind' - the penis is both assisted to rise from, and prevented from returning to, a flaccid state. One could even say that Viagra has a 'mind-altering' effect on the penis, that is, it produces a kind of psychophallic rather that psychedelic effect. 1 Perhaps it is not just the body-penis out of control which is a source of humour, but also the out of control mind-penis. An interesting challenge to dualistic framings of male/mind/control and female/body/out of control indeed! Notes 1. Thanks to Annie Potts (personal communication) for this insight. Works Cited Bordo, Susan. The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture. Albany: SUNY, 1987. Gatens, Moira. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London: Routledge, 1996. Hirschman, Elizabeth, Linda Scott, and William Wells. "A Model of Product Discourse: Linking Consumer Practice to Cultural Texts". Journal of Advertising 27 (1998): 33-51. Jansson, Andre. "The Mediatization of Consumption - Towards an analytic Framework of Image Culture". Journal of Consumer Culture 2 (2002) : 5-31. "Potent Medicine: A Year Ago Viagra Hit the Shelves and the Earth Moved. Well, Sort of." Washington Post (March 26 1999). Retrieved from http://www.prn.usm.my/viagra/israel.html (01/07/2003). Potts, Annie. The Science Fiction of Sex. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Shildrick, Margrit. Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)ethics. London: Routledge, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Vares, Tiina. "Viagra and 'Getting it up'" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0311/7-vares-viagra.php>. APA Style Vares, T. (2003, Nov 10). Viagra and 'Getting it up'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0311/7-vares-viagra.php>

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Introduction It has frequently been noted that ICTs and social networking applications have blurred the once-clear boundary between work, leisure and entertainment, just as they have collapsed the distinction between public and private space. While each individual has a sense of what “home” means, both in terms of personal experience and more conceptually, the following three examples of online interaction (based on participants’ interest, or involvement, in activities traditionally associated with the home: pet care, craft and cooking) suggest that the utilisation of online communication technologies can lead to refined and extended definitions of what “home” is. These examples show how online communication can assist in meeting the basic human needs for love, companionship, shelter and food – needs traditionally supplied by the home environment. They also provide individuals with a considerably expanded range of opportunities for personal expression and emotional connection, as well as creative and commercial production, than that provided by the purely physical (and, no doubt, sometimes isolated and isolating) domestic environment. In this way, these case studies demonstrate the interplay and melding of physical and virtual “home” as domestic practices leach from the most private spaces of the physical home into the public space of the Internet (for discussion, see Gorman-Murray, Moss, and Rose). At the same time, online interaction can assert an influence on activity within the physical space of the home, through the sharing of advice about, and modeling of, domestic practices and processes. A Dog’s (Virtual) Life The first case study primarily explores the role of online communities in the formation and expression of affective values and personal identity – as traditionally happens in the domestic environment. Garber described the 1990s as “the decade of the dog” (20), citing a spate of “new anthropomorphic” (22) dog books, Internet “dog chat” sites, remakes of popular classics such as Lassie Come Home, dog friendly urban amenities, and the meteoric rise of services for pampered pets (28-9). Loving pets has become a lifestyle and culture, witnessed and commodified in Pet Superstores as well as in dog collectables and antiques boutiques, and in publications like The Bark (“the New Yorker of Dog Magazines”) and Clean Run, the international agility magazine, Website, online book store and information gateway for agility products and services. Available online resources for dog lovers have similarly increased rapidly during the decade since Garber’s book was published, with the virtual world now catering for serious hobby trainers, exhibitors and professionals as well as the home-based pet lover. At a recent survey, Yahoo Groups – a personal communication portal that facilitates social networking, in this case enabling users to set up electronic mailing lists and Internet forums – boasted just over 9,600 groups servicing dog fanciers and enthusiasts. The list Dogtalk is now an announcement only mailing list, but was a vigorous discussion forum until mid-2006. Members of Dogtalk were Australian-based “clicker-trainers”, serious hobbyist dog trainers, many of whom operated micro-businesses providing dog training or other pet-related services. They shared an online community, but could also engage in “flesh-meets” at seminars, conferences and competitive dog sport meets. An author of this paper (Rutherford) joined this group two years ago because of her interest in clicker training. Clicker training is based on an application of animal learning theory, particularly psychologist E. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning, so called because of the trademark use of a distinctive “click” sound to mark a desired behaviour that is then rewarded. Clicker trainers tend to dismiss anthropomorphic pack theory that positions the human animal as fundamentally opposed to non-human animals and, thus, foster a partnership (rather than a dominator) mode of social and learning relationships. Partnership and nurturance are common themes within the clicker community (as well as in more traditional “home” locations); as is recognising and valuing the specific otherness of other species. Typically, members regard their pets as affective equals or near-equals to the human animals that are recognised members of their kinship networks. A significant function of the episodic biographical narratives and responses posted to this list was thus to affirm and legitimate this intra-specific kinship as part of normative social relationship – a perspective that is not usually validated in the general population. One of the more interesting nexus that evolved within Dogtalk links the narrativisation of the pet in the domestic sphere with the pictorial genre of the family album. Emergent technologies, such as digital cameras together with Web-based image manipulation software and hosting (as provided by portals like Photobucket and Flickr ) democratise high quality image creation and facilitate the sharing of these images. Increasingly, the Dogtalk list linked to images uploaded to free online galleries, discussed digital image composition and aesthetics, and shared technical information about cameras and online image distribution. Much of this cultural production and circulation was concerned with digitally inscribing particular relationships with individual animals into cultural memory: a form of family group biography (for a discussion of the family photograph as a display of extended domestic space, see Rose). The other major non-training thread of the community involves the sharing and witnessing of the trauma suffered due to the illness and loss of pets. While mourning for human family members is supported in the off-line world – with social infrastructure, such as compassionate leave and/or bereavement counselling, part of professional entitlements – public mourning for pets is not similarly supported. Yet, both cultural studies (in its emphasis on cultural memory) and trauma theory have highlighted the importance of social witnessing, whereby traumatic memories must be narratively integrated into memory and legitimised by the presence of a witness in order to loosen their debilitating hold (Felman and Laub 57). Postings on the progress of a beloved animal’s illness or other misfortune and death were thus witnessed and affirmed by other Dogtalk list members – the sick or deceased pet becoming, in the process, a feature of community memory, not simply an individual loss. In terms of such biographical narratives, memory and history are not identical: “Any memories capable of being formed, retained or articulated by an individual are always a function of socially constituted forms, narratives and relations … Memory is always subject to active social manipulation and revision” (Halbwachs qtd. in Crewe 75). In this way, emergent technologies and social software provide sites, akin to that of physical homes, for family members to process individual memories into cultural memory. Dogzonline, the Australian Gateway site for purebred dog enthusiasts, has a forum entitled “Rainbow Bridge” devoted to textual and pictorial memorialisation of deceased pet dogs. Dogster hosts the For the Love of Dogs Weblog, in which images and tributes can be posted, and also provides links to other dog oriented Weblogs and Websites. An interesting combination of both therapeutic narrative and the commodification of affect is found in Lightning Strike Pet Loss Support which, while a memorial and support site, also provides links to the emerging profession of pet bereavement counselling and to suppliers of monuments and tributary urns for home or other use. loobylu and Narratives of Everyday Life The second case study focuses on online interactions between craft enthusiasts who are committed to the production of distinctive objects to decorate and provide comfort in the home, often using traditional methods. In the case of some popular craft Weblogs, online conversations about craft are interspersed with, or become secondary to, the narration of details of family life, the exploration of important life events or the recording of personal histories. As in the previous examples, the offering of advice and encouragement, and expressions of empathy and support, often characterise these interactions. The loobylu Weblog was launched in 2001 by illustrator and domestic crafts enthusiast Claire Robertson. Robertson is a toy maker and illustrator based in Melbourne, Australia, whose clients have included prominent publishing houses, magazines and the New York Public Library (Robertson “Recent Client List” online). She has achieved a measure of public recognition: her loobylu Weblog has won awards and been favourably commented upon in the Australian press (see Robertson “Press for loobylu” online). In 2005, an article in The Age placed Robertson in the context of a contemporary “craft revolution”, reporting her view that this “revolution” is in “reaction to mass consumerism” (Atkinson online). The hand-made craft objects featured in Robertson’s Weblogs certainly do suggest engagement with labour-intensive pursuits and the construction of unique objects that reject processes of mass production and consumption. In this context, loobylu is a vehicle for the display and promotion of Robertson’s work as an illustrator and as a craft practitioner. While skills-based, it also, however, promotes a family-centred lifestyle; it advocates the construction by hand of objects designed to enhance the appearance of the family home and the comfort of its inhabitants. Its specific subject matter extends to related aspects of home and family as, in addition to instructions, ideas and patterns for craft, the Weblog features information on commercially available products for home and family, recipes, child rearing advice and links to 27 other craft and other sites (including Nigella Lawson’s, discussed below). The primary member of its target community is clearly the traditional homemaker – the mother – as well as those who may aspire to this role. Robertson does not have the “celebrity” status of Lawson and Jamie Oliver (discussed below), nor has she achieved their market saturation. Indeed, Robertson’s online presence suggests a modest level of engagement that is placed firmly behind other commitments: in February 2007, she announced an indefinite suspension of her blog postings so that she could spend more time with her family (Robertson loobylu 17 February 2007). Yet, like Lawson and Oliver, Robertson has exploited forms of domestic competence traditionally associated with women and the home, and the non-traditional medium of the Internet has been central to her endeavours. The content of the loobylu blog is, unsurprisingly, embedded in, or an accessory to, a unifying running commentary on Robertson’s domestic life as a parent. Miles, who has described Weblogs as “distributed documentaries of the everyday” (66) sums this up neatly: “the weblogs’ governing discursive quality is the manner in which it is embodied within the life world of its author” (67). Landmark family events are narrated on loobylu and some attract deluges of responses: the 19 June 2006 posting announcing the birth of Robertson’s daughter Lily, for example, drew 478 responses; five days later, one describing the difficult circ*mstances of her birth drew 232 comments. All of these comments are pithy, with many being simple empathetic expressions or brief autobiographically based commentaries on these events. Robertson’s news of her temporary retirement from her blog elicited 176 comments that both supported her decision and also expressed a sense of loss. Frequent exclamation marks attest visually to the emotional intensity of the responses. By narrating aspects of major life events to which the target audience can relate, the postings represent a form of affective mass production and consumption: they are triggers for a collective outpouring of largely hom*ogeneous emotional reaction (joy, in the case of Lily’s birth). As collections of texts, they can be read as auto/biographic records, arranged thematically, that operate at both the individual and the community levels. Readers of the family narratives and the affirming responses to them engage in a form of mass affirmation and consumerism of domestic experience that is easy, immediate, attractive and free of charge. These personal discourses blend fluidly with those of a commercial nature. Some three weeks after loobylu announced the birth of her daughter, Robertson shared on her Weblog news of her mastitis, Lily’s first smile and the family’s favourite television programs at the time, information that many of us would consider to be quite private details of family life. Three days later, she posted a photograph of a sleeping baby with a caption that skilfully (and negatively) links it to her daughter: “Firstly – I should mention that this is not a photo of Lily”. The accompanying text points out that it is a photo of a baby with the “Zaky Infant Sleeping Pillow” and provides a link to the online pregnancystore.com, from which it can be purchased. A quotation from the manufacturer describing the merits of the pillow follows. Robertson then makes a light-hearted comment on her experiences of baby-induced sleep-deprivation, and the possible consequences of possessing the pillow. Comments from readers also similarly alternate between the personal (sharing of experiences) to the commercial (comments on the product itself). One offshoot of loobylu suggests that the original community grew to an extent that it could support specialised groups within its boundaries. A Month of Softies began in November 2004, describing itself as “a group craft project which takes place every month” and an activity that “might give you a sense of community and kinship with other similar minded crafty types across the Internet and around the world” (Robertson A Month of Softies online). Robertson gave each month a particular theme, and readers were invited to upload a photograph of a craft object they had made that fitted the theme, with a caption. These were then included in the site’s gallery, in the order in which they were received. Added to the majority of captions was also a link to the site (often a business) of the creator of the object; another linking of the personal and the commercial in the home-based “cottage industry” sense. From July 2005, A Month of Softies operated through a Flickr site. Participants continued to submit photos of their craft objects (with captions), but also had access to a group photograph pool and public discussion board. This extension simulates (albeit in an entirely visual way) the often home-based physical meetings of craft enthusiasts that in contemporary Australia take the form of knitting, quilting, weaving or other groups. Chatting with, and about, Celebrity Chefs The previous studies have shown how the Internet has broken down many barriers between what could be understood as the separate spheres of emotional (that is, home-based private) and commercial (public) life. The online environment similarly enables the formation and development of fan communities by facilitating communication between those fans and, sometimes, between fans and the objects of their admiration. The term “fan” is used here in the broadest sense, referring to “a person with enduring involvement with some subject or object, often a celebrity, a sport, TV show, etc.” (Thorne and Bruner 52) rather than focusing on the more obsessive and, indeed, more “fanatical” aspects of such involvement, behaviour which is, increasingly understood as a subculture of more variously constituted fandoms (Jenson 9-29). Our specific interest in fandom in relation to this discussion is how, while marketers and consumer behaviourists study online fan communities for clues on how to more successfully market consumer goods and services to these groups (see, for example, Kozinets, “I Want to Believe” 470-5; “Utopian Enterprise” 67-88; Algesheimer et al. 19-34), fans regularly subvert the efforts of those urging consumer consumption to utilise even the most profit-driven Websites for non-commercial home-based and personal activities. While it is obvious that celebrities use the media to promote themselves, a number of contemporary celebrity chefs employ the media to construct and market widely recognisable personas based on their own, often domestically based, life stories. As examples, Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson’s printed books and mass periodical articles, television series and other performances across a range of media continuously draw on, elaborate upon, and ultimately construct their own lives as the major theme of these works. In this, these – as many other – celebrity chefs draw upon this revelation of their private lives to lend authenticity to their cooking, to the point where their work (whether cookbook, television show, advertisem*nt or live chat room session with their fans) could be described as “memoir-illustrated-with-recipes” (Brien and Williamson). This generic tendency influences these celebrities’ communities, to the point where a number of Websites devoted to marketing celebrity chefs as product brands also enable their fans to share their own life stories with large readerships. Oliver and Lawson’s official Websites confirm the privileging of autobiographical and biographical information, but vary in tone and approach. Each is, for instance, deliberately gendered (see Hollows’ articles for a rich exploration of gender, Oliver and Lawson). Oliver’s hip, boyish, friendly, almost frantic site includes the what are purported-to-be self-revelatory “Diary” and “About me” sections, a selection of captioned photographs of the chef, his family, friends, co-workers and sponsors, and his Weblog as well as footage streamed “live from Jamie’s phone”. This self-revelation – which includes significant details about Oliver’s childhood and his domestic life with his “lovely girls, Jools [wife Juliette Norton], Poppy and Daisy” – completely blurs the line between private life and the “Jamie Oliver” brand. While such revelation has been normalised in contemporary culture, this practice stands in great contrast to that of renowned chefs and food writers such as Elizabeth David, Julia Child, James Beard and Margaret Fulton, whose work across various media has largely concentrated on food, cooking and writing about cooking. The difference here is because Oliver’s (supposedly private) life is the brand, used to sell “Jamie Oliver restaurant owner and chef”, “Jamie Oliver cookbook author and TV star”, “Jamie Oliver advertising spokesperson for Sainsbury’s supermarket” (from which he earns an estimated £1.2 million annually) (Meller online) and “Jamie Oliver social activist” (made MBE in 2003 after his first Fifteen restaurant initiative, Oliver was named “Most inspiring political figure” in the 2006 Channel 4 Political Awards for his intervention into the provision of nutritious British school lunches) (see biographies by Hildred and Ewbank, and Smith). Lawson’s site has a more refined, feminine appearance and layout and is more mature in presentation and tone, featuring updates on her (private and public) “News” and forthcoming public appearances, a glamorous selection of photographs of herself from the past 20 years, and a series of print and audio interviews. Although Lawson’s children have featured in some of her television programs and her personal misfortunes are well known and regularly commented upon by both herself and journalists (her mother, sister and husband died of cancer) discussions of these tragedies, and other widely known aspects of her private life such as her second marriage to advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, is not as overt as on Oliver’s site, and the user must delve to find it. The use of Lawson’s personal memoir, as sales tool, is thus both present and controlled. This is in keeping with Lawson’s professional experience prior to becoming the “domestic goddess” (Lawson 2000) as an Oxford graduated journalist on the Spectator and deputy literary editor of the Sunday Times. Both Lawson’s and Oliver’s Websites offer readers various ways to interact with them “personally”. Visitors to Oliver’s site can ask him questions and can access a frequently asked question area, while Lawson holds (once monthly, now irregularly) a question and answer forum. In contrast to this information about, and access to, Oliver and Lawson’s lives, neither of their Websites includes many recipes or other food and cooking focussed information – although there is detailed information profiling their significant number of bestselling cookbooks (Oliver has published 8 cookbooks since 1998, Lawson 5 since 1999), DVDs and videos of their television series and one-off programs, and their name branded product lines of domestic kitchenware (Oliver and Lawson) and foodstuffs (Oliver). Instruction on how to purchase these items is also featured. Both these sites, like Robertson’s, provide various online discussion fora, allowing members to comment upon these chefs’ lives and work, and also to connect with each other through posted texts and images. Oliver’s discussion forum section notes “this is the place for you all to chat to each other, exchange recipe ideas and maybe even help each other out with any problems you might have in the kitchen area”. Lawson’s front page listing states: “You will also find a moderated discussion forum, called Your Page, where our registered members can swap ideas and interact with each other”. The community participants around these celebrity chefs can be, as is the case with loobylu, divided into two groups. The first is “foodie (in Robertson’s case, craft) fans” who appear to largely engage with these Websites to gain, and to share, food, cooking and craft-related information. Such fans on Oliver and Lawson’s discussion lists most frequently discuss these chefs’ television programs and books and the recipes presented therein. They test recipes at home and discuss the results achieved, any problems encountered and possible changes. They also post queries and share information about other recipes, ingredients, utensils, techniques, menus and a wide range of food and cookery-related matters. The second group consists of “celebrity fans” who are attracted to the chefs (as to Robertson as craft maker) as personalities. These fans seek and share biographical information about Oliver and Lawson, their activities and their families. These two areas of fan interest (food/cooking/craft and the personal) are not necessarily or always separated, and individuals can be active members of both types of fandoms. Less foodie-orientated users, however (like users of Dogtalk and loobylu), also frequently post their own auto/biographical narratives to these lists. These narratives, albeit often fragmented, may begin with recipes and cooking queries or issues, but veer off into personal stories that possess only minimal or no relationship to culinary matters. These members also return to the boards to discuss their own revealed life stories with others who have commented on these narratives. Although research into this aspect is in its early stages, it appears that the amount of public personal revelation either encouraged, or allowed, is in direct proportion to the “open” friendliness of these sites. More thus are located in Oliver’s and less in Lawson’s, and – as a kind of “control” in this case study, but not otherwise discussed – none in that of Australian chef Neil Perry, whose coolly sophisticated Website perfectly complements Perry’s professional persona as the epitome of the refined, sophisticated and, importantly in this case, unapproachable, high-end restaurant chef. Moreover, non-cuisine related postings are made despite clear directions to the contrary – Lawson’s site stating: “We ask that postings are restricted to topics relating to food, cooking, the kitchen and, of course, Nigella!” and Oliver making the plea, noted above, for participants to keep their discussions “in the kitchen area”. Of course, all such contemporary celebrity chefs are supported by teams of media specialists who selectively construct the lives that these celebrities share with the public and the postings about others’ lives that are allowed to remain on their discussion lists. The intersection of the findings reported above with the earlier case studies suggests, however, that even these most commercially-oriented sites can provide a fruitful data regarding their function as home-like spaces where domestic practices and processes can be refined, and emotional relationships formed and fostered. In Summary As convergence results in what Turow and Kavanaugh call “the wired homestead”, our case studies show that physically home-based domestic interests and practices – what could be called “home truths” – are also contributing to a refiguration of the private/public interplay of domestic activities through online dialogue. In the case of Dogtalk, domestic space is reconstituted through virtual spaces to include new definitions of family and memory. In the case of loobylu, the virtual interaction facilitates a development of craft-based domestic practices within the physical space of the home, thus transforming domestic routines. Jamie Oliver’s and Nigella Lawson’s sites facilitate development of both skills and gendered identities by means of a bi-directional nexus between domestic practices, sites of home labour/identity production and public media spaces. As participants modify and redefine these online communities to best suit their own needs and desires, even if this is contrary to the stated purposes for which the community was instituted, online communities can be seen to be domesticated, but, equally, these modifications demonstrate that the activities and relationships that have traditionally defined the home are not limited to the physical space of the house. While virtual communities are “passage points for collections of common beliefs and practices that united people who were physically separated” (Stone qtd in Jones 19), these interactions can lead to shared beliefs, for example, through advice about pet-keeping, craft and cooking, that can significantly modify practices and routines in the physical home. Acknowledgments An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Association of Internet Researchers’ International Conference, Brisbane, 27-30 September 2006. 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The Wired Homestead: An MIT Press Sourcebook on the Internet and the Family. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>. APA Style Brien, D., L. Rutherford, and R. Williamson. (Aug. 2007) "Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>.

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On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ from around the nation for a Muslim Summit in response to the London bombings in July of that year. One of the outcomes of the two hour summit was a Statement of Principles committing Muslim communities in Australia to resist radicalisation and pursue a ‘moderate’ Islam. Since then the ill-defined term ‘moderate Muslim’ has been used in both the political and media discourse to refer to a preferred form of Islamic practice that does not challenge the hegemony of the nation state and that is coherent with the principles of secularism. Akbarzadeh and Smith conclude that the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘mainstream’ are used to describe Muslims whom Australians should not fear in contrast to ‘extremists’. Ironically, the policy direction towards regulating the practice of Islam in Australia in favour of a state defined ‘moderate’ Islam signals an attempt by the state to mediate the practice of religion, undermining the ethos of secularism as it is expressed in the Australian Constitution. It also – arguably – impacts upon the citizenship rights of Australian Muslims in so far as citizenship presents not just as a formal set of rights accorded to an individual but also to democratic participation: the ability of citizens to enjoy those rights at a substantive level. Based on the findings of research into how Australian Muslims and members of the broader community are responding to the political and media discourses on terrorism, this article examines the impact of these discourses on how Muslims are practicing citizenship and re-defining an Australian Muslim identity. Free Speech Free speech has been a hallmark of liberal democracies ever since its defence became part of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Australian Constitution does not expressly contain a provision for free speech. The right to free speech in Australia is implied in Australia’s ratification of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), article 19 of which affirms: Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The ultimate recent endorsem*nt of free speech rights, arguably associated with the radical free speech ‘open platform’ movement of the 1960s at the University of California Berkeley, constructs free speech as essential to human and civil liberties. Its approach has been expressed in terms such as: “I reject and detest XYZ views but will defend to the utmost a person’s right to express them”. An active defence of free speech is based on the observation that, unless held to account, “[Authorities] would grant free speech to those with whom they agree, but not to minorities whom they consider unorthodox or threatening” (“Online Archives of California”). Such minorities, differing from the majority view, do so as a right accorded to citizens. In very challenging circ*mstances – such as opposing the Cold War operations of the US Senate Anti-American Activities Committee – the free speech movement has been celebrated as holding fast (or embodying a ‘return’) to the true meaning of the American First Amendment. It was in public statements of unpopular and minority views, which opposed those of the majority, that the right to free speech could most non-controvertibly be demonstrated. Some have argued that such rights should be balanced by anti-vilification legislation, by prohibitions upon incitement to violence, and by considerations as to whether the organisation defended by the speaker was banned. In the latter case, there can be problems with excluding the defence of banned organisations from legitimate debate. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, Sinn Fein was denounced in the UK as the ‘political wing of the IRA’ (the IRA being a banned organisation) and denied a speaking position in many forums, yet has proved to be an important party in the eventual reconciliation of the Northern Ireland divide. In effect, the banning of an organisation is a political act and such acts should best be interrogated through free speech and democratic debate. Arguably, such disputation is a responsibility of an involved citizenry. In general, liberal democracies such as Australia do not hesitate to claim that citizens have a right to free speech and that this is a right worth defending. There is a legitimate expectation by Australians of their rights as citizens to freedom of expression. For some Australian Muslims, however, the appeal to free speech seems a hollow one. Muslim citizens run the risk of being constructed as ‘un-Australian’ when they articulate their concerns or opinions. Calls by some Muslim leaders not to reprint the Danish cartoons depicting images of the Prophet Mohammed for example, met with a broader community backlash and drew responses that, typically, constructed Muslims as a threat to Australian cultural values of freedom and liberty. These kinds of responses to expressions by Australian Muslims of their deeply held convictions are rarely, if ever, interpreted as attempts to curtail Australian Muslims’ rights to free speech. There is a poor fit between what many Australian Muslims believe and what they feel the current climate in Australia allows them to say in the public domain. Positioned as the potential ‘enemy within’ in the evolving media and political discourse post September 11, they have been allocated restricted speaking positions on many subjects from the role and training of their Imams to the right to request Sharia courts (which could operate in parallel with Australian courts in the same way that Catholic divorce/annulment courts do). These social and political restrictions lead them to question whether Muslims enjoy citizenship rights on an equal footing with Australians from the broader community. The following comment from an Australian woman, an Iraqi refugee, made in a research interview demonstrates this: The media say that if you are Australian it means that you enjoy freedom, you enjoy the rights of citizenship. That is the idea of what it means to be Australian, that you do those things. But if you are a Muslim, you are not Australian. You are a people who are dangerous, a people who are suspicious, a people who do not want democracy—all the characteristics that make up terrorists. So yes, there is a difference, a big difference. And it is a feeling all Muslims have, not just me, whether you are at school, at work, and especially if you wear the hijab. (Translated from Arabic by Anne Aly) At the same time, Australian Muslims observe some members of the broader community making strong assertions about Muslims (often based on misunderstanding or misinformation) with very little in the way of censure or rebuke. For example, again in 2005, Liberal backbenchers Sophie Panopoulos and Bronwyn Bishop made an emotive plea for the banning of headscarves in public schools, drawing explicitly on the historically inherited image of Islam as a violent, backward and oppressive ideology that has no place in Western liberal democracy: I fear a frightening Islamic class emerging, supported by a perverse interpretation of the Koran where disenchantment breeds disengagement, where powerful and subversive orthodoxies are inculcated into passionate and impressionable young Muslims, where the Islamic mosque becomes the breeding ground for violence and rejection of Australian law and ideals, where extremists hijack the Islamic faith with their own prescriptive and unbending version of the Koran and where extremist views are given currency and validity … . Why should one section of the community be stuck in the Dark Ages of compliance cloaked under a veil of some distorted form of religious freedom? (Panopoulos) Several studies attest to the fact that, since the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001, Islam, and by association Australian Muslims, have been positioned as other in the political and media discourse (see for example Aly). The construct of Muslims as ‘out of place’ (Saniotis) denies them entry and representation in the public sphere: a key requisite for democratic participation according to Habermas (cited in Haas). This notion of a lack of a context for Muslim citizenship in Australian public spheres arises out of the popular construction of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Australian’ as mutually exclusive modes of being. Denied access to public spaces to partake in democratic dialogue as political citizens, Australian Muslims must pursue alternative communicative spaces. Some respond by limiting their expressions to closed spheres of communication – a kind of enforced silence. Others respond by pursuing alternative media discourses that challenge the dominant stereotypes of Muslims in Western media and reinforce majority-world cultural views. Enforced Silence In closed spheres of discussion, Australian Muslims can openly share their perceptions about terrorism, the government and media. Speaking openly in public however, is not common practice and results in forced silence for fear of reprisal or being branded a terrorist: “if we jump up and go ‘oh how dare you say this, rah, rah’, he’ll be like ‘oh he’s going to go off, he’ll blow something up’”. One research participant recalled that when his work colleagues were discussing the September 11 attacks he decided not to partake in the conversation because it “might be taken against me”. The participant made this decision despite the fact that his colleagues were expressing the opinion that United States foreign policy was the likely cause for the attacks—an opinion with which he agreed. This suggests some support for the theory that the fear of social isolation may make Australian Muslims especially anxious or fearful of expressing opinions about terrorism in public discussions (Noelle-Neumann). However, it also suggests that the fear of social isolation for Muslims is not solely related to the expression of minority opinion, as theorised in Noelle-Neumann’s Spiral of Silence . Given that many members of the wider community shared the theory that the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre in 2001 may have been a response to American foreign policy, this may well not be a minority view. Nonetheless, Australian Muslims hesitated to embrace it. Saniotis draws attention to the pressure on Australian Muslims to publicly distance themselves from the terrorist attacks of September 11 and to openly denounce the actions of terrorists. The extent to which Muslims were positioned as a threatening other was contingent on their ability to demonstrate that they too participated in the distal responses to the terrorist attacks—initial pity for the sufferer and eventual marginalisation and rejection of the perceived aggressor. Australian Muslims were obliged to declare their loyalty and commitment to Australia’s ally and, in this way, partake in the nationalistic responses to the threat of terrorism. At the same time however, Australian Muslims were positioned as an imagined enemy and a threat to national identity. Australian Muslims were therefore placed in a paradoxical bind- as Australians they were expected to respond as the victims of fear; as Muslims they were positioned as the objects of fear. Even in discussions where their opinions are congruent with the dominant opinion being expressed, Australian Muslims describe themselves as feeling apprehensive or anxious about expressing their opinions because of how these “might be taken”. Pursuing alternative discourses The overriding message from the research project’s Muslim participants was that the media, as a powerful purveyor of public opinion, had inculcated a perception of Muslims as a risk to Australia and Australians: an ‘enemy within’; the potential ‘home grown terrorist’. The daily experience of visibly-different Australian Muslims, however, is that they are more fearing than fear-inspiring. The Aly and Balnaves fear scale indicates that Australian Muslims have twice as many fear indicators as non-Muslims Australians. Disengagement from Western media and media that is seen to be influenced or controlled by the West is widespread among Australian Muslims who increasingly argue that the media institutions are motivated by an agenda that includes profit and the perpetuation of a negative stereotype of Muslims both in Australia and around the globe, particularly in relation to Middle Eastern affairs. The negative stereotypes of Muslims in the Australian media have inculcated a sense of victimhood which Muslims in Australia have used as the basis for a reconstruction of their identity and the creation of alternative narratives of belonging (Aly). Central to the notion of identity among Australian Muslims is a sense of having their citizenship rights curtailed by virtue of their faith: of being included in a general Western dismissal of Muslims’ rights and experiences. As one interviewee said: If you look at the Channel Al Jazeera for example, it’s a channel but they aren’t making up stories, they are taping videos in Iraqi, Palestine and other Muslim countries, and they just show it to people, that’s all they do. And then George Bush, you know, we hear on the news that George Bush was discussing with Tony Blair that he was thinking to bomb Al Jazeera so why would these people have their right to freedom and we don’t? So that’s why I think the people who are in power, they have the control over the media, and it’s a big political game. Because if it wasn’t then George Bush, he’s the symbol of politics, why would he want to bomb Al Jazeera for example? Amidst leaks and rumours (Timms) that the 2003 US bombing of Al Jazeera was a deliberate attack upon one of the few elements of the public sphere in which some Western-nationality Muslims have confidence, many elements of the mainstream Western media rose to Al Jazeera’s defence. For example, using an appeal to the right of citizens to engage in and consume free speech, the editors of influential US paper The Nation commented that: If the classified memo detailing President Bush’s alleged proposal to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera is provided to The Nation, we will publish the relevant sections. Why is it so vital that this information be made available to the American people? Because if a President who claims to be using the US military to liberate countries in order to spread freedom then conspires to destroy media that fail to echo his sentiments, he does not merely disgrace his office and soil the reputation of his country. He attacks a fundamental principle, freedom of the press—particularly a dissenting and disagreeable press—upon which that country was founded. (cited in Scahill) For other Australian Muslims, it is the fact that some media organisations have been listed as banned by the US that gives them their ultimate credibility. This is the case with Al Manar, for example. Feeling that they are denied access to public spaces to partake in democratic dialogue as equal political citizens, Australian Muslims are pursuing alternative communicative spaces that support and reinforce their own cultural worldviews. The act of engaging with marginalised and alternative communicative spaces constitutes what Clifford terms ‘collective practices of displaced dwelling’. It is through these practices of displaced dwelling that Australian Muslims essentialise their diasporic identity and negotiate new identities based on common perceptions of injustice against Muslims. But you look at Al Jazeera they talk in the same tongue as the Western media in our language. And then you look again at something like Al Manar who talks of their own tongue. They do not use the other media’s ideas. They have been attacked by the Australians, been attacked by the Israelis and they have their own opinion. This statement came from an Australian Muslim of Jordanian background in her late forties. It reflects a growing trend towards engaging with media messages that coincide with and reinforce a sense of injustice. The Al Manar television station to which this participant refers is a Lebanese based station run by the militant Hezbollah movement and accessible to Australians via satellite. Much like Al Jazeera, Al Manar broadcasts images of Iraqi and Palestinian suffering and, in the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, graphic images of Lebanese casualties of Israeli air strikes. Unlike the Al Jazeera broadcasts, these images are formatted into video clips accompanied by music and lyrics such as “we do not fear America”. Despite political pressure including a decision by the US to list Al Manar as a terrorist organisation in December 2004, just one week after a French ban on the station because its programming had “a militant perspective with anti-Semitic connotations” (Jorisch), Al Manar continued to broadcast videos depicting the US as the “mother of terrorism”. In one particularly graphic sequence, the Statue of Liberty rises from the depths of the sea, wielding a knife in place of the torch and dripping in blood, her face altered to resemble a skull. As she rises out of the sea accompanied by music resembling a funeral march the following words in Arabic are emblazoned across the screen: On the dead bodies of millions of native Americans And through the enslavement of tens of millions Africans The US rose It pried into the affairs of most countries in the world After an extensive list of countries impacted by US foreign policy including China, Japan, Congo, Vietnam, Peru, Laos, Libya and Guatamala, the video comes to a gruelling halt with the words ‘America owes blood to all of humanity’. Another video juxtaposes images of Bush with Hitler with the caption ‘History repeats itself’. One website run by the Coalition against Media Terrorism refers to Al Manar as ‘the beacon of hatred’ and applauds the decisions by the French and US governments to ban the station. Al Manar defended itself against the bans stating on its website that they are attempts “to terrorise and silence thoughts that are not in line with the US and Israeli policies.” The station claims that it continues on its mission “to carry the message of defending our peoples’ rights, holy places and just causes…within internationally agreed professional laws and standards”. The particular brand of propaganda employed by Al Manar is gaining popularity among some Muslims in Australia largely because it affirms their own views and opinions and offers them opportunities to engage in an alternative public space in which Muslims are positioned as the victims and not the aggressors. Renegotiating an ‘Othered’ Identity The negative portrayal of Muslims as ‘other’ in the Australian media and in political discourse has resulted in Australian Muslims constructing alternative identities based on a common perception of injustice. Particularly since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001 and the ensuing “war on terror”, the ethnic divisions within the Muslim diaspora are becoming less significant as Australian Muslims reconstruct their identity based on a notion of supporting each other in the face of a global alliance against Islam. Religious identity is increasingly becoming the identity of choice for Muslims in Australia. This causes problems, however, since religious identity has no place in the liberal democratic model, which espouses secularism. This is particularly the case where that religion is sometimes constructed as being at odds with the principles and values of liberal democracy; namely tolerance and adherence to the rule of law. This problematic creates a context in which Muslim Australians are not only denied their heterogeneity in the media and political discourse but are dealt with through an understanding of Islam that is constructed on the basis of a cultural and ideological clash between Islam and the West. Religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship. Such ‘essentialising practices’ as eliding considerable diversity into a single descriptor serves to reinforce and consolidate diasporic identity among Muslims in Australia, but does little to promote and assist participatory citizenship or to equip Muslims with the tools necessary to access the public sphere as political citizens of the secular state. In such circ*mstances, the moderate Muslim may be not so much a ‘preferred’ citizen as one whose rights has been constrained. Acknowledgment This paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2005-7, involving 10 focus groups and 60 in-depth interviews. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members. References Akbarzadeh, Shahram, and Bianca Smith. The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media (The Age and Herald Sun Newspapers). Melbourne: Monash University, 2005. Aly, Anne, and Mark Balnaves. ”‘They Want Us to Be Afraid’: Developing Metrics of the Fear of Terrorism.” International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations 6 (2007): 113-122. Aly, Anne. “Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 42.1 (2007): 27-40. Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. London: Harvard UP, 1997. Haas, Tanni. “The Public Sphere as a Sphere of Publics: Rethinking Habermas’s Theory of the Public Sphere.” Journal of Communication 54.1 (2004): 178- 84. Jorisch, Avi. J. “Al-Manar and the War in Iraq.” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 5.2 (2003). Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. “The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion.” Journal of Communication 24.2 (1974): 43-52. “Online Archives of California”. California Digital Library. n.d. Feb. 2008 < http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt1199n498/?&query= %22open%20platform%22&brand=oac&hit.rank=1 >. Panopoulos, Sophie. Parliamentary debate, 5 Sep. 2005. Feb. 2008 < http://www.aph.gov.au.hansard >. Saniotis, Arthur. “Embodying Ambivalence: Muslim Australians as ‘Other’.” Journal of Australian Studies 82 (2004): 49-58. Scahill, Jeremy. “The War on Al-Jazeera (Comment)”. 2005. The Nation. Feb. 2008 < http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051219/scahill >. Timms, Dominic. “Al-Jazeera Seeks Answers over Bombing Memo”. 2005. Media Guardian. Feb. 2008 < http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/23/iraq.iraqandthemedia >.

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Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen argue that in “contemporary Western visualization central composition is relatively uncommon” (Reading Images 203). In fact, “most compositions polarise elements as Given and New and/or Ideal and Real” (Reading Images 203). This is the regular situation on the front pages of Australia’s national and capital city dailies; but not on May 28. Rather than the favoured front page structures of left (Given) and right (New) and/or top (Ideal) and bottom (Real), on this morning the layouts in the newspapers centralised the Schapelle Corby judgment. While this is not unprecedented, it is the type of coverage usually kept for major issues such as 9/11 or the Bali Bombing. Even the recent release of Douglas Wood, which was arguably as, if not more, important for the Australian public in terms of the issues it raised about Australia’s involvement in the war in Iraq, did not receive the same type of treatment. Although further study needs to be undertaken, I believe this centralising of issues, that is the running of one story only, on front pages is a growing trend, particularly among the tabloids. The effect of this centralising layout structure is to reduce the news choice for the reader on front pages that they would normally approach with an attitude of scanning and selecting. While this approach could still be taken across the whole paper, the front-page choices are minimised. This essay will examine the coverage of the Corby verdict in the tabloids The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun, The Advertiser, The Mercury, and The West Australian, because it is here that the greatest impact of centralisation on the encoded reading paths can be found. Although the broadsheets The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Courier-Mail, and The Canberra Times also centralised the issue, there is not room here to cover them in detail. May 28 was the peak of the media frenzy in the Corby coverage, or at least one of the peaks. As the story is ongoing—turning into something of a soap opera in its call to readers and television news viewers to tune in and see the latest bizarre development, such as the chief lawyer admitting he’s a crook—it could peak again, particularly if on appeal a heavier sentence is handed down. On May 28, the focus moved from Corby’s guilt or innocence to the horror of the twenty-year sentence. In each category—broadsheet and tabloid—the layouts were remarkably similar. At a glance, three of the tabloids are so similar that side-by-side on a newsstand they could have been mistaken for the same. Apart from the fact that Corby’s beauty gave her cultural salience, it is not clear why the Australian media was so taken with her story in the first instance when there are and have been many Australians on drug charges in Asia. My interest here is not so much why or how she became news—that’s an issue for another time—but that once she had captured the attention of the Australian print media, how did they visually treat the material and what are the implications of that treatment. I will argue that the treatment elevated her story, giving it the same weight as the war on terror coverage since 9/11. One of the first elements that draws the eye on any newspaper page is the photograph. Tim Harrower suggests photographs “give a page motion and emotion” (28), arguing however that it is the headline “that leaps out, that grabs you” (37). In reality, it is most likely a combination of both that draws a reader’s attention. Both encode the importance of a story with a dominating photograph or a large headline signalling a story’s significance. The varying size of headlines and photographs and their placement signal the page designer’s order of importance. Six of the ten major Australian newspapers chose the same photograph for their front pages on May 28: a picture of Corby with her head held in her left hand and a look of despair on her face. Four of them—The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, The Advertiser, and the Herald Sun—used the full photograph, while it was heavily cropped into a horizontal picture on the front pages of The West Australian and The Age. The Australian’s choice was similar but the photograph was taken from a slightly different angle. Only one of these newspapers, The West Australian, acknowledged that Corby did not just hang her head in her hand in despair but rather was slapping her head and sobbing as the verdict was read. The television footage gives a different impression of this moment than the still photograph run in the newspapers. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Courier-Mail, in contrast, chose a photograph of Corby struggling with the courtroom police. The Sydney Morning Herald more closely cropped their version so that the emphasis is on Corby. More of the struggle is depicted in The Courier-Mail. The only newspaper making a substantially different choice was The Canberra Times. In this publication, the central vertical photograph was a close up of Corby with tears in her eyes. Her mien is more composed than in the photographs on the other front pages. The source for the photographs, with the exception of The Australian’s choice from Associated Press, was Reuters. Given that the event was in Indonesia and in a crowded courtroom, the array of photographs may have been limited. Of interest was the use of the photograph. The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun ran it full-page, like a poster shot, with the mastheads and headlines over the top. In contrast, The Advertiser maintained a white background for their masthead with the photograph underneath enclosed in a heavy frame and the headlines imposed on top. The other newspapers ran the photograph to the edge of the page without an added frame. The Advertiser, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun chose to forgo their normal front-page teasers. This restricted the scan and select for the reader. Normally readers would have at least two stories, sometimes three, as well as two to three teasers or pointers (usually across the top of the page under the masthead) to scan and select their reading matter. On May 28, however, Corby was centralised with a similar reading path encoded for each of these newspapers. The photograph is the most salient element and the eye moves from this to the main headline at the bottom of the page. As the masthead is known and familiar, unless the reader is selecting the newspaper from a newsstand rather than picking it up from their front yard, it is likely they would only subconsciously register it. These layouts, with a reading path from photograph to headlines down the page, are closer to linear in design, than the normal non-linear format and more interactive front pages. Therefore, the coding is for reading “left to right and from top to bottom, line by line” (Kress and van Leeuwen 218). Newspapers are not normally read in a linear way, but “selectively and partially . . . Their composition sets up particular hierarchies of the movement of the hypothetical reader within and across their different elements. Such reading paths begin with the most salient element, from there move to the next most salient element and so on.” (218) There is also sameness in the headlines and their implications. The Mercury, the most unadorned of the layouts, has “20 Years” in block capitals with a subhead and pointer reading “Corby’s Nightmare Sentence, pages 2-6”. The implication is clear, Corby’s sentence is 20 years in jail and it is pronounced a “nightmare”. The Herald Sun also chose “20 Years” with a subheading of “Shock and tears over jail sentence”. Consolidating this notion of “shock and tears” were three smaller photographs across the bottom of the page depicting crying and sobbing women. No male sympathy was depicted, thus tapping into and reinforcing Australian cultural stereotypes that it is the Australian women rather than the men who cry. The Advertiser’s main headline declared “20 Years in Hell”. Beside this was a smaller underlined headline and pointer “Guilty Corby, sent to jail, Australians react in anger Pages 8-15”. There are slight distinctions in these three pages but essentially the encoded reading path and message is the same. That is not to say that some people may read the pages in a different order. As Kress and van Leeuwen argue “newspaper pages can be read in more than one way” (“Front Page” 205), however, the choice on these pages is limited. The Daily Telegraph uses headlines with different emphasis and includes text from the main story imposed over the photograph. Pointers square-off the pages at the bottom. A kicker head at the top of the page, below the masthead, and set against a photograph of Abu Bakir Bashir, declares: “This terrorist planned the murder of 88 Australians and got two years. Yesterday Schapelle Corby got 20”. This comparison does not appear on the already examined pages. Towards the bottom of the page, the main headline set over two lines reads “Nation’s Fury”. To the right of the “Nation” is a smaller headline, which says “20 years in hell and prosecutor’s still demand life”. The story begins beside the second line “Fury”. The message on this page is more strident than the others and was analysed by the ABC TV show Media Watch on May 30. Media Watch declared the “spin on the verdict” used by The Daily Telegraph as “truly a disgrace”. The criticism was made because Bashir was not convicted in court of masterminding the bombing therefore the word “planned” is problematic and misleading. As the Media Watch report points out, the three Indonesians convicted of masterminding the bombing are on death row and will face the firing squad. The final tabloid, The West Australian, presented a similar message to The Daily Telegraph with a headline of “Bomb plotter: 2½ years / Dope smuggler: 20 years”. The visual impact of this page, however, is not as striking as the other pages. The visual designs of The Advertiser, The Daily Telegraph, The Mercury, and the Herald Sun make it immediately clear that the Corby verdict is the central issue in the news and that all other stories are so marginal they are off the page. In contrast, The West Australian ran its normal teasers just below the masthead, offering four choices for the reader as well as weather and home delivery details at the bottom. The heavily cropped central photograph of Corby leaves in only her wrist and central facial features; it is not even immediately apparent that the photograph is of Corby. The story runs in an L-shape around it. Although Corby is central, the reading path is not as clear. The reader’s eye will most likely be drawn from photograph to caption and to headline or headline, photograph, caption. Whatever the path, the story text is always read last, that is, if the reader chooses this story at all (Kress and van Leeuwen, “Front Pages” 205). The story opens by announcing that Corby’s lawyers want the Australian authorities to “launch an investigation” into the case and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer has offered the help of two Australian QCs in preparing an appeal. This introduction does not support the headline. The comparison with Bashir comes in paragraph three. While Corby still has salience, the inclusion of teasers on the front of The West Australian brings back the choice for the reader, albeit in a small way. Kress and van Leeuwen argue that newspapers “are the first point of ‘address’ for the readers” presenting “the most significant events and issues of the day for the paper and its readers” (“Front Page” 229). In the Corby coverage on May 28, the newspapers presented the court verdict as the most important of all stories on offer and her image became the most salient element, the “nucleus” of the front pages. All newspapers make choices for their readers in their capacity as gatekeepers (see David Manning White and Glen Bleske), but not, I would argue, to the extent that it appeared in the Corby case. A centralising approach to news can be understood with stories such as 9/11 or the Bali Bombing but does one woman’s plight over drug charges in Bali truly deserve such coverage? As a single event maybe not, but the Corby verdict again raised the issue of Australia’s uneasiness about the laws and culture of its Asian neighbours, feelings amplified in the wake of the Bali Bombing. The rhetoric used in the front pages of The Daily Telegraph and The West Australian clearly state this when they compare Corby’s sentence to Bashir’s. They demonstrate a paranoia about the treatment of “our girl” in a foreign judicial system which appears to deal more leniently with terrorists. Thus, one girl’s story is transformed into part of a much larger issue, a fact reinforced through the visual treatment of the material. There remain some questions. What does it say about the newspaper’s attitude to their readers when they centralise issues so strongly that reader choice is removed? Is this part of the “dumbing down” of the Australian media, where news organisations move towards more clearly dictating views to their reading public? Is it attributable to media ownership, after all four of these tabloids belong to News Corporation? These questions and others about the trend towards the centralising of issues are for a bigger study. For now, we watch to see how much longer Corby remains in the nucleus of the news and for further indication of a growing trend towards centralising issues. References Bleske, Glen K. “Mrs Gates Takes Over: An Updated Version of a 1949 Case Study.” Social Meanings of News. Ed. Dan Berkowitz. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Harrower, Tim. The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1998. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. “Front Page: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper Layout.” Approaches to Media Discourse. Ed. Allan Bell and Peter Garrett. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2003. Media Watch. May 30, 2005. http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1380398.htm>. Sellers, Leslie. The Simple Subs Book. Oxford: Permagon Press, 1968. White, David Manning. “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study in the Selection of News.” Social Meanings of News. Ed. Dan Berkowitz. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Delaney, Elizabeth. "Scanning the Front Pages: The Schapelle Corby Judgment." M/C Journal 8.4 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/08-delaney.php>. APA Style Delaney, E. (Aug. 2005) "Scanning the Front Pages: The Schapelle Corby Judgment," M/C Journal, 8(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0508/08-delaney.php>.

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On 23 August 2005, John Howard, then Prime Minister, called together Muslim ‘representatives’ from around the nation for a Muslim Summit in response to the London bombings in July of that year. One of the outcomes of the two hour summit was a Statement of Principles committing Muslim communities in Australia to resist radicalisation and pursue a ‘moderate’ Islam. Since then the ill-defined term ‘moderate Muslim’ has been used in both the political and media discourse to refer to a preferred form of Islamic practice that does not challenge the hegemony of the nation state and that is coherent with the principles of secularism. Akbarzadeh and Smith conclude that the terms ‘moderate’ and ‘mainstream’ are used to describe Muslims whom Australians should not fear in contrast to ‘extremists’. Ironically, the policy direction towards regulating the practice of Islam in Australia in favour of a state defined ‘moderate’ Islam signals an attempt by the state to mediate the practice of religion, undermining the ethos of secularism as it is expressed in the Australian Constitution. It also – arguably – impacts upon the citizenship rights of Australian Muslims in so far as citizenship presents not just as a formal set of rights accorded to an individual but also to democratic participation: the ability of citizens to enjoy those rights at a substantive level. Based on the findings of research into how Australian Muslims and members of the broader community are responding to the political and media discourses on terrorism, this article examines the impact of these discourses on how Muslims are practicing citizenship and re-defining an Australian Muslim identity. Free Speech Free speech has been a hallmark of liberal democracies ever since its defence became part of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Australian Constitution does not expressly contain a provision for free speech. The right to free speech in Australia is implied in Australia’s ratification of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), article 19 of which affirms: Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. The ultimate recent endorsem*nt of free speech rights, arguably associated with the radical free speech ‘open platform’ movement of the 1960s at the University of California Berkeley, constructs free speech as essential to human and civil liberties. Its approach has been expressed in terms such as: “I reject and detest XYZ views but will defend to the utmost a person’s right to express them”. An active defence of free speech is based on the observation that, unless held to account, “[Authorities] would grant free speech to those with whom they agree, but not to minorities whom they consider unorthodox or threatening” (“Online Archives of California”). Such minorities, differing from the majority view, do so as a right accorded to citizens. In very challenging circ*mstances – such as opposing the Cold War operations of the US Senate Anti-American Activities Committee – the free speech movement has been celebrated as holding fast (or embodying a ‘return’) to the true meaning of the American First Amendment. It was in public statements of unpopular and minority views, which opposed those of the majority, that the right to free speech could most non-controvertibly be demonstrated. Some have argued that such rights should be balanced by anti-vilification legislation, by prohibitions upon incitement to violence, and by considerations as to whether the organisation defended by the speaker was banned. In the latter case, there can be problems with excluding the defence of banned organisations from legitimate debate. In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, Sinn Fein was denounced in the UK as the ‘political wing of the IRA’ (the IRA being a banned organisation) and denied a speaking position in many forums, yet has proved to be an important party in the eventual reconciliation of the Northern Ireland divide. In effect, the banning of an organisation is a political act and such acts should best be interrogated through free speech and democratic debate. Arguably, such disputation is a responsibility of an involved citizenry. In general, liberal democracies such as Australia do not hesitate to claim that citizens have a right to free speech and that this is a right worth defending. There is a legitimate expectation by Australians of their rights as citizens to freedom of expression. For some Australian Muslims, however, the appeal to free speech seems a hollow one. Muslim citizens run the risk of being constructed as ‘un-Australian’ when they articulate their concerns or opinions. Calls by some Muslim leaders not to reprint the Danish cartoons depicting images of the Prophet Mohammed for example, met with a broader community backlash and drew responses that, typically, constructed Muslims as a threat to Australian cultural values of freedom and liberty. These kinds of responses to expressions by Australian Muslims of their deeply held convictions are rarely, if ever, interpreted as attempts to curtail Australian Muslims’ rights to free speech. There is a poor fit between what many Australian Muslims believe and what they feel the current climate in Australia allows them to say in the public domain. Positioned as the potential ‘enemy within’ in the evolving media and political discourse post September 11, they have been allocated restricted speaking positions on many subjects from the role and training of their Imams to the right to request Sharia courts (which could operate in parallel with Australian courts in the same way that Catholic divorce/annulment courts do). These social and political restrictions lead them to question whether Muslims enjoy citizenship rights on an equal footing with Australians from the broader community. The following comment from an Australian woman, an Iraqi refugee, made in a research interview demonstrates this: The media say that if you are Australian it means that you enjoy freedom, you enjoy the rights of citizenship. That is the idea of what it means to be Australian, that you do those things. But if you are a Muslim, you are not Australian. You are a people who are dangerous, a people who are suspicious, a people who do not want democracy—all the characteristics that make up terrorists. So yes, there is a difference, a big difference. And it is a feeling all Muslims have, not just me, whether you are at school, at work, and especially if you wear the hijab. (Translated from Arabic by Anne Aly) At the same time, Australian Muslims observe some members of the broader community making strong assertions about Muslims (often based on misunderstanding or misinformation) with very little in the way of censure or rebuke. For example, again in 2005, Liberal backbenchers Sophie Panopoulos and Bronwyn Bishop made an emotive plea for the banning of headscarves in public schools, drawing explicitly on the historically inherited image of Islam as a violent, backward and oppressive ideology that has no place in Western liberal democracy: I fear a frightening Islamic class emerging, supported by a perverse interpretation of the Koran where disenchantment breeds disengagement, where powerful and subversive orthodoxies are inculcated into passionate and impressionable young Muslims, where the Islamic mosque becomes the breeding ground for violence and rejection of Australian law and ideals, where extremists hijack the Islamic faith with their own prescriptive and unbending version of the Koran and where extremist views are given currency and validity … . Why should one section of the community be stuck in the Dark Ages of compliance cloaked under a veil of some distorted form of religious freedom? (Panopoulos) Several studies attest to the fact that, since the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001, Islam, and by association Australian Muslims, have been positioned as other in the political and media discourse (see for example Aly). The construct of Muslims as ‘out of place’ (Saniotis) denies them entry and representation in the public sphere: a key requisite for democratic participation according to Habermas (cited in Haas). This notion of a lack of a context for Muslim citizenship in Australian public spheres arises out of the popular construction of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Australian’ as mutually exclusive modes of being. Denied access to public spaces to partake in democratic dialogue as political citizens, Australian Muslims must pursue alternative communicative spaces. Some respond by limiting their expressions to closed spheres of communication – a kind of enforced silence. Others respond by pursuing alternative media discourses that challenge the dominant stereotypes of Muslims in Western media and reinforce majority-world cultural views. Enforced Silence In closed spheres of discussion, Australian Muslims can openly share their perceptions about terrorism, the government and media. Speaking openly in public however, is not common practice and results in forced silence for fear of reprisal or being branded a terrorist: “if we jump up and go ‘oh how dare you say this, rah, rah’, he’ll be like ‘oh he’s going to go off, he’ll blow something up’”. One research participant recalled that when his work colleagues were discussing the September 11 attacks he decided not to partake in the conversation because it “might be taken against me”. The participant made this decision despite the fact that his colleagues were expressing the opinion that United States foreign policy was the likely cause for the attacks—an opinion with which he agreed. This suggests some support for the theory that the fear of social isolation may make Australian Muslims especially anxious or fearful of expressing opinions about terrorism in public discussions (Noelle-Neumann). However, it also suggests that the fear of social isolation for Muslims is not solely related to the expression of minority opinion, as theorised in Noelle-Neumann’s Spiral of Silence . Given that many members of the wider community shared the theory that the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre in 2001 may have been a response to American foreign policy, this may well not be a minority view. Nonetheless, Australian Muslims hesitated to embrace it. Saniotis draws attention to the pressure on Australian Muslims to publicly distance themselves from the terrorist attacks of September 11 and to openly denounce the actions of terrorists. The extent to which Muslims were positioned as a threatening other was contingent on their ability to demonstrate that they too participated in the distal responses to the terrorist attacks—initial pity for the sufferer and eventual marginalisation and rejection of the perceived aggressor. Australian Muslims were obliged to declare their loyalty and commitment to Australia’s ally and, in this way, partake in the nationalistic responses to the threat of terrorism. At the same time however, Australian Muslims were positioned as an imagined enemy and a threat to national identity. Australian Muslims were therefore placed in a paradoxical bind- as Australians they were expected to respond as the victims of fear; as Muslims they were positioned as the objects of fear. Even in discussions where their opinions are congruent with the dominant opinion being expressed, Australian Muslims describe themselves as feeling apprehensive or anxious about expressing their opinions because of how these “might be taken”. Pursuing alternative discourses The overriding message from the research project’s Muslim participants was that the media, as a powerful purveyor of public opinion, had inculcated a perception of Muslims as a risk to Australia and Australians: an ‘enemy within’; the potential ‘home grown terrorist’. The daily experience of visibly-different Australian Muslims, however, is that they are more fearing than fear-inspiring. The Aly and Balnaves fear scale indicates that Australian Muslims have twice as many fear indicators as non-Muslims Australians. Disengagement from Western media and media that is seen to be influenced or controlled by the West is widespread among Australian Muslims who increasingly argue that the media institutions are motivated by an agenda that includes profit and the perpetuation of a negative stereotype of Muslims both in Australia and around the globe, particularly in relation to Middle Eastern affairs. The negative stereotypes of Muslims in the Australian media have inculcated a sense of victimhood which Muslims in Australia have used as the basis for a reconstruction of their identity and the creation of alternative narratives of belonging (Aly). Central to the notion of identity among Australian Muslims is a sense of having their citizenship rights curtailed by virtue of their faith: of being included in a general Western dismissal of Muslims’ rights and experiences. As one interviewee said: If you look at the Channel Al Jazeera for example, it’s a channel but they aren’t making up stories, they are taping videos in Iraqi, Palestine and other Muslim countries, and they just show it to people, that’s all they do. And then George Bush, you know, we hear on the news that George Bush was discussing with Tony Blair that he was thinking to bomb Al Jazeera so why would these people have their right to freedom and we don’t? So that’s why I think the people who are in power, they have the control over the media, and it’s a big political game. Because if it wasn’t then George Bush, he’s the symbol of politics, why would he want to bomb Al Jazeera for example? Amidst leaks and rumours (Timms) that the 2003 US bombing of Al Jazeera was a deliberate attack upon one of the few elements of the public sphere in which some Western-nationality Muslims have confidence, many elements of the mainstream Western media rose to Al Jazeera’s defence. For example, using an appeal to the right of citizens to engage in and consume free speech, the editors of influential US paper The Nation commented that: If the classified memo detailing President Bush’s alleged proposal to bomb the headquarters of Al Jazeera is provided to The Nation, we will publish the relevant sections. Why is it so vital that this information be made available to the American people? Because if a President who claims to be using the US military to liberate countries in order to spread freedom then conspires to destroy media that fail to echo his sentiments, he does not merely disgrace his office and soil the reputation of his country. He attacks a fundamental principle, freedom of the press—particularly a dissenting and disagreeable press—upon which that country was founded. (cited in Scahill) For other Australian Muslims, it is the fact that some media organisations have been listed as banned by the US that gives them their ultimate credibility. This is the case with Al Manar, for example. Feeling that they are denied access to public spaces to partake in democratic dialogue as equal political citizens, Australian Muslims are pursuing alternative communicative spaces that support and reinforce their own cultural worldviews. The act of engaging with marginalised and alternative communicative spaces constitutes what Clifford terms ‘collective practices of displaced dwelling’. It is through these practices of displaced dwelling that Australian Muslims essentialise their diasporic identity and negotiate new identities based on common perceptions of injustice against Muslims. But you look at Al Jazeera they talk in the same tongue as the Western media in our language. And then you look again at something like Al Manar who talks of their own tongue. They do not use the other media’s ideas. They have been attacked by the Australians, been attacked by the Israelis and they have their own opinion. This statement came from an Australian Muslim of Jordanian background in her late forties. It reflects a growing trend towards engaging with media messages that coincide with and reinforce a sense of injustice. The Al Manar television station to which this participant refers is a Lebanese based station run by the militant Hezbollah movement and accessible to Australians via satellite. Much like Al Jazeera, Al Manar broadcasts images of Iraqi and Palestinian suffering and, in the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah, graphic images of Lebanese casualties of Israeli air strikes. Unlike the Al Jazeera broadcasts, these images are formatted into video clips accompanied by music and lyrics such as “we do not fear America”. Despite political pressure including a decision by the US to list Al Manar as a terrorist organisation in December 2004, just one week after a French ban on the station because its programming had “a militant perspective with anti-Semitic connotations” (Jorisch), Al Manar continued to broadcast videos depicting the US as the “mother of terrorism”. In one particularly graphic sequence, the Statue of Liberty rises from the depths of the sea, wielding a knife in place of the torch and dripping in blood, her face altered to resemble a skull. As she rises out of the sea accompanied by music resembling a funeral march the following words in Arabic are emblazoned across the screen: On the dead bodies of millions of native Americans And through the enslavement of tens of millions Africans The US rose It pried into the affairs of most countries in the world After an extensive list of countries impacted by US foreign policy including China, Japan, Congo, Vietnam, Peru, Laos, Libya and Guatamala, the video comes to a gruelling halt with the words ‘America owes blood to all of humanity’. Another video juxtaposes images of Bush with Hitler with the caption ‘History repeats itself’. One website run by the Coalition against Media Terrorism refers to Al Manar as ‘the beacon of hatred’ and applauds the decisions by the French and US governments to ban the station. Al Manar defended itself against the bans stating on its website that they are attempts “to terrorise and silence thoughts that are not in line with the US and Israeli policies.” The station claims that it continues on its mission “to carry the message of defending our peoples’ rights, holy places and just causes…within internationally agreed professional laws and standards”. The particular brand of propaganda employed by Al Manar is gaining popularity among some Muslims in Australia largely because it affirms their own views and opinions and offers them opportunities to engage in an alternative public space in which Muslims are positioned as the victims and not the aggressors. Renegotiating an ‘Othered’ Identity The negative portrayal of Muslims as ‘other’ in the Australian media and in political discourse has resulted in Australian Muslims constructing alternative identities based on a common perception of injustice. Particularly since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in September 2001 and the ensuing “war on terror”, the ethnic divisions within the Muslim diaspora are becoming less significant as Australian Muslims reconstruct their identity based on a notion of supporting each other in the face of a global alliance against Islam. Religious identity is increasingly becoming the identity of choice for Muslims in Australia. This causes problems, however, since religious identity has no place in the liberal democratic model, which espouses secularism. This is particularly the case where that religion is sometimes constructed as being at odds with the principles and values of liberal democracy; namely tolerance and adherence to the rule of law. This problematic creates a context in which Muslim Australians are not only denied their heterogeneity in the media and political discourse but are dealt with through an understanding of Islam that is constructed on the basis of a cultural and ideological clash between Islam and the West. Religion has become the sole and only characteristic by which Muslims are recognised, denying them political citizenship and access to the public spaces of citizenship. Such ‘essentialising practices’ as eliding considerable diversity into a single descriptor serves to reinforce and consolidate diasporic identity among Muslims in Australia, but does little to promote and assist participatory citizenship or to equip Muslims with the tools necessary to access the public sphere as political citizens of the secular state. In such circ*mstances, the moderate Muslim may be not so much a ‘preferred’ citizen as one whose rights has been constrained. Acknowledgment This paper is based on the findings of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, 2005-7, involving 10 focus groups and 60 in-depth interviews. The authors wish to acknowledge the participation and contributions of WA community members. References Akbarzadeh, Shahram, and Bianca Smith. The Representation of Islam and Muslims in the Media (The Age and Herald Sun Newspapers). Melbourne: Monash University, 2005. Aly, Anne, and Mark Balnaves. ”‘They Want Us to Be Afraid’: Developing Metrics of the Fear of Terrorism.” International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations 6 (2007): 113-122. Aly, Anne. “Australian Muslim Responses to the Discourse on Terrorism in the Australian Popular Media.” Australian Journal of Social Issues 42.1 (2007): 27-40. Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. London: Harvard UP, 1997. Haas, Tanni. “The Public Sphere as a Sphere of Publics: Rethinking Habermas’s Theory of the Public Sphere.” Journal of Communication 54.1 (2004): 178- 84. Jorisch, Avi. J. “Al-Manar and the War in Iraq.” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 5.2 (2003). Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth. “The Spiral of Silence: A Theory of Public Opinion.” Journal of Communication 24.2 (1974): 43-52. “Online Archives of California”. California Digital Library. n.d. Feb. 2008 http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt1199n498/?&query= %22open%20platform%22&brand=oac&hit.rank=1>. Panopoulos, Sophie. Parliamentary debate, 5 Sep. 2005. Feb. 2008 http://www.aph.gov.au.hansard>. Saniotis, Arthur. “Embodying Ambivalence: Muslim Australians as ‘Other’.” Journal of Australian Studies 82 (2004): 49-58. Scahill, Jeremy. “The War on Al-Jazeera (Comment)”. 2005. The Nation. Feb. 2008 http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051219/scahill>. Timms, Dominic. “Al-Jazeera Seeks Answers over Bombing Memo”. 2005. Media Guardian. Feb. 2008 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/nov/23/iraq.iraqandthemedia>. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Aly, Anne, and Lelia Green. "‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/08-aly-green.php>. APA Style Aly, A., and L. Green. (Apr. 2008) "‘Moderate Islam’: Defining the Good Citizen," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/08-aly-green.php>.

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Abstract:

How much do you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? (Fight Club) …The fabric of the rhizome is the conjunction, “and…and…and…” This conjunction carries enough force to shake and uproot the verb “to be.” Where are you going? Where are you coming from…These are totally useless questions. (Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari 25) Fight Club (1999) depicts the struggle of Jack (Edward Norton) to determine a sense of identity in late capitalism, under which discipline gives way to control (Deleuze 177-182), and consumer culture feminises men. Within this social structure, people no longer occupy singular subjectivities, but instead are compelled to slide between infinite subject positions, always in a state of becoming, never arriving. Jack’s sense of identity, gleaned from shiny, new possessions, is exemplary of the postmodern subject who is all malleable surface and no depth, or, to use Jean Baudrillard’s lexicon, a schizophrenic “pure screen, a switching center [sic] for all the networks of influence” (a 133). As an alternative to this hollow and meaningless subjectivity, Fight Club suggests that there is a connection between pain and aggression and ‘knowing yourself’. Confronting and engaging with the primal feelings of pain and oblivion, it is implied, will bring Jack closer to a more authentic sense of identity than he could ever buy for himself from Ikea. Jack begins to attend support groups for the ill, in search of “real pain.” The crying and sense of oblivion experienced at these groups prove cathartic for Jack. These early scenes anticipate the idea that it is not through external things that one can attain an authentic sense of identity; rather, that the quest for authentic identity has become redundant and the only way out is to aspire to something less inauthentic. The way to do this, Fight Club suggests, is to embrace hopelessness, to return to degree zero and proceed in a simpler way. Jack’s apartment and the objects it contains are metonymic for his personality: recall the scene depicting his condo complete with descriptive captions and mood music, as if it were an advertisem*nt. This is a visual enactment of Baudrillard’s theorisation of hyperreality, defined as the kind of reality that has resulted from an ideology that no longer represents real conditions of existence, because there are no longer any real objective truths to represent (b 6, 25). By extension, Jack’s personality is a piecemeal construct of these superficial objects: “I loved that condo. I loved every stick of furniture. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed; it was me.” After destroying Jack’s apartment, Tyler (Brad Pitt) confronts Jack with a critique of the consumer ideology by which he has lived his life. Confounding distrust of women and contempt for consumerism, Tyler points out that things “could be worse. A woman could cut off your penis while you’re asleep and toss it out of the window of a moving car,” before launching into an assault on Jack’s consumerist lifestyle asking why Is a duvet essential to our survival in the hunter-gatherer sense of the word…We’re consumers, we are by-products of the life-style obsession. Murder, crime, poverty: these things don’t concern me: celebrity magazines, television with five hundred channels, some guy’s name on my underwear…I say, “never be complete.” I say, “stop being perfect.” I say, “let’s evolve.” It is curious that Tyler carries out this tirade while consuming mass-produced beer and cigarettes. Fight Club overtly criticises ‘feminine’ modes of consumption—agonising over which ruffled valance to buy; taking pride in one’s home wares and condiments. However, this is undercut by its complicity with more ‘masculine’ modes of consumption—smoking and drinking - which are contingent on the rugged mode of masculinity it promotes. Fight Club does not only depict postmodern subjectivity in general as in crisis; rather, the suggestion is that in the postmodern era masculine subjectivity in particular is in trouble. Jack’s struggle to recuperate a sense of authentic masculine identity involves two different types of conflict: physical and political. Through physical violence we see fighting enacted in its arguably rawest sense: hyperreal violence with no coherent objective. Political conflict in this film includes but is not limited to physical brutality, propaganda, and acts of terrorism. The two different types of struggle in this film conduct themselves under the auspices of ‘Fight Club’ and ‘Project Mayhem’, respectively. Superficially, it would appear that Fight Club and Project Mayhem are two different things: Fight Club is for the sole purpose of men engaging in physical violence and an ensuing sense of abandon, while Project Mayhem is a tightly regimented organisation devoted to resisting and attacking the capitalist system and consumer culture. While considering the two different types of conflict in isolation would make it easier to unpack the complex set of ideas which the narrative device of fighting acts as a vehicle for in this film, this would be to ignore the fact that according to Fight Club the struggle for authentic subjectivity under late capitalism is a dubious objective to begin with, that “maybe it’s a mistake to believe in the existence of things, persons, or subjects” (Deleuze 26). Fight Club is represented as a way for Jack to subvert the ideology of late capitalism and its inherent consumerism that has, up to this point, defined his subjectivity. Fight Club potentially subverts the ideology of late capitalism in two ways: first, it provides a space where class hierarchy does not apply and allows lower-class workers to be momentarily “like gods” (this inversion proves, however, to be a hierarchical structure). Secondly, the evidence of physical violence can be read as subverting the ideology of respectable presentation in the bureaucratic work place. As Jack explains: “I got right in everyone’s hostile little face. Yes, these are bruises from fighting. Yes, I’m comfortable with that. I am enlightened.” Exactly what it is that is enlightening about fighting in this film is worth consideration. In the article ‘f*ck you Hero’ in Face magazine, Edward Norton describes the point of Fight Club as “needing the punch in the face to wake yourself up.” I think it’s about more than this. Notice that Jack continues to attend Fight Club long after he proclaims, “I am enlightened.” So, it’s safe to say it’s about more than simply ‘waking yourself up’. Jack describes how fighting makes him feel saved from the emptiness of his life, that it is “not about words.” An understanding of the explicit bodily violence depicted in Fight Club can be enhanced when considered with reference to John Fiske’s ‘Offensive Bodies and Carnival Pleasures’ (1989). Developing Michel de Certeau’s thesis that “there is no law that is not inscribed on bodies” (139), Fiske asserts the primacy of the body in ideological struggles, arguing “the body is where the social is most convincingly represented as the individual and where politics can best disguise itself as human nature” (70). In actively damaging the external façade of their bodies, therefore, the members of Fight Club reject the conservative politics that inscribe themselves on the neatly presented bodies of obedient workers. Fiske also makes reference to the psychoanalytic concept ‘jouissance’ defined as “a moment of pleasure when the body breaks free from social control” (94). Given that Jack describes the experience of Fight Club as defying words, fighting could be read as an experience of jouissance which allows members to escape the dominant system of signification and that momentarily transports these men, if not closer to the ‘truth’, at least further from social constraints. While Fight Club implicates other factors as being responsible for the contemporary demise of masculinity—including the breakdown of the family unit and absentee fathers—Tyler’s address to Fight Club foreshadowing Project Mayhem is perhaps the clearest articulation in Fight Club of the disaffection felt by these men and its alleged cause: I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived—an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables; or they’re slaves with white collars…Advertisem*nts have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs they hate so they can buy sh*t they don’t need. We are the middle children of history, with no purpose or place. We have no Great War, or great depression. The great war is a spiritual war. The great depression is our lives. We were raised by television to believe that we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars—but we won’t. And we’re learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. Following this speech, Tyler hands out homework assignments. Tasks include the incitement of violence in the wider community, and the calculated vandalism of billboards, car-yards and public art. Tyler completes his own homework assignment, threatening a convenience store attendant with death unless he takes steps immediately to return to college and pursue his dream. This scene is exemplary of the ideology of ‘following your dream’, a perversion of the capitalist ethos, that pervades Fight Club. While threatening to drive the car they are both in into oncoming traffic, Tyler urges Jack to decide what it is he wants to accomplish before he dies. This appeal to individual fulfilment contradicts the hyper-collective mentality of Project Mayhem, which dictates that members renounce their names, shave their heads, wear identical black clothing and immerse themselves in dogma: “You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.” Tyler’s appeal to Jack to “stop trying to control everything and just let go” is dissonant with the tightly regimented structure of Project Mayhem, complete with teams and committees. The notion of pain as a portal to ‘your true self’ is recalled when Tyler gives Jack a chemical burn. Tyler expounds: Without pain…we’d have nothing…what you’re feeling is premature enlightenment. This is the greatest moment of your life…It’s only after you’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. This ideology of abandon, of ‘losing it all,’ is contradicted throughout Fight Club by Tyler’s equal appeal to rules and structure. Furthermore, Jack’s description of the feelings he experienced after fighting—“when the fight was over, nothing was solved, but nothing mattered”—seems to be embracing the converse: if nothing was solved and nothing mattered, surely ‘finding yourself’ is not important. Slavoj Zizek’s consideration of the postmodern individual can stand as a summary of the depiction of subjectivity in Fight Club. Zizek posits a subjectivity that knows no limits, when [t]he inherent obverse of ‘Be your true Self!’ is…the injunction to cultivate permanent refashioning, in accordance with the postmodern postulate of the subject’s indefinite plasticity…in short, extreme individualism reverts to its opposite, leading to the ultimate identity crisis: subjects experience themselves as radically unsure, with no ‘proper face’, changing from one imposed mask to another, since what is behind that mask is ultimately nothing, a horrifying void they are frantically trying to fill in with their compulsive activity… (373) In this sense, the narrative on subjectivity in Fight Club becomes extremely complicated, conflating extreme individualism (“follow your dream”), extreme collectivism (“you are not special”), and an endless shifting from mask to mask to mask (Cornelius—Jack—Tyler…) where no mask is privileged as more authentic than another. Fight Club is fundamentally ambivalent towards all of the issues it would explore. It promotes a discourse of ‘finding yourself’ while simultaneously insisting “you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.” Does it all simply dissolve into postmodern irony, or does a kernel of significance remain? Beneath the contradictions the message regarding subjectivity seems to be this: the only ‘authentic’ thing about contemporary subjectivity is that at its heart lies a void. Embracing this void, while a bleak prospect, rather than frantically trying to compensate for its absence, is the only authentic gesture that remains. Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean. ‘The Ecstasy of Communication’. 1983. Trans. John Johnston. Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. London: Pluto Press, 1990. . Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss, Paul Patton and Philip Beitchman. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. 1984. Trans. Stephen Rendall. London: University of California Press, 1988. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. 1987. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations: 1972-1990. New York: Columbia UP, 1995. Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Twentieth Century Fox, 1999. Fiske, John. ‘Offensive Bodies and Carnival Pleasures’. Understanding Popular Culture. 1989. London: Routledge, 1996. McLean, Craig. ‘f*ck you Hero.’ Face. #35, December 1999. Zizek, Slavoj. The Ticklish Subject: the Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso, 1999. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Greenwood, Kate. "“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake” " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 6.1 (2003). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/09-snowflake.php>. APA Style Greenwood, K., (2003, Feb 26). “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake” . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,(1). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0302/09-snowflake.html

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The word “prosthetic” has its origins as a mathematical term. According to scholar Brandon W. Hawk, Plato uses the words prosthesis and prostithenai in Phaedo to mean "addition, add to, to place", and Aristotle uses it in a similar, algebraic sense in the Metaphysics. Later, as the word appears in classical Latin, it is used as a grammatical and rhetorical term, in the sense of a letter or syllable that is added on to a word, usually the addition of a syllable to the beginning of a word, hence pro-thesis (Hawk). This is the sense of the word that was “inherited … by early modern humanists”, says Hawk, but when it appears in Edward Phillips's The New World of English Words: Or, a General Dictionary (1706), we can see how, with advances in technology, it changes from a grammatical/linguistic term into a medical term. What was once word is now made flesh:Prosthesis, a Grammatical Figure, when a Letter or Syllable is added to the beginning of a Word, as Gnatus for natus, tetuli for tuli, &c. In Surgery, Prosthesis is taken for that which fills up what is wanting, as is to beseen in fistulous and hollow Ulcers, filled up with Flesh by that Art: Also themaking of artificial Legs and Arms, when the natural ones are lost.Hawk also points to P. Dionis in Course Chirurg (a 1710 textbook detailing the art of chirurgy, or surgery, as it’s known now), who uses the word to denote one type of surgical operation; that is, prosthesis becomes not a word, but an act that “adds what is deficient”, an act that repairs loss, that “fills up what is wanting”, that fills up what is “hollow”, that “fills up with flesh”. R. Brookes, in his Introduction to Physic and Surgery (1754), is the first to define prosthesis as both an act and also as a separate, material object; it is “an operation by which some instrument is added to supply the Defect of a Part which is wanting, either naturally or accidentally”. It is not until the twentieth century (1900, to be exact), though, that the word begins to refer solely to a device or object that is added on to somehow “supply the defect”, or fill up what which is “wanting”. So etymologically we move from the writer creating a new literary device, to the scientist/doctor acting in order to fix something, then back to the device again, this time as tangible object that fills a gap where there is lack and loss (Hawk).This is how we most often see the word, and so we have the notion of prosthetic used in this medicalised sense, as an "instrument", in relation to people with missing or disfunctional limbs. Having a prosthetic arm or leg in an ableist society instantly marks one as "missing" something, or being "disabled". Wheelchairs and other prosthetic accoutrements also serve as a metonymic shorthand for disability (an example of this might be how, on reserved parking spots in North America, the image on the sign is that of a person in a wheelchair). In the case of deaf people, who are also thought of as "disabled", but whose supposed disability is invisible, hearing aids and cochlear implants (CIs) serve as this kind of visible marker.* Like artificial limbs and wheelchairs, these "instruments" (they are actually called “hearing instruments” by audiologists) are sometimes added on to the purportedly “lacking” body. They are objects that “restore function to” the disabled deaf ear. As such, these devices, like wheelchairs and bionic arms, also serve as a shorthand in American culture, especially in film and visual media, where this kind of obvious, material symbolism is very helpful in efficiently driving narrative along. David L. Mitchell and Sharon T. Snyder call this kind of disability shorthand "narrative prosthesis". In their 2001 book of the same name, they demonstrate that disability and the markers of disability, far from being neglected or omitted (as has been claimed by critics like Sarah Ruiz-Grossman), actually appear in literature and film to the point where they are astonishingly pervasive. Unlike other identities who are vastly underrepresented, Mitchell and Snyder note, images of disability are almost constantly circulated in print and visual media (this is clearly demonstrated in older film studies such as John Schuchman's Hollywood Speaks and Martin Norden's Cinema of Isolation, as well). The reason that this happens, Mitchell and Snyder say, is because almost all narrative is structured around the idea of a flaw in the natural order, the resolution of that flaw, and the restoration of order. This flaw, they show, is more often than not represented by a disabled character or symbol. Disability, then, is a "crutch upon which literary narratives lean for their representational power, disruptive potentiality and analytical insight" (49). And, in the end, all narrative is thus dependent upon some type of disability used as a prosthetic, which serves not only to “fill in” lack, but also to restore and reinforce normalcy. They also state that concepts of, and characters with, disability are therefore used in literature and film primarily as “opportunist metaphorical device(s)” (205). Hearing aids and CIs are great examples of "opportunist" devices used on television and in movies, mostly as props or “add-ons” in visual narratives. This "adding on" is done, more often than not, to the detriment of providing a well rounded narrative about the lived experience of deaf people who use such devices on a daily basis. There are countless examples of this in American television shows and films (in an upward trend since 2000), including many police and crime dramas where a cochlear implant device-as-clue stands in for the dead victim’s identity (Kincheloe "Do Androids"). We see it in movies, most notably in 2018’s A Quiet Place, in which a CI is weaponized and used to defeat the alien monster/Other (as opposed to the deaf heroine doing it by herself) (Kincheloe "Tired Tropes"). In 2019's Toy Story 4, there is a non-signing child who we know is deaf because they wear a CI. In the 2019 animated Netflix series, Undone, the main character wears a CI, and it serves as one of several markers (for her and the viewer) of her possible psychological breakdown.It seems fairly obvious that literal prostheses such as hearing aids and CI devices are used as a form of media shorthand to connote hearing ideas of “deafness”. It also might seem obvious that, as props that reinforce mainstream, ableist narratives, they are there to tell us that, in the end, despite the aesthetic nervousness that disability produces, "things will be okay". It's "fixable". These are prosthetics that are easily identified and easily discussed, debated, and questioned.What is perhaps not so obvious, however, is that American Sign Language (ASL), is also used in media as a narrative prosthetic. Lennard Davis' discussion of Erving Goffman’s idea of “stigma” in Enforcing Normalcy supports the notion that sign language, like hearing aids, is a marker. When seen by the hearing, non-signing observer, sign language "stigmatizes" the signing deaf person (48). In this sense, ASL is, like a hearing aid, a tangible "sign" of deaf identity. I would then argue that ASL is, like hearing aids and CIs, used as a "narrative prosthesis" signifying deafness and disability; its insertion allows ableist narratives to be satisfyingly resolved. Even though ASL is not a static physical device, but a living language and an integral part of deaf lived experience, it is casually employed almost everywhere in media today as a cheap prop, and as such, serves narrative purposes that are not in the best interest of realistic deaf representation. Consider this example: On 13 April 2012, Sir Paul McCartney arranged for a special event at his daughter Stella McCartney’s ivy-covered store in West Hollywood. Stars and friends like Jane Fonda, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin, Quincy Jones, and Reese Witherspoon sipped cucumber margaritas and nibbled on a spread of vegetarian Mexican appetizers. Afterwards, McCartney took them all to a tent set up on the patio out back, where he proudly introduced a new video, directed by himself. This was the world premiere of the video for "My Valentine", a song from his latest (some might say oddly titled) album, Kisses from the Bottom, a song he had originally written for and sung to new wife Nancy Shevell, at their 2011 wedding.The video is very simply shot in black and white, against a plain grey backdrop. As it begins, the camera fades in on actor Natalie Portman, who is seated, wearing a black dress. She stares at the viewer intently, but with no expression. As McCartney’s voiced-over vocal begins, “What if it rained/We didn’t care…”, she suddenly starts to mouth the words, and using sign language. The lens backs up to a medium shot of her, then closes back in on a tight close up of just her hands signing “my valentine” on her chest. There is then a quick cut to actor Johnny Depp, who is sitting in a similar position, in front of a grey backdrop, staring directly at the camera, also with no expression. There is a fade back to Portman’s face, then to her body, a close up of her signing the word “appear”, and then a cut back to Depp. Now he starts signing. Unlike Portman, he does not mouth the words, but stares ahead, with no facial movement. There is then a series of jump cuts, back and forth, between shots of the two actors’ faces, eyes, mouths, hands. For the solo bridge, there is a closeup on Depp’s hands playing guitar – a cut to Portman’s face, looking down – then to her face with eyes closed as she listens. here is some more signing, we see Depp’s impassive face staring at us again, and then, at the end, the video fades out on Portman’s still figure, still gazing at us as well.McCartney told reporters that Stella had been the one to come up with the idea for using sign language in the video. According to the ASL sign language coach on the shoot, Bill Pugin, the choice to include it wasn’t that far-fetched: “Paul always has an interpreter on a riser with a spot for his concerts and Stella loves sign language, apparently” ("The Guy Who Taught Johnny Depp"). Perhaps she made the suggestion because the second stanza contains the words “I tell myself that I was waiting for a sign…” Regardless, McCartney advised her father to “ring Natalie up and just ask her if she will sign to your song”. Later realizing he wanted another person signing in the video, Paul McCartney asked Johnny Depp to join in, which he did. When asked why he chose those two actors, McCartney said, “Well, they’re just nice people, some friends from way back and they were just very kind to do it”. A week later, they all got together with cinematographer Wally Pfister, who filmed Inception and The Dark Knight, behind the camera. According to the official press release about the video, posted on McCartney’s website, the two actors then "translate[d] the lyrics of the song into sign language – each giving distinctly different performances, making ... compelling viewing" ("Paul McCartney Directs His Own"). The response to the video was quite positive; it immediately went viral on YouTube (the original posting of it got over 15 million views). The album made it to number five on the Billboard charts, with the single reaching number twenty. The album won a 2013 Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal album, and the video Best Music Film (“Live Kisses”). McCartney chose to sing that particular song from the album on the award show itself, and four years later, he featured both the song and video as part of his 31 city tour, the 2017 One on One concert, in which he made four million dollars a city. All told the video has served McCartney quite well.But…For whom the sign language? And why? The video is not meant for deaf eyes. When viewed through a deaf lens, it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, “compelling”; it isn’t even comprehensible. It is so bad, in fact, that the video, though signed, is also captioned for the deaf and hard of hearing. To the untrained, “hearing” eye, the signing seems to be providing a “deaf translation” of what is being sung. But it is in fact a pantomime. The actors are quite literally “going through the motions”. One egregious example of this is how, at the end of the video, when Depp thinks he’s signing “valentine”. it looks like he's saying “f*ck-heart” (several media sources politely reported that he’d signed “enemy”). Whatever he did, it’s not a sign. In response to criticism of his signing, Depp said nonchalantly, “Apparently, instead of ‘love' I might have said, ‘murder'” ("Johnny Depp Says"). That wasn’t the only point of confusion, though: the way Portman signs “then she appears” was misunderstood by some viewers to be the sign for “tampon”. She actually signed it correctly, but media sources from MTV.com, to the Washington Post, “signsplained” that she had just gotten a bit confused between ASL and BSL signs (even though the BSL for “appears” bears no resemblance to what she did, and the ASL for tampon, while using the same classifier, is also signed quite differently). Part of the problem, according to sign coach Pugin, was that he and Depp “had about fifteen minutes to work on the song. I signed the song for hours sitting on an apple box under the camera for Johnny to be able to peripherally see me for each take. I was his “human cue card”. Johnny’s signing turned out to be more theatrical and ‘abbreviated’ because of the time issue” ("The Guy Who Taught").Portman, perhaps taking more time to rehearse, does a better job, but “theatrical and abbreviated” indeed; the signing was just not good, despite Pugin's coaching. But to hearing eyes, it looks fine; it looks beautiful, it looks poignant and somehow mysterious. It looks the way sign language is “supposed” to look.Remember, the McCartney website claimed that the actors were “translating” the lyrics. Technically speaking, “translation” would mean that the sense of the words to the song were being rendered, fluently, from one language (English) into another (SL), for an audience receptive to the second language. In order to “translate”, the translator needs to be fluent in both of the languages involved. To be clear, what Depp and Portman were doing was not translation. They are hearing people, not fluent in sign language, acting like signers (something that happens with dismaying regularity in the entertainment industry). Depp, to his credit, knew he wasn’t “translating”, in fact, he said "I was only copying what the guy showed me”. “But”, he says, "it was a gas – sign language is apparently very interpretive. It's all kind of different" (italics mine) ("Johnny Depp Passes the Buck"). Other than maybe being an embellishment on that one line, “I tell myself that I was waiting for a sign…”, the sentiments of McCartney’s song have absolutely nothing to do with ASL or deaf people. And he didn’t purposefully place sign language in his video as a way to get his lyrics across to a deaf audience. He’s a musician; it is fairly certain that the thought of appealing to a deaf audience never entered his or his daughter’s mind. It is much more likely that he made the decision to use sign language because of its cool factor; its emo “novelty”. In other words, McCartney used sign language as a prop – as a way to make his song “different”, more “touching”, more emotionally appealing. Sign adds a je ne sais quoi, a little “something”, to the song. The video is a hearing person’s fantasy of what a signing person looks like, what sign language is, and what it does. McCartney used that fantasy, and the sentimentality that it evokes, to sell the song. And it worked. This attitude toward sign language, demonstrated by the careless editing of the video, Depp’s flippant remarks, and the overall attitude that if it’s wrong it’s no big deal, is one that is pervasive throughout the entertainment and advertising industries and indeed throughout American culture in the U.S. That is, there is this notion that sign language is “a gas”. It’s just a “different” thing. Not only is it “different”, but it is also a “thing”, a prop, a little exotic spice you throw into the pot. It is, in other words, a "narrative prosthesis", an "add-on". Once you see this, it becomes glaringly apparent that ASL is not viewed in mainstream American culture as the language of a group of people, but instead is widely used and commodified as a product. The most obvious form of commodification is in the thousands of ASL products, from Precious Moment figurines, to Baby Signing videos, to the ubiquitous “I LOVE YOU” sign seen on everything from coffee mugs to tee shirts, to Nike posters with “Just Do It” in fingerspelling. But the area in which the language is most often commodified (and perhaps most insidiously so) is in the entertainment industry, in visual media, where it is used by writers, directors and actors, not to present an accurate portrait of lived deaf experience and language, but to do what Paul McCartney did, that is, to insert it just to create a “different”, unique, mysterious, exotic, heartwarming spectacle. Far too often, this commodification of the language results in weirdly distorted representations of what deaf people and their language actually are. You can see this everywhere: ASL is a prominent narrative add-on in blockbuster films like the aforementioned A Quiet Place; it is used in the Oscar winning The Shape of Water, and in Wonderstruck, and Baby Driver as well; it is used in the indie horror film Hush; it is used in a lot of films with apes (the Planet of the Apes series and Rampage are two examples); it is displayed on television, mostly in police dramas, in various CSI programs, and in series like The Walking Dead and Castle Rock; it is used in commercials to hawk everything from Pepsi to hotel chains to jewelry to Hormel lunchmeat to fast food (Burger King, Chik Fil A); it is used and commented on in interpreted concerts and music videos and football halftime shows; it is used (often misused) in PSAs for hurricanes and police stops; it is used in social media, from vlogs to cochlear implant activation videos. You can find ASL seemingly everywhere; it is being inserted more and more into the cultural mainstream, but is not appearing as a language. It is used, nine times out of ten, as a decorative ornament, a narrative prop. When Davis discusses the hearing perception of ASL as a marker or visible stigma, he points out that the usual hearing response to observing such stigma is a combination of a Freudian attraction/repulsion (the dominant response being negative). Many times this repulsion results from the appeal to pathos, as in the commercials that show the poor isolated deaf person with the nice hearing person who is signing to them so that they can now be part of the world. The hearing viewer might think to themselves "oh, thank God I'm not deaf!"Davis notes that, in the end, it is not the signer who is the disabled one in this scenario (aside from the fact that many times a signing person is not in fact deaf). The hearing, non signing observer is actually the one “disabled” by their own reaction to the signing “other”. Not only that, but the rhetorical situation itself becomes “disabled”: there is discomfort – wariness of language – laughter – compulsive nervous talking – awkwardness – a desire to get rid of the object. This is a learned response. People habituated, Davis says, do not respond this way (12-13). While people might think that the hearing audience is becoming more and more habituated because ASL is everywhere, the problem is that people are being incorrectly habituated. More often than not, sign language, when enfolded into narratives about hearing people in hearing situations, is put into service as a prop that can mitigate such awkward moments of possible tension and conflict; it is a prosthetic that "fills the gap", allowing an interaction between hearing and deaf people that almost always allows for a positive, "happy" resolution, a return to "normalcy", the very purpose of the "narrative prosthetic" as posited by Mitchell and Snyder. Once we see how ASL is being employed in media mostly as a narrative prosthesis, we can, as Mitchell and Snyder suggest we do (what I hope this essay begins to do), and that is, to begin to “undo the quick repair of disability in mainstream representations and beliefs; to try to make the prosthesis show; to flaunt its imperfect supplementation as an illusion” (8). In other words, if we can scrutinize the shorthand, and dig deeper, seeing the prosthetic for what it is, all of this seemingly exploitative commodification of ASL will be a good thing. Maybe, in “habituating” people correctly, in widening both hearing people’s exposure to ASL and their understanding of its actual role in deaf lived experience, signing will become less of a prosthetic, an object of fetishistic fascination. Maybe hearing people, as they become used to seeing signing people in real signing situations, will be less likely to walk up to deaf people they don’t know and say things like: “Oh, your language is SO beautiful”, or say, “I know sign!” (then fingerspelling the alphabet with agonising slowness and inaccuracy while the deaf person nods politely). However, if the use of ASL as a prosthetic in popular culture and visual media continues to go on unexamined and unquestioned, it will just continue to trivialise a living, breathing language. This trivialisation can in turn continue to reduce the lived experiences of deaf people to a sort of caricature, further reinforcing the negative representations of deaf people in America that are already in place, stereotypes that we have been trying to escape for over 200 years. Note* The word "deaf" is used in this article to denote the entire range of individuals with various hearing losses and language preferences, including Deaf persons and hard of hearing persons, etc. For more on these distinctions please refer to the website entry on this published by the National Association of the Deaf (NAD).ReferencesDavis, Lennard. Enforcing Normalcy. New York: Verso, 1995."The Guy Who Taught Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman Sign Language." Intimate Excellent: The Fountain Theater Blog. 18 Mar. 2012. <https://intimateexcellent.com/2012/04/18/the-guy-who-taught-johnny-depp-and-natalie-portman-sign-language-in-mccartney-video/>.Fitzgerald, Roisin. "Johnny Depp Says Sign Language Mishap Isn't His Fault." HiddenHearing Blog 14 Apr. 2012. <https://hiddenhearingireland.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/johnny-depp-says-sign-language-mishap-isnt-his-fault/>.Hawk, Brandon W. “Prosthesis: From Grammar to Medicine in the Earliest History of the Word.” Disability Studies Quarterly 38.4 (2018).McCartney, Paul. "My Valentine." YouTube 13 Apr. 2012.McGinnis, Sara. "Johnny Depp Passes the Buck on Sign Language Snafu." sheknows.com 10 May 2012. <https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/959949/johnny-depp-passes-the-buck-on-sign-language-snafu/>.Miller, Julie. "Paul McCartney on Directing Johnny Depp and Natalie Portman." Vanity Fair 14 Apr. 2012. <https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2012/04/paul-mccartney-johnny-depp-natalie-portman-my-valentine-music-video-gwyneth-paltrow>.Mitchell, David T., and Sharon L. Snyder. Narrative Prosthesis: Disabilities and the Dependencies of Discourse. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P. 2000.Norden, Martin. F. The Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in Movies. Rutgers UP: 1994."Paul McCartney Directs His Own My Valentine Video." paulmccartney.com 14 Apr. 2012. <https://www.paulmccartney.com/news-blogs/news/paul-mccartney-directs-his-own-my-valentine-videos-featuring-natalie-portman-and>.Ruiz-Grossman, Sarah. "Disability Representation Is Seriously Lacking in Television and the Movies: Report." Huffington Post 27 Mar. 2019. <https://www.huffpost.com/entry/disability-representation-movies-tv_n_5c9a7b85e4b07c88662cabe7>.Schuchman, J.S. Hollywood Speaks: Deafness and the Film Entertainment Industry. U Illinois P, 1999.

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Introduction It is now commonplace for babies to begin their lives inhabiting media environments characterised by the presence, distribution, and mobility of digital devices and screens. Such arrangements can be traced, in part, to the birth of a new regime of mobile and touchscreen media beginning with the release of the iPhone in 2007 and the iPad in 2010, which stimulated a surge in household media consumption, underpinned by broadband and wireless Internet infrastructures. Research into these conditions of ambient mediation at the beginnings of life, however, is currently dominated by medical and educational literature, largely removed from media studies approaches that seek to understand the everyday contexts of babies using media. Putting aside discourses of promise or peril familiar to researchers of children’s media (Buckingham; Postman), this paper draws on ongoing research in both domestic and social media settings exploring infants’ everyday encounters and entanglements with mobile media and communication technologies. The paper identifies the ways infants’ mobile communication is assembled and distributed through touchscreen interfaces, proxy parent users, and commercial software sorting. It argues that within these interfacial, intermediary, and interactive contexts, we can conceptualise infants’ communicative agency through an emerging repertoire of techniques: accidental, assisted and automated. This assemblage of infant communication recognises that children no longer live with but in media (Deuze), which underscores the impossibility of a path of media resistance found in medical discourses of ‘exposure’ and restriction, and instead points to the need for critical and ethical responses to these immanent conditions of infant media life. Background and Approach Infants, understandably, have largely been excluded from analyses of mobile mediality given their historically limited engagement with or capacity to use mobile media. Yet, this situation is undergoing change as mobile devices become increasingly prominent in children’s homes (OfCom; Rideout), and as touchscreen interfaces lower thresholds of usability (Buckleitner; Hourcade et al.). The dominant frameworks within research addressing infants and media continue to resonate with long running and widely circulated debates in the study of children and mass media (Wartella and Robb), responding in contradictory ways to what is seen as an ever-increasing ‘technologization of childhood’ (McPake, Plowman and Stephen). Education research centres on digital literacy, emphasising the potential of mobile computing for these future digital learners, labourers, and citizens (McPake, Plowman and Stephen). Alternatively, health research largely positions mobile media within the rubric of ‘screen time’ inherited from older broadcast models, with paediatric groups continuing to caution parents about the dangers of infants’ ‘exposure’ to electronic screens (Strasburger and Hogan), without differentiating between screen types or activities. In turn, a range of digital media channels seek to propel or profit from infant media culture, with a number of review sites, YouTube channels and tech blogs promoting or surveying the latest gadgets and apps for babies. Within media studies, research is beginning to analyse the practices, conceptions and implications of digital interfaces and content for younger children. Studies are, for example, quantifying the devices, activities, and time spent by young children with mobile devices (Ofcom; Rideout), reviewing the design and marketing of children’s mobile application software products (e.g. Shuler), analysing digital content shared about babies on social media platforms (Kumar & Schoenebeck; Morris), and exploring emerging interactive spaces and technologies shaping young children’s ‘postdigital’ play (Giddings; Jayemanne, Nansen and Apperley). This paper extends this growing area of research by focusing specifically on infants’ early encounters, contexts, and configurations of mobile mediality, offering some preliminary analysis of an emerging repertoire of mobile communication techniques: accidental, assisted, and automated. That is, through infants playing with devices and accidentally activating them; through others such as parents assisting use; and through software features in applications that help to automate interaction. This analysis draws from an ongoing research project exploring young children’s mobile and interactive media use in domestic settings, which is employing ethnographic techniques including household technology tours and interviews, as well as participant observation and demonstrations of infant media interaction. To date 19 families, with 31 children aged between 0 and 5, located in Melbourne, Australia have participated. These participating families are largely hom*ogeneous and privileged; though are a sample of relatively early and heavy adopters that reveal emerging qualities about young children’s changing media environments and encounters. This approach builds on established traditions of media and ethnographic research on technology consumption and use within domestic spaces (e.g. Mackay and Ivey; Silverstone and Hirsch), but turns to the digital media encountered by infants, the geographies and routines of these encounters, and how families mediate these encounters within the contexts of home life. This paper offers some preliminary findings from this research, drawing mostly from discussions with parents about their babies’ use of digital, mobile, and touchscreen media. In this larger project, the domestic and family research is accompanied by the collection of online data focused on the cultural context of, and content shared about, infants’ mobile media use. In this paper I report on social media analysis of publicly shared images tagged with #babyselfie queried from Instagram’s API. I viewed all publicly shared images on Instagram tagged with #babyselfie, and collected the associated captions, comments, hashtags, and metadata, over a period of 48 hours in October 2014, resulting in a dataset of 324 posts. Clearly, using this data for research purposes raises ethical issues about privacy and consent given the posts are being used in an unintended context from which they were originally shared; something that is further complicated by the research focus on young children. These issues, in which the ease of extracting online data using digital methods research (Rogers), needs to be both minimised and balanced against the value of the research aims and outcomes (Highfield and Leaver). To minimise risks, captions and comments cited in this paper have been de-identified; whist the value of this data lies in complementing and contextualising the more ethnographically informed research, despite perceptions of incompatibility, through analysis of the wider cultural and mediated networks in which babies’ digital lives are now shared and represented. This field of cultural production also includes analysis of examples of children’s software products from mobile app stores that support baby image capture and sharing, and in particular in this paper discussion of the My Baby Selfie app from the iTunes App Store and the Baby Selfie app from the Google Play store. The rationale for drawing on these multiple sources of data within the larger project is to locate young children’s digital entanglements within the diverse places, platforms and politics in which they unfold. This research scope is limited by the constraints of this short paper, however different sources of data are drawn upon here in order to identify, compare, and contextualise the emerging themes of accidental, assisted, and automated. Accidental Media Use The domestication and aggregation of mobile media in the home, principally laptops, mobile phones and tablet computers has established polymediated environments in which infants are increasingly surrounded by mobile media; in which they often observe their parents using mobile devices; and in which the flashing of screens unsurprisingly draws their attention. Living within these ambient media environments, then, infants often observe, find and reach for mobile devices: on the iPad or whatever, then what's actually happening in front of them, then naturally they'll gravitate towards it. These media encounters are animated by touchscreens interfaces that are responsive to the gestural actions of infants. Conversely, touchscreen interfaces drive attempts to swipe legacy media screens. Underscoring the nomenclature of ‘natural user interfaces’ within the design and manufacturer communities, screens lighting up through touch prompts interest, interaction, and even habituation through gestural interaction, especially swiping: It's funny because when she was younger she would go up the T.V. and she would try swiping to turn the channel.They can grab it and start playing with it. It just shows that it's so much part of their world … to swipe something. Despite demonstrable capacities of infants to interact with mobile screens, discussions with parents revealed that accidental forms of media engagement were a more regular consequence of these ambient contexts, interfacial affordances and early encounters with mobile media. It was not uncommon for infants to accidentally swipe and activate applications, to temporarily lock the screen, or even to dial contacts: He didn't know the password, and he just kept locking it … find it disabled for 15 minutes.If I've got that on YouTube, they can quite quickly get on to some you know [video] … by pressing … and they don't do it on purpose, they're just pushing random buttons.He does Skype calls! I think he recognizes their image, the icon. Then just taps it and … Similarly, in the analysis of publicly shared images on Instagram tagged with #babyselfie, there were instances in which it appeared infants had accidentally taken photos with the cameraphone based on the image content, photo framing or descriptions in the caption. Many of these photos showed a baby with an arm in view reaching towards the phone in a classic trope of a selfie image; others were poorly framed shots showing parts of baby faces too close to the camera lens suggesting they accidentally took the photograph; whilst most definitive was many instances in which the caption of the image posted by parents directly attributed the photographic production to an infant: Isabella's first #babyselfie She actually pushed the button herself! My little man loves taking selfies lol Whilst, then, the research identified many instances in which infants accidentally engaged in mobile media use, sometimes managing to communicate with an unsuspecting interlocutor, it is important to acknowledge such encounters could not have emerged without the enabling infrastructure of ambient media contexts and touchscreen interfaces, nor observed without studying this infrastructure utilising materially-oriented ethnographic perspectives (Star). Significantly, too, was the intermediary role played by parents. With parents acting as intermediaries in household environments or as proxy users in posting content on their behalf, multiple forms of assisted infant communication were identified. Assisted Media Use Assisted communication emerged from discussions with parents about the ways, routines, and rationale for making mobile media available to their children. These sometimes revolved around keeping their child engaged whilst they were travelling as a family – part of what has been described as the pass-back effect – but were more frequently discussed in terms of sharing and showing digital content, especially family photographs, and in facilitating infant mediated communication with relatives abroad: they love scrolling through my photos on my iPhone …We quite often just have them [on Skype] … have the computers in there while we're having dinner … the laptop will be there, opened up at one end of the table with the family here and there will be my sister having breakfast with her family in Ireland … These forms of parental mediated communication did not, however, simply situate or construct infants as passive recipients of their parents’ desires to make media content available or their efforts to establish communication with extended family members. Instead, the research revealed that infants were often active participants in these processes, pushing for access to devices, digital content, and mediated communication. These distributed relations of agency were expressed through infants verbal requests and gestural urging; through the ways parents initiated use by, for example, unlocking a device, preparing software, or loading an application, but then handed them over to infants to play, explore or communicate; and through wider networks of relations in which others including siblings, acted as proxies or had a say in the kinds of media infants used: she can do it, once I've unlocked … even, even with iView, once I'm on iView she can pick her own show and then go to the channel she wants to go to.We had my son’s birthday and there were some photos, some footage of us singing happy birthday and the little one just wants to watch it over and over again. She thinks it's fantastic watching herself.He [sibling] becomes like a proxy user … with the second one … they don't even need the agency because of their sibling. Similarly, the assisted communication emerging from the analysis of #babyselfie images on Instagram revealed that parents were not simply determining infant media use, but often acting as proxies on their behalf. #Selfie obsessed baby. Seriously though. He won't stop. Insists on pressing the button and everything. He sees my phone and points and says "Pic? Pic?" I've created a monster lol. In sharing this digital content on social networks, parents were acting as intermediaries in the communication of their children’s digital images. Clearly they were determining the platforms and networks where these images were published online, yet the production of these images was more uncertain, with accidental self-portraits taken by infants suggesting they played a key role in the circuits of digital photography distribution (van Dijck). Automated Media Use The production, archiving, circulation and reception of these images speaks to larger assemblages of media in which software protocols and algorithms are increasingly embedded in and help to configure everyday life (e.g. Chun; Gillespie), including young children’s media lives (Ito). Here, software automates process of sorting and shaping information, and in doing so both empowers and governs forms of infant media conduct. The final theme emerging from the research, then, is the identification of automated forms of infant mobile media use enabled through software applications and algorithmic operations. Automated techniques of interaction emerged as part of the repertoire of infant mobile mediality and communication through observations and discussions during the family research, and through surveying commercial software applications. Within family discussions, parents spoke about the ways digital databases and applications facilitated infant exploration and navigation. These included photo galleries stored on mobile devices, as well as children’s Internet television services such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s catch-up online TV service, iView, which are visually organised and easily scrollable. In addition, algorithmic functions for sorting, recommending and autoplay on the video-sharing platform YouTube meant that infants were often automatically delivered an ongoing stream of content: They just keep watching it [YouTube]. So it leads on form the other thing. Which is pretty amazing, that's pretty interactive.Yeah, but the kids like, like if they've watched a YouTube clip now, they'll know to look down the next column to see what they want to play next … you get suggestions there so. Forms of automated communication specifically addressing infants was also located in examples of children’s software products from mobile app stores: the My Baby Selfie app from the iTunes App Store and the Baby Selfie app from the Google Play store. These applications are designed to support baby image capture and sharing, promising to “allow your baby to take a photo of him himself [sic]” (Giudicelli), based on automated software features that use sounds and images to capture a babies attention and touch sensors to activate image capture and storage. In one sense, these applications may appear to empower infants to participate in the production of digital content, namely selfies, yet they also clearly distribute this agency with and through mobile media and digital software. Moreover, they imply forms of conduct, expectations and imperatives around the possibilities of infant presence in a participatory digital culture. Immanent Ethic and Critique Digital participation typically assumes a degree of individual agency in deciding what to share, post, or communicate that is not typically available to infants. The emerging communicative practices of infants detailed above suggests that infants are increasingly connecting, however this communicative agency is distributed amongst a network of ambient devices, user-friendly interfaces, proxy users, and software sorting. Such distributions reflect conditions Deuze has noted, that we do not live with but in media. He argues this ubiquity, habituation, and embodiment of media and communication technologies pervade and constitute our lives becoming effectively invisible, negating the possibility of an outside from which resistance can be mounted. Whilst, resistance remains a solution promoted in medical discourses and paediatric advice proposing no ‘screen time’ for children aged below two (Strasburger and Hogan), Deuze’s thesis suggests this is ontologically futile and instead we should strive for a more immanent relation that seeks to modulate choices and actions from within our media life: finding “creative ways to wield the awesome communication power of media both ethically and aesthetically” ("Unseen" 367). An immanent ethics and a critical aesthetics of infant mediated life can be located in examples of cultural production and everyday parental practice addressing the arrangements of infant mobile media and communication discussed above. For example, an article in the Guardian, ‘Toddlers pose a serious risk to smartphones and tablets’ parodies moral panics around children’s exposure to media by noting that media devices are at greater risk of physical damage from children handling them, whilst a design project from the Eindhoven Academy – called New Born Fame – built from soft toys shaped like social media logos, motion and touch sensors that activate image capture (much like babyselfie apps), but with automated social media sharing, critically interrogates the ways infants are increasingly bound-up with the networked and algorithmic regimes of our computational culture. Finally, parents in this research revealed that they carefully considered the ethics of media in their children’s lives by organising everyday media practices that balanced dwelling with new, old, and non media forms, and by curating their digitally mediated interactions and archives with an awareness they were custodians of their children’s digital memories (Garde-Hansen et al.). I suggest these examples work from an immanent ethical and critical position in order to make visible and operate from within the conditions of infant media life. Rather than seeking to deny or avoid the diversity of encounters infants have with and through mobile media in their everyday lives, this analysis has explored the ways infants are increasingly configured as users of mobile media and communication technologies, identifying an emerging repertoire of infant mobile communication techniques. The emerging practices of infant mobile communication outlined here are intertwined with contemporary household media environments, and assembled through accidental, assisted, and automated relations of living with mobile media. Moreover, such entanglements of use are both represented and discursively reconfigured through multiple channels, contexts, and networks of public mediation. Together, these diverse contexts and forms of conduct have implications for both studying and understanding the ways babies are emerging as active participants and interpellated subjects within a continually expanding digital culture. Acknowledgments This research was supported with funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE130100735). I would like to express my appreciation to the children and families involved in this study for their generous contribution of time and experiences. References Buckingham, David. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. Polity Press: Oxford, 2000. Buckleitner, Warren. “A Taxonomy of Multi-Touch Interaction Styles, by Stage.” Children's Technology Review 18.11 (2011): 10-11. Chun, Wendy. Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011. Deuze, Mark. “Media Life.” Media, Culture and Society 33.1 (2011): 137-148. Deuze, Mark. “The Unseen Disappearance of Invisible Media: A Response to Sebastian Kubitschko and Daniel Knapp.” Media, Culture and Society 34.3 (2012): 365-368. Garde-Hansen, Joanne, Andrew Hoskins and Anna Reading. Save as … Digital Memories. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Giddings, Seth. Gameworlds: Virtual Media and Children’s Everyday Play. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. Gillespie, Tarleton. “The Relevance of Algorithms.” Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society. Eds. Tarelton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski and Kirsten Foot. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014. Giudicelli, Patrick. "My Baby Selfie." iTunes App Store. Apple Inc., 2015. Highfield, Tim, and Tama Leaver. “A Methodology for Mapping Instagram Hashtags.” First Monday 20.1 (2015). Hourcade, Juan Pablo, Sarah Mascher, David Wu, and Luiza Pantoja. “Look, My Baby Is Using an iPad! An Analysis of Youtube Videos of Infants and Toddlers Using Tablets.” Proceedings of CHI 15. New York: ACM Press, 2015. 1915–1924. Ito, Mizuko. Engineering Play: A Cultural History of Children’s Software. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009. Jayemanne, Darshana, Bjorn Nansen and Thomas Apperley. “Post-Digital Play and the Aesthetics of Recruitment.” Proceedings of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) 2015. Lüneburg, 14-17 May 2015. Kumar, Priya, and Sarita Schoenebeck. “The Modern Day Baby Book: Enacting Good Mothering and Stewarding Privacy on Facebook.” Proceedings of CSCW 2015. Vancouver, 14-18 March 2015. Mackay, Hugh, and Darren Ivey. Modern Media in the Home: An Ethnographic Study. Rome: John Libbey, 2004. Morris, Meredith. “Social Networking Site Use by Mothers of Young Children.” Proceedings of CSCW 2014. 1272-1282. OfCom. Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report. London: OfCom, 2013. McPake, Joanna, Lydia Plowman and Christine Stephen. "The Technologisation of Childhood? Young Children and Technology in The Home.” Children and Society 24.1 (2010): 63–74. Postman, Neil. Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage, 1993. Rideout, Victoria. Zero to Eight: Children’s Media Use in America 2013. Common Sense Media, 2013. Rogers, Richard. Digital Methods. Boston. MIT Press, 2013. Silverstone, Roger, and Eric Hirsch (eds). Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. London: Routledge, 1992. Shuler, Carly. iLearn: A Content Analysis of the iTunes App Store’s Education Section. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, 2009. Star, Susan Leigh. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43.3 (1999): 377–391. Strasburger, Victor, and Marjorie Hogan. “Policy Statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics: Children, Adolescents, and the Media.” Pediatrics 132 (2013): 958-961. Van Dijck, José. “Digital Photography: Digital Photography: Communication, Identity, Memory.” Visual Communication 7.1 (2008): 57-76. Wartella, Ellen, and Michael Robb. “Historical and Recurring Concerns about Children’s Use of the Mass Media.” The Handbook of Children, Media, and Development. Eds. Sandra Calvert and Barbara Wilson. Malden: Blackwell, 2008.

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I sat alone on the beach under the shade of a big umbrella. My husband, Bill, and our three children were in the condo taking a break from the Florida sunshine. Dreamily, I gazed at the vast Gulf of Mexico, the brilliant blue sky stretching endlessly above. I was sitting about 50 feet from the surf, but I couldn't actually see the waves hitting the beach; I was almost blind. It was a windy day in late May and I loved feeling the ocean breeze sweeping over me. I imagined I could hear the waves crashing onto the surf, but the sound was only a memory. I was totally deaf. Although I had a cochlear implant and could hear the waves, the cry of sea gulls, and many other sounds with the technology, I wasn't wearing it at the moment and everything I heard was in my mind. As a child, my understanding of speech was better and my vision was clearer. My diagnosis was optic atrophy at age 5 and my vision gradually degenerated over the years. For unknown reasons, nerve damage caused hearing loss and during my teens, my hearing grew worse and worse until by the time I was ready for college, I was profoundly deaf. I chose to attend Gallaudet University because my high school teachers and my parents felt I would receive better services as a deaf and blind student. I feel it was a very good decision; when I entered Gallaudet, it was like entering a new and exhilarating world. Before attending Gallaudet, while I struggled to cope with hearing loss combined with severely low vision, my world grew smaller and smaller, not being able to communicate efficiently with others. At Gallaudet, I suddenly found I could communicate with almost anybody I met on campus using sign language. Thus, my self-confidence and independence grew as I proceeded to get a college education.It wasn't an easy route to follow. I didn't know Braille at the time and depended on using a CCTV (closed captioned television) electronic aid which magnified text, enabling me to read all my college books. I also relied on the assistance of a class aid who interpreted all my teachers' lectures and class discussions because I was unable to see people's signing unless they signed right in front of my face. It was slow going and often frustrating, trying to keep involved socially and keeping up with my coursework but when I was 13 years old, my vision specialist teacher who had worked with me from 5th grade until I graduated from high school, wrote a note for me saying, "Anything worthwhile seldom comes easy." The phrase stuck in my mind and I tried to follow this philosophy. In 1989 after 7 years of persistence, I graduated with a Bachelor's of Arts degree in psychology. With the B.A. in hand and having developed good communication skills with deaf and deaf-blind people using sign language and ASL (American Sign Language), I was ready to face the world. But I wasn't exactly ready; I knew I wanted a professional job working with deaf-blind people and the way to get there was to earn a master's degree. I applied for admission into Gallaudet's graduate school and was accepted into the vocational rehabilitation counselling program. While I thoroughly enjoyed graduate school experience, I got to work with my class mates one-on-one more often and there were a lot more hands-on activities, it became obvious to me that I wasn't prepared for graduate school. I needed to learn Braille and how to use Braille technology; my vision had worsened a lot since starting college. In addition, I needed a break from school and needed to gain experience in the working world. After completing one and a half years and earning 15 credit hours in the master's program, I left Gallaudet and found a job in Baltimore, Maryland.The job was with a new program for adults who were visually and hearing impaired and mentally disabled. My job was assisting the clients with independent living and work related skills. Most of the other staff were deaf, communicating via ASL. By then, I was skilled using tactile signing, putting my hand on the back of the signer's hand to follow movements by touch, and I made friends with co-workers. I felt grown up and independent working full-time, living in my own apartment, using the subway train and bus to travel to and from work. I didn't have any serious problems living on my own. There was a supermarket up the road to which I could walk or ride a bus. But I needed a taxi ride back to the apartment when I had more groceries than I could carry. I would leave a sign I made out of cardboard and wrote my address in big black numbers, on my apartment door to help the driver find my place. I used a white cane and upon moving to Baltimore, an Orientation and Mobility (O and M) teacher who worked with blind people, showing them how to travel in the city, taught me the route to my work place using the subway and bus. Thus, I was independent and knew my way to work as well as to a nearby shopping mall. One day as I stood on the subway station platform holding my white cane, waiting for my train, the opposite train pulled in. As I stood watching passengers hurrying to board, knowing my train would arrive soon on the other side, a woman ran up to me and started pulling my arm. I handed her my notebook and black marker I used for communicating with people in the public, telling her I couldn't hear and would she please write in large print? She frantically scribbled something, but I couldn't read the note. She then gave me back the pen and pad, grabbed my arm again and started pulling me towards the train. I refused to budge, gesturing towards the opposite tracks, clearly indicating I was waiting for the other train. Finally, she let go, dashed into the train before the doors closed. I watched the train pull away, sadly reflecting that some people who wanted to help, just didn't understand how to approach disabled people. As a deaf-blind traveller, it was my duty to help educate the general public how to assist disabled persons in a humane way. After I established my new life for a few months, Bill was offered a position in the same program and moved to Baltimore to join me. He had worked at the Helen Keller National Centre in New York where I met him while doing a summer internship there three years before. I was thrilled when he got the job working beside me and we got to know each other on a daily basis. We had been dating since we met although I was in college and he was working and living in New York and then Cleveland, Ohio. Bill being hearing and sighted, was skilled in sign language and communication techniques with deaf-blind people. He had a wonderful attitude towards disabled people and made me feel like a normal person who was capable of doing things. We shared a lot and were very comfortable with each other. After nearly six months together in Baltimore, we married in May 1992, several weeks before my 28th birthday.After our first year of marriage living in Maryland, Bill and I moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. We wanted to live closer to my family and parents, Ron and Judy Cummings, who lived in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 176 miles north of Little Rock. I wanted to go back to school and entered the deaf education program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with the goal of becoming a teacher for deaf-blind students. I never dreamed I would have a deaf-blind child of my own one day. My vision and hearing loss were caused by nerve damage and no one else in my family nor Bill's had a similar disability.I was pregnant with our first child when I entered UALR. In spite of my growing belly, I enjoyed the teacher training experience. I worked with a deaf-blind 12-year-old student and her teacher at the Arkansas School for the Deaf; observed two energetic four-year-olds in the pre-school program. But when my son, Joe was born in June 1994, my world changed once again. School became less important and motherhood became the ultimate. As a deaf-blind person, I wanted to be the best mom within my abilities.I decided that establishing good communication with my child was an important aspect of being a deaf-blind mom. Bill was in full agreement and we would set Joe on the kitchen table in his infant carrier, reciting together in sign language, "The three Bears". I could see Joe's tiny fists and feet wave excitedly in the air as he watched us signing children's stories. I would encourage Joe to hold my fingers while I signed to him, trying to establish a tactile signing relationship. But he was almost two years old when he finally understood that he needed to sign into my hands. We were sitting at the table and I had a bag of cookies. I refused to give him one until he made the sign for "cookie" in my hand. I quickly rewarded him with a cookie and he got three or four each time he made the sign in my hand. Today at 16, Joe is an expert finger speller and can effectively communicate with me and his younger deaf-blind brother, Ben.When Joe was two and a half, I decided to explore a cochlear implant. It was 1996 and we were living in Poplar Bluff by then. My cousin, who was studying audiology, told me that people using cochlear implants were able to understand sound so well they didn't need good vision. I made an appointment with the St. Louis cochlear implant program and after being evaluated, I decided to go ahead. I am glad I have a cochlear implant. After months of practice I learned to use the new sound and was eventually able to understand many environmental sounds. I never regained the ability of understanding speech, though, but I could hear people's voices very clearly, the sound of laughter, birds singing, and many more. Being able to hear my children's voices is especially wonderful, even when they get noisy and I get a headache. That fall I went to Leader Dogs School for the Blind (LDSB) where I met Milo, a large yellow Labrador retriever. At LDSB I learned how to care for and work with a dog guide. Having Milo as my companion and guide was like stepping into another new and wonderful world of independence. With Milo, I could walk briskly and feel secure. Milo was a big help as a deaf-blind mom, too. With Milo's guiding help, it was wonderful following my children while they rode tricycles or bikes and the whole family enjoyed going out for walks together. Our second son, Ben, was born in February 1999. He was a perfectly healthy little boy and Bill and I were looking forward to raising two sons. Joe was four and a half years old when Ben was born and was fascinated in his new brother. But when Ben was 5 months old, he was diagnosed with Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis (LCH), a rare childhood disease and in some cases, fatal. It was a long, scary road we followed as Ben received treatment at the children's hospital in St. Louis which involved making the 150 mile trip almost weekly for chemotherapy and doctor check-ups. Through it all, Ben was a happy little boy, in spite of the terrible rash that affected his scalp and diaper area, a symptom of LCH. Bill and I knew that we had to do everything possible to help Ben. When he was a year old, his condition seemed stable enough for me to feel comfortable leaving my family for two months to study Braille and learn new technology skills at a program in Kansas City. My vision had deteriorated to a point where I could no longer use a CCTV.Bill's mom, Marie Reid, who lived in Cleveland, Ohio, made a special trip to stay at our home in Poplar Bluff to help Bill with the boys while I was gone. I was successful at the program, learning Braille, making a change from magnification to Braille technology. Upon returning home, I began looking for a job and found employment as a deaf-blind specialist in a new project in Mississippi. The job was in Tupelo and we moved to northern Mississippi, settling into a new life. We transferred Ben's treatment to St. Judes Children's hospital located in Memphis, 94 miles west of Tupelo. I went to work and Bill stayed home with the boys, which worked well. When Ben had to go to St. Judes every three weeks for chemotherapy, Bill was able to drive him. The treatment was successful, the rash had disappeared and there were no traces of LCH in Ben's blood tests. But when he was almost 3 years old, he was diagnosed with optic atrophy, the same eye disease I suffered from and an audiologist detected signs of inner ear hearing loss.Shocked at the news that our little son would grow up legally blind and perhaps become deaf, Bill and I had to rethink our future. We knew we wanted Ben to have a good life and as a deaf-blind child, he needed quality services. We chose to move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania because I knew there were good services for deaf-blind people and I could function independently as a stay-home mom. In addition, Cleveland, Ohio, where Marie Reid and several of Bill's siblings lived, was a two hour's drive from Pittsburgh and living near family was important to us. With regret, I left my job opportunity and new friends and we re-located to Pittsburgh. We lived on a quiet street near Squirrel Hill and enrolled Joe into a near-by Catholic school. Ben received excellent early intervention services through the Pittsburgh public school, beginning Braille, using a white cane and tactile signing. The Pennsylvania services for the blind generously purchased a wonderful computer system and Braille display for me to use at home. I was able to communicate with Joe's and Ben's teachers and other contacts using e-mail. Ben's Braille teacher provided us with several print/Braille books which I read to the boys while Ben touched the tactile pictures. I made friends in the deaf and deaf-blind community and our family attended social events. Besides the social benefits of a deaf community, Pittsburgh offered a wonderful interpreting service and I was able to take Ben to doctor appointments knowing an interpreter would meet me at the hospital to assist with communication. I also found people who were willing to help me as volunteer SSPs (support Service Providers), persons whose role is to assist a deaf-blind person in any way, such as shopping, going to the bank, etc. Thus, I was able to function quite independently while Bill worked. Perhaps Bill and I were a bit crazy; after all, we had enough on our plate with a deaf-blind son and a deaf-blind mom, but love is a mysterious thing. In October 2003, Tim was born and our family was complete. Having two school-aged children and a baby on my hands was too much for me to handle alone. Bill was working and busy with culinary arts school. We realized we needed more help with the children, plus the high cost of living in the city was a struggle for us. We decided for the family's best interest, it would be better to move back to Poplar Bluff. After Joe and Ben were out of school in June, my mom flew out to Pittsburgh to escort them back to her home while Bill finished his externship for his culinary arts degree and in the late summer of 2004, we packed up our apartment, said good-bye to Pittsburgh, and drove to Missouri. The move was a good decision in many ways. Poplar Bluff, a rural town in south-eastern Missouri, has been my hometown since I was 10 years old. My extended family live there and the boys are thriving growing up among their cousins. Ben is receiving Braille and sign language services at public school and reads Braille faster than me!While both Bill and I are deeply satisfied knowing our children are happy, we have made personal sacrifices. Bill has given up his career satisfaction as a professional cook, needing to help look after the children and house. I have given up the benefits of city life such as interpreting and SSP services, not to mention the social benefits of a deaf community. But the children's well-being comes first, and I have found ways to fulfil my needs by getting involved with on-line groups for deaf-blind people, including writers and poets. I have taken a great interest in writing, especially children's stories and hope to establish a career as a writer. While I work on my computer, Bill keeps busy engaging the boys in various projects. They have built a screened-in tree house in the backyard where Ben and Tim like to sleep during warm summer nights.“It's almost 5 o'clock," Bill signed into my hand, rousing me from my thoughts. Time to prepare for our homeward journey the next day to Poplar Bluff, Missouri.Christy and Family

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It is time for the truth to be brought out ... . Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. -- Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence (1947-50), signed statement to Congress, 22 Aug. 1960 As an avid UFO enthusiast, an enduring subject of frustration for me is the complacency and ignorance that tends to characterise public knowledge of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. Its hard for people like myself to understand how anyone could not be interested in UFOs, let alone Congressional statements from ex-Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency testifying to an official policy of secrecy and ridicule (in other words, propaganda), which aims to suppress public interest and belief in UFOs. As a student of cultural studies who also happens to be a conspiracy theorist, the idea of the Central Intelligence Agency seeking to manipulate one of the twentieth century's most significant icons -- the UFO -- is a fascinating one, because it allows for the possibility that the ways in which the UFO has come to be understood by the public may involve more than the everyday cultural processes described by cultural studies. A review of the history of the CIA's interest in UFO phenomena actually suggests, quite compellingly I think, that since the 1950s, American culture (and, indirectly and to a lesser degree, the rest of the western world) may have been subjected to a highly sophisticated system of UFO propaganda that originated from the Central Intelligence Agency. This is, of course, a highly contentious claim which would bring many important repercussions should it turn out to be true. There is no point pretending that it doesn't sound like a basic premise of The X-Files -- of course it does. So to extract the idea from its comfortable fictional context and attempt to place it into a real historical one (a completely legitimate endeavour) one must become familiar with the politics of the UFO phenomenon in Cold War America, a field of history which is, to understate the matter, largely ignored by academia. A cursory glance at the thousands of (now declassified) UFO-related documents that once circulated through some of the highest channels of US intelligence reveal that, rather than the nonsense topic it is often considered, the UFO phenomenon has been a matter of great concern for the US government since 1947. To get a sense of just how seriously UFOs were taken by the CIA in the 1950s, consider this declassified 'Secret' memorandum from H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, to the Director of Central Intelligence, General Walter Bedell Smith, dated 24 September 1952: a world-wide reporting system has been instituted and major Air Force bases have been ordered to make interceptions of unidentified flying objects ... . Since 1947, ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center, a branch of the US Air Force] has received approximately 1500 official reports of sightings ... . During 1952 alone, official reports totalled 250. Of the 1500 reports, Air Force carries 20 percent as unexplained and of those received from January through July 1952 it carries 28 percent as unexplained. (qtd. in Good 390) Fifteen-hundred reports in five years is roughly three-hundred reports per year, which is dangerously close to one per day. Although only twenty percent, or one-fifth of these reports were unexplained, equalling about 60 unexplained sightings per year, this still equalled more than one unexplained sighting per week. But these were just the unexplained, official sightings collected by ATIC, which was by no means a comprehensive database of all sightings occurring in the United States, or the rest of the world, for that matter. Extrapolation of these figures suggested that the UFO problem was probably much more extensive than the preliminary findings were indicating, hence the erection of a world-wide reporting system and the interception of UFOs by major US Air Force bases. The social consequences of the UFO problem quickly became a matter of major importance to the CIA. Chadwell went on to point out that: The public concern with the phenomena, which is reflected both in the United States press and in the pressure of inquiry upon the Air Force, indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic. (qtd. in Good 393) By "acceptance of the incredible" Chadwell was probably referring to acceptance of the existence of intelligently controlled, disc-shaped craft which are capable of performing aerial manoeuvres far in excess of those possible with contemporary technology. Flying saucers were, and remain, incredible. Yet belief in them had permeated the US government as early as 1947, when a 'Secret' Air Materiel Command report (now declassified) from Lieutenant General Nathan Twining to the Commanding General, Army Air Forces, announced that: It is the opinion that: (a) The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary and fictitious. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors. (b) The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, manoeuvrability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft or radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely. -- (qtd. in Good 313-4) This report was compiled only two months after the term flying saucer had been invented, following pilot Kenneth Arnold's historic sighting of nine saucer-like objects in June 1947. The fact that a phenomenon which should have been ignored as a tabloid fad was being confirmed, extremely quickly, by the Air Materiel Command Headquarters suggested that those people mentally conditioned to accept the impossible were not restricted to the public domain. They also, apparently, held positions of considerable power within the government itself. This rapid acceptance, at the highest levels of America's defense agencies, of the UFO reality must have convinced certain segments of the CIA that a form of hysteria had already begun, so powerful that those whose job it was to not only remain immune from such psychosocial forces, but to manage them, were actually succumbing to it themselves. What the CIA faced, then, was nothing short of a nation on the verge of believing in aliens. Considering this, it should become a little clearer why the CIA might develop an interest in the UFO phenomenon at this point. Whether aliens were here or not did not, ultimately, matter. What did matter was the obvious social phenomenon of UFO belief. Walter Bedell Smith, Director of Central Intelligence, realised this in 1952, and wrote to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (in a letter previously classified 'Secret'): It is my view that this situation has possible implications for our national security which transcend the interests of a single service. A broader, coordinated effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of the several phenomena which apparently are involved in these reports, and to assure ourselves that the incidents will not hamper our present efforts in the Cold War or confuse our early warning system in case of an attack. I therefore recommend that this Agency and the agencies of the Department of Defense be directed to formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects ... . This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Strategy Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate. (qtd. in Good 400-1) What the Director was asserting, basically, was that the UFO problem was too big for the CIA to solve alone. Any government agencies it was deemed necessary to involve were to be called into action to deal with the UFOs. If this does not qualify UFOs as serious business, it is difficult to imagine what would. In the same year, Chadwell again reported to the CIA Director in a memo which suggests that he and his colleagues were on the brink of believing not only that UFOs were real, but that they represented an extraterrestrial presence: At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... . Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles. (qtd. in Good 403) In 1953, these concerns eventually led to the CIA's most public investigation of the UFO phenomenon, the Robertson Panel. Its members were Dr H. P. Robertson (physics and radar); Dr Lloyd V. Berkner (geophysics); Dr Samuel Goudsmit (atomic structure and statistical problems); and Dr Thornton Page (astronomy and astrophysics). Associate members were Dr J. Allen Hynek (astronomy) and Frederick C. Durant (missiles and rockets). Twelve hours of meetings ensued (not nearly enough time to absorb all of the most compelling UFO data gathered at this point), during which the panel was shown films of UFOs, case histories and sightings prepared by the ATIC, and intelligence reports relating to the Soviet Union's interest in US sightings, as well as numerous charts depicting, for example, frequency and geographic location of sightings (Good 404). The report (not fully declassified until 1975) concluded with a highly skeptical, and highly ambiguous, view of UFO phenomena. Part IV, titled "Comments and Suggestions of the Panel", stated that: Reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings ... by deduction and scientific method it could be induced (given additional data) that other cases might be explained in a similar manner. (qtd. in Good 404) However, even if the panel's insistence that UFOs were not of extraterrestrial origin seemed disingenuous, it still noted the subjectivity of the public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare (qtd. in Good 405). To remedy this, it recommended quite a profound method of propaganda: The debunking aim would result in reduction in public interest in flying saucers which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such [as] television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the secret is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy ... . It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program ... . It was believed that business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the mystery and then the explanation would be forceful ... . The continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic ... . [It is recommended that] the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired; that the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognise most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action. We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures. (qtd. in Good 405-6) The general aim of the Robertson Panel's recommendations, then, was to not only stop people believing in UFOs, but to stop people seeing UFOs, which constitutes an extreme manipulation of the public consciousness. It was the intention of the CIA to ensure, as subtly as was possible, that most people interpreted specific visual experiences (i.e. UFO sightings) in terms of a strict CIA-developed criterion. This momentous act basically amounts to an attempt to define, control and enforce a particular construction of reality which specifically excludes UFOs. In an ironic way, the Robertson Panel report advocated a type of modern exorcism, and may have been the very birthplace of the idea that such an obvious icon of wonder and potential as the UFO is, it can never be more than a misidentification or a hoax. We cannot be certain to what extent the recommendations of the Robertson Panel were put into practice, but we can safely assume that its findings were not ignored by the CIA. For example, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Chief of the ATIC's Aerial Phenomena Branch, has testified that "[We were] ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out, we have to publish a fast explanation -- make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can't find a plausible answer. We even have to discredit our own pilots" (Good 407). Comments like these make one wonder just how extensive the program of debunking and ridicule actually was. What I have suggested here is that during the 1950s, and possibly throughout the four decades since, an objective of the CIA has been to downplay its own interest in the UFO phenomenon to the public whilst engaging in secret, complex investigations of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. If this is the case, as the evidence -- the best of which can be found in the government's own files (even though such evidence, as tens of thousands of conspiracy theorists continue to stress, can hardly be taken simply at face value) -- indicates, then the construction of the UFO in western popular culture will have to be revised as a process involving more than just the projection of popular hopes, desires and anxieties onto an abstract, mythical object. It will also need to be seen as involving the clandestine manipulation of this process by immeasurably powerful groups within the culture itself, such as the CIA. And since the CIAs major concerns about UFOs haved traditionally been explicitly related to the Cold War, the renewed prominence of the UFO in western popular culture since the demise of the Soviet Union requires immediate, serious investigation in a political context. For the UFO issue is, and has always been, a political issue. I suggest that until this fascinating chapter of American domestic history is explored more thoroughly, the cultural function of the UFO will remain just as poorly understood as its physical nature. References Good, Timothy. Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat. London: MacMillan, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php>. Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Adam Dodd. (1999) Making it unpopular: the CIA and UFOs in popular culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]).

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Abstract:

IntroductionThis article is about the transformation of coffee, from having no place in the everyday lives of the people of Bangladesh, to a new position as a harbinger of liberal values and Western culture. The context is a group of Australian photojournalism students who embarked on a month-long residency in Bangladesh; the content is a Nescafé advertisem*nt encouraging the young, middle-class Bangladesh audience to consume coffee, in a marketing campaign that promotes “my first cup.” For the Australian students, the marketing positioning of this advertising campaign transformed instant coffee into a strange and unfamiliar commodity. At the same time, the historic association between Bangladesh and tea prompted one of the photographers to undertake her own journey to explore the hidden side of that other Western staple. This paper explores the tradition of tea culture in Bangladesh and the marketing campaign for instant coffee within this culture, combining the authors’ experiences and perspectives. The outline of the Photomedia unit in the Bachelor of Creative Industries degree that the students were working towards at Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia states that:students will engage with practices, issues and practicalities of working as a photojournalist in an international, cross cultural context. Students will work in collaboration with students of Pathshala: South Asian Institute of Photography, Dhaka Bangladesh in the research, production and presentation of stories related to Bangladeshi society and culture for distribution to international audiences (ECU). The sixteen students from Perth, living and working in Bangladesh between 5 January and 7 February 2012, exhibited a diverse range of cultures, contexts, and motivations. Young Australians, along with a number of ECU’s international students, including some from Norway, China and Sweden, were required to learn first-hand about life in Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries. Danielle Fusco and ECU lecturer Duncan Barnes collaborated with staff and students of Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute (Pathshala). Their recollections and observations on tea production and the location are central to this article but it is the questions asked by the group about the marketing of instant coffee into this culture that provides its tensions. Fusco completed a week-long induction and then travelled in Bangladesh for a fortnight to research and photograph individual stories on rural and urban life. Barnes here sets the scene for the project, describing the expectations and what actually happened: When we travel to countries that are vastly different to our own it is often to seek out that difference; to go in search of the romanticised ideals that have been portrayed as paradise in films, books and photographs. “The West” has long been fascinated with “The East” (Said) and for the past half century, since the hippie treks to Marrakesh and Afghanistan, people have journeyed overland to the Indian sub-continent, both from Europe and from Australia, yearning for a cultural experience they cannot find at home. Living in Perth, Western Australia, sometimes called the most isolated capital city in the world, that pull to something “different” is like a magnet. Upon arrival in Dhaka, you find yourself deliciously overwhelmed by the heavy traffic, the crowded markets, the spicy foods and the milky lassie drinks. It only takes a few stomach upsets to make your Western appetite start kicking in and you begin craving things you have at home but that are hard to find in Bangladesh. Take coffee for example. I recently completed a month-long visit to Bangladesh, which, like India, is a nation of tea drinkers. Getting any kind of good coffee requires that you be in what expatriates call “the Golden Triangle” of Dhaka city—within the area contained by Gulshan-Banani-Baridhara. Here you find the embassies and a sizeable expatriate community that constitutes a Western bubble unrepresentative of Bangladesh beyond these districts. Coffee World is an example of a Western-style café chain that, as the name suggests, serves coffee beverages. It has trouble making a quality flat white. The baristas are poorly trained, the service is painfully slow, yet the prices are comparable to those in the West. Even with these disadvantages, it is frequented by Westerners who also make use of the free WiFi. In contrast, tea is available at every road junction for around 5 cents Australian. It’s ready in seconds: the kettle is always hot due to a constant turnover of local customers. It was the history of tea growing in Bangladesh, and a desire to know more about a commodity that people in the West take for granted, that most attracted Fusco’s interest. She chose to focus on Bangladesh’s oldest commercial tea garden (plantation) Sylhet, which has been in production since 1857 (Tea Board). As is the case with many tea farms in the Indian sub-continent, the workers at Sylhet are part of Bangladesh’s Hindu minority. Fusco left Dhaka and travelled into the rural areas to investigate tea production: Venturing into these estates from the city is like entering an entirely different world. They are isolated places, and although they are close in distance, they are completely separate from the main city. Spending time in the Khadim tea estate amongst the plantations and the workers’ compounds made me very aware of the strong relationship that exists between them. The Hindu teaching of Samsara refers to the continuous cycle of repeated birth, life, death and rebirth [Hinduism], which became a metaphor for me, for this relationship I was experiencing. It is clear that neither farm [where the tea is grown] nor village [which houses the people] could live without each other. The success and maintenance of the tea farm relies on the workers just as much as the workers rely on the tea gardens for their livelihood and sustenance. Their life cycles are intertwined and in synch. There are many problems in the compounds. The people are extremely poor. Their education opportunities are limited, and they work incredibly hard for very little money for their entire lives. They are bound to stay and work here and as those generations before them, were born, worked and died here, living their whole lives in the community of the tea farm. By documenting the lives of the people, I realised I was documenting the process of the lives of the tea trees at the same time. This is how I met Lolita.Figure 1. Bangladeshi tea worker, Lolita, stands in a small section of the Khadim tea plantation in the early morning. Sylhet, Bangladesh (Danielle Fusco, Jan. 2012). This woman emulated everything I was seeing and feeling about the village and the garden. She spoke about the reliance on the trees, especially because of the money and, therefore, the food, they provide for her and her husband. I became aware of the injustice of this system because the workers are paid so little while this industry is booming. It was obvious that life here is far from perfect, but as Lolita explains, they make do. She has worked on the tea estate for decades. As her husband is no longer working, she is the primary income earner. They are able, however, to live in relative comfort now their children have all married and left and it is just the two of them. Lolita describes that money lies within these trees. Money for her means that she can eat that day. Money for the managers means industrial success. Either way, whether it is in the eyes of the individual or the industry, tea always comes down to Taka [the currency of Bangladesh]. Marketing Coffee in a Culture of Tea and Betel Nut With such a strong culture of tea production and consumption and a coffee culture just existing on the fringe, a campaign by Nescafé to encourage Bangladeshi consumers to have “my first cup” of Nescafé instant coffee at the time of this study captured the imagination of the students. How effective can the marketing of Nescafé instant coffee be in a society that is historically a producer and consumer of tea, and which also still embraces the generations-old use of the betel nut as an everyday stimulant? Although it only employs some 150,000 (Islam et al.) in a nation of 150 million people, tea makes an important contribution to the Bangladesh economy. Shortly after the 1971 civil war, in which East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) became independent from West Pakistan (now Pakistan), the then-Chairman of the Bangladesh Tea Board, writing in World Development, commented:In the highly competitive marketing environment of today it is extremely necessary for the tea industry of Bangladesh to increase production by raising the per acre yield, improve quality by adoption of finer plucking standards and modernization of factories and reduce per unit cost of production so as to be able to sell more of our teas to foreign markets and thereby earn higher amounts of much needed foreign exchange for the country as well as generate additional resources within the industry for ploughing back for further development (Ali 55). In Bangladesh, tea is a cash crop that, even in the 1970s following vicious conflicts, is more than capable of meeting local demand and producing an export dividend. Coffee is imported commodity that, historically, has had little place in Bangladeshi life or culture. However important tea is, it is not the traditional Bangladesh stimulant. Instead, over the years, when people in the West would have had a cup of tea or coffee and/or a cigarette, most Bangladeshis have turned to the betel nut. A 2005 study of 100 citizens from Araihazar, Bangladesh, conducted by researchers from Columbia University, found that coffee consumption is “very low in this population” (Hafeman et al. 567). The purpose of the study was to assess the impact of betel quids (the wad of masticated nut) and the chewing of betel nuts, upon tremor. For this reason, it was important to record the consumption of stimulants in the 98 participants who progressed to the next stage of the study and took a freehand spiral-drawing test. While “26 (27%) participants had chewed betel quids, 23 (23%) had smoked one or more cigarettes, [and] 14 (14%) drank tea; on that day, only 1 (1%) drank caffeinated soda, and none (0%) drank coffee” (Hafeman et al. 568). Given its addictive and carcinogenic properties (Sharma), the people who chewed betel quids were more likely to exhibit tremor in their spiral drawings than the people who did not. As this (albeit small) study suggests, the preferred Bangladeshi stimulant is more likely to be betel or tobacco rather than a beverage. Insofar as hot drinks are consumed, Bangladesh citizens drink tea. This poses a significant challenge for multinational advertisers who seek to promote the consumption of instant coffee as a means of growing the global market for Nescafé. Marketing Nescafé to Bangladesh In Dhaka, in January 2012, the television campaign slogan for Nescafé is “My first cup”, with the tagline, “Time you started.” This Nescafé television commercial (NTC) impressed itself upon the Australian visitors, both in terms of its frequency of broadcast and in its referencing of Western culture and values. (The advertisem*nt can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E8mFX43oAM). The NTC’s three stars, Vir Das, Purab Kohli, and leading Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone, are highly-recognisable to young Bangladeshi audiences and the storyline is part of a developing series of advertisem*nts which together form a mini-soap opera, like that used so successfully to advertise the Nescafé Gold Blend brand of instant coffee in the West in the 1980s to 1990s (O’Donohoe 242; Beale). The action takes place in Kohli’s affluent, Western-style apartment. The drama starts with Das challenging Kohli regarding whether he has successfully developed a relationship with his attractive neighbour, Padukone. Using a combination of local language with English words and sub-titles, the first sequence is captioned: “Any progress with Deepika, or are you still mixing coffee?” Suggesting incredulity, and that he could do better, Das asks Kohli, according to the next subtitle, “What are you doing dude?” The use of the word “dude” clearly refers to American youth culture, familiar in such movies as Dude, where’s my car? This is underlined by the immediate transition to the English words of “bikes … biceps … chest … explosion.” Of these four words only “chest” is pronounced in the local tongue, although all four words are included as captions in English. Kohli appears less and less impressed as Das becomes increasingly insistent, with Das going on to express frustration with Kohli through the exclamation “u don’t even have a plan.” The use of the text-speak English “u” here can be constructed as another way of persuading young Bangladeshi viewers that this advertisem*nt is directed at them: the “u” in place of “you” is likely to annoy their English-speaking elders. Das continues speaking in his mother tongue, with the subtitle “Deepika padukone [sic] is your neighbour and you are only drinking coffee,” with the subsequent subtitle emphasising: “Deepika and only coffee.” At this point, Padukone enters the apartment through the open door without knocking and confidently says “Hi.” Kohli explains the situation by responding (in English, and subtitled) “my school friend, Das”. Padukone, in turn, responds in a friendly way to both men (in English, and subtitled) “You guys want to have coffee?” Instead of responding directly to this invitation, Das models to Kohli what it is to take the initiative in this situation: what it is to have a plan. “Hello” (he says, in English and subtitled) “I don’t have coffee but I have a plan. You and me, my bike, right now, hit the town, party!” Kohli looks down at the floor, embarrassed, while Padukone looks quizzically at him over Das’s shoulder. Kohli smiles, and points to himself and Padukone, clearly excluding Das: “I will have coffee” (in English, and subtitle). “Better plan”, exclaims Padukone, “You and me, my place, right now, coffee.” She looks challengingly at Das: “Right?,” a statement rather than a request, and exits, with Kohli following and Das left behind in the apartment. Cue voice-over (not a subtitle, but in-screen speech bubble) “[It’s] time you started” (spoken) “the new Nescafé” (shot change) “My first cup” (with an in-screen price promotion). This commercial associates coffee drinking with Western values of social and personal autonomy. For young women in the traditional Muslim culture of Bangladesh, it suggests a world in which they are at liberty to spend time with the suitors they choose, ignoring those whom they find pushy or inappropriate, and free to invite a man back to “my place, right now” for coffee. The scene setting in this advertisem*nt and the use of English in both the spoken and written text suggests its target is the educated middle class, and indicates that sophisticated, affluent, trend-setters drink coffee as a part of getting to know their neighbours. In line with this, the still which ends the commercial promotes the Facebook page “Know your neighbours.” The flirtatious nature of the actors in the advertisem*nt, the emphasis on each of the male characters spending time alone with the female character, and the female character having both power and choice in this situation is likely to be highly unacceptable to traditional Bangladeshi parental values and, therefore, proportionately more exciting to the target audience. The underlying suggestion of “my first cup” and “time you started” is that the social consumption of that first cup of coffee is the “first step” to becoming more Western. The statement also has overtones of sexual initiation. The advertisem*nt aligns itself with the world portrayed in the Western media consumed in Bangladesh, and the implication is that—even if Western liberal values are not currently a possible choice for all—it is at least feasible to start on the journey towards these values through drinking that first cup of coffee. Unbeknownst to the Bangladesh audience, this Nescafé marketing strategy echoes, in almost all material particulars, the same approach that was so successful in persuading Australians to embrace instant coffee. Khamis, in her essay on Australia and the convenience of instant coffee, argues that, while in 1928 Australia had the highest per capita consumption of tea in the world, this had begun to change by the 1950s. The transformation in the market positioning of coffee was partly achieved through an association between tea and old-fashioned ‘Britishness’ and coffee and the United States: this discovery [of coffee] spoke to changes in Australia’s lifestyle options: the tea habit was tied to Australia’s development as a far-flung colonial outpost, a daily reminder that many still looked to London as the nation’s cultural capital: the growing appeal of instant coffee reflected a widening and more nuanced cultural palate. This was not just ‘another’ example of the United States postwar juggernaut; it marks the transitional phase in Australia’s history, as its cultural identity was informed less by the staid conservativism of Britain than the heady flux of New World glamour (219). Coffee was associated with the USA not simply through advertising but also through cultural exposure. By 1943, notes Khamis, there were 120,000 American service personnel stationed in Australia and she quotes Symons (168) as saying that “when an American got on a friendly footing with an Australian family he was usually found in the kitchen, teaching the Mrs how to make coffee, or washing the dishes” (168, cited in Khamis 220). The chances were that “the Mrs”—the Australian housewife—felt she needed the tuition: an Australian survey conducted by Gallup in March 1950 indicated that 55 per cent of respondents at that time had never tried coffee, while a further 24 per cent said they “seldom” consumed it (Walker and Roberts 133, cited in Khamis 222). In a newspaper article titled, “Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here”, Munro describes the impact of exposure to the first American troops based in Australia during this time, with a then seven year old recalling: “They were foreign, quite a different culture from us. They spoke more loudly than us. They had strange accents, cute expressions, they were really very exotic.” The American troops caused consternation for Australian fathers and boyfriends. Dulcie Wood was 18 when she was dating an American serviceman: They had more money to spend (than Australian troops). They seemed to have plenty of supplies, they were always bringing you presents—stockings and cartons of cigarettes […] Their uniforms were better. They took you to more places. They were quite good dancers, some of them. They always brought you flowers. They were more polite to women. They charmed the mums because they were very polite. Some dads were a bit more sceptical of them. They weren’t sure if all that charm was genuine (quoted in Munro). Darian-Smith argues that, at that time, Australian understanding of Americans was based on Hollywood films, which led to an impression of American technological superiority and cultural sophistication (215-16, 232). “Against the American-style combination of smart advertising, consumerism, self-expression and popular democracy, the British class system and its buttoned-up royals appeared dull and dour” writes Khamis (226, citing Grant 15)—almost as dull and dour as 1950s tea compared with the postwar sophistication of Nescafé instant coffee. Conclusion The approach Nestlé is using in Bangladesh to market instant coffee is tried and tested: coffee is associated with the new, radical cultural influence while tea and other traditional stimulants are relegated to the choice of an older, more staid generation. Younger consumers are targeted with a romantic story about the love of coffee, reflected in a mini-soap opera about two people becoming a couple over a cup of Nescafé. Hopefully, the Pathshala-Edith Cowan University collaboration is at least as strong. Some of the overseas visitors return to Bangladesh on a regular basis—the student presentations in 2012 were, for instance, attended by two visiting graduates from the 2008 program who were working in Bangladesh. For the Australian participants, the association with Pathshala, South Asian Media Institute, and Drik Photo Agency brings recognition, credibility and opportunity. It also offers a totally new perspective on what to order in the coffee queue once they are home again in Australia. Postscript The final week of the residency in Bangladesh was taken up with presentations and a public exhibition of the students’ work at Drik Picture Agency, Dhaka, 3–7 February 2012. Danielle Fusco’s photographs can be accessed at: http://public-files.apps.ecu.edu.au/SCA_Marketing/coffee/coffee.html References Ali, M. “Commodity Round-up: Problems and Prospects of Bangladesh Tea”, World Development 1.1–2 (1973): 55. Beale, Claire. “Should the Gold Blend Couple Get Back Together?” The Independent 29 Apr 2010. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/advertising/should-the-gold-blend-couple-get-back-together-1957196.html›. Darian-Smith, Kate. On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 1939-1945. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2009. Dude, Where’s My Car? Dir. Danny Leiner. Twentieth Century Fox, 2000. Edith Cowan University (ECU). “Photomedia Summer School Bangladesh 2012.” 1 May 2012 .Grant, Bruce. The Australian Dilemma: A New Kind of Western Society. Sydney: Macdonald Futura, 1983. Hafeman, D., H. Ashan, T. Islam, and E. Louis. “Betel-quid: Its Tremor-producing Effects in Residents of Araihazar, Bangladesh.” Movement Disorders 21.4 (2006): 567-71. Hinduism. “Reincarnation and Samsara.” Heart of Hinduism. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://hinduism.iskcon.org/concepts/102.htm›. Islam, G., M. Iqbal, K. Quddus, and M. Ali. “Present Status and Future Needs of Tea Industry in Bangladesh (Review).” Proceedings of the Pakistan Academy of Science. 42.4 (2005): 305-14. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.paspk.org/downloads/proc42-4/42-4-p305-314.pdf›. Khamis, Susie. “It Only Takes a Jiffy to Make: Nestlé, Australia and the Convenience of Instant Coffee.” Food, Culture & Society 12.2 (2009): 217-33. Munro, Ian. “Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here.” The Age 27 Feb. 2002. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/02/26/1014704950716.html›. O’Donohoe, Stephanie. “Raiding the Postmodern Pantry: Advertising Intertextuality and the Young Adult Audience.” European Journal of Marketing 31.3/4 (1997): 234-53 Pathshala. Pathshala, South Asian Media Academy. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.pathshala.net/controller.php›. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Sharma, Dinesh. “Betel Quid and Areca Nut are Carcinogenic without Tobacco.” The Lancet Oncology 4.10 (2003): 587. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.lancet.com/journals/lanonc/article/PIIS1470-2045(03)01229-4/fulltext›. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia. Ringwood, Vic: Penguin, 1984. Tea Board. “History of Bangladesh Tea Industry.” Bangladesh Tea Board. 8 Apr. 2012 ‹http://www.teaboard.gov.bd/index.php?option=HistoryTeaIndustry›. Walker, Robin and Dave Roberts. From Scarcity to Surfeit: A History of Food and Nutrition in New South Wales. Sydney: NSW UP, 1988.

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The paper discusses mobility in the context of displacement. How is the mobile phone appropriated by refugees in immigration detention? What does the mobile phone, and indeed, mobility, signify in an Australian policy landscape of mandatory detention of asylum seekers and formerly prohibited access to mobile phones for detainees inside immigration detention centres? What does this intimate about the perceived dangers of “new” and mobile media? The author’s preliminary research with refugees in Australian immigration detention centres compares policy and practice. Firstly, it interrogates the unwritten policies regulating refugees’ access to media technologies when incarcerated in immigration detention. As there is no written policy on technology access and practices vary across immigration detention centres, the information in this paper has been given by detainees and has not been verified by the management of detention centres. The paper suggests that the utopian promises of mobile media echo those made about cyberspace in the 1990s. Furthermore, the residual effects of such rhetoric have infiltrated government policy in terms of perceiving mobile media as dangerous when adopted by marginalised groups such as refugees. Secondly, the research examines how and why the mobile phone has been adopted by immigration detainees despite their former prohibition. It explores the ways in which refugees practice an imagined mobility through media whilst in detention, and finds that this is critical to sustaining connection with their imagined communities. Why Refugees? In the context of increased forced migration of people due to circ*mstances such as political instability, war, natural disaster and famine; it is necessary to better understand how refugees mobilise and organise in situations of displacement. As new technologies encourage the capacity for borderlessness, such advantages also have to be contrasted with the potential dangers of spontaneous border crossings. The study of the behaviour and practices of refugees in relation to communication technologies offers an insight into the efficacy of immigration detention policy in filtering movement and interaction, both physical and virtual, between Australia and other countries. Although the study of refugees is a discipline in its own right, there has been minimal examination of how they appropriate technology, particularly that which facilitates and complements their mobility, to maintain connections with their diasporic networks while in situations of displacement. The studies that have been undertaken concentrate on the use of technology by refugees living in the wider community (see Glazebrook, McIver Jr. and Prokosch; Howard and Owens), rather than in the context of detention. In previous research of diasporas within the discipline of Cultural Studies, technology has been regarded as vital to subcultures and minority groups. Technology has been the tool by which such communities respond to their structural conditions (see Cunningham; Hall; Halleck). Such investigations have concentrated on the intersection of class, gender and ethnicity and how they inscribe meanings to specific technologies, which in turn, become intrinsic to the identities of the groups and communities. The research extends the work that has been done within Cultural Studies by similarly focusing on a marginalised group, refugees, and their participation in particular technologies. A review of literature across refugee studies, diaspora studies and technology studies has shown that: The study of technology use by refugees has had minimal investigation The study of diasporas has rarely included refugees The study of communities and communication practices which surround particular technologies has concentrated on groups other than refugees The escalation of issues of asylum and border control in public discourse warrant more knowledge about refugees and their networks of communication beyond the boundaries of detention and Australia The notion of “networks” refers to people, technologies, processes and practices that form the relationships between refugees in institutionalised immigration detention and the outside world. The Australian Immigration Detention Context Between 1992 and 1994, Australian law moved from permitting (but not enforcing) limited detention of asylum seekers, to a blanket policy of mandatory detention (HREOC) which, at one point, had up to 12,000 individuals in detention (Castan Centre for Human Rights Law). The detention context is particularly relevant to Australia, because its policy of mandatory detention means that refugees have restricted contact with the world outside of the detention centre. In 2005, the Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) Bill allowed detained families with children to live in community detention, that is, in residential accommodation outside of an immigration detention centre. Although community detention carries with it specific conditions, families are unaccompanied and have more freedom of movement. This paper discusses the author’s preliminary work with refugees in immigration detention, prior to the introduction of community detention. The research sought to investigate how asylum seekers use technology to sustain connections with their virtual communities in situations of displacement. Specifically, it explored how technology is appropriated to mediate communication in the context of institutionalised detention. The key research questions addressed by the research were: what kinds of technologies are available to refugees? How are these used? How are their benefits and limitations perceived? What, if any, kinds of social networks surround these technologies? How are relationships of power surrounding these technologies negotiated? Can technology assist refugees in sustaining connections with their communities of choice and reducing their sense of isolation? Can technology play a role in reducing the well-documented effects of this incarceration by providing mediated social interaction? What are the implications for policy, especially in relation to permitted technologies and surveillance of communication practices? Access to informants was gained by working with a refugee community advocacy group, which has established links with refugees in detention and experience in dealing with the management of detention centres. One such group is ChilOut, which organises visitor programs to immigration detention centres. This affiliation was important in gaining access to, and trust of, detainees who were willing to participate in the research. It presented opportunities to interact with detainees on a social basis. Semi-structured interviews with the research subjects were conducted to ascertain the strategies and resources currently utilised to counter the effects of mandatory detention. In 2005, detainees had access to a range of technology which can be broadly termed “old media”, while access to “new media” – such as the Internet and mobile phones – are prohibited. At the time of printing, detainees reported that mobile phones without cameras were only recently permitted. Detainees have access to pay phones inside the centre. Visitors are allowed to give detainees phone cards so they can use the pay phones without charge or the need for change. In addition to pay phones, detainees are provided with access to a fax and photocopier, which are generally used to liaise with and send relevant documentation to lawyers. There is distrust of using the fax machine at the detention centre because it is in a management office area and the detainees require permission to use it. It means the guards can read the faxes that are sent, as well as those that are received before notifying the detainees that they have received one. Detainees also have television, videos, DVDs and newspapers, so there is the possibility of feeling like part of an imagined community (Anderson) through these media. There are computers available, but no Internet access. Some of the children load computer games on them to play, others have Playstation in their rooms. It is noteworthy that the only technology to which detainees have access and which facilitates real-time person-to-person interaction is the telephone. The phone offers the opportunity for direct contact with the outside world without the visual and other sensory realities of detention. The telephone is able to mask the extent of imprisonment as it does not show the barbed razor wire surrounding the compound. Yet detainees were not permitted to have mobile phones for a long time. Thus, the key question remains: why were they deprived of access to mobile phones while allowed access to pay phones and landlines? What does this suggest about the perceived dangers of mobile media and the resonance of last century’s techno-utopian discourses? Given that detainees were only given access to “old media”, it seems that this tired but resolutely upbeat rhetoric about new technology which celebrates it as inherently liberating actually inflected policies determining the kinds of technologies to which detainees have access. It confirms the pessimistic assertions of media theorists such as Schiller and Mosco, that new technologies further alienate disadvantaged groups. As the Australian government attempts to regulate the physical movement of people across its borders, mantras of the dot.com era such as “everyone is a free agent” (Kumar 77) appear to undermine this agenda. The assumptions of liberty and democracy embedded in this “free agency” are implicit in policies that denied refugees access to “new media” such as the Internet and mobile phones. The “liberating” nature of such technology was regarded as unsafe in the hands of refugees, whose freedom of movement is institutionally contained by the Australian government through mandatory detention. The physical movement of refugees, as well as the agency and freedom with which they can claim asylum in a country, is actively discouraged through immigration detention policy and limitations on access to technology. The promise of self-expression afforded by mobile media seemed antithetical to the prejudicial administration of refugees, which is premised upon a distrust of their claims of identity and asylum. Subsequently, their use of mobile technology was also assumed to be suspect and therefore had to be restricted. Detained refugees serve as a reminder of the parameters of upbeat discourses about new technology. That is, the utopian possibilities of mobile media appear to be conditional such that its “power” can only be entrusted to certain groups. In policy terms, the mobile phone is a rich site of signification. Not only does the technology itself imply a way of being (that is free, mobile, always accessible and always able to access), but it also connotes an ideal type of user, one that is appropriate and deserving of such technology. It seems that refugees are not entitled to their mobility and, therefore, do not have rights to media that is considered to facilitate such mobility, in spite of their detention. Furthermore, there is a suggested dichotomy in the government’s classification of the technologies to which refugees have access. The fact of detention means refugees are surrounded by technology, held captive by it and are inevitably in close proximity to it. It is technology which is seen as antithetical to mobility and therefore could be described as “static”: phones, faxes, photocopiers, television, video – all of which may be characterised as “old media”. The binary opposite of such technology is that which can be regarded as mobile or new or interactive media; that which resonates with the residual effects of 1990s techno-utopian rhetoric; and could be considered as threatening in the hands of those who have physically made unauthorised border crossings. However, prior investigations of “mobile” technologies, demonstrates that such dualisms are flawed as the lowest technologies also have the capacity to facilitate mobility. Examples include Paul Gilroy’s work on the Black Atlantic, which notes that books and records have been vital in carrying oppositional ideologies and philosophies across the black diaspora. Within Asian diasporas, the exchange of video letters and taped Bollywood movies have been interpreted as forms of localised challenges to the centralised power of the broadcast media industries (Ang; Gillespie). These economies of exchange as facilitated by older forms of mobile media have been studied in relation to issues of migration and marginalisation. Given that refugees are also affected by such issues, their mobile media practices are a sobering reminder that mobility is not necessarily hi-tech nor confined to the realms of the affluent, educated and socio-economically advantaged. Rather, mobility can be a tenuous state of being displaced and itinerant, with technology adopted to manage and adapt to its challenges. The Mobile Media Practices of Detained Refugees The initial findings from the fieldwork indicate that for refugees, the mobile phone is not a technology of choice but instead, a technology of necessity and survival. Every technology that is available to them is used to sustain connection to their localized and globalised networks. The restriction to their physical movement of detainees is compensated through use of technology which allows any sort of interaction and communication. Being part of a technologically-mediated community appears to minimise the marginalisation and isolation they experience. Such feelings of dislocation have been well-documented in studies of the impact of incarceration on the mental health of refugees (see Mares and Jureidini; RANZCP; Hodes). It seems that the telephone and fax are the mainstays of their communication networks. However, such technologies are closely monitored, as landline phone calls can be traced or even tapped, and faxes have to be sent from an office manned by guards. An experienced visitor to detention centres commented that “most” detainees had mobile phones and when they were contraband, guards knew about them but generally ignored their use by detainees. Only mobile phones offer the potential for communication to be free from the surveillance by detention centres staff. The ways in which mobile phones are used by detainees is decidedly lo-tech, for example, for communication with family where use of a landline is impractical. One of the detainees said that he speaks to his wife and children on the centre pay phone every few days. However, the call costs are expensive as his family only has a mobile phone, not a landline, at their place of residence. For them to call him is also expensive and awkward, because they have to call the pay phone and if somebody answers, they have then to locate him somewhere within the compound. Thus, the connections between the detainees and their loved ones are very fragile in that they are almost totally dependent on the phone to maintain these relationships. In this instance, the mobile phone offers another means for managing the tenuous nature of these ties. The mobile phone, particularly SMS technology, offers a suitable alternative as the detainee can communicate with his family cheaply and quickly. It compensates for the constraints of the pay phone. The informal interactions afforded by the mobile phone also extend beyond family members of detainees to their supporters and advocates. Likewise, the mobile phone complements the communication practices facilitated through permitted technologies. For example, when detainees are liaising with the Department of Immigration (DIMIA), they will ask advice from the regular visitors to the immigration detention centre who come from an array of organizations such as churches, refugee advocacy groups, law firms and health organizations. Visitors generally offer whatever assistance they can by obtaining necessary forms from the department, searching the Internet, undertaking letter writing campaigns, and lobbying government ministers. Something worked in amongst all the network activity that took place over the course of this week. As promised to the family, I scoured the DIMIA web site for a form for applying under Section 417. While there didn’t seem to be an official form, I used the opportunity to research the section of the Migration Act. Googling turned up a 12 page “guide to section 417 applications” written by a barrister, which I printed out and faxed to them. So as to ensure that the family received the fax, I SMS-ed them to let them know a fax was on its way and how many pages to expect. They responded to me by fax, saying that they had been notified that they too were going to be released into community detention in the coming weeks. (Extract from fieldwork diary) The mobile phone serves the function of anticipating and verifying communications which may potentially be surveilled by staff of detention centres. Where detainees may not trust that they are being given all the letters or faxes that have been sent to them, the mobile phone enables a degree of privacy so that they at least know what to expect from their correspondents. Furthermore, it provides the opportunity for detainees to speak about matters related to their case for asylum that are regarded as too sensitive to risk being discussed in a public place such as on the centre pay phone. Often this involves seeking assistance with their application for asylum. He rang T on the centre pay phone and said that he would like to speak with me, but did not have my number. He didn’t have a pen and paper to jot down my details at the time, so he gave T his mobile number and asked her to pass it onto me, so I could ring him on it. When I rang, he had returned to his room where he could talk freely. He told me about the visit from the Commonwealth Ombudsman, who undertook to look into his case over the next couple of weeks. We talked about what would assist the Ombudsman in reviewing the case. I said I would write a letter or email in the first instance, and if he wanted other letters of support, I could circulate details of his case on the ChilOut newsletter. He said he didn’t want publicity at this stage. I offered to fax him a copy of my email, but he preferred that I give it to him in person as the fax machine in the office was too public and any documents received could be read. Again, the mobile seems to be the most appropriate technology for coordinating and organising privately away from centre surveillance… (Extract from fieldwork diary) Fear of breaches of confidentiality form only part of detainees’ desire for privacy from detention centre staff. There is also a need for private space away from other detainees as their imprisonment necessitates the constant use of communal facilities such as the pay phone. In addition to being used for its capacity for private communication, the mobile phone was also exploited as a broadcast technology by detained refugees. Text messages proved an effective way of providing brief updates to family and friends about the status of their case: 20 September 200510:24:07 Hi Linda. I am fine thank u. not news yet, I think they’ll come to see me soon, if I got news, I’ll let u know. Wish u have a good time. 15 October 200516:31:49 HI Linda, I was interview by Ombudsman yesterday, we talked about one hour and a half, it sound good…Thank u for yr concern 25 December 200520:26:54 Hi Linda. I am still in [detention centre]. No any news from Ombudsman, may be early next year. I am fine here, thanks. Tuesday 17 October 200613:44:41 Hi Linda…I transferd to [community] housing. Its much better here. How a u? takecare ur health, thanks. Thursday 16 November 200618:46:23 HI There is a good news to let u know I got the decision from that I won the FC case. Thus, for detained refugees, the mobile phone has been adopted for simple, lo-tech use. None of the respondents indicated a desire for a camera function on their mobile phones. However, one detainee did suggest that she would like to use a webcam to see and hear her child in China, whom she has not seen in eight years. While she did use the Internet for this purpose when she was on the “outside”, now she can only rely on weekly telephone conversations made from inside the detention centre. Conclusion What happens when technology is placed in the hands of those for whom it was never meant? It makes explicit what is often implied in studies of adoption of new technology, that the “utopian promise” is confined to a narrow socio-economic demographic: the advantaged, the affluent and the educated. Those who fall outside these perimeters are perceived as undeserving and untrustworthy of such technology. This is exemplified in the Australian government’s policy to deny refugees access to “new” and mobile media whilst being compulsorily detained. The decision to withhold mobile technology from mobile communities who are not so materially privileged is not only ironic but unwarranted in light of the empirical data. This has since been acknowledged by allowing detainees use of mobile phones. The mobile phone practices of detained refugees show that it is being used as a complementary and alternative technology, that is, to compensate for the inadequacies of the communication media allowed by detention centres. The mobile phone is exploited for the functions that permitted technologies do not offer: firstly, the ability to communicate with friends and family more immediately and effectively; secondly, the capacity to communicate privately with less probability of surveillance; thirdly, the opportunity to broadcast content one to many. In such communications, use of the mobile phone is simple and lo-tech: it is deployed for straightforward (but improved) interaction with detainees’ imagined communities which would otherwise be possible anyway through the “old” media technologies provided in detention. In practice, there was no evidence of the use of the hi-tech functions of mobile phones; nor was there any indication, as implied by policy, of the possible dangers that may ensue if such features of mobile media were available to detained refugees. Potentially, the research can impact on immigration detention policy, particularly in terms of reviewing the conditions under which technology is made available to refugees in institutionalised detention contexts. However, further research is required, especially a comparison of the former prohibited use of mobile media in immigration detention centres with the permitted use of these in community immigration detention. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. London: Verso, 1993. Ang, Ien. Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World. London: Routledge, 1996. Castan Centre for Human Rights Law. 2003. “Detention, Children and Asylum Seekers: A Comparative Study.” Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. 26 July 2004. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention/ submissions/castan.html>. Cunningham, Stuart. “Popular Media as Public ‘Sphericules’ for Diasporic Communities.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 4.2 (2001): 131-147. Gillespie, Marie. Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London: Routledge, 1995. Gilroy, Paul. There Ain’t no Black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchison, 1987. Glazebrook, Diana. “Becoming Mobile after Detention.” Social Analysis: International Journal of Cultural and Social Practice 48.3 (2004). Hall, Stuart. “Aspirations and Attitude… Reflections on Black Britain in the 90s.” New Formations: Frontlines, Backyards. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998. Halleck, Dee. “Watch Out Dick Tracy! Popular Video in the Wake of Exxon Valdez.” Technoculture. Eds. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991. Hodes, Matthew. “Three Key Issues for Young Refugees’ Mental Health.” Transcultural Psychiatry 39.2 (2002): 196-213. Howard, Ellen, and Christine Owens. “Using the Internet to Communicate with Immigrant/Refugee Communities about Health.” Poster presentation at JCDL ‘02, Portland, Oregon, 13-17 July 2002. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). “A Last Resort?” Report on National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention. 26 July 2004. http://www.hreoc.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention/ submissions/castan.html>. Kumar, Amitava. “Temporary Access: The Indian H-1B Worker in the US.” Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life. Eds. Alondra Nelson and Thuy Linh Tu. New York: NYU P, 2001. Mares, Sarah, and Jon Jureidini. “Children and Families Referred from a Remote Immigration Detention Centre.” Forgotten Rights – Responding to the Crisis of Asylum Seeker Health Care: A National Summit. 12 Nov. 2003. McIver, William, and Arthur Prokosch. “Towards a Critical Approach to Examining the Digital Divide”. IEEE, 2002. Mosco, Vincent. Pushbutton Fantasies: Critical Perspectives in Videotex and Information Technology. Norwood: Ablex, 1982. Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. “RANZCP Airs Deep Concern at the Mandatory Detention of Child Asylum Seekers.” Media release, 11 Nov. 2003. Schiller, Herbert. Information Inequality: The Deepening Social Crisis in America. London: Routledge, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Leung, Linda. "Mobility and Displacement: Refugees' Mobile Media Practices in Immigration Detention." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/10-leung.php>. APA Style Leung, L. (Mar. 2007) "Mobility and Displacement: Refugees' Mobile Media Practices in Immigration Detention," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/10-leung.php>.

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Babies and toddlers are amassing huge followings on social media, achieving microcelebrity status, and raking in five figure sums. In East Asia, many of these lucrative “micro­-microcelebrities” rise to fame by inheriting exposure and proximate microcelebrification from their social media Influencer mothers. Through self-branding techniques, Influencer mothers’ portrayals of their young’ children’s lives “as lived” are the canvas on which (baby) products and services are marketed to readers as “advertorials”. In turning to investigate this budding phenomenon, I draw on ethnographic case studies in Singapore to outline the career trajectory of these young children (under 4yo) including their social media presence, branding strategies, and engagement with their followers. The chapter closes with a brief discussion on some ethical considerations of such young children’s labour in the social media age.Influencer MothersTheresa Senft first coined the term “microcelebrity” in her work Camgirls as a burgeoning online trend, wherein people attempt to gain popularity by employing digital media technologies, such as videos, blogs, and social media. She describes microcelebrities as “non-actors as performers” whose narratives take place “without overt manipulation”, and who are “more ‘real’ than television personalities with ‘perfect hair, perfect friends and perfect lives’” (Senft 16), foregrounding their active response to their communities in the ways that maintain open channels of feedback on social media to engage with their following.Influencers – a vernacular industry term albeit inspired by Katz & Lazarsfeld’s notion of “personal influence” that predates Internet culture – are one type of microcelebrity; they are everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following in “digital” and “physical” spaces, and monetize their following by integrating “advertorials” into their blog or social media posts and making physical appearances at events. A pastiche of “advertisem*nt” and “editorial”, advertorials in the Influencer industry are highly personalized, opinion-laden promotions of products/services that Influencers personally experience and endorse for a fee. Influencers in Singapore often brand themselves as having “relatability”, or the ability to persuade their followers to identify with them (Abidin). They do so by make consciously visible the backstage (Goffman) of the usually “inaccessible”, “personal”, and “private” aspects of mundane, everyday life to curate personae that feel “authentic” to fans (Marwick 114), and more accessible than traditional celebrity (Senft 16).Historically, the Influencer industry in Singapore can be traced back to the early beginnings of the “blogshop” industry from the mid-2000s and the “commercial blogging” industry. Influencers are predominantly young women, and market products and services from diverse industries, although the most popular have been fashion, beauty, F&B, travel, and electronics. Most prominent Influencers are contracted to management agencies who broker deals in exchange for commission and assist in the production of their vlogs. Since then, the industry has grown, matured, and expanded so rapidly that Influencers developed emergent models of advertorials, with the earliest cohorts moving into different life stages and monetizing several other aspects of their personal lives such as the “micro-microcelebrity” of their young children. What this paper provides is an important analysis of the genesis and normative practices of micro-microcelebrity commerce in Singapore from its earliest years, and future research trajectories in this field.Micro-Microcelebrity and Proximate MicrocelebrificationI define micro-microcelebrities as the children of Influencers who have themselves become proximate microcelebrities, having derived exposure and fame from their prominent Influencer mothers, usually through a more prolific, deliberate, and commercial form of what Blum-Ross defines as “sharenting”: the act of parents sharing images and stores about their children in digital spaces such as social networking sites and blogs. Marwick (116-117), drawing from Rojek’s work on types of celebrity – distinguishes between two types of microcelebrity: “ascribed microcelebrity” where the online personality is made recognizable through the “production of celebrity media” such as paparazzi shots and user-produced online memes, or “achieved microcelebrity” where users engage in “self-presentation strateg[ies]”, such as fostering the illusion of intimacy with fans, maintaining a persona, and selective disclosure about oneself.Micro-microcelebrities lie somewhere between the two: In a process I term “proximate microcelebrification”, micro-microcelebrities themselves inherit celebrity through the preemptive and continuous exposure from their Influencer mothers, many beginning even during the pre-birth pregnancy stages in the form of ultrasound scans, as a form of “achieved microcelebrity”. Influencer mothers whose “presentational strategies” (cf. Marshall, “Promotion” 45) are successful enough (as will be addressed later) gain traction among followers, who in turn further popularize the micro-microcelebrity by setting up fan accounts, tribute sites, and gossip forums through which fame is heightened in a feedback loop as a model of “ascribed microcelebrity”.Here, however, I refrain from conceptualizing these young stars as “micro-Influencers” for unlike Influencers, these children do not yet curate their self-presentation to command the attention of followers, but instead are used, framed, and appropriated by their mothers for advertorials. In other words, Influencer mothers “curate [micro-microcelebrities’] identities into being” (Leaver, “Birth”). Following this, many aspects of their micro-microcelebrities become rapidly commodified and commercialized, with advertisers clamoring to endorse anything from maternity hospital stays to nappy cream.Although children of mommybloggers have the prospect to become micro-microcelebrities, both groups are conceptually distinct. Friedman (200-201) argues that among mommybloggers arose a tension between those who adopt “the raw authenticity of nonmonetized blogging”, documenting the “unglamorous minutiae” of their daily lives and a “more authentic view of motherhood” and those who use mommyblogs “primarily as a source of extra income rather than as a site for memoir”, focusing on “parent-centered products” (cf. Mom Bloggers Club).In contrast, micro-microcelebrities and their digital presence are deliberately commercial, framed and staged by Influencer mothers in order to maximize their advertorial potential, and are often postured to market even non-baby/parenting products such as fast food and vehicles (see later). Because of the overt commerce, it is unclear if micro-microcelebrity displays constitute “intimate surveillance”, an “almost always well-intentioned surveillance of young people by parents” (Leaver, “Born” 4). Furthermore, children are generally peripheral to mommybloggers whose own parenting narratives take precedence as a way to connect with fellow mothers, while micro-microcelebrities are the primary feature whose everyday lives and digital presence enrapture followers.MethodologyThe analysis presented is informed by my original fieldwork with 125 Influencers and related actors among whom I conducted a mixture of physical and digital personal interviews, participant observation, web archaeology, and archival research between December 2011 and October 2014. However, the material presented here is based on my digital participant observation of publicly accessible and intentionally-public digital presence of the first four highly successful micro-microcelebrities in Singapore: “Baby Dash” (b.2013) is the son of Influencer xiaxue, “#HeYurou” (b.2011) is the niece of Influencer bongqiuqiu, “#BabyElroyE” (b.2014) is the son of Influencer ohsofickle, and “@MereGoRound” (b.2015) is the daughter of Influencer bongqiuqiu.The microcelebrity/social media handles of these children take different forms, following the platform on which their parent/aunt has exposed them on the most. Baby Dash appears in all of xiaxue’s digital platforms under a variety of over 30 indexical, ironic, or humourous hashtags (Leaver, “Birth”) including “#pointylipped”, #pineappledash”, and “#面包脸” (trans. “bread face”); “#HeYurou” appears on bongqiuqiu’s Instagram and Twitter; “#BabyElroyE” appears on ohsofickle’s Instagram and blog, and is the central figure of his mother’s new YouTube channel; and “@MereGoRound” appears on all of bongqiuqiu’s digital platforms but also has her own Instagram account and dedicated YouTube channel. The images reproduced here are screenshot from Influencer mothers’ highly public social media: xiaxue, bongqiuqiu, and ohsofickle boast 593k, 277k, and 124k followers on Instagram and 263k, 41k, and 17k followers on Twitter respectively at the time of writing.Anticipation and Digital EstatesIn an exclusive front-pager (Figure 1) on the day of his induced birth, it was announced that Baby Dash had already received up to SGD25,000 worth of endorsem*nt deals brokered by his Influencer mother, xiaxue. As the first micro-microcelebrity in his cohort (his mother was among the pioneer Influencers), Baby Dash’s Caesarean section was even filmed and posted on xiaxue’s YouTube channel in three parts (Figure 2). xiaxue had announced her pregnancy on her blog while in her second trimester, following which she consistently posted mirror selfies of her baby bump.Figure 1 & 2, screenshot April 2013 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›In her successful attempt at generating anticipation, the “bump” itself seemed to garner its own following on Twitter and Instagram, with many followers discussing how the Influencer dressed “it”, and how “it” was evolving over the weeks. One follower even compiled a collage of xiaxue’s “bump” chronologically and gifted it to the Influencer as an art image via Twitter on the day she delivered Baby Dash (Figure 3 & 4). Followers also frequently speculated and bantered about how her baby would look, and mused about how much they were going to adore him. Figure 3 & 4, screenshot March 2013 from ‹twitter.com/xiaxue› While Lupton (42) has conceptualized the sharing of images that precede birth as a “rite of passage”, Influencer mothers who publish sonograms deliberately do so in order to claim digital estates for their to-be micro-microcelebrities in the form of “reserved” social media handles, blog URLs, and unique hashtags for self-branding. For instance, at the 3-month mark of her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu debuted her baby’s dedicated hashtag, “#MereGoRound” in a birth announcement on her on Instagram account. Shortly after, she started an Instagram account, “@MereGoRound”, for her baby, who amassed over 5.5k followers prior to her birth. Figure 5 & 6, screenshot March 2015 from instagram.com/meregoround and instagram.com/bongqiuqiuThe debut picture features a heavily pregnant belly shot of bongqiuqiu (Figure 5), creating much anticipation for the arrival of a new micro-microcelebrity: in the six months leading up to her birth, various family, friends, and fans shared Instagram images of their gifts and welcome party for @MereGoRound, and followers shared congratulations and fan art on the dedicated Instagram hashtag. During this time, bongqiuqiu also frequently updated followers on her pregnancy progress, not without advertising her (presumably sponsored) gynecologist and hospital stay in her pregnancy diaries (Figure 6) – like Baby Dash, even as a foetus @MereGoRound was accumulating advertorials. Presently at six months old, @MereGoRound boasts almost 40k followers on Instagram on which embedded in the narrative of her growth are sponsored products and services from various advertisers.Non-Baby-Related AdvertorialsPrior to her pregnancy, Influencer bongqiuqiu hopped onto the micro-microcelebrity bandwagon in the wake of Baby Dash’s birth, by using her niece “#HeYurou” in her advertorials. Many Influencers attempt to naturalize their advertorials by composing their post as if recounting a family event. With reference to a child, parent, or partner, they may muse or quip about a product being used or an experience being shared in a bid to mask the distinction between their personal and commercial material. bongqiuqiu frequently posted personal, non-sponsored images engaging in daily mundane activities under the dedicated hashtag “#HeYurou”.However, this was occasionally interspersed with pictures of her niece holding on to various products including storybooks (Figure 8) and shopping bags (Figure 9). At first glance, this might have seemed like any mundane daily update the Influencer often posts. However, a close inspection reveals the caption bearing sponsor hashtags, tags, and campaign information. For instance, one Instagram post shows #HeYurou casually holding on to and staring at a burger in KFC wrapping (Figure 7), but when read in tandem with bongqiuqiu’s other KFC-related posts published over a span of a few months, it becomes clear that #HeYurou was in fact advertising for KFC. Figure 7, 8, 9, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/bongqiuqiu›Elsewhere, Baby Dash was incorporated into xiaxue’s car sponsorship with over 20 large decals of one of his viral photos – dubbed “pineapple Dash” among followers – plastered all over her vehicle (Figure 10). Followers who spot the car in public are encouraged to photograph and upload the image using its dedicated hashtag, “#xiaxuecar” as part of the Influencer’s car sponsorship – an engagement scarcely related to her young child. Since then, xiaxue has speculated producing offshoots of “pineapple Dash” products including smartphone casings. Figure 10, screenshot December 2014 from ‹instagram.com/xiaxue›Follower EngagementSponsors regularly organize fan meet-and-greets headlined by micro-microcelebrities in order to attract potential customers. Photo opportunities and the chance to see Baby Dash “in the flesh” frequently front press and promotional material of marketing campaigns. Elsewhere on social media, several Baby Dash fan and tribute accounts have also emerged on Instagram, reposting images and related media of the micro-microcelebrity with overt adoration, no doubt encouraged by xiaxue, who began crowdsourcing captions for Baby Dash’s photos.Influencer ohsofickle postures #BabyElroyE’s follower engagement in a more subtle way. In her YouTube channel that debut in the month of her baby’s birth, ohsofickle produces video diaries of being a young, single, mother who is raising a child (Figure 11). In each episode, #BabyElroyE is the main feature whose daily activities are documented, and while there is some advertising embedded, ohsofickle’s approach on YouTube is much less overt than others as it features much more non-monetized personal content (Figure 12). Her blog serves as a backchannel to her vlogs, in which she recounts her struggles with motherhood and explicitly solicits the advice of mothers. However, owing to her young age (she became an Influencer at 17 and gave birth at 24), many of her followers are teenagers and young women who respond to her solicitations by gushing over #BabyElroyE’s images on Instagram. Figure 11 & 12, screenshot September 2015 from ‹instagram.com/ohsofickle›PrivacyAs noted by Holloway et al. (23), children like micro-microcelebrities will be among the first cohorts to inherit “digital profiles” of their “whole lifetime” as a “work in progress”, from parents who habitually underestimate or discount the privacy and long term effects of publicizing information about their children at the time of posting. This matters in a climate where social media platforms can amend privacy policies without user consent (23), and is even more pressing for micro-microcelebrities whose followers store, republish, and recirculate information in fan networks, resulting in digital footprints with persistence, replicability, scalability, searchability (boyd), and extended longevity in public circulation which can be attributed back to the children indefinitely (Leaver, “Ends”).Despite minimum age restrictions and recent concerns with “digital kidnapping” where users steal images of other young children to be re-posted as their own (Whigham), some social media platforms rarely police the proliferation of accounts set up by parents on behalf of their underage children prominently displaying their legal names and life histories, citing differing jurisdictions in various countries (Facebook; Instagram), while others claim to disable accounts if users report an “incorrect birth date” (cf. Google for YouTube). In Singapore, the Media Development Authority (MDA) which governs all print and digital media has no firm regulations for this but suggests that the age of consent is 16 judging by their recommendation to parents with children aged below 16 to subscribe to Internet filtering services (Media Development Authority, “Regulatory” 1). Moreover, current initiatives have been focused on how parents can impart digital literacy to their children (Media Development Authority, “Empowered”; Media Literacy Council) as opposed to educating parents about the digital footprints they may be unwittingly leaving about their children.The digital lives of micro-microcelebrities pose new layers of concern given their publicness and deliberate publicity, specifically hinged on making visible the usually inaccessible, private aspects of everyday life (Marshall, “Persona” 5).Scholars note that celebrities are individuals for whom speculation of their private lives takes precedence over their actual public role or career (Geraghty 100-101; Turner 8). However, the personae of Influencers and their young children are shaped by ambiguously blurring the boundaries of privacy and publicness in order to bait followers’ attention, such that privacy and publicness are defined by being broadcast, circulated, and publicized (Warner 414). In other words, the publicness of micro-microcelebrities is premised on the extent of the intentional publicity rather than simply being in the public domain (Marwick 223-231, emphasis mine).Among Influencers privacy concerns have aroused awareness but not action – Baby Dash’s Influencer mother admitted in a national radio interview that he has received a death threat via Instagram but feels that her child is unlikely to be actually attacked (Channel News Asia) – because privacy is a commodity that is manipulated and performed to advance their micro-microcelebrities’ careers. As pioneer micro-microcelebrities are all under 2-years-old at present, future research warrants investigating “child-centred definitions” (Third et al.) of the transition in which they come of age, grow an awareness of their digital presence, respond to their Influencer mothers’ actions, and potentially take over their accounts.Young LabourThe Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in Singapore, which regulates the employment of children and young persons, states that children under the age of 13 may not legally work in non-industrial or industrial settings (Ministry of Manpower). However, the same document later ambiguously states underaged children who do work can only do so under strict work limits (Ministry of Manpower). Elsewhere (Chan), it is noted that national labour statistics have thus far only focused on those above the age of 15, thus neglecting a true reflection of underaged labour in Singapore. This is despite the prominence of micro-microcelebrities who are put in front of (video) cameras to build social media content. Additionally, the work of micro-microcelebrities on digital platforms has not yet been formally recognized as labour, and is not regulated by any authority including Influencer management firms, clients, the MDA, and the MOM. Brief snippets from my ethnographic fieldwork with Influencer management agencies in Singapore similarly reveal that micro-microcelebrities’ labour engagements and control of their earnings are entirely at their parents’ discretion.As models and actors, micro-microcelebrities are one form of entertainment workers who if between the ages of 15 days and 18 years in the state of California are required to obtain an Entertainment Work Permit to be gainfully employed, adhering to strict work, schooling, and rest hour quotas (Department of Industrial Relations). Furthermore, the Californian Coogan Law affirms that earnings by these minors are their own property and not their parents’, although they are not old enough to legally control their finances and rely on the state to govern their earnings with a legal guardian (Screen Actors Guild). However, this similarly excludes underaged children and micro-microcelebrities engaged in creative digital ecologies. Future research should look into safeguards and instruments among young child entertainers, especially for micro-micrcocelebrities’ among whom commercial work and personal documentation is not always distinct, and are in fact deliberately intertwined in order to better engage with followers for relatabilityGrowing Up BrandedIn the wake of moral panics over excessive surveillance technologies, children’s safety on the Internet, and data retention concerns, micro-microcelebrities and their Influencer mothers stand out for their deliberately personal and overtly commercial approach towards self-documenting, self-presenting, and self-publicizing from the moment of conception. As these debut micro-microcelebrities grow older and inherit digital publics, personae, and careers, future research should focus on the transition of their ownership, engagement, and reactions to a branded childhood in which babies were postured for an initimate public.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “Communicative Intimacies: Influencers and Perceived Interconnectedness.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology. Forthcoming, Nov 2015.Aiello, Marianne. “Mommy Blog Banner Ads Get Results.” Healthcare Marketing Advisor 17 Nov. 2010. HealthLeaders Media. 16 Aug. 2015 ‹http://healthleadersmedia.com/content/MAR-259215/Mommy-Blog-Banner-Ads-Get-Results›.Azzarone, Stephanie. “When Consumers Report: Mommy Blogging Your Way to Success.” Playthings 18 Feb. 2009. 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Presence, Privacy, and Intimate Surveillance.” Re-Orientation: Translingual Transcultural Transmedia: Studies in Narrative, Language, Identity, and Knowledge. Eds. John Hartley & Weiguo Qu. Fudan University Press, forthcoming.Lupton, Deborah. The Social Worlds of the Unborn. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013.Marshall, P. David. "The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media." Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 35-48. Marshall, P. David. “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self.” Journalism 15.2 (2013): 153-170. Marwick, Alice E. Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, & Branding in the Social Media Age. 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We need a clear, unified, and consistent voice to effect the complete dismantling, the abolition, of the mechanisms of animal exploitation.And that will only come from what we say and do, no matter who we are.— Gary L. Francione, animal rights theoristThe history of hashtags is relatively short but littered with the remnants of corporate hashtags which may have seemed a good idea at the time within the confines of the boardroom. It is difficult to understand the rationale behind the use of hashtags as an effective communications tactic in 2019 by corporations when a quick stroll through their recent past leaves behind the much-derided #qantasluxury (Glance), #McDstories (Hill), and #myNYPD (Tran).While hashtags have an obvious purpose in bringing together like-minded publics and facilitating conversation (Kwye et al. 1), they have also regularly been the subject of “hashtag takeovers” by activists and other interested parties, and even by trolls, as the Ecological Society of Australia found in 2015 when their seemingly innocuous #ESA15 hashtag was taken over with p*rnographic images (news.com.au). Hashtag takeovers have also been used as a dubious marketing tactic, where smaller and less well-known brands tag their products with trending hashtags such as #iphone in order to boost their audience (Social Garden). Hashtags are increasingly used as a way for activists or other interested parties to disrupt a message. It is, I argue, predictable that any hashtag related to an even slightly controversial topic will be subject to some form of activist hashtag takeover, with varying degrees of success.That veganism and the dairy industry should attract such conflict is unsurprising given that the two are natural enemies, with vegans in particular seeming to anticipate and actively engage in the battle for the opposing hashtag.Using a comparative analysis of the #Veganuary and #Februdairy hashtags and how they have been used by both pro-vegan and pro-dairy social media users, this article illustrates that the enthusiastic and well-meaning social media efforts of farmers and dairy supporters have so far been unable to counteract those of well-organised and equally passionate vegan activists. This analysis compares tweets in the first week of the respective campaigns, concluding that organisations, industries and their representatives should be extremely wary of engaging said activists who are not only highly-skilled but are also highly-motivated. Grassroots, ideology-driven activism is a formidable opponent in any public space, let alone when it takes place on the outspoken and unstructured landscape of social media which is sometimes described as the “wild West” (Fitch 5) where anything goes and authenticity and plain-speaking is key (Macnamara 12).I Say Hashtag, You Say Bashtag#Februdairy was launched in 2018 to promote the benefits of dairy. The idea was first mooted on Twitter in 2018 by academic Dr Jude Capper, a livestock sustainability consultant, who called for “28 days, 28 positive dairy posts” (@Bovidiva; Howell). It was a response to the popular Veganuary campaign which aimed to “inspire people to try vegan for January and throughout the rest of the year”, a campaign which had gained significant traction both online and in the traditional media since its inception in 2014 (Veganuary). Hopes were high: “#Februdairy will be one month of dairy people posting, liking and retweeting examples of what we do and why we do it” (Yates). However, the #Februdairy hashtag has been effectively disrupted and has now entered the realm of a bashtag, a hashtag appropriated by activists for their own purpose (Austin and Jin 341).The Dairy Industry (Look Out the Vegans Are Coming)It would appear that the dairy industry is experiencing difficulties in public perception. While milk consumption is declining, sales of plant-based milks are increasing (Kaiserman) and a growing body of health research has questioned whether dairy products and milk in particular do in fact “do a body good” (Saccaro; Harvard Milk Study). In the 2019 review of Canada’s food guide, its first revision since 2007, for instance, the focus is now on eating plant-based foods with dairy’s former place significantly downgraded. Dairy products no longer have their own distinct section and are instead placed alongside other proteins including lentils (Pippus).Nevertheless, the industry has persevered with its traditional marketing and public relations activities, choosing to largely avoid addressing animal welfare concerns brought to light by activists. They have instead focused their message towards countering concerns about the health benefits of milk. In the US, the Milk Processing Education Program’s long-running celebrity-driven Got Milk campaign has been updated with Milk Life, a health focused campaign, featuring images of children and young people living an active lifestyle and taking part in activities such as skateboarding, running, and playing basketball (Milk Life). Interestingly, and somewhat inexplicably, Milk Life’s home page features the prominent headline, “How Milk Can Bring You Closer to Your Loved Ones”.It is somewhat reflective of the current trend towards veganism that tennis aces Serena and Venus Williams, both former Got Milk ambassadors, are now proponents for the plant-based lifestyle, with Venus crediting her newly-adopted vegan diet as instrumental in her recovery from an auto-immune disease (Mango).The dairy industry’s health focus continues in Australia, as well as the use of the word love, with former AFL footballer Shane Crawford—the face of the 2017 campaign Milk Loves You Back, from Lion Dairy and Drinks—focusing on reminding Australians of the reputed nutritional benefits of milk (Dawson).Dairy Australia meanwhile launched their Legendairy campaign with a somewhat different focus, promoting and lauding Australia’s dairy families, and with a message that stated, in a nod to the current issues, that “Australia’s dairy farmers and farming communities are proud, resilient and innovative” (Dairy Australia). This campaign could be perceived as a morale-boosting exercise, featuring a nation-wide search to find Australia’s most legendairy farming community (Dairy Australia). That this was also an attempt to humanise the industry seems obvious, drawing on established goodwill felt towards farmers (University of Cambridge). Again, however, this strategy did not address activists’ messages of suffering animals, factory farms, and newborn calves being isolated from their grieving mothers, and it can be argued that consumers are being forced to make the choice between who (or what) they care about more: animals or the people making their livelihoods from them.Large-scale campaigns like Legendairy which use traditional channels are of course still vitally important in shaping public opinion, with statistics from 2016 showing 85.1% of Australians continue to watch free-to-air television (Roy Morgan, “1 in 7”). However, a focus and, arguably, an over-reliance on traditional platforms means vegans and animal activists are often unchallenged when spreading their message via social media. Indeed, when we consider the breakdown in age groups inherent in these statistics, with 18.8% of 14-24 year-olds not watching any commercial television at all, an increase from 7% in 2008 (Roy Morgan, “1 in 7”), it is a brave and arguably short-sighted organisation or industry that relies primarily on traditional channels to spread their message in 2019. That these large-scale campaigns do little to address the issues raised by vegans concerning animal welfare leaves these claims largely unanswered and momentum to grow.This growth in momentum is fuelled by activist groups such as the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) who are well-known in this space, with 5,494,545 Facebook followers, 1.06 million Twitter followers, 973,000 Instagram followers, and 453,729 You Tube subscribers (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). They are also active on Pinterest, a visual-based platform suited to the kinds of images and memes particularly detrimental to the dairy industry. Although widely derided, PETA’s reach is large. A graphic video posted to Facebook on February 13 2019 and showing a suffering cow, captioned “your cheese is not worth this” was shared 1,244 times, and had 4.6 million views in just over 24 hours (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). With 95% of 12-24 year olds in Australia now using social networking sites (Statista), it is little wonder veganism is rapidly growing within this demographic (Bradbury), with The Guardian labelling the rise of veganism unstoppable (Hancox).Activist organisations are joined by prominent and charismatic vegan activists such as James Aspey (182,000 Facebook followers) and Earthling Ed (205,000 Facebook followers) in distributing information and images that are influential and often highly graphic or disturbing. Meanwhile Instagram influencers and You Tube lifestyle vloggers such as Ellen Fisher and FreeLee share information promoting vegan food and the vegan lifestyle (with 650,320 and 785,903 subscribers respectively). YouTube video Dairy Is Scary has over 5 million views (Janus) and What the Health, a follow-up documentary to Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, promoting veganism, is now available on Netflix, which itself has 9.8 million Australian subscribers (Roy Morgan, “Netflix”). BOSH’s plant-based vegan cookbook was the fastest selling cookbook of 2018 (Chiorando).Additionally, the considerable influence of celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Beyonce, Alicia Silverstone, Zac Efron, and Jessica Chastain, to name just a few, speaking publicly about their vegan lifestyle, encourages veganism to become mainstream and increases its widespread acceptance.However not all the dairy industry’s ills can be blamed on vegans. Rising costs, cheap imports, and other pressures (Lockhart, Donaghy and Gow) have all placed pressure on the industry. Nonetheless, in the battle for hearts and minds on social media, the vegans are leading the way.Qualitative research interviewing new vegans found converting to veganism was relatively easy, yet some respondents reported having to consult multiple resources and required additional support and education on how to be vegan (McDonald 17).Enter VeganuaryUsing a month, week or day to promote an idea or campaign, is a common public relations and marketing strategy, particularly in health communications. Dry July and Ocsober both promote alcohol abstinence, Frocktober raises funds for ovarian cancer, and Movember is an annual campaign raising awareness and funds for men’s health (Parnell). Vegans Matthew Glover and Jane Land were discussing the success of Movember when they raised the idea of creating a vegan version. Their initiative, Veganuary, urging people to try vegan for the month of January, launched in 2014 and since then 500,000 people have taken the Veganuary pledge (Veganuary).The Veganuary website is the largest of its kind on the internet. With vegan recipes, expert advice and information, it provides all the answers to Why go vegan, but it is the support offered to answer How to go vegan that truly sets Veganuary apart. (Veganuary)That Veganuary participants would use social media to discuss and share their experiences was a foregone conclusion. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are all utilised by participants, with the official Veganuary pages currently followed/liked by 159,000 Instagram followers, receiving 242,038 Facebook likes, and 45,600 Twitter followers (Veganuary). Both the Twitter and Instagram sites make effective use of hashtags to spread their reach, not only using #Veganuary but also other relevant hashtags such as #TryVegan, #VeganRecipes, and the more common #Vegan, #Farm, and #SaveAnimals.Februdairy Follows Veganuary, But Only on the CalendarCalling on farmers and dairy producers to create counter content and their own hashtag may have seemed like an idea that would achieve an overall positive response.Agricultural news sites and bloggers spread the word and even the BBC reported on the industry’s “fight back” against Veganuary (BBC). However the hashtag was quickly overwhelmed with anti-dairy activists mobilising online. Vegans issued a call to arms across social media. The Vegans in Australia Facebook group featured a number of posts urging its 58,949 members to “thunderclap” the Februdairy hashtag while the Project Calf anti-dairy campaign declared that Februdairy offered an “easy” way to spread their information (Sandhu).Februdairy farmers and dairy supporters were encouraged to tell their stories, sharing positive photographs and videos, and they did. However this content was limited. In this tweet (fig. 1) the issue of a lack of diverse content was succinctly addressed by an anti-Februdairy activist.Fig. 1: Content challenges. (#Februdairy, 2 Feb. 2019)MethodUtilising Twitter’s advanced search capability, I was able to search for #Veganuary tweets from 1 to 7 January 2019 and #Februdairy tweets from 1 to 7 February 2019. I analysed the top tweets provided by Twitter in terms of content, assessed whether the tweet was pro or anti Veganuary and Februdairy, and also categorised its content in terms of subject matter.Tweets were analysed to assess whether they were on message and aligned with the values of their associated hashtag. Veganuary tweets were considered to be on message if they promoted veganism or possessed an anti-dairy, anti-meat, or pro-animal sentiment. Februdairy tweets were assessed as on message if they promoted the consumption of dairy products, expressed sympathy or empathy towards the dairy industry, or possessed an anti-vegan sentiment. Tweets were also evaluated according to their clarity, emotional impact and coherence. The overall effectiveness of the hashtag was then evaluated based on the above criteria as well as whether they had been hijacked.Results and FindingsOverwhelmingly, the 213 #Veganuary tweets were on message. That is they were pro-Veganuary, supportive of veganism, and positive. The topics were varied and included humorous memes, environmental facts, information about the health benefits of veganism, as well as a strong focus on animals. The number of non-graphic tweets (12) concerning animals was double that of tweets featuring graphic or shocking imagery (6). Predominantly the tweets were focused on food and the sharing of recipes, with 44% of all pro #Veganuary tweets featuring recipes or images of food. Interestingly, a number of well-known corporations tweeted to promote their vegan food products, including Tesco, Aldi, Iceland, and M&S. The diversity of veganism is reflected in the tweets. Organisations used the hashtag to promote their products, including beauty and shoe products, social media influencers promoted their vegan podcasts and blogs, and, interestingly, the Ethiopian Embassy of the United Kingdom tweeted their support.There were 23 (11%) anti-Veganuary tweets. Of these, one was from Dr. Jude Capper, the founder of Februdairy. The others expressed support for farming and farmers, and a number were photographs of meat products, including sausages and fry-ups. One Australian journalist tweeted in favour of meat, stating it was yummy murder. These tweets could be described as entertaining and may perhaps serve as a means of preaching to the converted, but their ability to influence and persuade is negligible.Twitter’s search tool provided access to 141 top #Februdairy tweets. Of these 82 (52%) were a hijack of the hashtag and overtly anti-Februdairy. Vegan activists used the #Februdairy hashtag to their advantage with most of their tweets (33%) featuring non-graphic images of animals. They also tweeted about other subject matters, including environmental concerns, vegan food and products, and health issues related to dairy consumption.As noted by the activists (see fig. 1 above), most of the pro-Februdairy tweets were images of milk or dairy products (41%). Images of farms and farmers were the next most used (26%), followed by images of cows (17%) (see fig. 2). Fig. 2: An activist makes their anti-Februdairy point with a clear, engaging image and effective use of hashtags. (#Februdairy, 6 Feb. 2019)The juxtaposition between many of the tweets was also often glaring, with one contrasting message following another (see fig. 3). Fig. 3: An example of contrasting #Februdairy tweets with an image used by the activists to good effect, making their point known. (#Februdairy, 2 Feb. 2019)Storytelling is a powerful tool in public relations and marketing efforts. Yet, to be effective, high-quality content is required. That many of the Februdairy proponents had limited social media training was evident; images were blurred, film quality was poor, or they failed to make their meaning clear (see fig. 4). Fig. 4: A blurred photograph, reflective of some of the low-quality content provided by Februdairy supporters. (#Februdairy, 3 Feb. 2019)This image was tweeted in support of Februdairy. However the image and phrasing could also be used to argue against Februdairy. We can surmise that the tweeter was suggesting the cow was well looked after and seemingly content, but overall the message is as unclear as the image.While some pro-Februdairy supporters recognised the need for relevant hashtags, often their images were of a low-quality and not particularly engaging, a requirement for social media success. This requirement seems to be better understood by anti-Februdairy activists who used high-quality images and memes to create interest and gain the audience’s attention (see figs. 5 and 6). Fig. 5: An uninspiring image used to promote Februdairy. (#Februdairy, 6 Feb. 2019) Fig. 6: Anti-Februdairy activists made good use of memes, recognising the need for diverse content. (#Februdairy, 3 Feb. 2019)DiscussionWhat the #Februdairy case makes clear, then, is that in continuing its focus on traditional media, the dairy industry has left the battle online to largely untrained, non-social media savvy supporters.From a purely public relations perspective, one of the first things we ask our students to do in issues and crisis communication is to assess the risk. “What can hurt your organisation?” we ask. “What potential issues are on the horizon and what can you do to prevent them?” This is PR101 and it is difficult to understand why environmental scanning and resulting action has not been on the radar of the dairy industry long before now. It seems they have not fully anticipated or have significantly underestimated the emerging issue that public perception, animal cruelty, health concerns, and, ultimately, veganism has had on their industry and this is to their detriment. In Australia in 2015–16 the dairy industry was responsible for 8 per cent (A$4.3 billion) of the gross value of agricultural production and 7 per cent (A$3 billion) of agricultural export income (Department of Agriculture and Water Resources). When such large figures are involved and with so much at stake, it is hard to rationalise the decision not to engage in a more proactive online strategy, seeking to engage their publics, including, whether they like it or not, activists.Instead there are current attempts to address these issues with a legislative approach, lobbying for the introduction of ag-gag laws (Potter), and the limitation of terms such as milk and cheese (Worthington). However, these measures are undertaken while there is little attempt to engage with activists or to effectively counter their claims with a widespread authentic public relations campaign, and reflects a failure to understand the nature of the current online environment, momentum, and mood.That is not to say that the dairy industry is not operating in the online environment, but it does not appear to be a priority, and this is reflected in their low engagement and numbers of followers. For instance, Dairy Australia, the industry’s national service body, has a following of only 8,281 on Facebook, 6,981 on Twitter, and, crucially, they are not on Instagram. Their Twitter posts do not include hashtags and unsurprisingly they have little engagement on this platform with most tweets attracting no more than two likes. Surprisingly they have 21,013 subscribers on YouTube which featured professional and well-presented videos. This demonstrates some understanding of the importance of effective storytelling but not, as yet, trans-media storytelling.ConclusionSocial media activism is becoming more important and recognised as a legitimate voice in the public sphere. Many organisations, perhaps in recognition of this as well as a growing focus on responsible corporate behaviour, particularly in the treatment of animals, have adjusted their behaviour. From Unilever abandoning animal testing practices to ensure Dove products are certified cruelty free (Nussbaum), to Domino’s introducing vegan options, companies who are aware of emerging trends and values are changing the way they do business and are reaping the benefits of engaging with, and catering to, vegans. Domino’s sold out of vegan cheese within the first week and vegans were asked to phone ahead to their local store, so great was the demand. From their website:We knew the response was going to be big after the demand we saw for the product on social media but we had no idea it was going to be this big. (Domino’s Newsroom)As a public relations professional, I am baffled by the dairy industry’s failure to adopt a crisis-based strategy rather than largely rely on the traditional one-way communication that has served them well in the previous (golden?) pre-social media age. However, as a vegan, persuaded by the unravelling of the happy cow argument, I cannot help but hope this realisation continues to elude them.References@bovidiva. “Let’s Make #Februdairy Happen This Year. 28 Days, 28 Positive #dairy Posts. From Cute Calves and #cheese on Crumpets, to Belligerent Bulls and Juicy #beef #burgers – Who’s In?” Twitter post. 15 Jan. 2018. 1 Feb. 2019 <https://twitter.com/bovidiva/status/952910641840447488?lang=en>.Austin, Lucinda L., and Yan Jin. Social Media and Crisis Communication. 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Abstract:

1991 An afternoon in late 1991 found me on a Sydney bus reading Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (1991). A disembarking passenger paused at my side and, as I glanced up, hissed, ‘I don’t know how you can read that filth’. As she continued to make her way to the front of the vehicle, I was as stunned as if she had struck me physically. There was real vehemence in both her words and how they were delivered, and I can still see her eyes squeezing into slits as she hesitated while curling her mouth around that final angry word: ‘filth’. Now, almost fifteen years later, the memory is remarkably vivid. As the event is also still remarkable; this comment remaining the only remark ever made to me by a stranger about anything I have been reading during three decades of travelling on public transport. That inflamed commuter summed up much of the furore that greeted the publication of American Psycho. More than this, and unusually, condemnation of the work both actually preceded, and affected, its publication. Although Ellis had been paid a substantial U.S. $300,000 advance by Simon & Schuster, pre-publication stories based on circulating galley proofs were so negative—offering assessments of the book as: ‘moronic … pointless … themeless … worthless (Rosenblatt 3), ‘superficial’, ‘a tapeworm narrative’ (Sheppard 100) and ‘vile … p*rnography, not literature … immoral, but also artless’ (Miner 43)—that the publisher cancelled the contract (forfeiting the advance) only months before the scheduled release date. CEO of Simon & Schuster, Richard E. Snyder, explained: ‘it was an error of judgement to put our name on a book of such questionable taste’ (quoted in McDowell, “Vintage” 13). American Psycho was, instead, published by Random House/Knopf in March 1991 under its prestige paperback imprint, Vintage Contemporary (Zaller; Freccero 48) – Sonny Mehta having signed the book to Random House some two days after Simon & Schuster withdrew from its agreement with Ellis. While many commented on the fact that Ellis was paid two substantial advances, it was rarely noted that Random House was a more prestigious publisher than Simon & Schuster (Iannone 52). After its release, American Psycho was almost universally vilified and denigrated by the American critical establishment. The work was criticised on both moral and aesthetic/literary/artistic grounds; that is, in terms of both what Ellis wrote and how he wrote it. Critics found it ‘meaningless’ (Lehmann-Haupt C18), ‘abysmally written … schlock’ (Kennedy 427), ‘repulsive, a bloodbath serving no purpose save that of morbidity, titillation and sensation … pure trash, as scummy and mean as anything it depicts, a dirty book by a dirty writer’ (Yardley B1) and ‘garbage’ (Gurley Brown 21). Mark Archer found that ‘the attempt to confuse style with content is callow’ (31), while Naomi Wolf wrote that: ‘overall, reading American Psycho holds the same fascination as watching a maladjusted 11-year-old draw on his desk’ (34). John Leo’s assessment sums up the passionate intensity of those critical of the work: ‘totally hateful … violent junk … no discernible plot, no believable characterization, no sensibility at work that comes anywhere close to making art out of all the blood and torture … Ellis displays little feel for narration, words, grammar or the rhythm of language’ (23). These reviews, as those printed pre-publication, were titled in similarly unequivocal language: ‘A Revolting Development’ (Sheppard 100), ‘Marketing Cynicism and Vulgarity’ (Leo 23), ‘Designer p*rn’ (Manguel 46) and ‘Essence of Trash’ (Yardley B1). Perhaps the most unambiguous in its message was Roger Rosenblatt’s ‘Snuff this Book!’ (3). Of all works published in the U.S.A. at that time, including those clearly carrying X ratings, the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) selected American Psycho for special notice, stating that the book ‘legitimizes inhuman and savage violence masquerading as sexuality’ (NOW 114). Judging the book ‘the most misogynistic communication’ the organisation had ever encountered (NOW L.A. chapter president, Tammy Bruce, quoted in Kennedy 427) and, on the grounds that ‘violence against women in any form is no longer socially acceptable’ (McDowell, “NOW” C17), NOW called for a boycott of the entire Random House catalogue for the remainder of 1991. Naomi Wolf agreed, calling the novel ‘a violation not of obscenity standards, but of women’s civil rights, insofar as it results in conditioning male sexual response to female suffering or degradation’ (34). Later, the boycott was narrowed to Knopf and Vintage titles (Love 46), but also extended to all of the many products, companies, corporations, firms and brand names that are a feature of Ellis’s novel (Kauffman, “American” 41). There were other unexpected responses such as the Walt Disney Corporation barring Ellis from the opening of Euro Disney (Tyrnauer 101), although Ellis had already been driven from public view after receiving a number of death threats and did not undertake a book tour (Kennedy 427). Despite this, the book received significant publicity courtesy of the controversy and, although several national bookstore chains and numerous booksellers around the world refused to sell the book, more than 100,000 copies were sold in the U.S.A. in the fortnight after publication (Dwyer 55). Even this success had an unprecedented effect: when American Psycho became a bestseller, The New York Times announced that it would be removing the title from its bestseller lists because of the book’s content. In the days following publication in the U.S.A., Canadian customs announced that it was considering whether to allow the local arm of Random House to, first, import American Psycho for sale in Canada and, then, publish it in Canada (Kirchhoff, “Psycho” C1). Two weeks later, when the book was passed for sale (Kirchhoff, “Customs” C1), demonstrators protested the entrance of a shipment of the book. In May, the Canadian Defence Force made headlines when it withdrew copies of the book from the library shelves of a navy base in Halifax (Canadian Press C1). Also in May 1991, the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), the federal agency that administers the classification scheme for all films, computer games and ‘submittable’ publications (including books) that are sold, hired or exhibited in Australia, announced that it had classified American Psycho as ‘Category 1 Restricted’ (W. Fraser, “Book” 5), to be sold sealed, to only those over 18 years of age. This was the first such classification of a mainstream literary work since the rating scheme was introduced (Graham), and the first time a work of literature had been restricted for sale since Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969. The chief censor, John Dickie, said the OFLC could not justify refusing the book classification (and essentially banning the work), and while ‘as a satire on yuppies it has a lot going for it’, personally he found the book ‘distasteful’ (quoted in W. Fraser, “Sensitive” 5). Moreover, while this ‘R’ classification was, and remains, a national classification, Australian States and Territories have their own sale and distribution regulation systems. Under this regime, American Psycho remains banned from sale in Queensland, as are all other books in this classification category (Vnuk). These various reactions led to a flood of articles published in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and the U.K., voicing passionate opinions on a range of issues including free speech and censorship, the corporate control of artistic thought and practice, and cynicism on the part of authors and their publishers about what works might attract publicity and (therefore) sell in large numbers (see, for instance, Hitchens 7; Irving 1). The relationship between violence in society and its representation in the media was a common theme, with only a few commentators (including Norman Mailer in a high profile Vanity Fair article) suggesting that, instead of inciting violence, the media largely reflected, and commented upon, societal violence. Elayne Rapping, an academic in the field of Communications, proposed that the media did actively glorify violence, but only because there was a market for such representations: ‘We, as a society love violence, thrive on violence as the very basis of our social stability, our ideological belief system … The problem, after all, is not media violence but real violence’ (36, 38). Many more commentators, however, agreed with NOW, Wolf and others and charged Ellis’s work with encouraging, and even instigating, violent acts, and especially those against women, calling American Psycho ‘a kind of advertising for violence against women’ (anthropologist Elliot Leyton quoted in Dwyer 55) and, even, a ‘how-to manual on the torture and dismemberment of women’ (Leo 23). Support for the book was difficult to find in the flood of vitriol directed against it, but a small number wrote in Ellis’s defence. Sonny Mehta, himself the target of death threats for acquiring the book for Random House, stood by this assessment, and was widely quoted in his belief that American Psycho was ‘a serious book by a serious writer’ and that Ellis was ‘remarkably talented’ (Knight-Ridder L10). Publishing director of Pan Macmillan Australia, James Fraser, defended his decision to release American Psycho on the grounds that the book told important truths about society, arguing: ‘A publisher’s office is a clearing house for ideas … the real issue for community debate [is] – to what extent does it want to hear the truth about itself, about individuals within the community and about the governments the community elects. If we care about the preservation of standards, there is none higher than this. Gore Vidal was among the very few who stated outright that he liked the book, finding it ‘really rather inspired … a wonderfully comic novel’ (quoted in Tyrnauer 73). Fay Weldon agreed, judging the book as ‘brilliant’, and focusing on the importance of Ellis’s message: ‘Bret Easton Ellis is a very good writer. He gets us to a ‘T’. And we can’t stand it. It’s our problem, not his. American Psycho is a beautifully controlled, careful, important novel that revolves around its own nasty bits’ (C1). Since 1991 As unlikely as this now seems, I first read American Psycho without any awareness of the controversy raging around its publication. I had read Ellis’s earlier works, Less than Zero (1985) and The Rules of Attraction (1987) and, with my energies fully engaged elsewhere, cannot now even remember how I acquired the book. Since that angry remark on the bus, however, I have followed American Psycho’s infamy and how it has remained in the public eye over the last decade and a half. Australian OFLC decisions can be reviewed and reversed – as when Pasolini’s final film Salo (1975), which was banned in Australia from the time of its release in 1975 until it was un-banned in 1993, was then banned again in 1998 – however, American Psycho’s initial classification has remained unchanged. In July 2006, I purchased a new paperback copy in rural New South Wales. It was shrink-wrapped in plastic and labelled: ‘R. Category One. Not available to persons under 18 years. Restricted’. While exact sales figures are difficult to ascertain, by working with U.S.A., U.K. and Australian figures, this copy was, I estimate, one of some 1.5 to 1.6 million sold since publication. In the U.S.A., backlist sales remain very strong, with some 22,000 copies sold annually (Holt and Abbott), while lifetime sales in the U.K. are just under 720,000 over five paperback editions. Sales in Australia are currently estimated by Pan MacMillan to total some 100,000, with a new printing of 5,000 copies recently ordered in Australia on the strength of the book being featured on the inaugural Australian Broadcasting Commission’s First Tuesday Book Club national television program (2006). Predictably, the controversy around the publication of American Psycho is regularly revisited by those reviewing Ellis’s subsequent works. A major article in Vanity Fair on Ellis’s next book, The Informers (1994), opened with a graphic description of the death threats Ellis received upon the publication of American Psycho (Tyrnauer 70) and then outlined the controversy in detail (70-71). Those writing about Ellis’s two most recent novels, Glamorama (1999) and Lunar Park (2005), have shared this narrative strategy, which also forms at least part of the frame of every interview article. American Psycho also, again predictably, became a major topic of discussion in relation to the contracting, making and then release of the eponymous film in 2000 as, for example, in Linda S. Kauffman’s extensive and considered review of the film, which spent the first third discussing the history of the book’s publication (“American” 41-45). Playing with this interest, Ellis continues his practice of reusing characters in subsequent works. Thus, American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, who first appeared in The Rules of Attraction as the elder brother of the main character, Sean – who, in turn, makes a brief appearance in American Psycho – also turns up in Glamorama with ‘strange stains’ on his Armani suit lapels, and again in Lunar Park. The book also continues to be regularly cited in discussions of censorship (see, for example, Dubin; Freccero) and has been included in a number of university-level courses about banned books. In these varied contexts, literary, cultural and other critics have also continued to disagree about the book’s impact upon readers, with some persisting in reading the novel as a p*rnographic incitement to violence. When Wade Frankum killed seven people in Sydney, many suggested a link between these murders and his consumption of X-rated videos, p*rnographic magazines and American Psycho (see, for example, Manne 11), although others argued against this (Wark 11). Prosecutors in the trial of Canadian murderer Paul Bernardo argued that American Psycho provided a ‘blueprint’ for Bernardo’s crimes (Canadian Press A5). Others have read Ellis’s work more positively, as for instance when Sonia Baelo Allué compares American Psycho favourably with Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs (1988) – arguing that Harris not only depicts more degrading treatment of women, but also makes Hannibal Lecter, his antihero monster, sexily attractive (7-24). Linda S. Kauffman posits that American Psycho is part of an ‘anti-aesthetic’ movement in art, whereby works that are revoltingly ugly and/or grotesque function to confront the repressed fears and desires of the audience and explore issues of identity and subjectivity (Bad Girls), while Patrick W. Shaw includes American Psycho in his work, The Modern American Novel of Violence because, in his opinion, the violence Ellis depicts is not gratuitous. Lost, however, in much of this often-impassioned debate and dialogue is the book itself – and what Ellis actually wrote. 21-years-old when Less than Zero was published, Ellis was still only 26 when American Psycho was released and his youth presented an obvious target. In 1991, Terry Teachout found ‘no moment in American Psycho where Bret Easton Ellis, who claims to be a serious artist, exhibits the workings of an adult moral imagination’ (45, 46), Brad Miner that it was ‘puerile – the very antithesis of good writing’ (43) and Carol Iannone that ‘the inclusion of the now famous offensive scenes reveals a staggering aesthetic and moral immaturity’ (54). Pagan Kennedy also ‘blamed’ the entire work on this immaturity, suggesting that instead of possessing a developed artistic sensibility, Ellis was reacting to (and, ironically, writing for the approval of) critics who had lauded the documentary realism of his violent and nihilistic teenage characters in Less than Zero, but then panned his less sensational story of campus life in The Rules of Attraction (427-428). Yet, in my opinion, there is not only a clear and coherent aesthetic vision driving Ellis’s oeuvre but, moreover, a profoundly moral imagination at work as well. This was my view upon first reading American Psycho, and part of the reason I was so shocked by that charge of filth on the bus. Once familiar with the controversy, I found this view shared by only a minority of commentators. Writing in the New Statesman & Society, Elizabeth J. Young asked: ‘Where have these people been? … Books of p*rnographic violence are nothing new … American Psycho outrages no contemporary taboos. Psychotic killers are everywhere’ (24). I was similarly aware that such murderers not only existed in reality, but also in many widely accessed works of literature and film – to the point where a few years later Joyce Carol Oates could suggest that the serial killer was an icon of popular culture (233). While a popular topic for writers of crime fiction and true crime narratives in both print and on film, a number of ‘serious’ literary writers – including Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Kate Millet, Margaret Atwood and Oates herself – have also written about serial killers, and even crossed over into the widely acknowledged as ‘low-brow’ true crime genre. Many of these works (both popular or more literary) are vivid and powerful and have, as American Psycho, taken a strong moral position towards their subject matter. Moreover, many books and films have far more disturbing content than American Psycho, yet have caused no such uproar (Young and Caveney 120). By now, the plot of American Psycho is well known, although the structure of the book, noted by Weldon above (C1), is rarely analysed or even commented upon. First person narrator, Patrick Bateman, a young, handsome stockbroker and stereotypical 1980s yuppie, is also a serial killer. The book is largely, and innovatively, structured around this seeming incompatibility – challenging readers’ expectations that such a depraved criminal can be a wealthy white professional – while vividly contrasting the banal, and meticulously detailed, emptiness of Bateman’s life as a New York über-consumer with the scenes where he humiliates, rapes, tortures, murders, mutilates, dismembers and cannibalises his victims. Although only comprising some 16 out of 399 pages in my Picador edition, these violent scenes are extreme and certainly make the work as a whole disgustingly confronting. But that is the entire point of Ellis’s work. Bateman’s violence is rendered so explicitly because its principal role in the novel is to be inescapably horrific. As noted by Baelo Allué, there is no shift in tone between the most banally described detail and the description of violence (17): ‘I’ve situated the body in front of the new Toshiba television set and in the VCR is an old tape and appearing on the screen is the last girl I filmed. I’m wearing a Joseph Abboud suit, a tie by Paul Stuart, shoes by J. Crew, a vest by someone Italian and I’m kneeling on the floor beside a corpse, eating the girl’s brain, gobbling it down, spreading Grey Poupon over hunks of the pink, fleshy meat’ (Ellis 328). In complete opposition to how p*rnography functions, Ellis leaves no room for the possible enjoyment of such a scene. Instead of revelling in the ‘spine chilling’ pleasures of classic horror narratives, there is only the real horror of imagining such an act. The effect, as Kauffman has observed is, rather than arousing, often so disgusting as to be emetic (Bad Girls 249). Ellis was surprised that his detractors did not understand that he was trying to be shocking, not offensive (Love 49), or that his overall aim was to symbolise ‘how desensitised our culture has become towards violence’ (quoted in Dwyer 55). Ellis was also understandably frustrated with readings that conflated not only the contents of the book and their meaning, but also the narrator and author: ‘The acts described in the book are truly, indisputably vile. The book itself is not. Patrick Bateman is a monster. I am not’ (quoted in Love 49). Like Fay Weldon, Norman Mailer understood that American Psycho posited ‘that the eighties were spiritually disgusting and the author’s presentation is the crystallization of such horror’ (129). Unlike Weldon, however, Mailer shied away from defending the novel by judging Ellis not accomplished enough a writer to achieve his ‘monstrous’ aims (182), failing because he did not situate Bateman within a moral universe, that is, ‘by having a murderer with enough inner life for us to comprehend him’ (182). Yet, the morality of Ellis’s project is evident. By viewing the world through the lens of a psychotic killer who, in many ways, personifies the American Dream – wealthy, powerful, intelligent, handsome, energetic and successful – and, yet, who gains no pleasure, satisfaction, coherent identity or sense of life’s meaning from his endless, selfish consumption, Ellis exposes the emptiness of both that world and that dream. As Bateman himself explains: ‘Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in. This was civilisation as I saw it, colossal and jagged’ (Ellis 375). Ellis thus situates the responsibility for Bateman’s violence not in his individual moral vacuity, but in the barren values of the society that has shaped him – a selfish society that, in Ellis’s opinion, refused to address the most important issues of the day: corporate greed, mindless consumerism, poverty, homelessness and the prevalence of violent crime. Instead of p*rnographic, therefore, American Psycho is a profoundly political text: Ellis was never attempting to glorify or incite violence against anyone, but rather to expose the effects of apathy to these broad social problems, including the very kinds of violence the most vocal critics feared the book would engender. Fifteen years after the publication of American Psycho, although our societies are apparently growing in overall prosperity, the gap between rich and poor also continues to grow, more are permanently homeless, violence – whether domestic, random or institutionally-sanctioned – escalates, and yet general apathy has intensified to the point where even the ‘ethics’ of torture as government policy can be posited as a subject for rational debate. The real filth of the saga of American Psycho is, thus, how Ellis’s message was wilfully ignored. While critics and public intellectuals discussed the work at length in almost every prominent publication available, few attempted to think in any depth about what Ellis actually wrote about, or to use their powerful positions to raise any serious debate about the concerns he voiced. Some recent critical reappraisals have begun to appreciate how American Psycho is an ‘ethical denunciation, where the reader cannot but face the real horror behind the serial killer phenomenon’ (Baelo Allué 8), but Ellis, I believe, goes further, exposing the truly filthy causes that underlie the existence of such seemingly ‘senseless’ murder. But, Wait, There’s More It is ironic that American Psycho has, itself, generated a mini-industry of products. A decade after publication, a Canadian team – filmmaker Mary Harron, director of I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), working with scriptwriter, Guinevere Turner, and Vancouver-based Lions Gate Entertainment – adapted the book for a major film (Johnson). Starring Christian Bale, Chloë Sevigny, Willem Dafoe and Reese Witherspoon and, with an estimated budget of U.S.$8 million, the film made U.S.$15 million at the American box office. The soundtrack was released for the film’s opening, with video and DVDs to follow and the ‘Killer Collector’s Edition’ DVD – closed-captioned, in widescreen with surround sound – released in June 2005. Amazon.com lists four movie posters (including a Japanese language version) and, most unexpected of all, a series of film tie-in action dolls. The two most popular of these, judging by E-Bay, are the ‘Cult Classics Series 1: Patrick Bateman’ figure which, attired in a smart suit, comes with essential accoutrements of walkman with headphones, briefcase, Wall Street Journal, video tape and recorder, knife, cleaver, axe, nail gun, severed hand and a display base; and the 18” tall ‘motion activated sound’ edition – a larger version of the same doll with fewer accessories, but which plays sound bites from the movie. Thanks to Stephen Harris and Suzie Gibson (UNE) for stimulating conversations about this book, Stephen Harris for information about the recent Australian reprint of American Psycho and Mark Seebeck (Pan Macmillan) for sales information. References Archer, Mark. “The Funeral Baked Meats.” The Spectator 27 April 1991: 31. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. First Tuesday Book Club. First broadcast 1 August 2006. Baelo Allué, Sonia. “The Aesthetics of Serial Killing: Working against Ethics in The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and American Psycho (1991).” Atlantis 24.2 (Dec. 2002): 7-24. Canadian Press. “Navy Yanks American Psycho.” The Globe and Mail 17 May 1991: C1. Canadian Press. “Gruesome Novel Was Bedside Reading.” Kitchener-Waterloo Record 1 Sep. 1995: A5. Dubin, Steven C. “Art’s Enemies: Censors to the Right of Me, Censors to the Left of Me.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 28.4 (Winter 1994): 44-54. Dwyer, Victor. “Literary Firestorm: Canada Customs Scrutinizes a Brutal Novel.” Maclean’s April 1991: 55. Ellis, Bret Easton. American Psycho. London: Macmillan-Picador, 1991. ———. Glamorama. New York: Knopf, 1999. ———. The Informers. New York: Knopf, 1994. ———. Less than Zero. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985. ———. Lunar Park. New York: Knopf, 2005. ———. The Rules of Attraction. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. Fraser, James. :The Case for Publishing.” The Bulletin 18 June 1991. Fraser, William. “Book May Go under Wraps.” The Sydney Morning Herald 23 May 1991: 5. ———. “The Sensitive Censor and the Psycho.” The Sydney Morning Herald 24 May 1991: 5. Freccero, Carla. “Historical Violence, Censorship, and the Serial Killer: The Case of American Psycho.” Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 27.2 (Summer 1997): 44-58. Graham, I. “Australian Censorship History.” Libertus.net 9 Dec. 2001. 17 May 2006 http://libertus.net/censor/hist20on.html>. Gurley Brown, Helen. Commentary in “Editorial Judgement or Censorship?: The Case of American Psycho.” The Writer May 1991: 20-23. Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. New York: St Martins Press, 1988. Harron, Mary (dir.). American Psycho [film]. Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation, Lions Gate Films, Muse Productions, P.P.S. Films, Quadra Entertainment, Universal Pictures, 2004. Hitchens, Christopher. “Minority Report.” The Nation 7-14 January 1991: 7. Holt, Karen, and Charlotte Abbott. “Lunar Park: The Novel.” Publishers Weekly 11 July 2005. 13 Aug. 2006 http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA624404.html? pubdate=7%2F11%2F2005&display=archive>. Iannone, Carol. “PC & the Ellis Affair.” Commentary Magazine July 1991: 52-4. Irving, John. “p*rnography and the New Puritans.” The New York Times Book Review 29 March 1992: Section 7, 1. 13 Aug. 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/lifetimes/25665.html>. Johnson, Brian D. “Canadian Cool Meets American Psycho.” Maclean’s 10 April 2000. 13 Aug. 2006 http://www.macleans.ca/culture/films/article.jsp?content=33146>. Kauffman, Linda S. “American Psycho [film review].” Film Quarterly 54.2 (Winter 2000-2001): 41-45. ———. Bad Girls and Sick Boys: Fantasies in Contemporary Art and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Kennedy, Pagan. “Generation Gaffe: American Psycho.” The Nation 1 April 1991: 426-8. Kirchhoff, H. J. “Customs Clears Psycho: Booksellers’ Reaction Mixed.” The Globe and Mail 26 March 1991: C1. ———. “Psycho Sits in Limbo: Publisher Awaits Customs Ruling.” The Globe and Mail 14 March 1991: C1. Knight-Ridder News Service. “Vintage Picks up Ellis’ American Psycho.” Los Angeles Daily News 17 November 1990: L10. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. “Psycho: Wither Death without Life?” The New York Times 11 March 1991: C18. Leo, John. “Marketing Cynicism and Vulgarity.” U.S. News & World Report 3 Dec. 1990: 23. Love, Robert. “Psycho Analysis: Interview with Bret Easton Ellis.” Rolling Stone 4 April 1991: 45-46, 49-51. Mailer, Norman. “Children of the Pied Piper: Mailer on American Psycho.” Vanity Fair March 1991: 124-9, 182-3. Manguel, Alberto. “Designer p*rn.” Saturday Night 106.6 (July 1991): 46-8. Manne, Robert. “Liberals Deny the Video Link.” The Australian 6 Jan. 1997: 11. McDowell, Edwin. “NOW Chapter Seeks Boycott of ‘Psycho’ Novel.” The New York Times 6 Dec. 1990: C17. ———. “Vintage Buys Violent Book Dropped by Simon & Schuster.” The New York Times 17 Nov. 1990: 13. Miner, Brad. “Random Notes.” National Review 31 Dec. 1990: 43. National Organization for Women. Library Journal 2.91 (1991): 114. Oates, Joyce Carol. “Three American Gothics.” Where I’ve Been, and Where I’m Going: Essays, Reviews and Prose. New York: Plume, 1999. 232-43. Rapping, Elayne. “The Uses of Violence.” Progressive 55 (1991): 36-8. Rosenblatt, Roger. “Snuff this Book!: Will Brett Easton Ellis Get Away with Murder?” New York Times Book Review 16 Dec. 1990: 3, 16. Roth, Philip. Portnoy’s Complaint. New York: Random House, 1969. Shaw, Patrick W. The Modern American Novel of Violence. Troy, NY: Whitson, 2000. Sheppard, R. Z. “A Revolting Development.” Time 29 Oct. 1990: 100. Teachout, Terry. “Applied Deconstruction.” National Review 24 June 1991: 45-6. Tyrnauer, Matthew. “Who’s Afraid of Bret Easton Ellis?” Vanity Fair 57.8 (Aug. 1994): 70-3, 100-1. Vnuk, Helen. “X-rated? Outdated.” The Age 21 Sep. 2003. 17 May 2006 http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/19/1063625202157.html>. Wark, McKenzie. “Video Link Is a Distorted View.” The Australian 8 Jan. 1997: 11. Weldon, Fay. “Now You’re Squeamish?: In a World as Sick as Ours, It’s Silly to Target American Psycho.” The Washington Post 28 April 1991: C1. Wolf, Naomi. “The Animals Speak.” New Statesman & Society 12 April 1991: 33-4. Yardley, Jonathan. “American Psycho: Essence of Trash.” The Washington Post 27 Feb. 1991: B1. Young, Elizabeth J. “Psycho Killers. Last Lines: How to Shock the English.” New Statesman & Society 5 April 1991: 24. Young, Elizabeth J., and Graham Caveney. Shopping in Space: Essays on American ‘Blank Generation’ Fiction. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1992. Zaller, Robert “American Psycho, American Censorship and the Dahmer Case.” Revue Francaise d’Etudes Americaines 16.56 (1993): 317-25. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Brien, Donna Lee. "The Real Filth in : A Critical Reassessment." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php>. APA Style Brien, D. (Nov. 2006) "The Real Filth in American Psycho: A Critical Reassessment," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php>.

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Abstract:

Introduction Japan has long been cited as a major source of cute (kawaii) culture as it has spread around the world, as encapsulated in Christine R. Yano’s phrase ‘Pink Globalization’. This essay charts recent developments in Japanese society through the cute character Rilakkuma, a character produced by San-X (a competitor to Sanrio, which produces the famed Hello Kitty). His name means ‘relaxed bear’, and Rilakkuma and friends are featured in comics, games and other products, called kyarakutā shōhin (also kyarakutā guzzu, which both mean ‘character goods’). Rilakkuma is pictured relaxing, sleeping, eating sweets, and listening to music; he is not only lazy, but he is also unproductive in socio-economic terms. Yet, he is never censured for this lifestyle. He provides visual pleasure to those who buy these goods, but more importantly, Rilakkuma’s story charitably portrays a lifestyle that is fully consumptive with very little, if any, productivity. Rilakkuma’s reified consumption is certainly in line with many earlier analyses of shōjo (young girl) culture in Japan, where consumerism is considered ‘detached from the productive economy of heterosexual reproduction’ (Treat, 281) and valued as an end in itself. Young girl culture in Japan has been both critiqued and celebrated in in opposition to the economic productivity as well as the emotional emptiness and weakening social prestige of the salaried man (Roberson and Suzuki, 9-10). In recent years, ideal masculinity has been further critiqued with the rise of the sōshokukei danshi (‘grass-eating men’) image: today’s Japanese male youth appear to have no appetite for the ‘meat’ associated with heteronormative, competitively capitalistic male roles (Steger 2013). That is not to say all gender roles have vanished; instead, social and economic precarity has created a space for young people to subvert them. Whether by design or by accident, Rilakkuma has come to represent a Japanese consumer maintaining some standard of emotional equilibrium in the face of the instability that followed the Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in early 2011. A Relaxed Bear in a Precarious Japan Certainly much has been written about the ‘lost decade(s)’ in Japan, or the unraveling of the Japanese postwar miracle since the early 1990s in a variety of unsettling ways. The burst of the ‘bubble economy’ in 1991 led to a period of low or no economic growth, uncertain employment conditions and deflation. Because of Japan’s relative wealth and mature economic system, this was seen a gradual process that Mark Driscoll calls a shift from the ‘so-called Japan Inc. of the 1980s’ to ‘“Japan Shrink” of the 2010s and 2020s’ (165). The Japanese economy was further troubled by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and then the Tōhoku disasters. These events have contributed to Japan’s state of ambivalence, as viewed by both its citizens and by external observers. Despite its relative wealth, the nation continues to struggle with deflation (and its corresponding stagnation of wages), a deepening chasm between the two-tier employment system of permanent and casual work, and a deepening public mistrust of corporate and governing authorities. Some of this story is not ‘new’; dual employment practices have existed throughout Japan’s postwar history. What has changed, however, is the attitudes of casual workers; it is now thought to be much more difficult, if not impossible, to shift from low paid, insecure casual labour to permanent, secure positions. The overall unemployment rate remains low precisely because the number of temporary and part time workers has increased, as much as one third of all workers in 2012 (The Japan Times). The Japanese government now concedes that ‘the balance of working conditions between regular and non-regular workers have therefore become important issues’ (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare); many see this is not only a distinction between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, but also of a generational shift of those who achieved secure positions before the ‘lost decade’, and those who came after. Economic, political, environmental and social insecurity have given rise to a certain level public malaise, not conducive to a robust consumer culture. Enter Rilakkuma: he, like many other cute characters in Japan, entices the consumer to feel good about spending – or perhaps, to feel okay about spending? – in this precarious time of underemployment and uncertainty about the future. ‘Cute’ Characters: Attracting as Well as Attractive Cute (‘kawaii’) culture in Japan is not just aesthetic; it includes ‘a turn to emotion and even sentimentality, in some of the least likely places’ (Yano, 7). Cute kyarakutā are not just sentimentally attractive; they are more precisely attracting images which are used to sell these character goods: toys, household objects, clothing and stationery. Occhi writes that many kyarakutā are the result of an ‘anthropomorphization’ of objects or creatures which ‘guide the user towards specific [consumer] behaviors’ (78). While kyarakutā would be created first to sell a product, in the end, the character’s popularity at times can eclipse the product’s value, and the character thus becomes ‘pure product’, as in the case of Hello Kitty (Yano, 10). Most characters, however, merely function as ‘specific representatives of a product or service rendered mentally “sticky” through narratives, wordplay and other specialized aspects of their design’ (Occhi, 86). Miller refers to this phenomenon as ‘Japan’s zoomorphic urge’, and argues that etiquette guides and public service posters, which frequently use cute and cuddly animals in the place of humans, is done to ‘render […] potentially dangerous or sensitive topics as safe and acceptable’ (69). Cuteness instrumentally turns away from negative aspects of society, whether it is the demonstration of etiquette rules in public, or the portrayal of an underemployed or unemployed person watching TV at home, as in Rilakkuma. Thus we see a revitalization of the cute zeitgeist in Japanese consumerism in products such as the Rilakkuma franchise, produced by San-X, a company that produces and distributes ‘stationary [sic], sundry goods, merchandises [sic], and paper products with original design.’ (San-X Net). Who Is Rilakkuma? According to the company’s ‘fan’ books, written in response to the popularity of Rilakkuma’s character goods (Nakazawa), the background story of Rilakkuma is as follows: one day, a smallish bear found its way unexplained into the apartment of a Japanese OL (office lady) named Kaoru. He spends his time ‘being of no use to Kaoru, and is actually a pest by lying around all day doing nothing… his main concerns are meals and snacks. He seems to hate the summer [heat].’ Other activities include watching television, listening to music, taking long baths, and tossing balls of paper into the rubbish bin (Nakazawa, 4). His comrades are Korilakkuma (loosely translated as ‘Little Rilakkuma’) and Kiiroitori (simply, ‘Yellow Bird’). Korilakkuma is a smaller and paler version of Rilakkuma; like her friend, she appears in Kaoru’s apartment for no reason. She is described as liking to pull pranks (itazuradaisuki) and is comparatively more energetic (genki) than Rilakkuma; her main activities are imitating Rilakkuma and looking for someone with whom to play (6). Lastly, Kiiroitori is a small yellow bird resembling a chick, and seems to be the only character of the three who has any ‘right’ to reside in Kaoru’s apartment. Kiiroitori was a pet bird residing in cage before the appearance of these two bears, but after Rilakkuma and Korilakkuma set themselves up in her small apartment, Kiiroitori was liberated from his cage and flies in the faces of lazy Rilakkuma and mischievous Korilakkuma (7). Kiiroitori likes tidiness, and is frequently cleaning up after the lazy bears, and he can be short tempered about this (ibid). Kiiroitori’s interests include the charming but rather thrifty ‘finding spare change while cleaning up’ and ‘bear climbing’, which is enjoyed primarily for its annoyance to the bears (ibid). Fig. 1: Korilakkuma, Rilakkuma and Kiiroitori, in 10-year anniversary attire (photo by author). This narrative behind these character goods is yet another aspect of their commodification (in other words, their management, distribution and copyright protection). The information presented ­– the minute details of the characters’ existence, illustrated with cute drawings and calligraphy – enriches the consumer process by deepening the consumers’ interaction with the product. How does the story become as attractive as the cute character? One of the striking characteristics of the ‘official’ Rilakkuma discourse is the sense of ‘ikinari yattekita’ (things happening ‘out of the blue’; Nakazawa 22), or ‘naru yō ni narimasu’ (‘whatever will be will be’; 23) reasoning behind the narrative. Buyers want to know how and why these cute characters come into being, but there is no answer. To some extent, this vagueness reflects the reality of authorship: the characters were first conceptualized by a designer at San-X named Kondō Aki, who left the company soon after Rilakkuma’s debut in 2003 (Akibako). But this ‘out of the blue’ quality of the characters strikes a chord in many consumers’ view of their own lives: why are we here? what are we doing, and why do we do it? The existence of these characters and the reasons for their traits and preferences are inexplicable. There is no reason why or how Rilakkuma came to be – instead, readers are told that to just relax, ‘go with the flow’, and ‘what can be done today can always be done tomorrow’. Procrastination would normally be considered meiwaku, or bothersome to others who depend on you. In Productive Japan, this behavior is not valued. In Precarious Japan, however, underemployment and nonproductivity takes the pressure away from individuals to judge this behavior as negative. Procrastination shifts from meiwaku to normality, and to be transformed into kawaii culture, accepted and even celebrated as such. Rilakkuma is not the first Japanese pop cultural character to rub up against the hyper productive, gambaru (fight!) attitude associated with previous generations, with their associated tropes of the juken jikoku (exam preparation hell) for students, or the karōshi (death from overwork) salaried worker. An early example of this would be Chibi Marukochan (‘Little Maruko’), a comic character created in 1986 but whose popularity peaked in the 1990s. Maruko is an endearing but flawed primary school student who is cute and amusing, but also annoying and short tempered (Sakura). Flawed characters were frequently featured in Japanese popular culture, but Maruko was one of the first featured as heroine, not a jester-like sidekick. As an early example of Japanese cute, subversive characters, Maruko was often annoying and lazy, but she at least aspired to traits such as doing well in school and being a good daughter in her extended family. Rilakkuma, perhaps, demonstrates the extension of this cute but subversive hero/ine: when the stakes are lower (or at their lowest), so is the need for stress and anxiety. Taking it easy is the best option. Rilakkuma’s ‘charm point’ (chāmu pointo, which describes one’s personal appeal), is his transgressive cuteness, and this has paid off for San-X over the years in successful sales of his comic books as well as a variety of products (see fig. 2). Fig. 2: An example of some of the goods for sale in early 2014: a fleecy blanket, a 3d puzzle, note pads and stickers, decorative toggles for a school bag or purse, comic and ‘fan’ books, and a toy car (photo by the author). Over the decade between 2003 and 2013, San X has produced 51 volumes of Rilakkuma comics (Tonozuka, 37 – 42) and over 20 different series of stuffed animals (43 – 45); plus cushions, tote bags, tableware, stationery, and variety goods such as toilet paper holders, umbrellas and contact lens cases (46 – 52). While visiting the Rilakkuma themed shop in Tokyo Station in October 2013, a newly featured and popular product was the Rilakkuma ‘onesie’, a unisex and multipurpose outfit for adults. These products’ diversity are created to meet the consumer desires of Rilakkuma’s significant following in Japan; in a small-scale study of Japanese university students, researchers found that Rilakkuma was the number one nominated ‘favorite character’ (Nosu and Tanaka, 535). Furthermore, students claimed that the attractiveness of favorite characters were judged not just on their appearance, but also due to specific characteristics: ‘characters that are always idle, relaxed, stress-free’ and those ‘that have unusual behavior or stray from the right path’ (ibid) were cited as especially attractive/attracting. Just like Rilakkuma, these researchers found that young Japanese people – the demographic perhaps most troubled by an insecure economic future – are attracted to ‘characters that have flaws in some ways and are not merely cute’ (536). Where to, Rilakkuma? Miller, in her discussion of Japanese animal characters in a variety of cute cultural settings writes Non-human animals emerge as useful metaphors for humans, yet […] it is this aesthetic load rather than the lesson or the ideology behind the image that often becomes the center of our attention. […] However, I think it is useful to separate our analysis of zoomorphic images as vehicles for cuteness from their other possible uses and possible utility in many areas of culture (70). Similarly, we need to look beyond cute, and see what Miller terms as ‘the lesson’ behind the ‘aesthetic load’: here, how cuteness disguises social malaise and eases the shift from ‘Japan Inc.’ to ‘Japan Shrink’. When particular goods are ‘tied’ to other products, the message behind the ‘aesthetic load’ are complicated and deepened. Rilakkuma’s recent commercial (in)activity has been characterized by a variety of ‘tai uppu’ (tie ups), or promotional links between the Rilakkuma image and other similarly aligned products. Traditionally, tie ups in Japan have been most successful when formed between products that were associated with similar audiences and similar aesthetic preferences. We have seen tie ups, for example, between Hello Kitty and McDonald’s (targeting youthful fast food customers) since 1999 (Yano, 129). In ‘Japan Shrink’s’ competitive consumer market, tie ups are becoming more strategic, and all the more interesting. One of the troubled markets in Japan, as elsewhere, is the music industry. Shrinking expendable income coupled with a variety of downloading practices means the traditional popular music industry (primarily in the form of CDs) is in decline. In 2009, Rilakkuma began a co-badged campaign with Tower Records Japan – after all, listening to music is one of Rilakkuma’s listed favourite past times. TRJ was then independent from its failed US counterpart, and a major figure in the music retail scene despite disappointing CD sales since the late 1990s (Stevens, 85). To stir up consumer interest, TRJ offered objects, such as small dolls, towels and shopping bags, festooned with Rilakkuma images and phrases such as ‘Rilakkuma loves Tower Records’ and ‘Relaxed Tour 2012’ (Tonozuka, 72 – 73). Rilakkuma, in a familiar pose lying back with his arms crossed behind his head, but surrounded by musical notes and the phrase ‘No Music, No Life’ (72), presents compact image of the consumer zeitgeist of the day: one’s ikigai (reason for living) is clearly contingent on personal enjoyment, despite Japan’s music industry woes. Rilakkuma also enjoys a close relationship with the ubiquitous convenience store Lawson, which has over 11,000 individual stores throughout Japan and hundreds more overseas (Lawson, Corporate Information). Japanese konbini (the Japanese term for convenience stores), unlike their North American or Australian counterparts, enjoy a higher consumer image in terms of the quality and variety of their products, thus symbolize a certain relaxed lifestyle, as per Merry I. White’s description of the ‘no hands housewife’ breezing through the evening meal preparations thanks to ready made dishes purchased at konbini (72). Japanese convenience stores sell a variety of products, but sweets (Rilakkuma’s favourite) take up a large proportion of shelf space in many stores. The most current ‘Rilakkuma x Lawson campaign’ was undertaken between September and November 2013. During this period, customers earned points to receive a free teacup; certainly Rilakkuma’s cuteness motivated consumers to visit the store to get the prize. All was not well with this tie up, however; complaints about cracked teacups resulted in an external investigation. Finding no causal relationship between construction and fault, Lawson still apologized and offered to exchange any of the approximately 1.73 million cups with an alternate prize for any consumers who so wished (Lawson, An Apology). The alternate prize was still cute in its pink colouring and kawaii character pattern, but it was a larger and much sturdier commuter type mug. Here we see that while Rilakkuma is relaxed, he is still aware of corporate Japan’s increasing sense of corporate accountability and public health. One last tie up demonstrates an unusual alliance between the Rilakkuma franchise and other cultural icons. 2013 marked the ten-year anniversary of Rilakkuma and friends, and this was marked by several prominent campaigns. In Kyoto, we saw Rilakkuma and friends adorning o-mamori (religious amulets) at the famed Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion), a major temple in Kyoto (see fig. 3a). The ‘languid dream’ of the lazy bear is a double-edged symbol, contrasting with the disciplined practice of Buddhism and complying with a Zen-like dream state of the beauty of the grounds. Another ten-year anniversary campaign was the tie up between Rilakkuma and the 50 year anniversary of JR’s Yamanote Line, the ‘city loop’ in Tokyo. Fig. 3a: Kiiroitori sits atop Rilakkuma with Korilakkuma by their side at the Golden Pavillion, Kyoto. The top caption reads: ‘Relaxed bear, Languid at the Golden Pavilion; Languid Dream Travelogue’Fig. 3b: a key chain made to celebrate Rilakkuma’s appointment to the JR Line; still lazy, Rilakkuma lies on his side but wears a conductor’s cap. This tie up was certainly a coup, for the Yamanote Line is a significant part of 13 million Tokyo residents’ lives, as well as a visible fixture in the cultural landscape since the early postwar period. The Yamanote, with its distinctive light green coloring (uguisuiro, which translates literally to ‘nightingale [bird] colour’) has its own aesthetic: as one of the first modern train lines in the capital, it runs through all the major leisure districts and is featured in many popular songs and even has its own drinking game. This nostalgia for the past, coupled with the masculine, super-efficient former national railway’s system is thus juxtaposed with the lazy, feminized teddy bear (Rilakkuma is male, but his domain is feminine), linking a longing for the past with gendered images of production and consumption in the present. In figure 3b, we see Rilakkuma riding the Yamanote on his own terms (lying on his side, propped up by one elbow – a pose we would never see a JR employee take in public). This cheeky cuteness increases the iconic train’s appeal to its everyday consumers, for despite its efficiency, this line is severely overcrowded during peak hours and suffers from user malaise with respect to etiquette and safety issues. Life in contemporary Japan is no longer the bright, shiny ‘bubble’ of the 1980s. Japan is wrestling with internal and external demons: the nuclear crisis, the lagging economy, deteriorating relations with China, and a generation of young people who have never experienced the optimism of their parents’ generation. Dreamlike, Japan’s denizens move through the contours of their daily lives much as they have in the past, for major social structures remain for the most part in tact; instead, it is the vision of the future that has altered. In this environment, we can argue that kawaii aesthetics are all the more important, for if we are uncomfortable thinking about negative or depressing topics such as industries in decline, questionable consumer safety standards, and overcrowded trains, a cute bear can make it much more ‘bear’-able.ReferencesDriscoll, Mark. “Debt and Denunciation in Post-Bubble Japan: On the Two Freeters.” Cultural Critique 65 (2007): 164-187. Kondō Aki - akibako. “Profile [of Designer Aki Kondō].” 6 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.akibako.jp/profile/›. Lawson. “Kigyō Jōhō: Kaisha Gaiyō [Corporate Information: Company Overview].” Feb. 2013. 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.lawson.co.jp/company/corporate/about.html/›. Lawson. “Owabi to Oshirase: Rōson aki no rilakkuma fea keihin ‘rilakkuma tei magu’ hason no osore [An Apology and Announcement: Lawson’s Autumn Rilakkuma Fair Giveaway ‘Rilakkuma Tea Mug’ Concern for Damage.” 2 Dec. 2013. 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.lawson.co.jp/emergency/detail/detail_84331.html›. Miller, Laura. “Japan’s Zoomorphic Urge.” ASIANetwork Exchange XVII.2 (2010): 69-82. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “Employment Security.” 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/policy/employ-labour/employment-security/dl/employment_security_bureau.pdf›. Nakazawa Kumiko, ed. Rirakkuma Daradara Fuan Bukku [Relaxed Bear Leisurely Fan Book]. Tokyo: Kabushikigaisha Shufutoseikatsu. 2008. Nosu, Kiyoshi, and Mai Tanaka. “Factors That Contribute to Japanese University Students’ Evaluations of the Attractiveness of Characters.” IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering 8.5 (2013): 535–537. Occhi, Debra J. “Consuming Kyara ‘Characters’: Anthropomorphization and Marketing in Contemporary Japan.” Comparative Culture 15 (2010): 78–87. Roberson, James E., and Nobue Suzuki, “Introduction”, in J. Roberson and N. Suzuki, eds., Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 1-19. Sakura, Momoko. Chibi Marukochan 1 [Little Maruko, vol. 1]. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1987 [1990]. San-X Net. “Company Info.” 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.san-x.jp/COMPANY_INFO.html›. Steger, Brigitte. “Negotiating Gendered Space on Japanese Commuter Trains.” ejcjs 13.3 (2013). 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol13/iss3/steger.html› Stevens, Carolyn S. Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity and Power. London: Routledge, 2008. The Japan Times. “Nonregulars at Record 35.2% of Workforce.” 22 Feb. 2012. 6 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/02/22/news/nonregulars-at-record-35-2-of-workforce/#.UvMb-kKSzeM›. Tonozuka Ikuo, ed. Rirakkuma Tsuzuki Daradara Fan Book [Relaxed Bear Leisurely Fan Book, Continued]. Tokyo: Kabushikigaisha Shufutoseikatsu, 2013. Treat, John Whittier. “Yoshimoto Banana’s Kitchen, or The Cultural Logic of Japanese Consumerism.” In L. Skov and B. Moeran, eds., Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, Surrey: Curzon, 1995. 274-298. White, Merry I. “Ladies Who Lunch: Young Women and the Domestic Fallacy in Japan.” In K. Cwiertka and B. Walraven, eds., Asian Food: The Global and the Local. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. 63-75. Yano, Christine R. Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.

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Abstract:

There is, in our sense of place, little cognisance of what lies underground. Yet our sense of place, instinctive, unconscious, primeval, has its own underground: the secret spaces which mirror our insides; the world beneath the skin. Our roots lie beneath the ground, with the minerals and the dead. (Hughes 83) The-Home-and-Away-Game Imagine the earth-grounded, “diagrammatological” trajectory of a footballer who as one member of a team is psyching himself up before the start of a game. The siren blasts its trumpet call. The footballer bursts out of the pavilion (where this psyching up has taken place) to engage in the opening bounce or kick of the game. And then: running, leaping, limping after injury, marking, sliding, kicking, and possibly even passing out from concussion. Finally, the elation accompanying the final siren, after which hugs, handshakes and raised fists conclude the actual match on the football oval. This exit from the pavilion, the course the player takes during the game itself, and return to the pavilion, forms a combination of stasis and movement, and a return to exhausted stasis again, that every player engages with regardless of the game code. Examined from a “diagrammatological” perspective, a perspective Rowan Wilken (following in the path of Gilles Deleuze and W. J. T. Mitchell) understands as “a generative process: a ‘metaphor’ or way of thinking — diagrammatic, diagrammatological thinking — which in turn, is linked to poetic thinking” (48), this footballer’s scenario arises out of an aerial perspective that depicts the actual spatial trajectory the player takes during the course of a game. It is a diagram that is digitally encoded via a sensor on the footballer’s body, and being an electronically encoded diagram it can also make available multiple sets of data such as speed, heartbeat, blood pressure, maybe even brain-wave patterns. From this limited point of view there is only one footballer’s playing trajectory to consider; various groupings within the team, the whole team itself, and the diagrammatological depiction of its games with various other teams might also be possible. This singular imagining though is itself an actuality: as a diagram it is encoded as a graphic image by a satellite hovering around the earth with a Global Positioning System (GPS) reading the sensor attached to the footballer which then digitally encodes this diagrammatological trajectory for appraisal later by the player, coach, team and management. In one respect, this practice is another example of a willing self-surveillance critical to explaining the reflexive subject and its attribute of continuous self-improvement. According to Docker, Official Magazine of the Fremantle Football Club, this is a technique the club uses as a part of game/play assessment, a system that can provide a “running map” for each player equipped with such a tracking device during a game. As the Fremantle Club’s Strength and Conditioning Coach Ben Tarbox says of this tactic, “We’re getting a physiological profile that has started to build a really good picture of how individual players react during a game” (21). With a little extra effort (and some sizeable computer processing grunt) this two dimensional linear graphic diagram of a footballer working the football ground could also form the raw material for a three-dimensional animation, maybe a virtual reality game, even a hologram. It could also be used to sideline a non-performing player. Now try another related but different imagining: what if this diagrammatological trajectory could be enlarged a little to include the possibility that this same player’s movements could be mapped out by the idea of home-and-away games; say over the course of a season, maybe even a whole career, for instance? No doubt, a wide range of differing diagrammatological perspectives might suggest themselves. My own particular refinement of this movement/stasis on the footballer’s part suggests my own distinctive comings and goings to and from my own specific piece of home country. And in this incessantly domestic/real world reciprocity, in this diurnally repetitive leaving and coming back to home country, might it be plausible to think of “Home as Capital of the Region”? If, as Walter Benjamin suggests in the prelude to his monumental Arcades Project, “Paris — the Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” could it be that both in and through my comings and goings to and from this selfsame home country, my own burgeoning sense of regionality is constituted in every minute-by-minutiae of lived experience? Could it be that this feeling about home is manifested in my every day-to-night manoeuvre of home-and-away-and-away-and-home-making, of every singular instance of exit, play/engage, and the return home? “Home, Capital of the Region” then examines the idea that my home is that part of the country which is the still-point of eternal return, the bedrock to which I retreat after the daily grind, and the point from which I start out and do it all again the next day. It employs, firstly, this ‘diagrammatological’ perspective to illustrate the point that this stasis/movement across country can make an electronic record of my own psychic self-surveillance and actualisation in-situ. And secondly, the architectural plan of the domestic home (examined through the perspective of critical regionalism) is used as a conduit to illustrate how I am physically embedded in country. Lastly, intermingling these digressive threads is chora, Plato’s notion of embodied place and itself an ancient regional rendering of this eternal return to the beginning, the place where the essential diversity of country decisively enters the soul. Chora: Core of Regionality Kevin Lynch writes that, “Our senses are local, while our experience is regional” (10), a combination that suggests this regional emphasis on home-and-away-making might be a useful frame of reference (simultaneously spatiotemporal, both a visceral and encoded communication) for me to include as a crucial vector in my own life-long learning package. Regionality (as, variously, a sub-generic categorisation and an extension/concentration of nationality, as well as a recently re-emerged friend/antagonist to a global understanding) infuses my world of home with a grounded footing in country, one that is a site of an Eternal Return to the Beginning in the micro-world of the everyday. This is a point John Sallis discusses at length in his analysis of Plato’s Timaeus and its founding notion of regionality: chora. More extended absences away from home-base are of course possible but one’s return to home on most days and for most nights is a given of post/modern, maybe even of ancient everyday experience. Even for the continually shifting nomad, nightfall in some part of the country brings the rest and recreation necessary for the next day’s wanderings. This fundamental question of an Eternal Return to the Beginning arises as a crucial element of the method in Plato’s Timaeus, a seemingly “unstructured” mythic/scientific dialogue about the origins and structure of both the psychically and the physically implaced world. In the Timaeus, “incoherence is especially obvious in the way the natural sequence in which a narrative would usually unfold is interrupted by regressions, corrections, repetitions, and abrupt new beginnings” (Gadamer 160). Right in the middle of the Timaeus, in between its sections on the “Work of Reason” and the “Work of Necessity”, sits chora, both an actual spatial and bodily site where my being intersects with my becoming, and where my lived life criss-crosses the various arts necessary to articulating a recorded version of that life. Every home is a grounded chora-logical timespace harness guiding its occupant’s thoughts, feelings and actions. My own regionally implaced chora (an example of which is the diagrammatological trajectory already outlined above as my various everyday comings and goings, of me acting in and projecting myself into context) could in part be understood as a graphical realisation of the extent of my movements and stationary rests in my own particular timespace trajectory. The shorthand for this process is ‘embedded’. Gregory Ulmer writes of chora that, “While chorography as a term is close to choreography, it duplicates a term that already exists in the discipline of geography, thus establishing a valuable resonance for a rhetoric of invention concerned with the history of ‘place’ in relation to memory” (Heuretics 39, original italics). Chorography is the geographic discipline for the systematic study and analysis of regions. Chora, home, country and regionality thus form an important multi-dimensional zone of interplay in memorialising the game of everyday life. In light of these observations I might even go so far as to suggest that this diagrammatological trajectory (being both digital and GPS originated) is part of the increasingly electrate condition that guides the production of knowledge in any global/regional context. This last point is a contextual connection usefully examined in Alan J. Scott’s Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order and Michael Storper’s The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. Their analyses explicitly suggest that the symbiosis between globalisation and regionalisation has been gathering pace since at least the end of World War Two and the Bretton Woods agreement. Our emerging understanding of electracy also happens to be Gregory Ulmer’s part-remedy for shifting the ground under the intense debates surrounding il/literacy in the current era (see, in particular, Internet Invention). And, for Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow’s analysis of “Australian Everyday Cultures” (“Media Culture and the Home” 57–86), it is within the home that our un.conscious understanding of electronic media is at its most intense, a pattern that emerges in the longer term through receiving telegrams, compiling photo albums, listening to the radio, home- and video-movies, watching the evening news on television, and logging onto the computer in the home-office, media-room or home-studio. These various generalisations (along with this diagrammatological view of my comings and goings to and from the built space of home), all point indiscriminately to a productive confusion surrounding the sedentary and nomadic opposition/conjunction. If natural spaces are constituted in nouns like oceans, forests, plains, grasslands, steppes, deserts, rivers, tidal interstices, farmland etc. (and each categorisation here relies on the others for its existence and demarcation) then built space is often seen as constituting its human sedentary equivalent. For Deleuze and Guatteri (in A Thousand Plateaus, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology — The War Machine”) these natural spaces help instigate a nomadic movement across localities and regions. From a nomadology perspective, these smooth spaces unsettle a scientific, numerical calculation, sometimes even aesthetic demarcation and order. If they are marked at all, it is by heterogenous and differential forces, energised through constantly oscillating intensities. A Thousand Plateaus is careful though not to elevate these smooth nomadic spaces over the more sedentary spaces of culture and power (372–373). Nonetheless, as Edward S. Casey warns, “In their insistence on becoming and movement, however, the authors of A Thousand Plateaus overlook the placial potential of settled dwelling — of […] ‘built places’” (309, original italics). Sedentary, settled dwelling centred on home country may have a crust of easy legibility and order about it but it also formats a locally/regionally specific nomadic quality, a point underscored above in the diagrammatological perspective. The sedentary tendency also emerges once again in relation to home in the architectural drafting of the domestic domicile. The Real Estate Revolution When Captain Cook planted the British flag in the sand at Botany Bay in 1770 and declared the country it spiked as Crown Land and henceforth will come under the ownership of an English sovereign, it was also the moment when white Australia’s current fascination with real estate was conceived. In the wake of this spiking came the intense anxiety over Native Title that surfaced in late twentieth century Australia when claims of Indigenous land grabs would repossess suburban homes. While easily dismissed as hyperbole, a rhetorical gesture intended to arouse this very anxiety, its emergence is nonetheless an indication of the potential for political and psychic unsettling at the heart of the ownership and control of built place, or ‘settled dwelling’ in the Australian context. And here it would be wise to include not just the gridded, architectural quality of home-building and home-making, but also the home as the site of the family romance, another source of unsettling as much as a peaceful calming. Spreading out from the boundaries of the home are the built spaces of fences, bridges, roads, railways, airport terminals (along with their interconnecting pathways), which of course brings us back to the communications infrastructure which have so often followed alongside the development of transport infrastructure. These and other elements represent this conglomerate of built space, possibly the most significant transformation of natural space that humanity has brought about. For the purposes of this meditation though it is the more personal aspect of built space — my home and regional embeddedness, along with their connections into the global electrosphere — that constitutes the primary concern here. For a sedentary, striated space to settle into an unchallenged existence though requires a repression of the highest order, primarily because of the home’s proximity to everyday life, of the latter’s now fading ability to sometimes leave its presuppositions well enough alone. In settled, regionally experienced space, repressions are more difficult to abstract away, they are lived with on a daily basis, which also helps to explain the extra intensity brought to their sometimes-unsettling quality. Inversely, and encased in this globalised electro-spherical ambience, home cannot merely be a place where one dwells within avoiding those presuppositions, I take them with me when I travel and they come back with me from afar. This is a point obliquely reflected in Pico Iyer’s comment that “Australians have so flexible a sense of home, perhaps, that they can make themselves at home anywhere” (185). While our sense of home may well be, according to J. Douglas Porteous, “the territorial core” of our being, when other arrangements of space and knowledge shift it must inevitably do so as well. In these shifts of spatial affiliation (aided and abetted by regionalisation, globalisation and electronic knowledge), the built place of home can no longer be considered exclusively under the illusion of an autonomous sanctuary wholly guaranteed by capitalist property relations, one of the key factors in its attraction. These shifts in the cultural, economic and psychic relation of home to country are important to a sense of local and regional implacement. The “feeling” of autonomy and security involved in home occupation and/or ownership designates a component of this implacement, a point leading to Eric Leed’s comment that, “By the sixteenth century, literacy had become one of the definitive signs — along with the possession of property and a permanent residence — of an independent social status” (53). Globalising and regionalising forces make this feeling of autonomy and security dynamic, shifting the ground of home, work-place practices and citizenship allegiances in the process. Gathering these wide-ranging forces impacting on psychic and built space together is the emergence of critical regionalism as a branch of architectonics, considered here as a theory of domestic architecture. Critical Regionality Critical regionalism emerged out of the collective thinking of Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis (Tropical Architecture; Critical Regionalism), and as these authors themselves acknowledge, was itself deeply influenced by the work of Lewis Mumford during the first part of the twentieth century when he was arguing against the authority of the international style in architecture, a style epitomised by the Bauhaus movement. It is Kenneth Frampton’s essay, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” that deliberately takes this question of critical regionalism and makes it a part of a domestic architectonic project. In many ways the ideas critical regionalism espouses can themselves be a microcosm of this concomitantly emerging global/regional polis. With public examples of built-form the power of the centre is on display by virtue of a building’s enormous size and frequently high-cultural aesthetic power. This is a fact restated again and again from the ancient world’s agora to Australia’s own political bunker — its Houses of Parliament in Canberra. While Frampton discusses a range of aspects dealing with the universal/implaced axis across his discussion, it is points five and six that deserve attention from a domestically implaced perspective. Under the sub-heading, “Culture Versus Nature: Topography, Context, Climate, Light and Tectonic Form” is where he writes that, Here again, one touches in concrete terms this fundamental opposition between universal civilization and autochthonous culture. The bulldozing of an irregular topography into a flat site is clearly a technocratic gesture which aspires to a condition of absolute placelessness, whereas the terracing of the same site to receive the stepped form of a building is an engagement in the act of “cultivating” the site. (26, original italics) The “totally flat datum” that the universalising tendency sometimes presupposes is, within the critical regionalist perspective, an erroneous assumption. The “cultivation” of a site for the design of a building illustrates the point that built space emerges out of an interaction between parallel phenomena as they contrast and/or converge in a particular set of timespace co-ordinates. These are phenomena that could include (but are not limited to) geomorphic data like soil and rock formations, seismic activity, inclination and declension; climatic considerations in the form of wind patterns, temperature variations, rainfall patterns, available light and dark, humidity and the like; the building context in relation to the cardinal points of north, south, east, and west, along with their intermediary positions. There are also architectural considerations in the form of available building materials and personnel to consider. The social, psychological and cultural requirements of the building’s prospective in-dwellers are intermingled with all these phenomena. This is not so much a question of where to place the air conditioning system but the actuality of the way the building itself is placed on its site, or indeed if that site should be built on at all. A critical regionalist building practice, then, is autochthonous to the degree that a full consideration of this wide range of in-situ interactions is taken into consideration in the development of its design plan. And given this autochthonous quality of the critical regionalist project, it also suggests that the architectural design plan itself (especially when it utilised in conjunction with CAD and virtual reality simulations), might be the better model for designing electrate-centred projects rather than writing or even the script. The proliferation of ‘McMansions’ across many Australian suburbs during the 1990s (generally, oversized domestic buildings designed in the abstract with little or no thought to the above mentioned elements, on bulldozed sites, with powerful air-conditioning systems, and no verandas or roof eves to speak of) demonstrates the continuing influence of a universal, centralising dogma in the realm of built place. As summer temperatures start to climb into the 40°C range all these air-conditioners start to hum in unison, which in turn raises the susceptibility of the supporting infrastructure to collapse under the weight of an overbearing electrical load. The McMansion is a clear example of a built form that is envisioned more so in a drafting room, a space where the architect is remote-sensing the locational specificities. In this envisioning (driven more by a direct line-of-sight idiom dominant in “flat datum” and economic considerations rather than architectural or experiential ones), the tactile is subordinated, which is the subject of Frampton’s sixth point: It is symptomatic of the priority given to sight that we find it necessary to remind ourselves that the tactile is an important dimension in the perception of built form. One has in mind a whole range of complementary sensory perceptions which are registered by the labile body: the intensity of light, darkness, heat and cold; the feeling of humidity; the aroma of material; the almost palpable presence of masonry as the body senses it own confinement; the momentum of an induced gait and the relative inertia of the body as it traverses the floor; the echoing resonance of our own footfall. (28) The point here is clear: in its wider recognition of, and the foregrounding of my body’s full range of sensate capacities in relation to both natural and built space, the critical regionalist approach to built form spreads its meaning-making capacities across a broader range of knowledge modalities. This tactility is further elaborated in more thoroughly personal ways by Margaret Morse in her illuminating essay, “Home: Smell, Taste, Posture, Gleam”. Paradoxically, this synaesthetic, syncretic approach to bodily meaning-making in a built place, regional milieu intensely concentrates the site-centred locus of everyday life, while simultaneously, the electronic knowledge that increasingly underpins it expands both my body’s and its region’s knowledge-making possibilities into a global gestalt, sometimes even a cosmological one. It is a paradoxical transformation that makes us look anew at social, cultural and political givens, even objective and empirical understandings, especially as they are articulated through national frames of reference. Domestic built space then is a kind of micro-version of the multi-function polis where work, pleasure, family, rest, public display and privacy intermingle. So in both this reduction and expansion in the constitution of domestic home life, one that increasingly represents the location of the production of knowledge, built place represents a concentration of energy that forces us to re-imagine border-making, order, and the dynamic interplay of nomadic movement and sedentary return, a point that echoes Nicolas Rothwell’s comment that “every exile has in it a homecoming” (80). Albeit, this is a knowledge-making milieu with an expanded range of modalities incorporated and expressed through a wide range of bodily intensities not simply cognitive ones. Much of the ambiguous discontent manifested in McMansion style domiciles across many Western countries might be traced to the fact that their occupants have had little or no say in the way those domiciles have been designed and/or constructed. In Heidegger’s terms, they have not thought deeply enough about “dwelling” in that building, although with the advent of the media room the question of whether a “building” securely borders both “dwelling” and “thinking” is now open to question. As anxieties over border-making at all scales intensifies, the complexities and un/sureties of natural and built space take ever greater hold of the psyche, sometimes through the advance of a “high level of critical self-consciousness”, a process Frampton describes as a “double mediation” of world culture and local conditions (21). Nearly all commentators warn of a nostalgic, romantic or a sentimental regionalism, the sum total of which is aimed at privileging the local/regional and is sometimes utilised as a means of excluding the global or universal, sometimes even the national (Berry 67). Critical regionalism is itself a mediating factor between these dispositions, working its methods and practices through my own psyche into the local, the regional, the national and the global, rejecting and/or accepting elements of these domains, as my own specific context, in its multiplicity, demands it. If the politico-economic and cultural dimensions of this global/regional world have tended to undermine the process of border-making across a range of scales, we can see in domestic forms of built place the intense residue of both their continuing importance and an increased dependency on this electro-mediated world. This is especially apparent in those domiciles whose media rooms (with their satellite dishes, telephone lines, computers, television sets, games consuls, and music stereos) are connecting them to it in virtuality if not in reality. Indeed, the thought emerges (once again keeping in mind Eric Leed’s remark on the literate-configured sense of autonomy that is further enhanced by a separate physical address and residence) that the intense importance attached to domestically orientated built place by globally/regionally orientated peoples will figure as possibly the most viable means via which this sense of autonomy will transfer to electronic forms of knowledge. If, however, this here domestic habitué turns his gaze away from the screen that transports me into this global/regional milieu and I focus my attention on the physicality of the building in which I dwell, I once again stand in the presence of another beginning. This other beginning is framed diagrammatologically by the building’s architectural plans (usually conceived in either an in-situ, autochthonous, or a universal manner), and is a graphical conception that anchors my body in country long after the architects and builders have packed up their tools and left. This is so regardless of whether a home is built, bought, rented or squatted in. Ihab Hassan writes that, “Home is not where one is pushed into the light, but where one gathers it into oneself to become light” (417), an aphorism that might be rephrased as follows: “Home is not where one is pushed into the country, but where one gathers it into oneself to become country.” For the in-and-out-and-around-and-about domestic dweller of the twenty-first century, then, home is where both regional and global forms of country decisively enter the soul via the conduits of the virtuality of digital flows and the reality of architectural footings. Acknowledgements I’m indebted to both David Fosdick and Phil Roe for alerting me to the importance to the Fremantle Dockers Football Club. The research and an original draft of this essay were carried out under the auspices of a PhD scholarship from Central Queensland University, and from whom I would also like to thank Denis Cryle and Geoff Danaher for their advice. References Benjamin, Walter. “Paris — the Capital of the Nineteenth Century.” Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. Trans. Quintin Hoare. London: New Left Books, 1973. 155–176. Bennett, Tony, Michael Emmison and John Frow. Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Berry, Wendell. “The Regional Motive.” A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural. San Diego: Harcourt Brace. 63–70. Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: U of California P, 1997. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U of Minneapolis P, 1987. Deleuze, Gilles. “The Diagram.” The Deleuze Reader. Ed. Constantin Boundas. Trans. Constantin Boundas and Jacqueline Code. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 193–200. Frampton, Kenneth. “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Post-Modern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Port Townsend: Bay Press, 1983. 16–30. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Idea and Reality in Plato’s Timaeus.” Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight Hermeneutical Studies on Plato. Trans. P. Christopher Smith. New Haven: Yale UP, 1980. 156–193. Hassan, Ihab. “How Australian Is It?” The Best Australian Essays. Ed. Peter Craven. Melbourne: Black Inc., 2000. 405–417. Heidegger, Martin. “Building Dwelling Thinking.” Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. 145–161. Hughes, John. The Idea of Home: Autobiographical Essays. Sydney: Giramondo, 2004. Iyer, Pico. “Australia 1988: Five Thousand Miles from Anywhere.” Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World. London: Jonathon Cape, 1993. 173–190. “Keeping Track.” Docker, Official Magazine of the Fremantle Football Club. Edition 3, September (2005): 21. Leed, Eric. “‘Voice’ and ‘Print’: Master Symbols in the History of Communication.” The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture. Ed. Kathleen Woodward. Madison, Wisconsin: Coda Press, 1980. 41–61. Lefaivre, Liane and Alexander Tzonis. “The Suppression and Rethinking of Regionalism and Tropicalism After 1945.” Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization. Eds. Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre and Bruno Stagno. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Academy, 2001. 14–58. Lefaivre, Liane and Alexander Tzonis. Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World. New York: Prestel, 2003. Lynch, Kevin. Managing the Sense of a Region. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT P, 1976. Mitchell, W. J. T. “Diagrammatology.” Critical Inquiry 7.3 (1981): 622–633. Morse, Margaret. “Home: Smell, Taste, Posture, Gleam.” Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. Ed. Hamid Naficy. New York and London: Routledge, 1999. 63–74. Plato. Timaeus and Critias. Trans. Desmond Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1973. Porteous, J. Douglas. “Home: The Territorial Core.” Geographical Review LXVI (1976): 383-390. Rothwell, Nicolas. Wings of the Kite-Hawk: A Journey into the Heart of Australia. Sydney: Pidador, 2003. Sallis, John. Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus. Bloomington: Indianapolis UP, 1999. Scott, Allen J. Regions and the World Economy: The Coming Shape of Global Production, Competition, and Political Order. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Storper, Michael. The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: The Guildford Press, 1997. Ulmer, Gregory L. Heuretics: The Logic of Invention. New York: John Hopkins UP, 1994. Ulmer, Gregory. Internet Invention: Literacy into Electracy. Longman: Boston, 2003. Wilken, Rowan. “Diagrammatology.” Illogic of Sense: The Gregory Ulmer Remix. Eds. Darren Tofts and Lisa Gye. Alt-X Press, 2007. 48–60. Available at http://www.altx.com/ebooks/ulmer.html. (Retrieved 12 June 2007)

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Abstract:

Stand-up is a global phenomenon. It is Australia’s most significant form of advocatorial theatre and a major platform for challenging stigma and prejudice. In the twenty-first century, Australian stand-up is transforming into a more culturally diverse form and extending the spectrum of material addressing human rights. Since the 1980s Australian stand-up routines have moved beyond the old colonial targets of England and America, and Indigenous comics such as Kevin Kopinyeri, Andy Saunders, and Shiralee Hood have gained an established following. Additionally, the turn to Asia is evident not just in trade agreements and the higher education market but also in cultural exchange and in the billing of emerging Asian stand-ups at mainstream events. The major cultural driver for stand-up is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), Australia’s largest cultural event, now over 30 years old, and an important site for dissecting constructs of democracy and nationhood. As John McCallum has observed, popular humour in post-World War II Australia drew on widespread feelings of “displacement, migration and otherness—resonant topics in a country of transplanted people and a dispossessed indigenous population arguing over a distinct Australian identity” (205–06). This essay considers the traditional comic strategies of first and second generation immigrant stand-ups in Australia and compares them with the new wave of post 9/11 Asian-Australian and Middle-Eastern-Australian stand-ups whose personas and interrogations are shifting the paradigm. Self-identifying Muslim stand-ups challenge myths of dominant Australian identity in ways which many still find confronting. Furthermore, the theories of incongruity, superiority, and psychological release re-rehearsed in traditional humour studies, by figures such as Palmer (1994) and Morreall (2009), are predicated on models of humour which do not always serve live performance, especially stand-up with its relational dependence on audience interaction.Stand-ups who immigrated to Australia as children or whose parents immigrated and struggled against adversity are important symbols both of the Australian comedy industry and of a national self-understanding of migrant resilience and making good. Szubanski and Berger hail from earlier waves of European migrants in the 1950s and 1960s. Szubanski has written eloquently of her complex Irish-Polish heritage and documented how the “hand-me-down trinkets of family and trauma” and “the culture clash of competing responses to calamity” have been integral to the development of her comic success and the making of her Aussie characters (347). Rachel Berger, the child of Polish holocaust survivors, advertises and connects both identities on her LinkedIn page: “After 23 years as a stand-up comedian, growing up with Jewish guilt and refugee parents, Rachel Berger knows more about survival than any idiot attending tribal council on reality TV.”Anh Do, among Australia’s most famous immigrant stand-ups, identifies as one of the Vietnamese “boat people” and arrived as a toddler in 1976. Do’s tale of his family’s survival against the odds and his creation of a persona which constructs the grateful, happy immigrant clown is the staple of his very successful routine and increasingly problematic. It is a testament to the power of Do’s stand-up that many did not perceive the toll of the loss of his birth country; the grinding poverty; and the pain of his father’s alcoholism, violence, and survivor guilt until the publication of Do’s ironically titled memoir The Happiest Refugee. In fact, the memoir draws on many of the trauma narratives that are still part of his set. One of Do’s most legendary routines is the story of his family’s sea journey to Australia, told here on ABC1’s Talking Heads:There were forty of us on a nine metre fishing boat. On day four of the journey we spot another boat. As the boat gets closer we realise it’s a boatload of Thai pirates. Seven men with knives, machetes and guns get on our boat and they take everything. One of the pirates picks up the smallest child, he lifts up the baby and rips open the baby’s nappy and dollars fall out. And the pirate decides to spare the kid’s life. And that’s a good thing cos that’s my little brother Khoa Do who in 2005 became Young Australian of the Year. And we were saved on the fifth day by a big German merchant ship which took us to a refugee camp in Malaysia and we were there for around three months before Australia says, come to Australia. And we’re very glad that happened. So often we heard Mum and Dad say—what a great country. How good is this place? And the other thing—kids, as you grow up, do as much as you can to give back to this great country and to give back to others less fortunate.Do’s strategy is apparently one of genuflection and gratitude, an adoption of what McCallum refers to as an Australian post-war tradition of the comedy of inadequacy and embarrassment (210–14). Journalists certainly like to bill Do as the happy clown, framing articles about him with headlines like Rosemary Neill’s “Laughing through Adversity.” In fact, Do is direct about his gallows humour and his propensity to darkness: his humour, he says, is a means of countering racism, of “being able to win people over who might have been averse to being friends with an Asian bloke,” but Neill does not linger on this, nor on the revelation that Do felt stigmatised by his refugee origins and terrified and shamed by the crippling poverty of his childhood in Australia. In The Happiest Refugee, Do reveals that, for him, the credibility of his routines with predominantly white Australian audiences lies in the crafting of himself as an “Aussie comedian up there talking about his working-class childhood” (182). This is not the official narrative that is retold even if it is how Do has endeared himself to Australians, and ridding himself of the happy refugee label may yet prove difficult. Suren Jayemanne is well known for his subtle mockery of multiculturalist rhetoric. In his 2016 MICF show, Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator, Jayemanne played on the supposed contradiction of his Sri Lankan-Malaysian heritage against his teenage years in the wealthy suburb of Malvern in Melbourne, his private schooling, and his obsession with hip hop and black American culture. Jayemanne’s strategy is to gently confound his audiences, leading them slowly up a blind alley. He builds up a picture of how to identify Sri Lankan parents, supposedly Sri Lankan qualities such as an exceptional ability at maths, and Sri Lankan employment ambitions which he argues he fulfilled in becoming an accountant. He then undercuts his story by saying he has recently realised that his suburban background, his numerical abilities, his love of black music, and his rejection of accountancy in favour of comedy, in fact prove conclusively that he has, all along, been white. He also confesses that this is a bruising disappointment. Jayemanne exposes the emptiness of the conceits of white, brown, and black and of invented identity markers and plays on his audiences’ preconceptions through an old storyteller’s device, the shaggy dog story. The different constituencies in his audiences enjoy his trick equally, from quite different perspectives.Diana Nguyen, a second generation Vietnamese stand-up, was both traumatised and politicised by Pauline Hanson when she was a teenager. Hanson described Nguyen’s community in Dandenong as “yellow Asian people” (Filmer). Nguyen’s career as a community development worker combating racism relates directly to her activity as a stand-up: migrant stories are integral to Australian history and Nguyen hypothesises that the “Australian psyche of being invaded or taken over” has reignited over the question of Islamic fundamentalism and expresses her concern to Filmer about the Muslim youths under her care.Nguyen’s alarm about the elision of Islamic radicalism with Muslim culture drives an agenda that has led the new generation of self-identified Muslim stand-ups since 9/11. This post 9/11 world is described by Wajahat as gorged with “exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslim [. . . ] and perpetuated by negative discrimination and the marginalisation and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life in western societies.” In Australia, Aamer Rahman, Muhamed Elleissi, Khaled Khalafalla, and Nazeem Hussain typify this newer, more assertive form of second generation immigrant stand-up—they identify as Muslim (whether religious or not), as brown, and as Australian. They might be said to symbolise a logical response to Ghassan Hage’s famous White Nation (1998), which argues that a white supremacism underlies the mindset of the white elite in Australia. Their positioning is more nuanced than previous generations of stand-up. Nazeem Hussain’s routines mark a transformation in Australian stand-up, as Waleed Aly has argued: “ethnic comedy” has hitherto been about the parading of stereotypes for comfortable, mainstream consumption, about “minstrel characters” [. . .] but Hussain interrogates his audiences in every direction—and aggravates Muslims too. Hussain’s is the world of post 9/11 Australian Muslims. It’s about more than ethnic stereotyping. It’s about being a consistent target of political opportunism, where everyone from the Prime Minister to the Foreign Minister to an otherwise washed-up backbencher with a view on burqas has you in their sights, where bombs detonate in Western capitals and unrelated nations are invaded.Understandably, a prevalent theme among the new wave of Muslim comics, and not just in Australia, is the focus on the reading of Muslims as manifestly linked with Islamic State (IS). Jokes about mistaken identity, plane crashes, suicide bombing, and the Koran feature prominently. English-Pakistani Muslim, Shazia Mirza, gained comedy notoriety in the UK in the wake of 9/11 by introducing her routine with the words: “My name’s Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence” (Bedell). Stand-ups Negin Farsad, Ahmed Ahmed, and Dean Obeidalla are all also activists challenging prevailing myths about Islam, skin colour and terrorism in America. Egyptian-American Ahmed Ahmed acquired prominence for telling audiences in the infamous Axis of Evil Comedy Tour about how his life had changed much for the worse since 9/11. Ahmed Ahmed was the alias used by one of Osama Bin Laden’s devotees and his life became on ongoing struggle with anti-terrorism officials doing security checks (he was once incarcerated) and with the FBI who were certain that the comedian was among their most wanted terrorists. Similarly, Obeidalla, an Italian-Palestinian-Muslim, notes in his TEDx talk that “If you have a Muslim name, you are probably immune to identity theft.” His narration of a very sudden experience of becoming an object of persecution and of others’ paranoia is symptomatic of a shared understanding of a post 9/11 world among many Muslim comics: “On September 10th 2001 I went to bed as a white American and I woke up an Arab,” says Obeidalla, still dazed from the seismic shift in his life.Hussain and Khalafalla demonstrate a new sophistication and directness in their stand-up, and tackle their majority white audiences head-on. There is no hint of the apologetic or deferential stance performed by Anh Do. Many of the jokes in their routines target controversial or taboo issues, which up until recently were shunned in Australian political debate, or are absent or misrepresented in mainstream media. An Egyptian-Australian born in Saudi Arabia, Khaled Khalafalla arrived on the comedy scene in 2011, was runner-up in RAW, Australia’s most prestigious open mic competition, and in 2013 won the best of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for Devious. Khalafalla’s shows focus on racist stereotypes and identity and he uses a range of Middle Eastern and Indian accents to broach IS recruitment, Muslim cousin marriages, and plane crashes. His 2016 MICF show, Jerk, was a confident and abrasive routine exploring relationships, drug use, the extreme racism of Reclaim Australia rallies, controversial visa checks by Border Force’s Operation Fortitude, and Islamophobia. Within the first minute of his routine, he criticises white people in the audience for their woeful refusal to master Middle Eastern names, calling out to the “brown woman” in the audience for support, before lining up a series of jokes about the (mis)pronunciation of his name. Khalafalla derives his power on stage by what Oliver Double calls “uncovering.” Double contends that “one of the most subversive things stand-up can do is to uncover the unmentionable,” subjects which are difficult or impossible to discuss in everyday conversation or the broadcast media (292). For instance, in Jerk Khalafalla discusses the “whole hating halal movement” in Australia as a metaphor for exposing brutal prejudice: Let me break it down for you. Halal is not voodoo. It’s just a blessing that Muslims do for some things, food amongst other things. But, it’s also a magical spell that turns some people into f*ckwits when they see it. Sometimes people think it’s a thing that can get stuck to your t-shirt . . . like ‘Oh f*ck, I got halal on me’ [Australian accent]. I saw a guy the other day and he was like f*ck halal, it funds terrorism. And I was like, let me show you the true meaning of Islam. I took a lamb chop out of my pocket and threw it in his face. And, he was like Ah, what was that? A lamb chop. Oh, I f*cking love lamb chops. And, I say you fool, it’s halal and he burst into flames.In effect, Khalafalla delivers a contemptuous attack on the white members of his audience, but at the same time his joke relies on those same audience members presuming that they are morally and intellectually superior to the individual who is the butt of the joke. Khalafalla’s considerable charm is a help in this tricky send-up. In 2015 the Australian Department of Defence recognised his symbolic power and invited him to join the Afghanistan Task Force to entertain the troops by providing what Doran describes as “home-grown Australian laughs” (7). On stage in Australia, Khalafalla constructs a persona which is an outsider to the dominant majority and challenges the persecution of Muslim communities. Ironically, on the NATO base, Khalafalla’s act was perceived as representing a diverse but united Australia. McCallum has pointed to such contradictions, moments where white Australia has shown itself to be a “culture which at first authenticates emigrant experience and later abrogates it in times of defiant nationalism” (207). Nazeem Hussain, born in Australia to Sri Lankan parents, is even more confrontational. His stand-up is born of his belief that “comedy protects us from the world around us” and is “an evolutionary defence mechanism” (8–9). His ground-breaking comedy career is embedded in his work as an anti-racism activist and asylum seeker supporter and shaped by his second-generation migrant experiences, law studies, community youth work, and early mentorship by American Muslim comic trio Allah Made Me Funny. He is well-known for his pioneering television successes Legally Brown and Salam Café. In his stand-up, Hussain often dwells witheringly on the failings and peculiarities of white people’s attempts to interact with him. Like all his routines, his sell-out show Fear of the Brown Planet, performed with Aamer Rahman from 2004–2008, explored casual, pathologised racism. Hussain deliberately over-uses the term “white people” in his routines as a provocation and deploys a reverse racism against his majority white audiences, knowing that many will be squirming. “White people ask me how can Muslims have fun if they don’t drink? Muslims have fun! Of course we have fun! You’ve seen us on the news.” For Hussain stand-up is “fundamentally an art of protest,” to be used as “a tool by communities and people with ideas that challenge and provoke the status quo with a spirit of counterculture” (Low 1–3). His larger project is to humanise Muslims to white Australians so that “they see us firstly as human beings” (1–3). Hussain’s 2016 MICF show, Hussain in the Membrane, both satirised media hype and hysterical racism and pushed for a better understanding of the complex problems Muslim communities face in Australia. His show also connected issues to older colonial traditions of racism. In a memorable and beautifully crafted tirade, Hussain inveighed against the 2015 Bendigo riots which occurred after local Muslims lodged an application to Bendigo council to build a mosque in the sleepy Victorian town. [YELLING in an exaggerated Australian accent] No we don’t want Muslims! NO we don’t want Muslims—to come invade Bendigo by application to the local council! That is the most bureaucratic invasion of all times. No place in history has been invaded by lodging an application to a local council. Can you see ISIS running around chasing town planners? Of course not, Muslims like to wait 6–8 months to invade! That’s a polite way to invade. What if white people invaded that way? What a better world we’d be living in. If white people invaded Australia that way, we’d be able to celebrate Australia Day on the same day without so much blood on our hands. What if Captain Cook came to Australia and said [in a British accent] Awe we would like to apply to invade this great land and here is our application. [In an Australian accent] Awe sorry, mate, rejected, but we’ll give you Bendigo.As Waleed Aly sees it, the Australian cultural majority is still “unused to hearing minorities speak with such assertiveness.” Hussain exposes “a binary world where there’s whiteness, and then otherness. Where white people are individuals and non-white people (a singular group) are not” (Aly). Hussain certainly speaks as an insider and goes so far as recognising his coloniser’s guilt in relation to indigenous Australians (Tan). Aly well remembers the hate mail he and Hussain received when they worked on Salam Café: “The message was clear. We were outsiders and should behave as such. We were not real Australians. We should know our place, as supplicants, celebrating the nation’s unblemished virtue.” Khalafalla, Rahman, Elleissi, and Hussain make clear that the new wave of comics identify as Muslim and Australian (which they would argue many in the audiences receive as a provocation). They have zero tolerance of racism, their comedy is intimately connected with their political activism, and they have an unapologetically Australian identity. No longer is it a question of whether the white cultural majority in Australia will anoint them as worthy and acceptable citizens, it is a question of whether the audiences can rise to the moral standards of the stand-ups. The power has been switched. For Hussain laughter is about connection: “that person laughs because they appreciate the point and whether or not they accept what was said was valid isn’t important. What matters is, they’ve understood” (Low 5). ReferencesAhmed, Ahmed. “When It Comes to Laughter, We Are All Alike.” TedXDoha (2010). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxDoha-Ahmed-Ahmed-When-it-Co>.Aly, Waleed. “Comment.” Sydney Morning Herald 24 Sep. 2013."Anh Do". Talking Heads with Peter Thompson. ABC1. 4 Oct. 2010. Radio.Bedell, Geraldine. “Veiled Humour.” The Guardian (2003). 8 Aug. 2016 <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/apr/20/comedy.artsfeatures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other>.Berger, Rachel. LinkedIn [Profile page]. 14 June 2016 <http://www.linkedin.com/company/rachel-berger>.Do, Anh. The Happiest Refugee. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010. Doran, Mark. "Service with a Smile: Entertainers Give Troops a Taste of Home.” Air Force 57.21 (2015). 12 June 2016 <http://www.defence.gov.au/Publications/NewsPapers/Raaf/editions/5721/5721.pdf>.Double, Oliver. Getting the Joke: The Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.Filmer, Natalie. "For Dandenong Comedian and Actress Diana Nguyen The Colour Yellow has a Strong Meaning.” The Herald Sun 3 Sep. 2013.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of a White Supremacy in a Multicultural Age. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1998.Hussain, Nazeem. Hussain in the Membrane. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.———. "The Funny Side of 30.” Spectrum. The Age 12 Mar. 2016.Khalafalla, Khaled. Jerk. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.Low, Lian. "Fear of a Brown Planet: Fight the Power with Laughter.” Peril: Asian Australian Arts and Culture (2011). 12 June 2016 <http://peril.com.au/back-editions/edition10/fear-of-a-brown-planet-fight-the-power-with-laughter>. McCallum, John. "Cringe and Strut: Comedy and National Identity in Post-War Australia.” Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference. Ed. Stephen Wagg. New York: Routledge, 1998. Morreall, John. Comic Relief. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.Neill, Rosemary. "Laughing through Adversity.” The Australian 28 Aug. 2010.Obeidalla, Dean. "Using Stand-Up to Counter Islamophobia.” TedXEast (2012). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxEast-Dean-Obeidalla-Using-S;TEDxEast>.Palmer, Jerry. Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge, 1994. Szubanski, Magda. Reckoning. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2015. Tan, Monica. "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Allahu Akbar! Nazeem Hussain's Bogan-Muslim Army.” The Guardian 29 Feb. 2016. "Uncle Sam.” Salam Café (2008). 11 June 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeQPAJt6caU>.Wajahat, Ali, et al. "Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” Center for American Progress (2011). 11 June 2016 <https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/report/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc>.

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Abstract:

Introduction: Bubbles and Sport The ephemeral materiality of bubbles – beautiful, spectacular, and distracting but ultimately fragile – when applied to protect or conserve in the interests of sport-media profit, creates conditions that exacerbate existing inequalities in sport and society. Bubbles are usually something to watch, admire, and chase after in their brief yet shiny lives. There is supposed to be, technically, nothing inside them other than one or more gasses, and yet we constantly refer to people and objects being inside bubbles. The metaphor of the bubble has been used to describe the life of celebrities, politicians in purpose-built capital cities like Canberra, and even leftist, environmentally activist urban dwellers. The metaphorical and material qualities of bubbles are aligned—they cannot be easily captured and are liable to change at any time. In this article we address the metaphorical sporting bubble, which is often evoked in describing life in professional sport. This is a vernacular term used to capture and condemn the conditions of life of elite sportspeople (usually men), most commonly after there has been a sport-related scandal, especially of a sexual nature (Rowe). It is frequently paired with connotatively loaded adjectives like pampered and indulged. The sporting bubble is rarely interrogated in academic literature, the concept largely being left to the media and moral entrepreneurs. It is represented as involving a highly privileged but also pressurised life for those who live inside it. A sporting bubble is a world constructed for its most prized inhabitants that enables them to be protected from insurgents and to set the terms of their encounters with others, especially sport fans and disciplinary agents of the state. The Covid-19 pandemic both reinforced and reconfigured the operational concept of the bubble, re-arranging tensions between safety (protecting athletes) and fragility (short careers, risks of injury, etc.) for those within, while safeguarding those without from bubble contagion. Privilege and Precarity Bubble-induced social isolation, critics argue, encourages a loss of perspective among those under its protection, an entitled disconnection from the usual rules and responsibilities of everyday life. For this reason, the denizens of the sporting bubble are seen as being at risk to themselves and, more troublingly, to those allowed temporarily to penetrate it, especially young women who are first exploited by and then ejected from it (Benedict). There are many well-documented cases of professional male athletes “behaving badly” and trying to rely on institutional status and various versions of the sporting bubble for shelter (Flood and Dyson; Reel and Crouch; Wade). In the age of mobile and social media, it is increasingly difficult to keep misbehaviour in-house, resulting in a slew of media stories about, for example, drunkenness and sexual misconduct, such as when then-Sydney Roosters co-captain Mitchell Pearce was suspended and fined in 2016 after being filmed trying to force an unwanted kiss on a woman and then simulating a lewd act with her dog while drunk. There is contestation between those who condemn such behaviour as aberrant and those who regard it as the conventional expression of youthful masculinity as part of the familiar “boys will be boys” dictum. The latter naturalise an inequitable gender order, frequently treating sportsmen as victims of predatory women, and ignoring asymmetries of power between men and women, especially in hom*osocial environments (Toffoletti). For those in the sporting bubble (predominantly elite sportsmen and highly paid executives, also mostly men, with an array of service staff of both sexes moving in and out of it), life is reflected for those being protected via an array of screens (small screens in homes and indoor places of entertainment, and even smaller screens on theirs and others’ phones, as well as huge screens at sport events). These male sport stars are paid handsomely to use their skill and strength to perform for the sporting codes, their every facial expression and bodily action watched by the media and relayed to audiences. This is often a precarious existence, the usually brief career of an athlete worker being dependent on health, luck, age, successful competition with rivals, networks, and club and coach preferences. There is a large, aspirational reserve army of athletes vying to play at the elite level, despite risks of injury and invasive, life-changing medical interventions. Responsibility for avoiding performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs) also weighs heavily on their shoulders (Connor). Professional sportspeople, in their more reflective moments, know that their time in the limelight will soon be up, meaning that getting a ticket to the sporting bubble, even for a short time, can make all the difference to their post-sport lives and those of their families. The most vulnerable of the small minority of participants in sport who make a good, short-term living from it are those for whom, in the absence of quality education and prior social status, it is their sole likely means of upward social mobility (Spaaij). Elite sport performers are surrounded by minders, doctors, fitness instructors, therapists, coaches, advisors and other service personnel, all supporting athletes to stay focussed on and maximise performance quality to satisfy co-present crowds, broadcasters, sponsors, sports bodies and mass media audiences. The shield offered by the sporting bubble supports the teleological win-at-all-costs mentality of professional sport. The stakes are high, with athlete and executive salaries, sponsorships and broadcasting deals entangled in a complex web of investments in keeping the “talent” pivotal to the “attention economy” (Davenport and Beck)—the players that provide the content for sale—in top form. Yet, the bubble cannot be entirely secured and poor behaviour or performance can have devastating effects, including permanent injury or disability, mental illness and loss of reputation (Rowe, “Scandals and Sport”). Given this fragile materiality of the sporting bubble, it is striking that, in response to the sudden shutdown following the economic and health crisis caused by the 2020 global pandemic, the leaders of professional sport decided to create more of them and seek to seal the metaphorical and material space with unprecedented efficiency. The outcome was a multi-sided tale of mobility, confinement, capital, labour, and the gendering of sport and society. The Covid-19 Gilded Cage Sociologists such as Zygmunt Bauman and John Urry have analysed the socio-politics of mobilities, whereby some people in the world, such as tourists, can traverse the globe at their leisure, while others remain fixed in geographical space because they lack the means to be mobile or, in contrast, are involuntarily displaced by war, so-called “ethnic cleansing”, famine, poverty or environmental degradation. The Covid-19 global pandemic re-framed these matters of mobilities (Rowe, “Subjecting Pandemic Sport”), with conventional moving around—between houses, businesses, cities, regions and countries—suddenly subjected to the imperative to be static and, in perniciously unreflective technocratic discourse, “socially distanced” (when what was actually meant was to be “physically distanced”). The late-twentieth century analysis of the “risk society” by Ulrich Beck, in which the mysterious consequences of humans’ predation on their environment are visited upon them with terrifying force, was dramatically realised with the coming of Covid-19. In another iteration of the metaphor, it burst the bubble of twenty-first century global sport. What we today call sport was formed through the process of sportisation (Maguire), whereby hyper-local, folk physical play was reconfigured as multi-spatial industrialised sport in modernity, becoming increasingly reliant on individual athletes and teams travelling across the landscape and well over the horizon. Co-present crowds were, in turn, overshadowed in the sport economy when sport events were taken to much larger, dispersed audiences via the media, especially in broadcast mode (Nicholson, Kerr, and Sherwood). This lucrative mediation of professional sport, though, came with an unforgiving obligation to generate an uninterrupted supply of spectacular live sport content. The pandemic closed down most sports events and those that did take place lacked the crucial participation of the co-present crowd to provide the requisite event atmosphere demanded by those viewers accustomed to a sense of occasion. Instead, they received a strange spectacle of sport performers operating in empty “cathedrals”, often with a “faked” crowd presence. The mediated sport spectacle under the pandemic involved cardboard cut-out and sex doll spectators, Zoom images of fans on large screens, and sampled sounds of the crowd recycled from sport video games. Confected co-presence produced simulacra of the “real” as Baudrillardian visions came to life. The sporting bubble had become even more remote. For elite sportspeople routinely isolated from the “common people”, the live sport encounter offered some sensory experience of the social – the sounds, sights and even smells of the crowd. Now the sporting bubble closed in on an already insulated and insular existence. It exposed the irony of the bubble as a sign of both privileged mobility and incarcerated athlete work, both refuge and prison. Its logic of contagion also turned a structure intended to protect those inside from those outside into, as already observed, a mechanism to manage the threat of insiders to outsiders. In Australia, as in many other countries, the populace was enjoined by governments and health authorities to help prevent the spread of Covid-19 through isolation and immobility. There were various exceptions, principally those classified as essential workers, a heterogeneous cohort ranging from supermarket shelf stackers to pharmacists. People in the cultural, leisure and sports industries, including musicians, actors, and athletes, were not counted among this crucial labour force. Indeed, the performing arts (including dance, theatre and music) were put on ice with quite devastating effects on the livelihoods and wellbeing of those involved. So, with all major sports shut down (the exception being horse racing, which received the benefit both of government subsidies and expanding online gambling revenue), sport organisations began to represent themselves as essential services that could help sustain collective mental and even spiritual wellbeing. This case was made most aggressively by Australian Rugby League Commission Chairman, Peter V’landys, in contending that “an Australia without rugby league is not Australia”. In similar vein, prominent sport and media figure Phil Gould insisted, when describing rugby league fans in Western Sydney’s Penrith, “they’re lost, because the football’s not on … . It holds their families together. People don’t understand that … . Their life begins in the second week of March, and it ends in October”. Despite misgivings about public safety and equality before the pandemic regime, sporting bubbles were allowed to form, re-form and circulate. The indefinite shutdown of the National Rugby League (NRL) on 23 March 2020 was followed after negotiation between multiple entities by its reopening on 28 May 2020. The competition included a team from another nation-state (the Warriors from Aotearoa/New Zealand) in creating an international sporting bubble on the Central Coast of New South Wales, separating them from their families and friends across the Tasman Sea. Appeals to the mental health of fans and the importance of the NRL to myths of “Australianness” notwithstanding, the league had not prudently maintained a financial reserve and so could not afford to shut down for long. Significant gambling revenue for leagues like the NRL and Australian Football League (AFL) also influenced the push to return to sport business as usual. Sport contests were needed in order to exploit the gambling opportunities – especially online and mobile – stimulated by home “confinement”. During the coronavirus lockdowns, Australians’ weekly spending on gambling went up by 142 per cent, and the NRL earned significantly more than usual from gambling revenue—potentially $10 million above forecasts for 2020. Despite the clear financial imperative at play, including heavy reliance on gambling, sporting bubble-making involved special licence. The state of Queensland, which had pursued a hard-line approach by closing its borders for most of those wishing to cross them for biographical landmark events like family funerals and even for medical treatment in border communities, became “the nation's sporting hub”. Queensland became the home of most teams of the men’s AFL (notably the women’s AFLW season having been cancelled) following a large Covid-19 second wave in Melbourne. The women’s National Netball League was based exclusively in Queensland. This state, which for the first time hosted the AFL Grand Final, deployed sport as a tool in both national sports tourism marketing and internal pre-election politics, sponsoring a documentary, The Sporting Bubble 2020, via its Tourism and Events arm. While Queensland became the larger bubble incorporating many other sporting bubbles, both the AFL and the NRL had versions of the “fly in, fly out” labour rhythms conventionally associated with the mining industry in remote and regional areas. In this instance, though, the bubble experience did not involve long stays in miners’ camps or even the one-night hotel stopovers familiar to the popular music and sport industries. Here, the bubble moved, usually by plane, to fulfil the requirements of a live sport “gig”, whereupon it was immediately returned to its more solid bubble hub or to domestic self-isolation. In the space created between disciplined expectation and deplored non-compliance, the sporting bubble inevitably became the scrutinised object and subject of scandal. Sporting Bubble Scandals While people with a very low risk of spreading Covid-19 (coming from areas with no active cases) were denied entry to Queensland for even the most serious of reasons (for example, the death of a child), images of AFL players and their families socialising and enjoying swimming at the Royal Pines Resort sporting bubble crossed our screens. Yet, despite their (players’, officials’ and families’) relative privilege and freedom of movement under the AFL Covid-Safe Plan, some players and others inside the bubble were involved in “scandals”. Most notable was the case of a drunken brawl outside a Gold Coast strip club which led to two Richmond players being “banished”, suspended for 10 matches, and the club fined $100,000. But it was not only players who breached Covid-19 bubble protocols: Collingwood coaches Nathan Buckley and Brenton Sanderson paid the $50,000 fine imposed on the club for playing tennis in Perth outside their bubble, while Richmond was fined $45,000 after Brooke Cotchin, wife of team captain Trent, posted an image to Instagram of a Gold Coast day spa that she had visited outside the “hub” (the institutionally preferred term for bubble). She was subsequently distressed after being trolled. Also of concern was the lack of physical distancing, and the range of people allowed into the sporting bubble, including babysitters, grandparents, and swimming coaches (for children). There were other cases of players being caught leaving the bubble to attend parties and sharing videos of their “antics” on social media. Biosecurity breaches of bubbles by players occurred relatively frequently, with stern words from both the AFL and NRL leaders (and their clubs) and fines accumulating in the thousands of dollars. Some people were also caught sneaking into bubbles, with Lekahni Pearce, the girlfriend of Swans player Elijah Taylor, stating that it was easy in Perth, “no security, I didn’t see a security guard” (in Barron, Stevens, and Zaczek) (a month later, outside the bubble, they had broken up and he pled guilty to unlawfully assaulting her; Ramsey). Flouting the rules, despite stern threats from government, did not lead to any bubble being popped. The sport-media machine powering sporting bubbles continued to run, the attendant emotional or health risks accepted in the name of national cultural therapy, while sponsorship, advertising and gambling revenue continued to accumulate mostly for the benefit of men. Gendering Sporting Bubbles Designed as biosecurity structures to maintain the supply of media-sport content, keep players and other vital cogs of the machine running smoothly, and to exclude Covid-19, sporting bubbles were, in their most advanced form, exclusive luxury camps that illuminated the elevated socio-cultural status of sportsmen. The ongoing inequalities between men’s and women’s sport in Australia and around the world were clearly in evidence, as well as the politics of gender whereby women are obliged to “care” and men are enabled to be “careless” – or at least to manage carefully their “duty of care”. In Australia, the only sport for women that continued during the height of the Covid-19 lockdown was netball, which operated in a bubble that was one of sacrifice rather than privilege. With minimum salaries of only $30,000 – significantly less than the lowest-paid “rookies” in the AFL – and some being mothers of small children and/or with professional jobs juggled alongside their netball careers, these elite sportswomen wanted to continue to play despite the personal inconvenience or cost (Pavlidis). Not one breach of the netballers out of the bubble was reported, indicating that they took their responsibilities with appropriate seriousness and, perhaps, were subjected to less scrutiny than the sportsmen accustomed to attracting front-page headlines. National Netball League (also known after its Queensland-based naming rights sponsor as Suncorp Super Netball) players could be regarded as fortunate to have the opportunity to be in a bubble and to participate in their competition. The NRL Women’s (NRLW) Premiership season was also completed, but only involved four teams subject to fly in, fly out and bubble arrangements, and being played in so-called curtain-raiser games for the NRL. As noted earlier, the AFLW season was truncated, despite all the prior training and sacrifice required of its players. Similarly, because of their resource advantages, the UK men’s and boy’s top six tiers of association football were allowed to continue during lockdown, compared to only two for women and girls. In the United States, inequalities between men’s and women’s sports were clearly demonstrated by the conditions afforded to those elite sportswomen inside the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) sport bubble in the IMG Academy in Florida. Players shared photos of rodent traps in their rooms, insect traps under their mattresses, inedible food and blocked plumbing in their bubble accommodation. These conditions were a far cry from the luxury usually afforded elite sportsmen, including in Florida’s Walt Disney World for the men’s NBA, and is just one of the many instances of how gendered inequality was both reproduced and exacerbated by Covid-19. Bursting the Bubble As we have seen, governments and corporate leaders in sport were able to create material and metaphorical bubbles during the Covid-19 lockdown in order to transmit stadium sport contests into home spaces. The rationale was the importance of sport to national identity, belonging and the routines and rhythms of life. But for whom? Many women, who still carry the major responsibilities of “care”, found that Covid-19 intensified the affective relations and gendered inequities of “home” as a leisure site (Fullagar and Pavlidis). Rates of domestic violence surged, and many women experienced significant anxiety and depression related to the stress of home confinement and home schooling. During the pandemic, women were also more likely to experience the stress and trauma of being first responders, witnessing virus-related sickness and death as the majority of nurses and care workers. They also bore the brunt of much of the economic and employment loss during this time. Also, as noted above, livelihoods in the arts and cultural sector did not receive the benefits of the “bubble”, despite having a comparable claim to sport in contributing significantly to societal wellbeing. This sector’s workforce is substantially female, although men dominate its senior roles. Despite these inequalities, after the late March to May hiatus, many elite male sportsmen – and some sportswomen - operated in a bubble. Moving in and out of them was not easy. Life inside could be mentally stressful (especially in long stays of up to 150 days in sports like cricket), and tabloid and social media troll punishment awaited those who were caught going “over the fence”. But, life in the sporting bubble was generally preferable to the daily realities of those afflicted by the trauma arising from forced home confinement, and for whom watching moving sports images was scant compensation for compulsory immobility. The ethical foundation of the sparkly, ephemeral fantasy of the sporting bubble is questionable when it is placed in the service of a voracious “media sports cultural complex” (Rowe, Global Media Sport) that consumes sport labour power and rolls back progress in gender relations as a default response to a global pandemic. Covid-19 dramatically highlighted social inequalities in many areas of life, including medical care, work, and sport. For the small minority of people involved in sport who are elite professionals, the only thing worse than being in a sporting bubble during the pandemic was not being in one, as being outside precluded their participation. Being inside the bubble was a privilege, albeit a dubious one. But, as in wider society, not all sporting bubbles are created equal. Some are more opulent than others, and the experiences of the supporting and the supported can be very different. The surface of the sporting bubble may be impermanent, but when its interior is opened up to scrutiny, it reveals some very durable structures of inequality. Bubbles are made to burst. They are, by nature, temporary, translucent structures created as spectacles. As a form of luminosity, bubbles “allow a thing or object to exist only as a flash, sparkle or shimmer” (Deleuze, 52). In echoing Deleuze, Angela McRobbie (54) argues that luminosity “softens and disguises the regulative dynamics of neoliberal society”. The sporting bubble was designed to discharge that function for those millions rendered immobile by home confinement legislation in Australia and around the world, who were having to deal with the associated trauma, risk and disadvantage. 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Rogers, Michael. “Buckley, Sanderson to Pay Pies’ Huge Fine for COVID Breach.” AFL.com.au 1 Aug. 2020. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://www.afl.com.au/news/479118/buckley-sanderson-to-pay-pies-huge-fine-for-COVID-breach>. Richardson, David, and Richard Denniss. “Gender Experiences during the COVID-19 Lockdown: Women Lose from COVID-19, Men to Gain from Stimulus.” The Australia Institute June 2020. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/gender-experiences-during-the-COVID-19-lockdown>. Rowe, David. “All Sport Is Global: A Hard Lesson from the Pandemic.” Open Forum 28 Mar. 2020. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://www.openforum.com.au/all-sport-is-global-a-hard-lesson-from-the-pandemic>. ———. “And the Winner Is … Television: Spectacle and Sport in a Pandemic.” Open Forum 19 Sep. 2020. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://www.openforum.com.au/and-the-winner-istelevision-spectacle-and-sport-in-a-pandemic>. ———. Global Media Sport: Flows, Forms and Futures. London: Bloomsbury, 2011. ———. “Scandals and Sport.” Routledge Companion to Media and Scandal. Eds. Howard Tumber and Silvio Waisbord. London: Routledge, 2019. 324–32. ———. “Subjecting Pandemic Sport to a Sociological Procedure.” Journal of Sociology 56.4 (2020): 704–13. Schout, David. “Cricket Prepares for Mental Health Challenges Thrown Up by Bubble Life.” The Guardian 8 Nov. 2020. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/nov/08/cricket-prepares-for-mental-health-challenges-thrown-up-by-bubble-life>. Spaaij, Ramón. Sport and Social Mobility: Crossing Boundaries. London: Routledge, 2011. The Sporting Bubble. Dir. Peter Dickson. Nine Network Australia, 2020. Swanston, Tim. “With Coronavirus Limiting Interstate Movement, Queensland Is the Nation’s Sporting Hub—Is That Really Safe?” ABC News 29 Aug. 2020. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-29/coronavirus-queensland-rules-for-sports-teams-explainer/12542634>. Toffoletti, Kim. “How Is Gender-Based Violence Covered in the Sporting News? An Account of the Australian Football League Sex Scandal.” Women's Studies International Forum 30.5 (2007): 427–38. Urry, John. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007. Walter, Brad. “From Shutdown to Restart: How NRL Walked Tightrope to Get Season Going Again.” NRL.com 25 May 2020. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://www.nrl.com/news/2020/05/25/from-shutdown-to-restart-how-nrl-walked-tightrope-to-get-season-going-again>. Wade, Lisa. “Rape on Campus: Athletes, Status, and the Sexual Assault Crisis.” The Conversation 7 Mar. 2017. 8 Mar. 2021 <https://theconversation.com/rape-on-campus-athletes-status-and-the-sexual-assault-crisis-72255>. Webster, Andrew. “Sydney Roosters’ Mitchell Pearce Involved in a Drunken Incident with a Dog? 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In many ways, computers are becoming invisible and will continue to do so. When we reach into our pockets and pull out our cell phones to find a place to eat or message a friend on Facebook, we are no longer consciously aware that we are interacting with a user experience that has been consciously designed for our computer or device screen—but we are.— Andy Pratt and Jason Nunes, Interactive Design In theory, cell phones and other information and communication technologies (ICTs) are just a means for us to interact with people, businesses, and data sources. They have interfaces and, in a larger sense, are interfaces between their users and the networked world. Every day, people spend more time using them to perform more different tasks and find them more indispensable (Smith). As the epigraph above suggests, however, their omnipresence makes them practically invisible and has all but erased any feelings of awe or mystery that their power once generated. There is both a historical and functional dimension to this situation. In the historical advance of technology, it is part of what Kevin Kelly calls the “technium,” the ever-more complex interactions between advancing technology, our cognitive processes, and the cultural forces in which they are enmeshed; ICTs are measurably getting more powerful as time goes on and are, in this sense, worthy of our admiration (Kelly 11-17). In the functional dimension, on the other hand, many scholars and designers have observed how hard it is to hold on to this feeling of enchantment in our digital devices (Nye 185-226; McCarthy and Wright 192-97). As one study of human-computer interfaces observes “when people let the enchanting object [ICTs] do the emotional work of experience for them . . . what could be enchanting interactivity becomes a paradoxically detached interpassivity” (McCarthy et al. 377). ICTs can be ever more powerful, then, but this power will not necessarily be appreciated by their users. This paper analyzes recent narrative representations of ICT use in spy thrillers, with a particular focus on the canon of James Bond films (a sub-genre with a long-standing and overt fascination with advanced technology, especially ICTs), in order to explore how the banality of ICT technology has become the inescapable accompaniment of its power (Willis; Britton 99-123; 195-219). Among many possible recent examples: recall how Bond uses his ordinary cell phone camera to reveal the membership of the sinister Quantum group at an opera performance in Quantum of Solace; how world-wide video surveillance is depicted as inescapable (and amoral) in The Bourne Legacy; and how the anonymous protagonist of Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer discovers the vital piece of top secret information that explains the entire film—by searching for it on his laptop via Google. In each of these cases, ICTs are represented as both incredibly powerful and tediously quotidian. More precisely, in each case human users are represented as interfaces between ICTs and their stored knowledge, rather than the reverse. Beginning with an account of how the naturalization of ICTs has changed the perceived relations between technology and its users, this essay argues that the promotional rhetoric of human empowerment and augmentation surrounding ICTs is opposed by a persistent cinematic theme of human subordination to technological needs. The question it seeks to open is why—why do the mainstream cinematic narratives of our culture depict the ICTs that enhance our capacities to know and communicate as something that diminishes rather than augments us? One answer (which can only be provisionally sketched here) is the loss of pleasure. It does not matter whether or not technology augments our capacities if it cannot sustain the fantasy of pleasure and/or enhancement at the same time. Without this fantasy, ICTs are represented as usurping position as the knowing subject and users, in turn, become the media connecting them– even when that user is James Bond. The Rhetoric of Augmentation Until the past five years or so, the technologization of the human mind was almost always represented in popular culture as a threat to humanity—whether it be Ira Levin’s robotic Stepford Wives as the debased expression of male wish-fulfillment (Levin), or Jonathan Demme’s brainwashed assassins with computer chip implants in his remake of The Manchurian Candidate. When Captain Picard, the leader and moral centre of the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, is taken over by the Borg (an alien machine race that seeks to absorb other species into its technologized collective mind) in an episode from 1990, it is described as “assimilation” rather than an augmentation. The Borg version of Picard says to his former comrades that “we only wish to raise quality of life, for all species,” and it is a chilling, completely unemotional threat to the survival of our species (“Best of Both Worlds”). By 2012, on the other hand, the very same imagery is being used to sell smart phones by celebrating the technological enhancements that allegedly make us better human beings. In Verizon’s Droid DNA phone promotions, the product is depicted as an artificial heart for its user, one that enhances memory, “neural speed,” and “predictive intelligence” (thanks to Google Now). The tagline for the Verizon ad claims that “It’s not an upgrade to your phone; it’s an upgrade to yourself”, echoing Borg-Picard’s threat but this time as an aspirational promise (“Verizon Commercial”). The same technologization of the mind that was anathema just a few years ago, is now presented as both a desirable consumer goal and a professional necessity—the final close-up of the Verizon artificial heart shows that this 21st century cyborg has to be at his job in 26 minutes; the omnipresence of work in a networked world is here literally taken to heart. There is, notably, no promise of pleasure or liberation anywhere in this advertisem*nt. We are meant to desire this product very much, but solely because it allows us to do more and better work. Not coincidentally, the period that witnessed this inversion in popular culture also saw an exponential increase in the quantity and variety of digitally networked devices in our lives (“Mobile Cellular”) and the emergence of serious cultural, scientific, and philosophical movements exploring the idea of “enhanced” human beings, whether through digital tool use, biomedical prostheses, drugs, or genetic modifications (Buchanan; Savulescu and Bostrom; “Humanity +”). As the material boundaries of the “human” have become more permeable and malleable, and as the technologies that make this possible become everyday objects, our resistance to this possibility has receded. The discourse of the transhuman and extropian is now firmly established as a philosophical possibility (Lilley). Personal augmentation with the promise of pleasure is still, of course, very much present in the presentation of ICTs. Launching the iPad 2 in 2011, the late Steve Jobs described his new product as a “magical and revolutionary device” with an “incredible magical user interface on a much larger canvas with more resources” and gushing that “it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing” (“Apple Special Event”). This is the rhetoric of augmentation through technology and, as in the Verizon ad, it is very careful to position the consumer/user at the centre of the experience. The technology is described as wonderful not just in itself, but also precisely because it gives users “a larger canvas” with which to create. Likewise, the lifelogging movement (which encourages people to use small cameras to record every event of daily life) is at great pains to stress that “you, not your desktop’s hard drive, are the hub of your digital belongings” (Bell and Gemmell 10). But do users experience life with these devices as augmented? Is either the Verizon work cyborg or the iPad user’s singing heart representative of how these devices make us feel? It depends upon the context in which the question is asked. Extensive survey data on cell phone use shows that we are more attached than ever to our phones, that they allow us to be “productive” in otherwise dead times (such as while waiting in queues), and that only a minority of users worry about the negative effects of being “permanently connected” (Smith 9-10). Representations of technological augmentation in 21st century popular cinema, however, offer a very different perspective. Even in James Bond films, which (since Goldfinger in 1964) have been enraptured with technological devices as augmentations for its protagonists and as lures for audiences, digital devices have (in the three most recent films) lost their magic and become banal in the same way as they have in the lives of audience members (Nitins 2010; Nitins 2011; “List of James Bond Gadgets”). Rather than focusing on technological empowerment, the post 2006 Bond films emphasize (1) that ICTs “know” things and that human agents are just the media that connect them together; and (2) that the reciprocal nature of networked ICTs means that we are always visible when we use them; like Verizon phone users, our on-screen heroes have to learn that the same technology that empowers them simultaneously empowers others to know and/or control them. Using examples from the James Bond franchise, the remainder of this paper discusses the simultaneous disenchantment and power of ICT technology in the films as a representative sample of the cultural status of ICTs as a whole. “We don’t go in for that sort of thing any more...” From Goldfinger until the end of Pierce Brosnan’s tenure in 2002, technological devices were an important part of the audience’s pleasure in a Bond film (Willis; Nitins 2011). James Bond’s jetpack in Thunderball, to give one of many examples, is a quasi-magical aid for the hero with literary precursors going back to Aeneas’s golden bough; it is utterly enchanting and, equally importantly, fun. In the most recent Bond film, Skyfall, however, Q, the character who has historically made Bond’s technology, reappears after a two-film hiatus, but in the guise of a computer nerd who openly disdains the pleasures and possibilities of technological augmentation. When Bond complains about receiving only a gun and a radio from him, Q replies: “What did you expect? An exploding pen? We don’t really go in for that sort of thing any more.” Technology is henceforth to be banal and invisible albeit (as the film’s computer hacker villain Silva demonstrates) still incredibly powerful. The film’s pleasures must come from elsewhere. The post-credit sequence in Casino Royale, which involves the pursuit and eventual death of a terrorist bomb-maker, perfectly embodies the diminished importance of human agents as bearers of knowledge. It is bracketed at the beginning by the bomber looking at a text message while under surveillance by Bond and a colleague and at the end by Bond looking at the same message after having killed him. Significantly, the camera angle and setup of both shots make it impossible to distinguish between Bond’s hand and the bomber’s as they see the same piece of information on the same phone. The ideological, legal, racial, and other differences between the two men are erased in pursuit of the data (the name “Ellipsis” and a phone number) that they both covet. As digitally-transmitted data, it is there for anyone, completely unaffected by the moral or legal value attached to its users. Cell phones in these films are, in many ways, better sources of information than their owners—after killing a phone’s owner, his or her network traces can show exactly where s/he has been and to whom s/he has been talking, and this is how Bond proceeds. The bomber’s phone contacts lead Bond to the Bahamas, to the next villain in the chain, whom Bond kills and from whom he obtains another cell phone, which allows the next narrative location to be established (Miami Airport) and the next villain to be located (by calling his cell phone in a crowded room and seeing who answers) (Demetrios). There are no conventional interrogations needed here, because it is the digital devices that are the locus of knowledge rather than people. Even Bond’s lover Vesper Lynd sends her most important message to him (the name and cell phone number of the film’s arch villain) in a posthumous text, rather than in an actual conversation. Cell phones do not enable communication between people; people connect the important information that cell phones hold together. The second manifestation of the disenchantment of ICT technology is the disempowering omnipresence of surveillance. Bond and his colleague are noticed by the bomber when the colleague touches his supposedly invisible communication earpiece. With the audience’s point of view conflated with that of the secret agent, the technology of concealment becomes precisely what reveals the secret agent’s identity in the midst of a chaotic scene in which staying anonymous should be the easiest thing in the world; other villains identify Bond by the same means in a hotel hallway later in the film. While chasing the bomber, Bond is recorded by a surveillance camera in the act of killing him on the grounds of a foreign embassy. The secret agent is, as a result, made into an object of knowledge for the international media, prompting M (Bond’s boss) to exclaim that their political masters “don’t care what we do, they care what we get photographed doing.” Bond is henceforth part of the mediascape, so well known as a spy that he refuses to use the alias that MI6 provides for his climactic encounter with the main villain LeChiffre on the grounds that any well-connected master criminal will know who he is anyway. This can, of course, go both ways: Bond uses the omnipresence of surveillance to find another of his targets by using the security cameras of a casino. This one image contains many layers of reference—Bond the character has found his man; he has also found an iconic image from his own cultural past (the Aston Martin DB V car that is the only clearly delineated object in the frame) that he cannot understand as such because Casino Royale is a “reboot” and he has only just become 007. But the audience knows what it means and can insert this incarnation of James Bond in its historical sequence and enjoy the allusion to a past of which Bond is oblivious. The point is that surveillance is omnipresent, anonymity is impossible, and we are always being watched and interpreted by someone. This is true in the film’s narrative and also in the cultural/historical contexts in which the Bond films operate. It may be better to be the watcher rather than the watched, but we are always already both. By the end of the film, Bond is literally being framed by technological devices and becomes the organic connection between different pieces of technology. The literal centrality of the human agent in these images is not, in this disenchanted landscape, an indication of his importance. The cell phones to which Bond listens in these images connect him (and us) to the past, the back story or context provided by his masters that permits the audience to understand the complex plot that is unfolding before them. The devices at which he looks represent the future, the next situation or person that he must contain. He does not fully understand what is happening, but he is not there to understand – he is there to join the information held in the various devices together, which (in this film) usually means to kill someone. The third image in this sequence is from the final scene of the film, and the assault rifle marks this end—the chain of cell phone messages (direct and indirect) that has driven Casino Royale from its outset has been stopped. The narrative stops with it. Bond’s centrality amid these ICTS and their messages is simultaneously what allows him to complete his mission and what subjects him to their needs. This kind of technological power can be so banal precisely because it has been stripped of pleasure and of any kind of mystique. The conclusion of Skyfall reinforces this by inverting all of the norms that Bond films have created about their climaxes: instead of the technologically-empowered villain’s lair being destroyed, it is Bond’s childhood home that is blown up. Rather than beating the computer hacker at his own game, Bond kills him with a knife in a medieval Scottish church. It could hardly be less hi-tech if it tried, which is precisely the point. What the Bond franchise and the other films mentioned above have shown us, is that we do not rely on ICTs for enchantment any more because they are so powerfully connected to the everyday reality of work and to the loss of privacy that our digital devices exact as the price of their use. The advertising materials that sell them to us have to rely on the rhetoric of augmentation, but these films are signs that we do not experience them as empowering devices any more. The deeper irony is that (for once) the ICT consumer products being advertised to us today really do what their promotional materials claim: they are faster, more powerful, and more widely applicable in our lives than ever before. Without the user fantasy of augmentation, however, this truth has very little power to move us. We depict ourselves as the medium, and it is our digital devices that bear the message.References“Apple Special Event. March 2, 2011.” Apple Events. 21 Sep. 2013 ‹http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1103pijanbdvaaj/event/index.html›. Bell, Gordon, and Jim Gemmell. Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything. New York: Dutton, 2009.“The Best of Both Worlds: Part Two.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dir. Cliff Bole. Paramount, 2013. The Bourne Legacy. Dir. Tony Gilroy. Universal Pictures, 2012. Britton, Wesley. Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005. Buchanan, Allen. Beyond Humanity: The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement. Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Casino Royale. Dir. Martin Campbell. Columbia Pictures, 2006. “Data’s Day.” Star Trek: The Next Generation. Dir. Robert Wiemer. Burbank, CA: Paramount, 2013. The Ghost Writer. Dir. Roman Polanski. R.P. Productions/France 2 Cinéma, 2010. “Humanity +”. 25 Aug. 2013 ‹http://humanityplus.org›. Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking, 2010. Levin, Ira. The Stepford Wives. Introd. Peter Straub. New York: William Morrow, 2002. Lilley, Stephen. Transhumanism and Society: The Social Debate over Human Enhancement. New York: Springer, 2013. “List of James Bond Gadgets.” Wikipedia. 11 Nov. 2013 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_James_Bond_gadgets›. The Manchurian Candidate. Dir. Jonathan Demme. Paramount, 2004. McCarthy, John, and Peter Wright. Technology as Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004. McCarthy, John, et al. “The Experience of Enchantment in Human–Computer Interaction.” Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 10 (2006): 369-78. “Mobile Cellular Subscriptions (per 100 People).” The World Bank. 25 March 2013 ‹http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2›. Nitins, Tanya L. “A Boy and His Toys: Technology and Gadgetry in the James Bond Films.” James Bond in World and Popular Culture: The Films Are Not Enough. Eds. Rob Weiner, B. Lynn Whitfield, and Jack Becker. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 445-58. ———. Selling James Bond: Product Placement in the James Bond Films. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011. Nye, David E. Technology Matters—Questions to Live With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006. Pratt, Andy, and Jason Nunes Interactive Design: An Introduction to the Theory and Application of User-Centered Design. Beverly, MA: Rockport, 2012. Quantum of Solace. Dir: Marc Foster, Eon Productions, 2008. DVD. Savulescu, Julian, and Nick Bostrom, eds. Human Enhancement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Skyfall. Dir. Sam Mendes. Eon Productions, 2012. Smith, Aaron. The Best and Worst of Mobile Connectivity. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew Research Center. 25 Aug. 2013 ‹http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Best-Worst-Mobile.aspx›. Thunderball. Dir. Terence Young. Eon Productions, 1965. “Verizon Commercial – Droid DNA ‘Hyper Intelligence’.” 11 April 2013 ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYIAaBOb5Bo›. Willis, Martin. “Hard-Wear: The Millenium, Technology, and Brosnan’s Bond.” The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader. Ed. Christoph Linder. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. 151-65.

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IntroductionI have been studying the creation of Metro style train travel in Sydney for over a decade. My focus has been on the impact that media has had on the process (see Richardson, “Curatorial”; “Upheaval”; “Making”). Through extensive expert, public, and media research, I have investigated the coalitions and alliances that have formed (and disintegrated) between political, bureaucratic, news media, and public actors and the influences at work within these actor-networks. As part of this project, I visited an underground Métro turning fifty in Montreal, Canada. After many years studying the development of a train that wasn’t yet tangible, I wanted to ask a functional train the simple ethnomethodological/Latourian style question, “what do you do for a city and its people?” (de Vries). Therefore, in addition to research conducted in Montreal, I spent ten days wandering through many of the entrances, tunnels, staircases, escalators, mezzanines, platforms, doorways, and carriages of which the Métro system consists. The purpose was to observe the train in situ in order to broaden potential conceptualisations of what a train does for a city such as Montreal, with a view of improving the ideas and messages that would be used to “sell” future rapid rail projects in other cities such as Sydney. This article outlines a selection of the pathways wandered, not only to illustrate the power of social research based on physical wandering, but also the potential power the metaphorical and conceptual wandering an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) assemblage affords social research for media communications.Context, Purpose, and ApproachANT is a hybrid theory/method for studying an arena of the social, such as the significance of a train to a city like Montreal. This type of study is undertaken by following the actors (Latour, Reassembling 12). In ANT, actors do something, as the term suggests. These actions have affects and effects. These might be contrived and deliberate influences or completely circ*mstantial and accidental impacts. Actors can be people as we are most commonly used to understanding them, and they can also be texts, technological devices, software programs, natural phenomena, or random occurrences. Most significantly though, actors are their “relations” (Harman 17). This means that they are only present if they are relating to others. These relations and the resulting influences and impacts are called networks. A network in the ANT sense is not as simple as the lines that connect train stations on a rail map. Without actions, relations, influences, and impacts, there are no actors. Hence the hyphen in actor-network; the actor and the network are symbiotic. The network, rendered visible through actor associations, consists of the tenuous connections that “shuttle back and forth” between actors even in spite of the fact their areas of knowledge and reality may be completely separate (Latour Modern 3). ANT, therefore, may be considered an empirical practice of tracing the actors and the network of influences and impacts that they both help to shape and are themselves shaped by. To do this, central ANT theorist Bruno Latour employs a simple research question: “what do you do?” This is because in the process of doing, somebody or something is observed to be affecting other people or things and an actor-network becomes identifiable. Latour later learned that his approach shared many parallels with ethnomethodology. This was a discovery that more concretely set the trajectory of his work away from a social science that sought explanations “about why something happens, to ontological ones, that is, questions about what is going on” (de Vries). So, in order to make sense of people’s actions and relations, the focus of research became asking the deceptively simple question while refraining as much as possible “from offering descriptions and explanations of actions in terms of schemes taught in social theory classes” (14).In answering this central ANT question, studies typically wander in a metaphorical sense through an array or assemblage (Law) of research methods such as formal and informal interviews, ethnographic style observation, as well as the content analysis of primary and secondary texts (see Latour, Aramis). These were the methods adopted for my Montreal research—in addition to fifteen in-depth expert and public interviews conducted in October 2017, ten days were spent physically wandering and observing the train in action. I hoped that in understanding what the train does for the city and its people, the actor-network within which the train is situated would be revealed. Of course, “what do you do?” is a very broad question. It requires context. In following the influence of news media in the circuitous development of rapid rail transit in Sydney, I have been struck by the limited tropes through which the potential for rapid rail is discussed. These tropes focus on technological, functional, and/or operational aspects (see Budd; Faruqi; Hasham), costs, funding and return on investment (see Martin and O’Sullivan; Saulwick), and the potential to alleviate peak hour congestion (see Clennell; West). As an expert respondent in my Sydney research, a leading Australian architect and planner, states, “How boring and unexciting […] I mean in Singapore it is the most exciting […] the trains are fantastic […] that wasn’t sold to the [Sydney] public.” So, the purpose of the Montreal research is to expand conceptualisations of the potential for rapid rail infrastructure to influence a city and improve communications used to sell projects in the future, as well as to test the role of both physical and metaphorical ANT style wanderings in doing so. Montreal was chosen for three reasons. First, the Métro had recently turned fifty, which made the comparison between the fledgling and mature systems topical. Second, the Métro was preceded by decades of media discussion (Gilbert and Poitras), which parallels the development of rapid transit in Sydney. Finally, a different architect designed each station and most stations feature art installations (Magder). Therefore, the Métro appeared to have transcended the aforementioned functional and numerically focused tropes used to justify the Sydney system. Could such a train be considered a long-term success?Wandering and PathwaysIn ten days I rode the Montreal Métro from end to end. I stopped at all the stations. I wandered around. I treated wandering not just as a physical research activity, but also as an illustrative metaphor for an assemblage of research practices. This assemblage culminates in testimony, anecdotes, stories, and descriptions through which an actor-network may be glimpsed. Of course, it is incomplete—what I have outlined below represents only a few pathways. However, to think that an actor-network can ever be traversed in its entirety is to miss the point. Completion is a fallacy. Wandering doesn’t end at a finish line. There are always pathways left untrodden. I have attempted not to overanalyse. I have left contradictions unresolved. I have avoided the temptation to link paths through tenuous byways. Some might consider that I have meandered, but an actor-network is never linear. I can only hope that my wanderings, as curtailed as they may be, prove nuanced, colourful, and rich—if not compelling. ANT encourages us to rethink social research (Latour, Reassembling). Central to this is acknowledging (and becoming comfortable with) our own role as researcher in the illumination of the actor-network itself.Here are some of the Montreal pathways wandered:First Impressions I arrive at Montreal airport late afternoon. The apartment I have rented is conveniently located between two Métro stations—Mont Royal and Sherbrooke. I use my phone and seek directions by public transport. To my surprise, the only option is the bus. Too tired to work out connections, I decide instead to follow the signs to the taxi rank. Here, I queue. We are underway twenty minutes later. Travelling around peak traffic, we move from one traffic jam to the next. The trip is slow. Finally ensconced in the apartment, I reflect on how different the trip into Montreal had been, from what I had envisaged. The Métro I had travelled to visit was conspicuous in its total absence.FloatingIt is a feeling of floating that first strikes me when riding the Métro. It runs on rubber tyres. The explanation for the choice of this technology differs. There are reports that it was the brainchild of strong-willed mayor, Jean Drapeau, who believed the new technology would showcase Montreal as a modern world-scale metropolis (Gilbert and Poitras). However, John Martins-Manteiga provides a less romantic account, stating that the decision was made because tyres were cheaper (47). I assume the rubber tyres create the floating sensation. Add to this the famous warmth of the system (Magder; Hazan, Hot) and it has a thoroughly calming, even lulling, effect.Originally, I am planning to spend two whole days riding the Métro in its entirety. I make handwritten notes. On the first day, at mid-morning, nausea develops. I am suffering motion sickness. This is a surprise. I have always been fine to read and write on trains, unlike in a car or bus. It causes a moment of realisation. I am effectively riding a bus. This is an unexpected side-effect. My research program changes—I ride for a maximum of two hours at a time and my note taking becomes more circ*mspect. The train as actor is influencing the research program and the data being recorded in unexpected ways. ArtThe stained-glass collage at Berri-Uquam, by Pierre Gaboriau and Pierre Osterrath, is grand in scale, intricately detailed and beautiful. It sits above the tunnel from which the trains enter and leave the platform. It somehow seems wholly connected to the train as a result—it frames and announces arrivals and departures. Other striking pieces include the colourful, tiled circles from the mezzanine above the platform at station Peel and the beautiful stained-glass panels on the escalator at station Charlevoix. As a public respondent visiting from Chicago contends, “I just got a sense of exploration—that I wanted to have a look around”.Urban FormAn urban planner asserts that the Métro is responsible for the identity and diversity of urban culture that Montreal is famous for. As everyone cannot live right above a Métro station, there are streets around stations where people walk to the train. As there is less need for cars, these streets are made friendlier for walkers, precipitating a cycle. Furthermore, pedestrian-friendly streets promote local village style commerce such as shops, cafes, bars, and restaurants. So, there is not only more access on foot, but also more incentive to access. The walking that the Métro induces improves the dynamism and social aspects of neighbourhoods, a by-product of which is a distinct urban form and culture for different pockets of the city. The actor-network broadens. In following the actors, I now have to wander beyond the physical limits of the system itself. The streets I walk around station Mont Royal are shopping and restaurant strips, rich with foot traffic at all times of day; it is a vibrant and enticing place to wander.Find DiningThe popular MTL blog published a map of the best restaurants the Métro provides access to (Hazan, Restaurant).ArchitectureStation De La Savane resembles a retro medieval dungeon. It evokes thoughts of the television series Game of Thrones. Art and architecture work in perfect harmony. The sculpture in the foyer by Maurice Lemieux resembles a deconstructed metal mace hanging on a brutalist concrete wall. It towers above a grand staircase and abuts a fence that might ring a medieval keep. Up close I realise it is polished, precisely cut cylindrical steel. A modern fence referencing another time and place. Descending to the platform, craggy concrete walls are pitted with holes. I get the sense of peering through these into the hidden chambers of a crypt. Overlaying all of this is a strikingly modern series of regular and irregular, bold vertical striations cut deeply into the concrete. They run from floor to ceiling to add to a cathedral-like sense of scale. It’s warming to think that such a whimsical train station exists anywhere in the world. Time WarpA public respondent describes the Métro:It’s a little bit like a time machine. It’s a piece of the past and piece of history […] still alive now. I think that it brings art or form or beauty into everyday life. […] You’re going from one place to the next, but because of the history and the story of it you could stop and breathe and take it in a little bit more.Hold ups and HostagesA frustrated General Manager of a transport advocacy group states in an interview:Two minutes of stopping in the Métro is like Armageddon in Montreal—you see it on every media, on every smartphone [...] We are so captive in the Métro [there is a] loss of control.Further, a transport modelling expert asserts:You’re a hostage when you’re in transportation. If the Métro goes out, then you really are stuck. Unfortunately, it does go out often enough. If you lose faith in a mode of transportation, it’s going to be very hard to get you back.CommutingIt took me a good week before I started to notice how tired some of the Métro stations had grown. I felt my enthusiasm dip when I saw the estimated arrival time lengthen on the electronic noticeboard. Anger rose as a young man pushed past me from behind to get out of a train before I had a chance to exit. These tendrils of the actor-network were not evident to me in the first few days. Most interview respondents state that after a period of time passengers take less notice of the interesting and artistic aspects of the Métro. They become commuters. Timeliness and consistency become the most important aspects of the system.FinaleI deliberately visit station Champ-de-Mars last. Photos convince me that I am going to end my Métro exploration with an experience to savour. The station entry and gallery is iconic. Martins-Manteiga writes, “The stained-glass artwork by Marcelle Ferron is almost a religious experience; it floods in and splashes down below” (306). My timing is off though. On this day, the soaring stained-glass windows are mostly hidden behind protective wadding. The station is undergoing restoration. Travelling for the last time back towards station Mont Royal, my mood lightens. Although I had been anticipating this station for some time, in many respects this is a revealing conclusion to my Métro wanderings.What Do You Do?When asked what the train does, many respondents took a while to answer or began with common tropes around moving people. As a transport project manager asserts, “in the world of public transport, the perfect trip is the one you don’t notice”. A journalist gives the most considered and interesting answer. He contends:I think it would say, “I hold the city together culturally, economically, physically, logistically—that’s what I do […] I’m the connective tissue of this city”. […] How else do you describe infrastructure that connects poor neighbourhoods to rich neighbourhoods, downtown to outlying areas, that supports all sorts of businesses both inside it and immediately adjacent to it and has created these axes around the city that pull in almost everybody [...] And of course, everyone takes it for granted […] We get pissed off when it’s late.ConclusionNo matter how real a transportation system may be, it can always be made a little less real. Today, for example, the Paris metro is on strike for the third week in a row. Millions of Parisians are learning to get along without it, by taking their cars or walking […] You see? These enormous hundred-year-old technological monsters are no more real than the four-year-old Aramis is unreal: They all need allies, friends […] There’s no inertia, no irreversibility; there’s no autonomy to keep them alive. (Latour, Aramis 86)Through ANT-based physical and metaphorical wanderings, we find many pathways that illuminate what a train does. We learn from various actors in the actor-network through which the train exists. We seek out its “allies” and “friends”. We wander, piecing together as much of the network as we can. The Métro does lots of things. It has many influences and it influences many. It is undeniably an actor in an actor-network. Transport planners would like it to appear seamless—commuters entering and leaving without really noticing the in-between. And sometimes it appears this way. However, when the commuter is delayed, this appearance is shattered. If a signal fails or an engine falters, the Métro, through a process mediated by word of mouth and/or social and mainstream media, is suddenly rendered tired and obsolete. Or is it historic and quaint? Is the train a technical problem for the city of Montreal or is it characterful and integral to the city’s identity? It is all these things and many more. The actor-network is illusive and elusive. Pathways are extensive. The train floats. The train is late. The train makes us walk. The train has seeded many unique villages, much loved. The train is broken. The train is healthy for its age. The train is all that is right with Montreal. The train is all that is wrong with Montreal. The artwork and architecture mean nothing. The artwork and architecture mean everything. Is the train overly limited by the tyres that keep it underground? Of course, it is. Of course, it isn’t. Does 50 years of history matter? Of course, it does. Of course, it doesn’t. It thrives. It’s tired. It connects. It divides. It’s functional. It’s dirty. It’s beautiful. It’s something to be proud of. It’s embarrassing. A train offers many complex and fascinating pathways. It is never simply an object; it lives and breathes in the network because we live and breathe around it. It stops being effective. It starts becoming affective. Sydney must learn from this. My wanderings demonstrate that the Métro cannot be extricated from what Montreal has become over the last half century. In May 2019, Sydney finally opened its first Metro rail link. And yet, this link and other ongoing metro projects continue to be discussed through statistics and practicalities (Sydney Metro). This offers no affective sense of the pathways that are, and will one day be, created. By selecting and appropriating relevant pathways from cities such as Montreal, and through our own wanderings and imaginings, we can make projections of what a train will do for a city like Sydney. We can project a rich and vibrant actor-network through the media in more emotive and powerful ways. Or, can we not at least supplement the economic, functional, or technocratic accounts with other wanderings? Of course, we can’t. Of course, we can. 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