<?page no="0"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29 Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures Edited by Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer <?page no="1"?> Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures Edited by Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer <?page no="2"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature Edited by The Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE) General Editor: Lukas Erne Volume 29 <?page no="3"?> Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures Edited by Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer <?page no="4"?> Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http: / / dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. Publiziert mit Unterstützung der Schweizerischen Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. © 2013 · Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Dischingerweg 5 · D-72070 Tübingen Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Gedruckt auf säurefreiem und alterungsbeständigem Werkdruckpapier. Internet: http: / / www.narr.de E-Mail: info@narr.de Umschlagabbildung und Einbandgestaltung: Martin Heusser, Zürich Druck und Bindung: Laupp & Göbel, Nehren Printed in Germany ISSN 0940-0478 ISBN 978-3-8233-6829-8 <?page no="5"?> Table of Contents Introduction 11 Barbara Klinger (Indiana) Cinema and Immortality: Hollywood Classics in an Intermediated World 17 Isabel Capeloa Gil (Oporto) Framing War: Domesticity and the Visuality of Conflict 31 Johannes Binotto (Zurich) Bond Rerouted: 007 and the Internal Conflict in/ of Digital Media 51 Cornelia Klecker (Innsbruck) “Are You Watching Closely? ”: The Conflict of Mind-Tricking Narratives in Recent Hollywood Film 65 Anna Iatsenko(Geneva) Narrative Conflicts and Violence of Reading in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy 79 Barbara Straumann (Zurich) The Conflict of Voice in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance 93 Johannes Mahlknecht (Innsbruck) “Based on Entirely Coincidental Resemblances”: The Legal Disclaimer in Hollywood Cinema 109 Bryn Skibo-Birney (Geneva) Revolutionary Writing: The Symbiosis of Social and Literary Conflict and Aesthetic Production in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test 123 Roberta Hofer (Innsbruck) A Tug of War with Silky Strings: Struggles for Power Between Human Puppets and Their Puppeteers 141 <?page no="6"?> Simone Puff (Innsbruck) Colors in Conflict: Light vs. Dark Reloaded; or, the Commodification of (Black) Beauty 159 Ralph J. Poole (Salzburg) “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole: ” Locker-Room Dramas of Sexual Violence Against Males in Sports 177 Notes on Contributors 199 Index of Names 205 <?page no="7"?> General Editor’s Preface SPELL (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature) is a publication of SAUTE , the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English. Established in 1984, it first appeared every second year, was published annually from 1994 to 2008, and now appears three times every two years. Every second year, SPELL publishes a selection of papers given at the biennial symposia organized by SAUTE . Nonsymposium volumes are usually collections of papers given at other conferences organized by members of SAUTE , in particular conferences of SANAS , the Swiss Association for North American Studies and, more recently, of SAMEMES , the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies. However, other proposals are also welcome. Decisions concerning topics and editors are made by the Annual General Meeting of SAUTE two years before the year of publication. Volumes of SPELL contain carefully selected and edited papers devoted to a topic of literary, linguistic and - broadly - cultural interest. All contributions are original and are subjected to external evaluation by means of a full peer review process. Contributions are usually by participants at the conferences mentioned, but volume editors are free to solicit further contributions. Papers published in SPELL are documented in the MLA International Bibliography. SPELL is published with the financial support of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences. Information on all aspects of SPELL , including volumes planned for the future, is available from the General Editor, Prof. Lukas Erne, Département de langue et littérature anglaises, Faculté des Lettres, Université de Genève, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland, e-mail: lukas.erne@unige.ch. Information about past volumes of SPELL and about SAUTE , in particular about how to become a member of the association, can be obtained from the SAUTE website at http: / / www.saute.ch. Lukas Erne <?page no="9"?> Acknowledgements The editors wish to thank all those who presented papers at the 2012 joint biannual conference co-hosted by the Swiss Association for North American Studies (SANAS) and the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS). Particular thanks go to Johannes Binotto for helping with the pre-organization and to Andreas Leisner as the secretary of the AAAS. SANAS gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences and the generous contribution of the University of Zurich. The AAAS gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the US Embassy in Vienna, the International Relations Office, and the Dean’s office of the Faculty of Humanities 2 (Language and Literature) at the University of Innsbruck. We would like to recognize the efforts of those colleagues who so kindly assisted in the peer-review process for this volume and thank them for their work. We also wish to thank Keith Hewlett for his careful editorial preparation of this volume and Martin Heusser for his book cover design. <?page no="11"?> Introduction The essays in this volume are a selection of the papers presented at the jointly organized conference of the Swiss Association for American Studies (SANAS) and the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS) held at the University of Zurich on 9-10 November 2012. Choosing “Conflict” as the motto for the annual conference of two associations devoted to the study of the United States of America seemed appropriated in times when the international role of the United States has been a controversial one, producing and provoking rhetorical and military conflicts on numerous levels. What became apparent early on in the organization of the conference was that these geopolitical conflicts were not the prime targets the participants and their papers had singled out for investigation. Rather than these straightforward conflicts that America has been engaging in for over a decade, the papers at the conference seemed to be more attentive to metaphorical antagonisms within different forms of artistic expression. This interest in tensions and conflicts on numerous structural levels of culture within the field of American Studies seems, at first glance, unusual or unexpected. However, it turns out to be a leitmotif of American culture throughout its entire history, namely, in the form of a deep and profound preoccupation with the Other as a source of conflict or friction. Beginning with the age of discovery and the colonial period, America has always been exploring the tension between Europe or the European settlers and the new continent with its native inhabitants. This continues in the Early Republic by stylizing England as a crucial force for defining the identity of the United States through notions of demarcation and separation. Conflict is also at work in the literature and philosophy of transcendentalism with its urge to overcome the division between the individual and nature in a mystic sublation of this very divide. Struggles and conflicts between social strata characterize the literature of the Gilded Age and realism in the second half of the nineteenth century, man- Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 11-15. <?page no="12"?> 12 Introduction ifesting themselves in narratological experiments that highlight these antagonisms. This kind of opposition is reinforced in the culture of modernism, which gravitates around time and space as two conflicting dimensions for perceiving the world at large, thereby generating new media, including film and other mechanically reproducible forms of artistic expression, as well as new modes of storytelling in literature and the visual arts. Parallel to these structural conflicts fought over media of expression, racial or ethnic Otherness has been engaging in a creative friction throughout twentieth-century American culture at large. Also the resurfacing of American exceptionalism in the twenty-first century, modeled on Puritan notions of America as being the chosen nation, testifies once again to this long-standing conflict within American culture that directs its energy toward the Other in a variety of dimensions, spanning religion, politics, philosophy, class, media, and ethnicity, to name just a few. The essays in this collection address these moments of conflict in American culture from a variety of vantage points, mostly looking at structural areas of friction within different forms of artistic expression, including literature, film, photography, digital technologies, advertisements, and representations of sexual violence, all roughly grouped under the rubrics of media, narratives, and realities. Conflicting Media In her essay, Barbara Klinger uses the conflict between media technologies in film as a way to explain the constitution of a film canon or the emergence of films as movie classics. In close readings of the media transformations of films such as Gone with the Wind and It’s a Wonderful Life, Klinger demonstrates how, in an almost Darwinian manner, the cultural memory of films constitutes itself through recirculation of films in new formats. Her case studies illuminate how TV adaptations of films, their republishing in digital formats, directors’ cuts, or similar modes of redistribution, shape the fate of a film with respect to its position as a major work in film history. In a similarly media-conscious way, Isabel Capeloa Gil approaches the concept of representational conflicts through the tension between the actual realm of war and what could be referred to as the “home front.” By looking at early film material as well as at contemporary photo art, she demonstrates how essential this conflict between the home and the combat zone, as two seemingly exclusive dimensions, is for the representation of war. Domesticity becomes the backdrop or <?page no="13"?> Introduction 13 larger frame that is necessary for realizing the visual mimesis of the war experience. Mimetic issues are also at the fore of Johannes Binotto’s analysis of the James Bond movie Quantum Solace, in which he highlights the film’s media-specific self-reflexivity with respect to digital cinema. Binotto demonstrates the extent to which the visual grammar of the film is deeply influenced by digital technology, arguing that digital visualization is also at the core of the film’s plot and narrative. Through the use of specific frames, the film also reflects on digital imaging as a larger metacinematic dimension, thereby making wider claims concerning the status of cinema in the twenty-first century. Conflicting Narratives These new media formats go hand in hand - not just in cinema - with new modes of storytelling. Cornelia Klecker approaches in her essay what she terms “mind-tricking” narratives in recent Hollywood film, that is, films with a twist ending. By comparing The Prestige and The Illusionist she is able to pinpoint mechanisms of a new mode of storytelling that relies on two competing narratives or plots within one film. Surprise endings of a number of recent films make the viewer question what she has experienced up to this point. One final moment of revelation retrospectively creates a conflict of competing narratives in the viewer’s mind. In a similar vein, Anna Iatsenko shows how recent novels engage in analogous narratological strategies. Her reading of Toni Morrison’s A Mercy shows how the novel is able to suppress a conflicting plotline which, similar to a mind-tricking narrative, surprises us as readers by violating the plot we had, up to this point, been constructing in our minds. In an epiphany-like moment, when the narrator discloses a minute element of the story, the hitherto assumed plot shatters into pieces which the reader consequently has to reconstruct, thus producing a new narrative that stands in utter conflict with the previously believed-in meaning of the story. This narrative tension can, of course, also manifest itself as different narrative voices within one text. Barbara Straumann’s analysis of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance shows how the male narrator’s voice in the novel constantly collides with the voice of the dominating female figure of Zenobia. By using the Bachtinean concept of heteroglossia and by stressing the notion of the female figure’s continuous performative stance, Straumann reads these competing voices as larger principles at work in the novel as such. <?page no="14"?> 14 Introduction While the above essays are interested in how the ends of narratives violate or overwrite the memory of what the viewer or reader had experienced until arriving at the surprise ending, Johannes Mahlknecht focuses on how the beginning of a film shapes the expectations of moviegoers. By using the legal disclaimer, Mahlknecht selects one paratextual element of the opening sequence in order to explore the thin line that separates fiction from truth in film. As a minute framing device, the claim to the authenticity or assurance of the fictitious nature of a given film - usually positioned in the opening credits - shapes our mental disposition when watching this film. However, in many cases, as Mahlknecht’s close readings demonstrate, these disclaimers turn out to problematize the status of truth and authenticity in film rather than clarifying the very questions they claim to answer. Conflicting Realities Problems of authenticity and truth also lie at the heart of New Journalism as a narrative mode that tries to explore the gray areas between fact and fiction. This borderline, which is being negotiated between fiction and truth in New Journalism, in a transformed way, also lies at the heart of the story told in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Bryn Skibo-Birney analyzes Wolfe’s rendering of Ken Kesey’s drug experimentations in his attempts to create a drug-induced counterreality as a conflict between reality and fiction akin to the New Journalist enterprise. Another borderline that separates reality and imagination, that is, the conflict between the world and the perceiving mind, is explored in Roberta Hofer’s essay on human puppeteering. Films like Being John Malkovich and Stranger than Fiction, together with J. M. Coetzee’s Slow Man, serve as springboards to delve into the murky waters in which fact and fiction, self and Other, as well as reality and performance, blend and consequently get into conflict with one another. All three works problematize, through notions of performing human puppets, integral dimensions of narrative literature or narrative film, including the conflicting functions of author, narrator, character, and point of view. These performative aspects that govern any kind of reality transgression surface in a totally different guise in Simone Puff’s essay on skin color in African American standards of beauty. By screening advertisements and articles in Ebony magazine over a number of decades, Puff traces a latent conflict within African American print culture that gravitates around skin color as an indicator for a mostly female aesthetics. By juxtaposing globalized concepts of biracial beauty with African Ameri- <?page no="15"?> Introduction 15 can beauty standards, her essay lays bare an unreconciled conflict within African American self-expression during the second half of the twentieth century. The conflict between personal agency and outside control, which can manifest itself in normative beauty standards as well as in allegories of human puppeteering, also governs the last paper of the collection. Ralph Poole’s exploration of the representation of sexual violence against young males in sports returns to questions of how to depict events of undocumented violence in journalism or the media. Using a number of real cases as well as adaptations of sexual transgressions in films and TV series, Poole locates the mechanisms at work in mainstream mass communication. By emphasizing violence and media, the last paper comes full circle to the first essays of the collection, returning to questions that had been raised by the first papers with respect to the representation of war and its underlying conflicts. The essays in this volume try to span a large array of dimensions within American culture in which concepts of conflict fuel representational practices. Ranging from media-related levels, narrative modes, to ways in which to come to terms with different realities, the individual contributions map out a multitude of mostly structural forces of conflict. Despite their foregrounded representational agendas, these investigations, nevertheless, derive their momentum from a number of unmediated, that is, directly experienced forms of conflict that have always been at work throughout American cultural history. Mario Klarer and Christina Ljungberg <?page no="17"?> Cinema and Immortality: Hollywood Classics in an Intermediated World Barbara Klinger In our Darwinian media universe, some texts will disappear from view, while others survive, sometimes to become “immortal.” Rather than consider immortality as produced by a text’s aesthetic qualities, I focus on the phenomenon of the film reissue - the re-release of new versions - as vital to a film’s successful circulation through time. The re-release of a film in various venues, from movie theaters to television, involves its transformation to suit the requirements of new technologies and media. Hence, investigating the reissue means theorizing the significance these transformations have for textual study. In the process, we confront not only cinema’s immortality as opposed to its mortality, but other conceptual conflicts as well: the film text’s stability versus its instability; the essential cinematic versus intermediated cinema; and authenticity versus the copy. These conflicts lead to disciplinary questions: what kind of film history and film aesthetics best respond to cinema’s intermediality through decades of recycling? How does the appraisal of cinema’s intermediality - its constitutional relationships to other media involved in its circulation - shift accordingly? How might this shift ultimately result in new approaches to adaptation? To address these issues, I examine a group of Hollywood mainstays, including Gone with the Wind and It’s a Wonderful Life. Cultures exhaust themselves; civilizations die. . . . This is nothing we do not already know. There is however a more interesting question: what is it that causes life to perdure? ” (Maffesoli 114-115) When the issue of mortality is raised in relation to cinema, scholars usually examine it with respect to two concerns: the cinematic heritage, that Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 17-29. <?page no="18"?> 18 Barbara Klinger is, the lost or disintegrating films that threaten the archive and a full understanding of film history; and the so-called “death of cinema” caused by the displacement of celluloid by digital technologies. While both of these concerns will rightfully continue to generate discussion and debate, what is left unexamined is the opposite destiny for some films: that they endure over decades as highly visible exemplars of cinema to generations of audiences. We could attribute the longevity of such films to their essences, reasoning that each has commanded the public stage for so long because of its intrinsic merits. In my view, however, the picture is more complex. Certain older films have circulated historically through a series of versions distributed through an increasingly broad network of media platforms that re-release these films in some form. This circulation occurs within changing industrial and cultural circumstances that continually subject films to makeovers for old and new audiences alike. The alterations that films undergo as they are serially reissued in new versions occur subsequent to theatrical premieres in what is called the “aftermarket.” A film can materialize in different forms during its initial theatrical release, but post-premiere recycling through a range of media technologies and across exhibition venues makes its lasting impact possible. Although films have long reappeared, the heady universe that surrounds us now, with proliferating versions of films after their theatrical debuts on screens as diverse as room-engulfing HDTVs and palm-sized iPhones, makes the centrality of this type of film migration evident. Moreover, the aftermarket is the only dimension of cinema capable of sustaining or, conversely, marginalizing a film’s claim on public attention over time. Aftermarkets provide the conditions necessary for films to become memorable or to be forgotten, to rise or fall in canonical rank, to find or lose audiences, to persist in or disappear from the crowded media marketplace. To pursue the significance of the aftermarket to the study of film, I will examine the reappearances of a small group of Hollywood films made during the height of the classic studio era. These include Gone with the Wind (1939), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Casablanca (1942), and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), another enduring classic from a different period and nation, will also prove to be instructive here. The choice of these films allows me to concentrate on what I call the “popular immortals.” Popular immortals are celebrity texts that have earned critical accolades and, frequently, cult adoration. But they have also gained long-term, widespread fame among generations of mainstream viewers through television and cable reruns, reissue in movie theaters, and VHS , DVD , and Blu-ray editions, among other venues. <?page no="19"?> Cinema and Immortality 19 As fixtures of the American cinematic lexicon that have been recycled for more than seventy years, significant “old” Hollywood films help to expose the range of industry practices, modes of exhibition, and types of technologies and media responsible for keeping a title in the public eye over the long haul. In doing so, they reveal the textual transformations involved in its reissue - the revamping of a film’s audio-visual style and story to suit the requirements of new circumstances of exhibition and circulation. I argue that these films’ staying power owes in large part to their historical reappearance in multiple versions that have not only acted as life support systems, but have emblazoned them in the public imagination as representations of what cinema itself - at its best - was and is. I contend as well that all such versions are essentially adaptations. When movies are re-released, they are substantially modified, just as, in the case of more traditional forms of adaptation, texts must inevitably undergo change when translated into other media. 1 Cinema’s iteration in the aftermarket ultimately has ramifications for the nature of the object we study as film and for disciplinary approaches in the field itself. As we shall see, reckoning with reissues means confronting not only cinema’s immortality as opposed to its mortality, but a number of other conceptual conflicts as well: the stability versus the instability of the film text; the essential cinematic versus intermediated cinema; authenticity versus the copy; and the apparent primacy of versions of films that premiere in movie theaters versus those that appear afterward. These conflicts lead to disciplinary questions. What kind of film history and film aesthetics best respond to cinema’s intermediality through decades of recycling? Put another way, what modifications must film history and film aesthetics undergo to grasp cinema’s circulation and emphatic diachrony? How does the appraisal of cinema’s intermediality 2 - its constitutional relationships to other technologies and 1 Adaptation studies have been reinvigorated by the simultaneous awareness of the text’s place in multimedia networks of intertextuality and of the insufficiency of fidelitydriven, “books into film” comparisons for analyzing this situation (Iain Smith’s edited collection is a strong example of this kind of scholarship).While pursuing a broader agenda, though, new adaptation studies concentrate on contemporary phenomena where a text’s transmedia proliferation (a novel becomes a film which becomes a video game, etc.) is most evident. Further, these studies do not consider a film’s literal reissue as a mode of adaptation worth investigating as such. 2 Acknowledging that many different kinds of intermediality exist, my analysis presents the relationship between cinema and its transformative public re-presentations as a specific type of “intermedial configuration” (Rajewsky 43). As opposed, for instance, to identifying affinities between aural or optical technologies (Fullerton and Olsson), here the term signifies the material incorporation and muscular redefinition of the film text by fellow media and technologies involved in its serial reappearances over history. <?page no="20"?> 20 Barbara Klinger media in its life cycle - shift accordingly? How might this shift result in reconceived approaches to adaptation? Of course, my essay cannot exhaustively address all of these issues. But I mean to reflect upon facets of each of them through a series of mini-case studies of the “popular immortals,” particularly, but not exclusively, in relation to television - long one of the most significant and contentious venues of re-release for films. Let me begin, though, by clarifying the place the aftermarket typically occupies in the film industry and in the field, and addressing further why it deserves more scrutiny. The Aftermarket In debates in 2010 about the biggest box-office film of all time in North America, instigated by Avatar’s (2009) success, Gone with the Wind emerged victorious at no. 1 in both US and Canadian markets with close to 2 billion dollars in revenues, once grosses were adjusted for inflation (“All Time Box Office”). By another measure - the number of tickets sold - David O. Selznick’s classic still merited first place. Domestic moviegoers purchased 25 million tickets during Gone with the Wind’s first run; however, in theatrical reissue, the film sold an additional 180 million tickets, making its total more than 200 million admissions over its seventy year history in US theaters alone (Young). Even given frequent reruns on television and reissue on video, including, most recently, its seventieth anniversary Blu-ray edition, Gone with the Wind’s spectacular showing on NBC in 1976 is still noteworthy: its two-night broadcast drew almost half of US households, making it the highest-rated Hollywood feature film ever to appear on a network (Gorman). Even with the grand public visibility Avatar earned as a theatrical object of wonder economically, technologically, and experientially, with 62 million tickets sold in its first domestic run (Young), it clearly needed to get a second life. This process commenced quickly with Cameron’s venture selling millions of DVDs on its first day on the home market in April 2010. The film also reappeared in theaters with additional footage in August 2010 and in multiple special DVD editions in time for the holidays, with a wide-release 3D Blu-ray edition in Fall 2012 (Finke). Industry statistics like these often represent the aftermarket as nothing more than a cash cow. When film historians address the aftermarket, they tend to investigate the industrial, technical, economic, and legal developments that have underwritten film recycling: for example, the development of analog video or the ensuing Sony court case as it de- <?page no="21"?> Cinema and Immortality 21 termined whether the VCR was an instrument of media piracy. 3 When aesthetic judgments are woven into these accounts (especially before DVD , which, along with HDTV and home theater, improved the audiovisual quality of watching films on television), historians and critics often concentrate on the violence done to cinema as an art form on the “small screen,” a point to which I shall return. For now, the Gone with the Wind / Avatar face-off raises awareness of different matters. It demonstrates that textual proliferation is not simply a contemporary phenomenon; that films rely absolutely on a network of fellow media for their continued visibility and cultural status; and that cinema’s multi-mediated life cycles oblige textual change and cultural resituating. Even in theatrical re-release, a film is not the same as it was when it debuted. For instance, like other titles originally shot in Academy ratio and reissued in the 1950s, Gone with the Wind was “stretched” to widescreen dimensions to accommodate the times - to meet standards of theatrical spectacle meant to compete with television. It was also presented in an improved Technicolor transfer and changed to stereophonic sound. In 1967-68, the film was re-released in 70mm, Metrocolor ( MGM’s brand of Eastman Color), and six-track sound, presentational modes that again magnified its epical stature through technological updates. Ironically, both reissues involved severe cropping of the top and bottom of the image, actually providing less of the film in the midst of what otherwise appeared to be visual and audio plentitude. Along with print alterations, the heightened spectacle of Gone with the Wind’s version of the Civil War and Reconstruction periods in the 1950s and 1960s raise questions about the meanings it generated during crucial eras of the American Civil Rights movement. While each of the popular immortals I have mentioned has been resurrected through myriad means, each has also been strongly identified with television in their ancillary lives. Since films have been shown via television for more than sixty years, cinema’s televisual presence - its exhibition on TV monitors in the home from the early post- WWII broadcast days to the DVD and HD eras - illuminates cinema’s story as a major mass entertainment form and as a medium extensively shaped by the post-premiere distribution of its titles. 3 The Supreme Court ruled on the “Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.,” also known as the “Betamax Case” in 1984 in favor of Sony. This meant the Chief Justices found, among other things, that the VCR’s use to record movies was not in violation of copyright. <?page no="22"?> 22 Barbara Klinger Television In terms of social fortunes, the place that Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life occupies in the American consciousness would be impossible to gauge without taking stock of the role that TV - local , network, and cable stations - played in its destiny. In fact, the film itself would not have had such a wonderful life were it not for its fellow medium. When it was released after WWII , critical opinion was divided, with some lamenting the film’s embarrassing display of sentimentality (Crowther). The film might never have caught the eye of later audiences had it not appeared to enter the public domain in 1974. Until 1994 when Republic Pictures legally regained copyright on the film and licensed NBC to show it, many channels broadcast It’s a Wonderful Life innumerable times during the holidays, making it, as Ernest Mathijs has remarked, into a “seasonal cult” film (Mathijs). With its Christmastime denouement and seasonally appropriate uplifting message, reruns transformed the film’s once slightly radioactive sentimentality into a cherished mode of affect that embodied the holiday spirit. Television programming thus suggests how film affect can be redefined over time, as well as how the household TV set could become a holiday destination for families. Incessant replay also led to a shift in the magnitude of the film’s cultural presence and fueled its enduring crossover into popular and critical canons. Television has helped to make this and many other films what they are in the public imagination. Yet, pre- HDTV’s alterations of cinema have often been met with such negative reactions that television’s importance to film circulation and the cinematic heritage more generally has been obscured. As Douglas Gomery once wrote: “Reliance on television for the presentation of motion pictures has extracted a high price in terms of viewing conditions” (259). He and other historians have noted the extensive changes films have undergone to suit the requirements of TV : movies have been cut for length, censored for content, interrupted by ads, and, in the case of widescreen films, altered to fit the smaller screen. As a result, plots have been changed, scenes added or deleted, expletives removed or replaced with harmless words, and original visual elements transformed - at times, making the film in question unintelligible. By the 1980s, when outrage at the horrors networks visited upon cinema was at its height, concerns ranged from the aesthetic to the patriotic: for scholars, filmmakers, and film critics, TV’s “mutilation” of films showed “contempt for content” motivated by “programming needs” (Segrave 129-130). Further, by destroying authentic works rooted in the nation’s history, the networks’ avarice left “an art form defenseless” and tampered with “the hearts and minds of America” (Segrave 131, 133). <?page no="23"?> Cinema and Immortality 23 In terms of perceptions of destruction, perhaps colorization - a computerized process used in the 1980s and afterward to transform black-and-white films into color - is the most controversial of offenders at this time. In a familiar story, Ted Turner emerged in the 1980s as the infamous advocate of this process, “repainting” dozens of the pre-1950s films in his library, including Casablanca, to cablecast, initially, on TBS . He and other industry executives believed that colorization would make older films more viable for new audiences and more profitable for studios that leased them. Indeed, when Hal Roach Studios released It’s a Wonderful Life on VHS during this decade, color cassettes retailed successfully at more than four times the price of black-and-white copies (Segrave 156). Meanwhile, the community that opposed colorization regarded it as yet another act of aesthetic sabotage directed at theatrical cinema by aftermarket forces. With economics once again pitted against aesthetics, colorization desecrated the original film and was compared to putting lipstick on a Greek statue. While the colorization controversy eventually subsided, colorization itself did not disappear. In 2007 Paramount Pictures, current owner of the film’s ancillary rights, released It’s a Wonderful Life in a new version marked by improved colorization technologies. Further, in terms of reception, colorized transfers have found a place in popular canons: fans collect them and a piracy market exists for hard-to-find titles that have attained the status of rare objects. There are also holiday viewers in North America that keep Capra’s film running all day on Christmas on two TVs - one for the black-and-white and one for the colorized video, mustering a peaceful coexistence between versions otherwise often seen as at war. In both its controversial and “quieter” appearances, colorization has thus entered the print stream of It’s a Wonderful Life and other films, becoming part of their patterns of circulation. In fact, colorization is not an anomaly; it lies distinctly within practices common to a broader spectrum of versions: recall the manipulation of Gone with the Wind’s images via enhanced Technicolor and Metrocolor in its big-screen reappearances. More recently, with its digital footprint and economic logic, colorization is an antecedent of DVD . Industry executives view DVD too as a way of “recycling old films for maximum profits through a new technology.” DVD technology also updates or “freshens” films through a “more contemporary look” that will “appeal to a new generation of viewers” (Segrave 157). Moreover, DVD reprocesses and changes prints through the work of colorists and color correction technologies. These operations alter not only color and tone, but the image’s resolution, producing versions of the same film that look quite different. <?page no="24"?> 24 Barbara Klinger However, colorization lacks the critical cache associated with the DVD transfer. Despite its parallels with colorization, DVD - with its imprimatur of quality, the apparently authentic sheen of its revived images, and seductive packaging - seems the superior mode of repurposing. Introduced into a climate that embraces almost anything digital, DVD is among digital media that have rehabilitated TV for cinema screenings. In terms of cinema’s televisual history, then, there are “good” and “bad” aftermarkets, with aesthetic judgments informing analysis of the changes films undergo as they travel through their post-premiere lives. This marriage of film history and aesthetics has meant that earlier eras of the recycling of Hollywood films on network and cable TV and videocassette have not been fully mined in terms of their implications for the field. One possible direction here is to delve more deeply into a historical moment to examine the bases of aesthetic claims about film versions. Paul Grainge’s meta-critical take on the colorization controversies of the 1980s is instructive in this respect. He examines the controversies as rooted in the culture wars of the time, wherein perceptions of the increasing influence of big business over art, television’s degrading effects on art and culture, and the waning of US power in the face of globalization, fueled vigorous protest over the fate of classic black-andwhite film as emblems of American heritage vulnerable to all of these forces (155-176). As Grainge points out, colorization did not actually destroy the original; it visually reconfigured it, representing a “modification rather than a mutilation” (161). Colorization is in principle, then, no different than other versions that define film circulation. Moreover, by excavating the foundations of an aesthetic panic, Grainge sheds light on the contingency of aesthetic claims, demonstrating their origins in a matrix of social concerns. To come to terms with the versions that comprise the material migration of films across time, historians likewise must reconsider aesthetic claims that marginalize the place of a particular version in a film’s history of circulation. The Aftermarket and Intermediality Once film history is decoupled from traditional aesthetics that are based on notions of authenticity and quality, from judgments about savory and unsavory re-releases, aftermarket scholarship can approach an aesthetic better equipped to explore the film version’s place in the field - an aesthetic of circulation. This alternative approach identifies and conceptualizes the architectures of transformation that distinguish how films have been reformulated for ancillary venues and contexts over time. These range from the activities of organizations that participate in re- <?page no="25"?> Cinema and Immortality 25 presenting films, including media industries and archives, to the critical and cultural contexts in which films reappear. The transformations that occur in this mobilization of films are wide-ranging, affecting potentially the print’s physical attributes, film narrative and style, generic categorization, the canon, and meaning. No matter which mode of circulation is explored, however, research entails coming to terms with the import of cinema’s intermedia alliances. As we have seen, the case of It’s a Wonderful Life demonstrates how repetitious programming on TV strategically planned for the holidays can promote sentimental affect, cult canonicity, and membership in the family film genre. How a title becomes a family film is also, of course, subject to more finely grained aspects of programming. In his work on the TV rerun, Derek Kompare argues that this staple of programming is involved in an enterprise that is as semiotic as it is economic. On the one hand, the rerun is the “lifeblood” of a channel, forming the core of its appeal to advertisers and audiences alike. On the other, rerunning generates an active process that “grooms” content for TV : “in presenting familiar programming . . . networks do not merely run it; they strip it, promote it, repackage it, and recombine it” (171-172). Accordingly, when TV networks exhibit a Hollywood film, they not only transform the print’s physicality and the film’s textuality to conform to television’s standards, they also reframe it for consumption. A brief look at what we might call the “host effect” in The Wizard of Oz reruns offers one mode of reframing that characterized the film’s serial make-overs. In its televised showings from the 1950s to the 1990s on CBS alone, a number of small screen personalities who had their own shows on the network - comedy, variety, or drama - introduced the film. These hosts were often accompanied by their real-life families and/ or situated in their own homes or in “homey” surroundings. In this case, hosting, a widely practiced presentational mode on TV , enabled CBS to promote its stars and programming, as well as itself by opening and closing the film’s telecast with CBS -branded credits and music. Meanwhile, the host’s presence with children in domestic settings identified the film unambiguously as not just a musical, but as family fare. Further, the host-effect during Oz’s TV circulation came to define it as a canonical entry into the family genre. By the 1990s when Angela Lansbury - an actress associated with musical theater and star of Murder, She Wrote, a mystery series aimed at older viewers - hosted its telecast, the film’s place in this canon is on display, as is its appeal to nostalgia. Lansbury is in a room festooned with The Wizard of Oz posters. She wears casual clothing and sits in a comfortable-looking chair with a copy of the Frank Baum book opened on her lap. She is the portrait of a grandmotherly type ready for her <?page no="26"?> 26 Barbara Klinger grandchildren and their parents to enjoy the story. In this straightforward way, economic imperatives associated with the network’s promotion of its own brand and of the telecast translate into a multilayered semiotics of presentation. Through Lansbury’s persona and its association with older viewers and through the setting, The Wizard of Oz’s broadcast is framed in terms of memories of the novel and the film understood as a familial experience. Combined with Lansbury’s association with musical theater, the framing also helps to cement Oz’s generic hybridity as both musical and family film. By the time of the Lansbury telecast, the film has also clearly achieved cultural presence and authority. Reflecting upon cinema’s televisual history thus allows us to recalibrate notions of the canon to include popular tastes and affective modalities that develop through film recycling and to investigate the mechanisms by which films come to acquire status and an intimate place in culture and in audiences’ lives. Once we regard the aftermarket as more than an economic or legal zone or a place of aesthetic promise or danger for films, a title’s various iterations emerge as an intimate part of its history. With iterability identified as a prime moving force in a film’s historical trajectory, issues of aura and authenticity - the director’s cut, the restoration of never-before-seen footage - become part of the semiotic web woven by studios and other companies as they repurpose films for new venues and audiences. At the same time, unseemly alterations, such as the awkwardly censored or colorized print, assume their place as equally central to circulation. This aesthetics denuded of traditional associations with art and authenticity is defined, then, with respect to the expansive worlds of cinema’s material existence as a disseminated entity - an existence marked by its incorporation into other venues with their own technological and media-specific imperatives. As the grounding principle of film circulation and survival, this reconceived aesthetic provides the keys to a more robust understanding of film history that takes stock of cinema’s intermedia affiliations as part of its fundamental script. The Film Text and Adaptation Ultimately, the persistence of rerun films across exhibition forums raises broader questions about the protean nature of cinema itself. Like other media, film is a shifting prospect in its production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. The aftermarket - televisual and otherwise - is not really a separate sphere from first-run production and exhibition: it is part of a vital continuum that marks cinema as iterable and changeable <?page no="27"?> Cinema and Immortality 27 from the start; the aftermarket simply makes this state of affairs strikingly visible. To wit, Thomas Elsaesser’s study of Metropolis, a classic with one of the highest re-release profiles, demonstrates that director Fritz Lang’s extravaganza “from its inception, existed in different release versions” (32). These include, in 1927 alone, its short-lived premiere in Berlin, the US re-edit, and another altered version for broader German distribution. Since then the film has been repeatedly reborn in versions that have cobbled together or reconstructed its elements, from intertitles and narrative to image and sound. At the time Elsaesser’s book was published in 2000, perhaps the most famous of these re-imaginings was Giorgio Moroder’s 1984 version that boasted a New Wave musical soundtrack and restored and tinted images. As Elsaesser points out, this version converted the movie from a film of historical importance to a cult sensation (37). He muses further that Moroder’s re-issue can be seen “either as merely another business venture in the life-cycle of a film, or an adaptation, somewhere between a remake and a postmodern appropriation” (37). The new digital restoration in 2010 enhances this sense of category confusion. It was fashioned after a 16mm dupe negative discovered in Buenos Aires that contained twenty-five minutes of lost footage thought to hail from the film’s 1927 Berlin premiere cut. It also featured Gottfried Huppertz’s 1927 score in 5.1 Surround Sound stereo in theaters or in live orchestral performance. Hence, a 16mm version of the film, itself a copy, forms the basis of a digital theatrical restoration, another copy, presented to the public in varied exhibition circumstances. Acknowledging the difficulties that a carnival of prints poses for assertions of authenticity, Elsaesser’s summary question on this matter applies to any film with sustained cultural visibility. Is Metropolis a “strange torso or changeling of a film . . . [is it] mutilated or merely mutated? ” (34). Our choice is between regarding a film as a “mutating strange torso,” a volatile foundation that will be appropriated and transformed, or a fixed, original entity subject to the production of “mutilated changelings,” that is, ruined imposters. If we, reflecting on an aesthetics of circulation, opt for the first route, alterations to a film and its contexts become significant markers on an historical trail central to understanding that film. Pushed further, this pursuit of history over the long haul, as it foregrounds the inherent changeability of the film body, suggests the textual validity of the version, as well as its function as an appropriation with potentially substantial effects on a film’s meaning and cultural status. Once the version is thus doubly conceived, it gains legitimacy as both a text and a part of an intertextual network that dynamically rear- <?page no="28"?> 28 Barbara Klinger ticulates a title. Hence, it assumes a place in relation to other forms of adaptation that scholars have regarded as having clear analytical and conceptual value. The dictionary definition of adaptation - “the modification of an organism or its parts that make it more fit for existence under the conditions of its environment” - suggests that reissues are exemplary of this process. If every reissued version of a film is considered an adaptation of sorts, then the principles of change at work become a starting point for examining how a film is reiterated and reformulated for aftermarket technologies and media - from celluloid gauges to online streaming - as well as for new cultural contexts and audiences. In its afterlife, a film is thus always remade and adapted to new circumstances of “living.” Accordingly, our study of this phenomenon would be a revivified mode of adaptation study, free from concerns with fidelity, with the primacy of one medium over another, with questions of comparative aesthetics. Moreover, versions of the same film can be firmly recognized as participating in the textual proliferation and extension that have long characterized media culture in the more customary forms of sequels, prequels, and remakes. 4 The version thus becomes a vital textual phenomenon that enters into the filmic shape-shifting that occurs across media, without which a film’s history would be radically incomplete, its reputation a matter of memory, its intimate place in audience’s lives over time unfathomable. Paradoxically, textual immortality, far from signifying a kind of imperturbable stasis, relies on persistent, dynamic modifications to the textual body by forces to which this body is inextricably bound as it circulates. These forces may seem grand, as in the case of a digital restoration, or prosaic, as in the case of a programming strategy on TV . Whatever their appearance to the critical eye, they are vital to understanding the reissue as a mode of textual variation without which texts would fail to navigate the vast expanses of time necessary to become legends. 4 Daniel Herbert has coined the term versionality as a means of grasping the “intertextual, intermedial, and intramedial nexus” that surrounds any text and results in “repetitions and variations” (Cinemascope). If we push this concept further, we can consider any iteration of a text (e.g., a remake or a sequel) not only as a version, but as an adaptation understood in the broader sense that I pursue here. That is, versions represent the adaptations a text must undergo as it travels through industrial channels, culture, and history. <?page no="29"?> Cinema and Immortality 29 References “All Time Box Office: Domestic Grosses.” Box Office Mojo, 13 January 2013. http: / / boxofficemojo.com/ alltime/ domestic.htm. Crowther, Bosley. “It’s a Wonderful Life.” New York Times, 23 December 1946. http: / / movies.nytimes.com/ movie/ review? res= 9E00EF- DE163DEE3BBC4B51DFB467838D659EDE . Elsaesser, Thomas. Metropolis. London: British Film Institute, 2000. Finke, Nikki. “19.7 Million ‘Avatar’ Blu-ray and DVDs Sold.” Deadline.com. 11 May 2010. http: www.deadline.com/ 2010/ 19-7-millionavatar-blu-ray-dvds-sold/ . Fullerton, John and Jan Olsson. Allegories of Communication: Intermedial Concerns from Cinema to the Digital. Rome: John Libbey, 2004. Gomery, Douglas. Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. Gorman, Bill. “Top 100 Rated TV Shows of all Time.” TV by the Numbers. 21 March 2009. http: / / tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/ 2009/ 03- / 21/ top-100-rated-tv-shows-of-all-time. Grainge, Paul. Monochrome Memories: Nostalgia and Style in Retro America. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2002. Herbert, Daniel. “Horrors Derived: The Thing as Adaptation, Remake, and Version.” Cinemascope 2 (2005). http: / / www.cinema-scope.net. Kompare, Derek. Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. Maffesoli, Michel. The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society. Trans. Don Smith. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1996. Mathijs, Ernest. “Television and the Yuletide Cult.” Flow TV 11 (2010). http: / / flowtv.org/ ? p=4683. Rajewsky, Irina O. “Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality.” Intermédialités 6 (2005): 43-64. Segrave, Kerry. Movies at Home: How Hollywood Came to Television. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 1999. Smith, Iain R., ed. Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation. A Scope E-Book. Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies. Nottingham: Institute of Film and Television Studies, 2009. www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/ cultborr/ index.php. Young, John. “‘Avatar’ vs. ‘Gone with the Wind’.” Entertainment Weekly. 5 February 2010. http: / / www.ew.com/ ew/ article/ o"20341730,- 00.html. <?page no="31"?> Framing War: Domesticity and the Visuality of Conflict Isabel Capeloa Gil The extraordinary experience of mutual destruction presented by violent conflict exceeds the anthropological ordering enacted by culture, hence supporting a discourse of domestic framing. This has also been the case whenever visual media have sought to depict, represent or report conditions of warfare. War and the domestic nexus of home and family seem at times in danger of becoming interrelated discourses. The essay looks at the intertwining of the ideology of home and the rhetoric of war in war photography and aims specifically at discussing the ways in which art reacts against this discursive practice. Drawing on Martha Rosler’s series Bringing the War Home, it underpins how a counter-domestic visuality is constructed as a way of denaturalizing the embedding of home and nation, particularly at a time of growing limitations for the practice of news journalism. I. Frames For most, if not all of us, war is representation. It comes as an image projected onto the mind and supported by narrative. War is after death the uncanniest of human experiences and yet one that not only attracts representation, but also marks the discursive mode in which subjects deal with reality and produce meaning. The structural antagonism underderlying any discursive practice has been suggestively discussed by Michel Foucault’s take on the warring (guerroyant) (Foucault 185) dimension of linguistic utterances, as well as by Jean-Luc Nancy’s reflection on the scopic - from the Greek skopos, i.e. literally the visual and the target - as Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 31-49. <?page no="32"?> 32 Isabel Capeloa Gil the privileged way of appropriating the world in modernity (Nancy 41). Yet, this generalization of warring antagonism as supporting the very existence of discourse does not come without further dangers, as it tends to naturalize the exception of war as a trope of everyday action. This general contention is, however, not the one undertaken here, as I wish to discuss how the very exception of the event of war is domesticized when submitted to the joint work of representation and cultural mediation. When it is communicated and represented, war becomes culture. The cultural work of war thus views warfare as a situated event, represented by social narratives, which across several media, from literature to photography and film, work to render its exceptional violence meaningful to readers, spectators, audiences. The extraordinary experience of mutual destruction presented by violent conflict exceeds the anthropological ordering enacted by culture, hence supporting a discourse of domestic framing. This has also been the case whenever visual media have sought to depict, represent or report conditions of warfare. In fact, one of the most recurring discourses that comes across whenever the experience of war is represented is that of the legitimation of conflict for the sake of home and family. The nexus that links the violent actions undertaken by the collective family, the nation, with the defence of the private family has marked modern political theory from the inception of the nation-state and has drawn heavily from bourgeois family ideology in its clash against the ethics of the court society, as Norbert Elias famously discussed in The Civilizing Process. The homefront, a term popularized with WWI , according to the Oxford English Dictionary, stressed the link between the ideology of the nation at war and the home. What is more, since war was fought to defend the values of the nation, and the nation was the collective family, then it metonymically became a strategy to support and legitimate the domestic values of home. It is thus that American studies scholar John Carlos Rowe considers in his study of Vietnam imagery, “The [American] family as the most lethal institution in the world” (Rowe 3). War and the domestic nexus of home and family seem at times of danger to become interrelated discourses. By looking at war visuality, 1 the paper will ask how domesticity works as a cultural frame for images in time of war, why it is a privileged 1 Visuality is defined as a semiotic-cultural structure that organizes the flow of images in the social construction of modernity and simultaneously supports the visual construction of the social. A cultural analysis of visuality is necessarily rooted in the present and looks out and back from the researcher’s position, hence demanding a comparative outlook across time, media and geography. As a situated social construct, Nicholas Mirzoeff argues visuality renders the processes of history visible to power (5) and discloses the role images play therein. <?page no="33"?> Framing War 33 means of rendering the utterly alien experience of death in battle meaningful and what it does to the exercise of responsible critical judgement. Yet, although the home and the family as discursive practices constrain meaning production, by allowing some representations to work and disallowing others, I suggest they may also be called into question. Martha Rosler’s photographic work “Bringing the War Home,” arguably frames the frame, showing that ultimately, as Judith Butler argues, it can never quite fully determine what it is we see, think, recognize and apprehend (Butler 9). Drawing on Rosler’s activist photomontage, the paper will discuss how the use of counter-domesticity as a radical visual discourse in art photography’s treatment of war denaturalizes the visuality of home and nation and presents art as a new outlet for critical discourse at a time of growing restrictions for news journalism. II. The Visuality of War Modern visuality is deeply implicated in the structure of modern warfare. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Carl von Clausewitz conceded that vision was a prerogative of the skilled general, who could thus generate an image of the battlefield and of the development of battle without disclosing it to the enemy. War became hence a visual manoeuvre rehearsed in the mind of the strategist and embodied in the raw flesh of the clashing armies. Either in the mental vision of the war strategist, as for Clausewitz, or through Paul Virilio’s “invisible weapons that make things visible,” the management of visibility and visuality is indeed at the root of modern war strategy. The epitome of how deeply entangled the modern technologies of vision and war are, is, according to Virilio, “[. . .] the blindling shot of the Hiroshima flash which literally photographed the shadow cast by beings and things, so that every surface immediately became war’s recording surface, it’s film” (Virilio 1). Arguably, visuality as a discursive practice is also marked by antagonism. In fact, not only is the construction of scopic regimes deeply framed by social, ethical or political conflict, but no less contentious is the way in which subjects see, look at others and make sense of themselves. What we see, how we see and the institutional regimes that both constrain and are constrained by vision are far from being natural and unproblematic. Images do, in fact, structure the way subjects construct difference and distinction, how they recognize their kin and mark the Other as alien. The gaze produces the field of vision as a dichotomous battleground where, whilst strengthening the bonds of an ideal home, difference is constructed and upheld. <?page no="34"?> 34 Isabel Capeloa Gil How then do images play into the domestic ideology of war? Schechter in a study on embedded journalism during the Iraq war stresses that it is still the domestic agenda that manages overseas interventions. Whether perceived as psychological warfare against the US population (Schechter 8), or with the aim of stifling dissent and garnering support under the national flag (Dalglish et al 97), the fact of the matter is that the domestic frame is not a bygone narrative but continues to be inalienably linked to waging war and to its representation. By framing the unfathomable images of State sponsored killing into a coherent narrative, images foster a regime of the visible that serves the purposes of explaining to home audiences the State’s policy of violence. Together with the increasing aesthetical sense marking war photography, this has brought on a critique of the visual turn in news reporting, with the pressure of ideological commitment weakening the denunciatory mandate of journalism. I suggest, nevertheless, that it has also opened up a new public space of visual contestation by co-opting war photographs into art. 2 Barbie Zelizer contends that despite its referential vocation, the visuality of war in news photography has been losing evidential force, especially over the past 10 years, and more so after 2003 and the Iraq War. She argues, the increased number of photographs featured in newspapers “offers a turn to familiar images that couche war’s representation in already resonant ways” (Zelizer 124). There is an enormous availability of photo ops on the war field and audiences lust for the imagery of war but at the same time there is a rather sober tendency to refuse and object to graphic pictures, that has prompted newspaper editors to keep newspapers “family friendly” (124). They are more prone to enhance familiarity with sympathetic victims, as in the case of the Bosnian war, and instead stress distance with exotic perpetrators as in Iraq or Afghanistan footage. When war is reduced to a photograph, Zelizer suggests, its usage may lead to faulty news since it “depends on journalism being less journalistic than it needs to be” (131). For Zelizer the problem has three further causes: one is the appeal of dramatic material and the way the photograph, specially by enhancing colour gives vent to pathos; the second is the loss of referentiality that leads journalists to frame shots of one event with familiar images from the past therefore 2 Susan Sontag is a remarkable example of a theoretical change of heart in this regard. The privilege of the indexical visuality in photography she presents in On Photography is radically toned down later in Regarding the Pain of Others, where from Caillot to Goya, she responds to art’s unrelenting testimonial power, particularly with reference to Jeff Wall’s 1992 piece “Dead Troops Talk” (Sontag, Regarding the Pain 121-123). On the importance of the art gallery as the last stand of war photography’s, radical resilience and mnemonic power beyond the fleeting oblivion of the news media, see Monegal 11. <?page no="35"?> Framing War 35 provoking a misperception of the situated nature of the ongoing conflict. Thirdly, and following from the two previous elements, the privileging of aesthetical appeal over news reporting endangers the very nature of news reporting. Basically, when the aesthetical takes over the evidential nature of the photograph, journalism is in danger. Yet, what Zelizer views as the aesthetical danger of the photograph for news reporting with the ensuing loss of evidentiary force and critical distancing, has gained a different status in view of the critique of embedded reporting in the Iraq war, that has turned journalists into “weapons of mass deception” (Schechter 8). 3 This framing crisis and the increasing call for a critical engagement with the Iraq war has brought on two differing responses. On the one hand, the strict rejection of photojournalism and the emergence of activist anti-photojournalism. 4 On the other, the turn towards aestheticization and the art gallery as the new space for public criticism. Arguably, the strict distinction of war photography as newsworthy/ antinewsworthy and aesthetic seems reductive within a wider understanding of visual culture, that is less interested in institutional conflict and the reverential nature the photograph serves, as Sontag claims (Regarding the Pain 120) than it is in its purpose and changing meaning. Shifting reception conditions are indeed more relevant to the function and place the photograph occupies. Now, more than ever, with the increasing need for overlapping narrative frames of past wars to understand current visuality, “The photographer’s intentions are irrelevant in this larger process” (Regarding the Pain 122). Still, the gap between journalism’s perception of the institutional place of images in war and the refusal of what is seen as the amateurish and idle artist’s usage of war photography is discursively unavoidable, 5 but despite the numerous examples of manipulation, quick generalizations are more harmful than enlightening. Images of war, particularly in photojournalism, are indeed complex structures that although referential, do not lack aesthetic allure. While evidential and drawn to capture 3 See also Butler 165. 4 The term was coined by Allan Sekula to address his response to the 1999 antiglobalization demonstrations in Seattle, reflected in his “Waiting for the teargas” photo series (1999). It is a partisan way of dealing with the image, aiming to place the photographer’s intent at the forefront of the depiction, and controlling the gaze by blending with the object and acting upon it. See on this topic the exhibition “Antifotoperiodismo” which opened in July 2010 in La Virreina, Centre de la Imatge, Barcelona, curated by Carles Guerra. 5 See Carol Kino’s enlightening New York Times article (5 September 2008) on Martha Rosler’s 2008 exhibition at the Mitchell-Innes and Nash Gallery in Chelsea, New York, and her 2004-2008 series “Bringing the War Home.” <?page no="36"?> 36 Isabel Capeloa Gil “the real,” they are socially constructed, snapped by a subjective agent, mediated by editors and publishers and finally received by heterogeneous audiences. Images may be manipulated, they may lie, deceive with the language of transparency and show through invisibility. Yet, although intent is not all, intent too matters. And it matters, particularly when the photograph serves an evidential purpose in times of war. Evan Wright of Rolling Stone Magazine and embedded with US Marines in Iraq witnessed, in the earlier stages of the occupation, a trigger-happy young soldier shooting at the civilian population. His reaction as he came across the victims is noteworthy: Again, being a reporter, I’m thinking in the back of my mind, “This is gruesome. This is awesome. This is perfect. I’ve got everything now. This is the honest truth. I was there when the shooting happened, and everyone knew that Trombley was the one who shot them.” (quoted by Katovsky and Carlson 336). Excitement and denunciation come together when the shot is taken and the photograph, at once startling, shocking, objective and appealing, is the sole witness to this unique moment. No matter how shocking the journalist’s thrill at the ghastly event, the fact of the matter is that the mandate to testify and to use the camera as an instrument of accountability allowing those who were far away to make sense of a senseless situation remains invaluable. Despite the would-be aestheticization of the shot and the possible pathetic appeal of the scattered bodies, the force of the evidential visual immediacy renders the photograph a privileged medium to denounce the violence of war and to exert informed reporting. In this evidential framework comparative visuality is a key strategy with ethical consequences. 6 The 2008 Brighton Photo Biennial with the title “Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images” provides a good example of a successful presentation of the imagery of war from a comparative visual culture perspective. Curated by Julian Stallabrass, the show displayed side by side professional photos, photos taken by members of the armed forces acting either as professional photographers or as amateurs, 6 See the discussion surrounding the photo of a man pushed to his death on a New York subway and published on the front page of The New York Post on 4 December 2012. The photo by free-lance photographer R. Umar Abbasi caused outrage. Arguing for the right of news photography to show as essential to its democratic mandate, Barbie Zelizer contends. It is not the graphic imagery of the dead body but instead the picture of the man about to die that causes pity and provokes commotion, because visual affect is managed by assemblages of emotion regulated by discourses of power (Why we are outraged). <?page no="37"?> Framing War 37 photographs built into context in magazines, newspapers and on the Web as well as family snapshots, and finally art and museum photography. Aware of the genre inconsistencies, of the institutional differences and time discrepancies amongst the images displayed, Stallabrass declared the intent to foster a reflection on the interplay between particularity and generality, aesthetic and descriptive matter, the familial look and the alienness of the Other depicted in the theatre of war. In fact, the work was based on a play of contrasts, “one which allows comparison and contrast, and encourages critical examination of different generic forms of production” (Stallabrass 8). Because critique emerges at the site of comparison, a similar ethics of contrastive visual criticism frames the following discussion. And it is here at the threshold of comparative visuality that domesticity emerges, not simply as a trope, but as a rhetorical strategy to render the alien experience of war meaningful while opening up discursive spaces for discussion and critique. III. The Domestication of War Let me take you through three sets of images which allow for a representative discussion of what I suggest are four structural modes of visual domestication of the radically disruptive event of war: normalization, metaframing, phaticality and reification. In order to look into how war imagery tends to normalize the exception of war, let us look briefly at a short of the Spanish-American War, dating back to 1898, and shot by Thomas A. Edison Inc, named “Burial of the ‘Maine’ Victims.” It depicts a stream of ceremonial cars bearing the coffins of the deceased soldiers of the battleship Maine, sunk in La Habana harbour on 15 February 1898. Figure 1. “Burial of the Maine Victims.” Edison Manufacturing Co. 1898. Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (FEC2885). (Reproduced by kind permission of the Library of Congress) <?page no="38"?> 38 Isabel Capeloa Gil This “view” as it was called in the early days of cinema was shown to American audiences with a documentary intent. First comes a detachment of sailors and marines in the left foreground, while on the right the viewer observes a crowd of small black boys, a usual practice in any public procession in the South. Then follow the nine hearses, each coffin draped with the national flag. At the side of each wagon walk the pall bearers, surviving comrades, their heads bowed in attitudes of grief. Next come naval officers and marines, and lastly a procession of carriages, followed by a large crowd on foot. Although the view was portrayed as a documentary, the fact of the matter is that the sequence was actually a reenactment, shot at Key West, Florida on 27 March 1898. Nevertheless, the evidentiary hoax is institutional as well, because as the description of the film reads in the catalogue of the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Recording and Sound Division: “The scene is reproduced as it actually occurred.” 7 As film historian Charles Musser (46) has shown, these views of war were brought to public viewing together with shorts of current American home affairs with the aim of domesticating far-away violence according to household beliefs. Hence film became a medium to convey a structured political understanding of those events, by transforming the violent eventfulness of war into a frame that supported the construction of a cultural and political narrative aiming to make sense of problems at home. Through these supposedly authentic documentaries, war truly fostered a way of seeing and it became a primordial means of visualizing issues that concerned audiences beyond and above the economy of warfare, such as the daily life in the cities, the power of technologies or the common life of Americans. Quite remarkably the Edison Film Company’s short does not show the violence of war, but this is no impediment for audiences to interpret what is projected onto the screen as warring. The real conflict, the Spanish-American war, becomes a hidden performative, a conceptual signified without visual signifier, mimicked by the (empty) coffins as visible symbols of the invisible, albeit real, death of its victims. Enclosed within the visuality of daily life depicted in the other shorts projected in the cinematographer sessions, the “Maine” short is reduced from an exceptional interruption of normalcy into a household event. The fragmented and disparate views achieve a kind of virtual narrativity that places the common and the exceptional on equal standing. In this instance of a social construction of the visual, home, homefront and the front become one and war is normalized as a daily narrative. 7 See http: / / memory.loc.gov/ cgi-bin/ query/ h? ammem/ papr: @field(NUMBER+@band(sawmp+1511)), accessed on 25 January 2013. <?page no="39"?> Framing War 39 A second strategy at work in domestication is meta-framing, discussed with the cue from a professional photograph taken by Anja Niedringhaus for the Associated Press, in November 2004. The shot depicts US Marines of the 1st Division dressed as gladiators at their base outside Fallujah in Iraq. Every photograph has a story and this is strikingly evocative of the sword-and-sandal film tradition. Tapped to lead an attack on insurgent-held Fallujah, the 1st Division stages a chariot race with Iraqi horses confiscated before the raid reminiscent of William Wyler’s Ben-Hur (1959). In full character attire, these marines take up the roles of Romans and barbarians of yore staging a race of the righteous against the evildoers. The photograph was widely reproduced across the news media, but acquired a broad recognition when it was depicted in Evan Thomas and Scott Johnson’s article for Newsweek from 12 June 2006. Entitled “Probing a Bloodbath,” the piece about the investigation of the Haditha massacre used the Fallujah chariot race as rhetorical inspiration for investigative reporting on the massacre and as an instance of the power of imperial representation in the American way of leading the war. In fact, the overlapping of the imperial Roman discourse with the claim of US hegemony harks back to the beginnings of independent America and is a pervasive representation of its way of seeing the world as Amy Kaplan has convincingly argued (6). Yet, Rome is not the only frame the picture has invoked. Serving likewise the hegemonic purpose of contrasting the good versus the bad, the civilized versus the barbarians, the photograph had more than the life it acquired within the context of Newsweeek reporting. Two years earlier, on 7 November 2004, Agence France Presse had released a piece titled “Holy War: Evangelical Marines Prepare to Battle Barbarians.” Using Niedringhaus’ photograph as pictorial support, it focused on a gathering of evangelical Marines in the base outside Fallujah and on the religious overtones of the preparation for battle. The author stressed the Marines’ own comparison between their situation in Fallujah and that of the Hebrews, when David was getting ready to fight the Philistines. The David episodes did become a rather recurrent trope in the selfrepresentation of American troops in Iraq, supported by an evangelical rhetoric, smartly invoked in Paul Haggis’ In the Valley of Elah (2008). Despite the use of different cultural frames, both in the Newsweek article and in Agence France Presse’s report, the image provides an indexical proof that is transformed into pictorial metaphor of narratives of power imported by the journalist into the news piece. Hence, with a loss of referentiality in the interaction with the text, the picture strikes the viewer as uncanny and lost in time. Before a crowd of bystanders in the background, two marines run clad in blue tunics under which the white stripe of running shorts is <?page no="40"?> 40 Isabel Capeloa Gil barely visible. While one wearing a would-be Roman helmet holds a wooden shield and a spiked club, the other follows, wearing shades, the standard Personnel Armor Ground Troops Helmet or “Fritz” for its resemblance with the German WWII helmet, a round shield and a ball mace. Neither in attire nor in choice of weaponry do they show the slightest similarity to the Roman profile suggested by Newsweek reporting. On the contrary, the Barbarian inspiration is clearly visible. The Marines seem to have incorporated a new persona, taking up the role of New Barbarians engaged in intimidating exercises. The photograph discloses a genealogy of Caucasian tribesmen prompting a familiar identification with commonly held views about the origins of America and its role in the defence of Western Civilization against its Others, be they the Barbarian tribes, the Philistines, or the Iraqi Fallujah insurgents. Arguably, the picture ends up as a metaframe that destabilizes photojournalism’s mandate to show whilst stressing the image’s ability to symbolize and produce metaphors that resonate with the viewer’s familiar visual narratives. But what is the role of private family snapshots in the battlefield and how do they cater to the domestication of war? The third set of images addresses the importance of the amateur snapshot as a medium of maintaining the family bond in wartime and hence of the familial argument as a pivotal national narrative in war. As Marianne Hirsch has argued, with the dissemination of the portable camera, the photograph became the family’s primary instrument of self-knowledge and representation (7), inalienably tied to the ideology of the modern family. 8 For the soldier facing imminent of death on the battlefront, the home is the ultimate outlet of self-identification, with the family photos playing the role of surrogates to those dearly beloved far away. Likewise the depictions of the would-be family of comrades at the front enact a triangulation of the familiar gaze that provides for a sense of ideological continuity with the family back home. During WWII , the portable camera was widely disseminated amongst fighting men. Taking Germany as a case in point, data of the German Photography Almanach shows that at least 10 percent of soldiers on the Eastern front owned a camera. Despite the strict regulations that forebode the depiction of executions, 9 and other mili- 8 The argument had been made earlier by Walter Benjamin in “Kleine Geschichte der Photographie” (1931). 9 The general Heeresmitteilungen from 1940 prohibit specifically the snapping of war material, any Navy vessel, bridges, harbours and docks, fortresses and defence lines. Accidents and injuries were also off limits and very explicitly depictions of executions. However, there was nothing in the regulations to prohibit the snapping of corpses after killing, which explains the wide range of available pictures of these post-events (Schmiegelt 25) The same was the case with the Regulations of the Waffen SS which explicitly stated <?page no="41"?> Framing War 41 tary prescriptions on weaponry or any kind of data related to the positions of the armies, photography was widely popular. The genres were prototypical: the trophy photos before prisoners and seized enemy weaponry, the landscape images of the front (German Crimea for instance) and of the seized cities, Paris ranking the most widely photographed amongst them, local inhabitants, the company comrades and daily activities. The film was usually sent home to be developed and then sent back to the fighting men at the front. Some amateur photographers sold the pictures to fellow soldiers as the many lists of reprints and own and owe rolls show. Although the official prohibitions on photography were strong the will to show and snap was often stronger. Images of atrocities circulated both in the front and at home, side by side with snapshots of family festivities, loving children and fiancés. The contentious war crimes exhibit, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Dimensionen des Vernichtungskriegs 1941- 1944 (1995-1999) in fact displayed both professional and amateur images taken by German soldiers, some of them, if not kept in the official photo albums, than at least well kept in the family’s war memorabilia trove. Soldiers were called on to snap at the front, as the photographs provided the “dearest connection between the front and the home.” 10 Wives and family members were also encouraged to send back family photos. Film companies such as Agfa or Adox worked this ideology of exchange and created a number of popular adverts that stressed the symbolical link between the front and the home provided by the photograph (Jahn 73). Clearly, the private photograph established a familial gaze between the front and the home, hence building on the constitutive force of the photograph to support the family ideology and transporting it to the wild landscape of war. It projected a screen of domestic myths, such as sorority and fraternity, warmth, mutual support, and a sense of organic belonging, whilst at the same time enhancing the hierarchical patriarchal structure that confirmed the male combatant’s authority before the women, children and elderly back home. This exchange was more phatic than essential, as its aims were the maintenance of flow of communication between the families suffering under the hardships of the homefront and the soldier’s vital hazard on the battlefield. A phatic stream of images helped to maintain the strict family bonds and co-opt them into the wider ideology of the national family. Once again, the familial gaze what should be photographed and what was strictly off limits (Verordnungsblatt der Waffen SS, 3/ 1942, no.14, 57). 10 The photo inside the letter provided the “herzlichste Verbindung zwischen Front und Heimat” (Blashko 11). <?page no="42"?> 42 Isabel Capeloa Gil in war traps the viewer, projecting the family as a mythical screen between the camera and the object and in the end justifying the violence wreaked on the front for the sake of home and country. A photograph is an object, it bears a material life of paper and ink and is often encased. The fourth example I wish to discuss addresses the ways in which materiality prompts domestication. Let us consider the silver encased picture of a Portuguese soldier during the Colonial War (1961-1974), dressed in uniform in front of his tank. The photograph’s silver casing separates the experience of war snapped in the conventional still and kept inside the frame, from the routine of home. Placed on the wall of a middle class family it simultaneously celebrates the veteran’s safe return from war and reifies the violent past within the family’s history. German sociologist Georg Simmel argued in the 1902 essay “Der Bildrahmen. Ein ästhetischer Versuch” that the picture frame was a model of interaction between containment and difference. For him, the frame [. . .] cannot in its configuration present a bridge or an opening, through which it could somehow enter the world or through which the world could enter the framed reality” (11). Simmel is here concerned with art’s relation to the world and he posits the frame as the equivocal sign of this ambivalent relationship of containment and dialogue. The frame detaches whilst celebrating the enclosed event, experience or episode. Likewise, the encased war snapshot turns war into an object integrated into the decorative normalcy of daily life. By transporting the uncommon into the conventional in the after war period, the cased photograph incorporates war as a discursive feature of the family’s private history, into its meta-photographic context, negotiated between the individual subjectivity of the private story and the general narration of collective national history. The four examples suggest a rhetorical strategy of domestication at work in different photographic genres dealing with the experience of war, structured along four main axes: normalization or the inclusion of the visuality of war within the wider visuals of home affairs; meta-framing or the production of a deliberate loss of referentiality and privileging of metaphor; phaticality or a structure of communication not mainly set on producing meaning but rather on maintaining contact between home and front that works to fit photographic family communication into that of State sponsored violence; and finally reification, or a normalization of the war experience in the post war period by means of celebratory materializations within the home. The domestic framing of conflict and the pervasive blur between the ideology of home and war is thus a marker of the visuality of warfare. <?page no="43"?> Framing War 43 There are however cultural counter-practices of interference 11 which draw on the domestic frame to contest it. They work to render the invisible frame of home visible and support a visuality of contestation of the home ideology. Mostly, this work is done by artists, such as Martha Rosler or Nina Berman, and indeed takes place in the art gallery not in the front pages of newspapers. Yet, I suggest, the aesthetical by no means takes away the critical edge or denunciatory capability. On the contrary, as Rosler argues, at a time of wider restrictions for photojournalists, when war photography and war visuality tend to be naturalized within a wider trend to socialize violence, practices of estrangement and dissent find a privileged location in the art gallery. IV. Home(y) Wars Martha Rosler has been engaged with the representation of war since her early work in the 1960s, particularly the Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful series (1967-1972). Concerned with the impact the “living room war” of Vietnam and its photographic representation, Rosler set out to develop photocollages in the modernist tradition that linked the experience of war with the American homes. 12 She places her work at the intersection of a critique of plain indexicality, the social role of aesthetics and the ethical obligation of modern democracy. In the 1998 conference “Post-Documentary” at Rochester University she claimed: These challenges, which radically undermine photography’s claim to a unique capacity to offer direct insight into the real and offer up structural truths about power differentials in society, have produced something of a crisis among artists and intellectuals and troubled some in journalism and the legal professions, if not others in the wider audience. My aim is to explore some of the attributes and functions of social documentary photography and to determine if it still has a place in the postmodern world. 13 It was precisely a compulsion to provide aesthetics with a social dimension, which would help to heal and literally remediate the suspicion 11 The concept was coined by Hal Foster in the introduction to The Anti-aesthetic. Postmodern culture as a reflection of the antagonistic impact of Edward Said’s and Frederic Jameson’s theories on aesthetic postmodern practices (Foster xii). 12 Rosler, who is also a Professor of Visual Culture at Rutgers, became famous in the 1970s for her feminist art and the questioning of the woman’s place in art history and theory. See for instance the “Semiotics of the Kitchen” performance (1975) 13 http: / / home.earthlink.net/ ~navva/ writings/ rochester.html (accessed on 2 February 2011). <?page no="44"?> 44 Isabel Capeloa Gil over documentary photography, that led her to work on a second series of the Bringing the War Home project, updated with the reality of the Iraq War. Like in the earlier 1967 series, the home is for Rosler a lethal space, deadlier perhaps than the actual battle ground for its spotless cleanliness and suggestion of perfectibility. As Laura Cottingham wrote, for Rosler, war is always home, because its imagery is not imposed or forced into the living room, it belongs there (2). By confronting the cult of objects in the sanitized imaginary of the untouchable and lifeless American home with the dirty, messy and undistinguishable reality overseas, Rosler’s work presents the domestic frame as a surplus that does not work to uphold the ideology but is instead revealed as a frame that has been framed. By means of a counter-practice of interference it produces an irritation to the sanitized imaginary of home by placing the origin of the violence of war in the pristine living room or kitchen space. For the 1967 series, Rosler worked mainly with images from Life magazine, and brought together spaces segmented within the publication’s stream of images, letting the seamless flow of pictures from the Vietnam War plunge into the spotless imagery of home ads. In “Cleaning the Drapes,” a housewife vacuums the drapes, opening up the curtains to a trench outside the window. The coloured drape functions as an open border between the routine of home and the exception of war, stressing in the contrast between the black and white photo and the coloured ad how indexicality and connotation are built into one. The home is literally presented as the stage that supports the theatre of war, with the housewife as its expert director. What is more, the exoticism of the war shots that seem in the pages of Life magazine to be placed in far, far away locations are transported together with its objects into the unspoiled living room. 14 The picture of the amputee Tron [“Tron (amputee)” 1967-1972], walking the spotless carpet or the scattered bodies outside the Giacometti home [“House Beautiful (Giacometti)” 1967- 1972] present the effects of war on the real bodies of America’s others. The uncanny emptiness of the living rooms contrasts with the battered bodies outside, those of the soldiers or their victims, revealing the home as a haunted space, an (in)visible hand wreaking visible violence. Argua- 14 Martha Rosler: “It was these two projected spaces, one idealized and the other cast completely into the other mode. It showed a picture of who we thought we might be if we only strove hard enough, our best selves, versus this picture of the rejected space. It just seemed like this is the way it had to be shown. It wasn’t about contrasting two realities, but two world views: our ideal self and this other thing which was the unacceptable reality of another place. One suggested we had agency, that we could create this world, and the other suggested that we had no agency, that others had agency, the military or elected leaders or terrorists, though that’s not the lingo of the day, other geopolitical forces. This was not an arena that we had any power over” (Cook 11). <?page no="45"?> Framing War 45 bly, it was the revenance of the haunted home of America that prompted Rosler to revisit her earlier work in new robes. As she assumed in an interview, invoking Tomaso di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo (2007), the revision was about “evok[ing] a mood and invok[ing] a way of working, to say ‘Tout la change, tout la même chose’” (Cook 11). For the second Bringing the War Home House Beautiful series Rosler set out to stress the links between consumer culture and war. She denounces the power commodities have gained over humans, indeed transforming them into mass ornaments, models in a culture of copies and simulacra supporting the tug of war in Iraq. Compellingly, the series composed by contrastive fragments (models, furniture, war footage) sets the Iraq war in a postmodern space, populated by debris and disconnected fragments, that tell a wide variety of stories from different perspectives. In the 2004 series the distance from battle is greater, as the once empty uncanny home is populated by models that appear insensitive to the violence wreaked both at home and abroad by the American military. In “Photo Op” (Figure 2), the home is inhabited by a slender blond housewife/ model that screams as she watches Saddam’s face on her cell. Figure 2. Martha Rosler: “Photo Op.” House Beautiful. Bringing the War Home. New Series (2004). (Reproduced by kind permission of the author) <?page no="46"?> 46 Isabel Capeloa Gil The doubling of the female model shows that the woman is a fake, as the original and the copy are indistinguishable. The female figure is a ghost image produced as commodity, a ghost scared by the simulacra image of the great monster created by the media. The home is populated by two other humans, dead Iraqi children. The ghost model and the dead children are a strange family, a counter domestic construct that subverts the family ideology. Outside the window, the Iraqi war roars in the strident red colour of explosions casting an ominous shadow over the estranged home. This time, such as in the collage, “Walker” (2004-2007), violence is not a privilege exercised by the American “us” upon an alien “them,” but the violence of war contaminates the American soldier as well. Amputees and gymnasts are placed side by side in the living room in an uncanny contrast. While some work out to fulfil the mandate of beauty and fitness, others struggle to regain the walking ability. The contrast between the two realities shows the loss of reality pervading the contemporary world. Again, unlike the earlier work, graphic imagery of injured bodies is placed inside the home, framed by open newspapers or photo frames, and no longer situated beyond the artificial border of the living room window. The use of vivid colour popping out of the frame traps the viewer and interpellates her gaze. Referentiality is not an issue here, but rather photography becomes a hot medium destined to build affect. Clearly, the first series works as a kind of metaframe for the second one. In “The Grey Drape” (2004-2007) the stylish allure of 1960s ads is evoked as a model waves a grey drape recalling a smoke screen of sorts to block the view of a soldier patrol in an Iraqi street, cutting to the view of a crying mother begging outside the living room window. In other instances, the new series confronts the earlier pristine house patterns, now showing a wrecked home, Saddam’s Palace, overlapped by the multiplied image of a housewife cleaning the wreck (“Saddam’s Palace,” 2004). Tout la change, tout la même chose. One final piece sums up Rosler’s reverse domesticity. “Gladiators” (Figure 3) is a piece from 2004 that draws from Niedringhaus’ photograph, placed back centre to dominate the composition. The work is organized on three levels. In the centre a white couch over a white carpet is an imposing presence on the living room composition, where a policeman is placing a Caucasian male under arrest. In the left side corner a red ottoman seems to be pushed inside the frame, disturbing the pristine whiteness of the furniture. On the wall, in the background three photographs loom over the events taking place inside the house. In the centre, a blow-up of Niedringhaus’ picture rules over the composition, framed by an image of the Abu-Ghraib events on the left and the <?page no="47"?> Framing War 47 cropped angle of what evokes an explosion in the Middle East. In the forefront two soldiers scan the home and target the viewer with their rifles. The work’s title invokes the imperial narrative of the new gladiators, but the photographic composition works beyond this framing. The wall pictures show the nexus between the footage of war, on the right, imperial connotative framing and torture, on the left. The line of perspective links the performing gladiators with the two soldiers in the forefront, erecting a symbolical lineage between the performance and the daily action. What is more, the fact that one of the soldiers is aiming his gun at the viewer seems to place her as the next target in this war sequence. In fact, the photo uses the domestic frame not only as critique worthy, but moves to another level in that the home has now become the target for the militarization of the social. In the first and second series of Bringing the War Home, Rosler frames the home frame and, citing her earlier series, uses it as a surplus that interferes with the hegemonic discourse of domesticity. By means of reverse appropriation the home that legitimates war becomes the very site where war is negotiated and art the location where an ethics of visual antagonism takes place. In fact, her work shows how visuality is articulated not only as an antagonistic practice, but within the realm of real conflict, negotiating the right to see and show that marks democratic news photography with the visual artist’s critical mandate. So that some things may change and nothing remains the same. Figure 3. Martha Rosler: “Gladiators.” House Beautiful. Bringing the War Home. New Series (2004) (Reproduced by kind permission of the author) <?page no="48"?> 48 Isabel Capeloa Gil References Blashko, Fritz. “Fotos im Felde. Soldaten als Amateure, Knipser und Laien mit Kameras.” Fotofreund. Zeitschrift für Freunde der Fotografie 23/ 1 (1943): 11- 12. Butler, Judith. Frames of War. When is Life Grievable. London: Verso, 2009. Cook, Greg. “Martha Rosler Speaks.” The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research (21 November 2007). http: / / aesthetic.gregcookland.com- / 2007_11_18_archive.html (accessed on 2 February 2011). Cottingham, Laura. “The War is Always Home: Martha Rosler.” Martha Rosler. Catalogue text. New York, 1991. Dalglish, L., La Fleur, J. and G. Leslie. Homefront Confidential: How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public’s Right to Know. Arlington, Virginia: The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, 2003. Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process, Oxford: Blackwell. 2000. Foster, Hal (ed.) The Anti-aesthetic. Postmodern Culture. Townsend: Bay Press. 1983. . “The ‘Primitive’ Unconscious of Modern Art.” October 34 (1985): 45-70. Foucault, Michel. Il faut défendre la société. Paris: Seuil, 1997. Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames. Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. New Haven: Harvard University Press, 1997. Jahn, Peter and Ulrike Schmiegelt. Foto Feldpost. Kriegserlebnisse. Berlin: Elefanten Press, 2000. Kaplan, Amy. “Roman Fever: Imperial Melancholy in America.” Comparative Imperial Transformations Conference, Sydney, July 2008. http: / / www.arts.usyd.edu.au/ research/ nation_empire_globe/ downloads/ Empires_ WUN _Kaplan_3_09.pdf (accessed on 16 July 2010). Katovsky, Bill and Timothy Carlson. Embedded. The Media at War in Iraq. An Oral History. Guilford. The Lyons Press. 2003. Kino, Carol. “Glossy Idealism on the Frontlines.” New York Times, 9 May 2008. http: / / www.nytimes.com/ 2008/ 09/ 07/ arts/ design/ 07kino.html (accessed 30 January 2011). Mirzoeff, Nicholas. An Introduction to Visual Culture. London: Routledge, 2009. Monegal, Antonio (ed). Politica y (po)etica de las imagenes de Guerra. Barcelona: Paidos, 2007. Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Cinema: the American Screen to 1907. New York: Scribner, 1994. Nancy, Jean-Luc. “Dies Irae.” La faculte de juger. Ed. Jacques Derrida et al. Paris: Minuit, 1980. 40-51. <?page no="49"?> Framing War 49 Rosler, Martha. “Post-Documentary? ” Fanny Knapp Allen Conference, University of Rochester, 1998. http: / / home.earthlink.net/ ~navva- / writings/ rochester.html (accessed on 2 February 2011). . “Flat Daddy.” Photoworks (October-April 2008/ 09): 20-21. Rowe, John Carlos and Rick Berg. The Vietnam War and American Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Schechter, D. Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War in Iraq. New York: News Dissector/ Mediachannel.org, 2003. Schmiegelt, Ulrike. “. . . Macht Euch um mich keine Sorgen. . . Der Zweite Weltkrieg in den Fotografien deutscher Soldaten.” Foto Feldpost. Kriegserlebnisse. Ed. Peter Jahn und Ulrike Schmiegelt. Berlin: Elefanten Press, 2000. 23-31. Simmel, Georg. “The Picture Frame.” 1902. Theory, Culture and Society 11 (1994): 11-17. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. . Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar and Giroux, 2003. Stallabrass, Julian. “Rearranging Corpses: Curatorially.” Photoworks (October-April 2008/ 09): 6-8. Thomas, Evan and Scott Johnson. “Probing a Bloodbath.” Newsweek. June 12, 2006. Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema. The Logistics of Perception. London: Verso, 1989. Zelizer, Barbie. “When War is Reduced to a Photograph.” Reporting War. Journalism in Wartime. Ed. Allan Stuart and Barbie Zelizer. London: Routledge, 2004.115-135. . “Why we are outraged. The New York Post photo controversy.” OUPblog (http: / / blog.oup.com/ 2012/ 12/ new-york-post-photo-controversy/ ) (accessed on 1 August 2013). <?page no="51"?> Bond Rerouted: 007 and the Internal Conflict in/ of Digital Media Johannes Binotto While the James Bond that we know from the movies is equipped with almost superhuman qualities, the original character in Ian Fleming’s novels seems much more fragile. Being in constant battle not only with the political enemy but also with his internal, neurotic conflicts, Bond needs his missions as defense mechanisms to prevent him from psychological breakdown. This essay argues that the second to last installment of the Bond movie series, the 2008 film Quantum of Solace finally confronts this neurotic aspect of 007, not so much by psychologizing the character but rather by transposing internal conflict to the filmic level. The complex visual strategies of digitally enhanced filmmaking, with its over-determined images, depict a conflicted war zone where not only the secret agent but also the very system he is defending is shown as being ultimately split and pitted against itself. In his landmark reading of Ian Fleming’s Bond novels, Umberto Eco states that what makes them so attractive for a mass audience is how they systematically exclude any form of neurosis from their narrative (Eco 242). To be more precise, one could say that they manage to do so by constantly replacing inner turmoil with physical violence. It is only through this exchange that Bond becomes what Fausto Antonini has called “the flat man, without mental dimension, without complexes, without dark, inscrutable or abysmal psychic zones” (Antonini 162). The secret agent “evades the repressed unconscious by fleeing into action” (166). Physical conflict supersedes psychological conflict. It seems that bodily pain is still easier for our hero to deal with than emotional distress. Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 51-63. <?page no="52"?> 52 Johannes Binotto Bond going to pieces As successful as Bond’s escapes into action may be, there is the constant danger that neurosis will rear its ugly head the moment 007 has accomplished his dangerous mission. This seems to be the predicament in the very first Bond novel Casino Royale. In its awkward ending, the hitherto cold blooded 007 turns into a both inhibited and insecure lover who may be able to go to bed with Vesper Lynd, the woman he wants to marry, but who is unable to have even one simple straightforward talk with her. His inability to prevent his beloved from committing suicide seems to give further evidence of the agent’s utter helplessness. This helplessness is all the more telling in comparison to the ordeals Bond has gone through in the preceding chapters. Having just barely survived a brutal and conspicuous torture of his testicles by the hand of his opponent Le Chiffre, Bond was eager to reassure not only himself, and Vesper, but also the reader of his still intact sexual potency. However, in his inability to rescue Vesper, Bond is shown to be impotent in a much more fundamental sense. While the biological organ may still function properly, our hero seems unable to secure what in Lacanian psychoanalysis is called the “symbolic phallus,” the signifier of the symbolic mandate the man has to take on in relation to the woman (Evans 142- 143). Bond’s discovery that Vesper Lynd was in fact a double agent working for Russian intelligence comes all the more as a relief, since it forces Bond back into his job and thus back into action. By switching one mandate for another, 007 regains the phallic power that was under threat in his romantic engagement. The secret agent, who wanted to hand in his resignation in order to lead a normal life, discovers that there is no such thing for him. Even the love for which he was ready to quit the spy world was nothing more than an espionage charade. What was first believed to be a personal matter turns out to be just another occurrence in the line of duty and, hence, emotional distress must be replaced by cool professionalism. The infamous closing line of the book “The bitch is dead now” seems emblematic of this development. Its sheer cruelty is meant to convince us that Bond’s emotional detachment is now complete: escape into action accomplished. The novel Casino Royale thus ultimately turns out to be a protective fantasy about eluding neurosis. This interpretation is even more convincing if one takes into account Ian Fleming’s frequently repeated claim that he started to write the first Bond novel in order “to take my mind off the shock of getting married at the age of 43” (Pearson 113). The Bond character himself hence becomes a symptom staving off neurotic anxieties about emotional commitment. Nonetheless, for at least a couple of pages, it is obvious how fragile this “blunt instrument” <?page no="53"?> Internal Conflict of Digital Media 53 - as Bond was called by his creator (Stock 260) - in fact really is. This frailty of the Bond character, which is obliquely hinted at in several novels, will come to full light again in the second to last novel by Fleming, the bizarre You Only Live Twice. When early in the novel the British secret service ask for a psychiatric report on Bond’s health, the analyst comes to the conclusion that 007 is “going slowly to pieces” (Fleming, You Only Live Twice 30). In fact, this statement will turn out to be rather an understatement since here, Fleming undertakes no less than a complete deconstruction of his main character. The novel begins with Bond clinically depressed and suicidal, still mourning the loss of his wife Tracy, whom he married in the preceding novel On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Unreliable as a secret agent, he is given a mission which is virtually impossible and although he succeeds, his persona does not survive: After having killed his arch-enemy Ernst Stavro Blofeld and destroyed his refuge, a Japanese island completely infested with poisonous plants and insects, Bond suffers from amnesia. He believes himself to be a Japanese fisherman - the undercover identity he had chosen for this mission. Bond even forgets how to perform sexual intercourse, and it is only with the help of a Kama-Sutra-like “pillow book” given to him by his girlfriend Kissy Suzuky that he regains his sexual aptitude. When his memory seems to return - after he reads the word “Vladivostok” on a scrap of newspaper -, it is insinuated that he believes himself not to be a British but a Soviet spy. The former professional without psyche, who is devoid of any emotional depths returns traumatized, shell shocked, and with a split personality. Fleming’s last novel The Man With the Golden Gun takes this deconstruction of Bond even further by beginning with a brainwashed 007 returning from Russia, programmed to kill his boss M. Although the psychiatrists of MI6 will restore Bond to his former self (if there ever was one) and make him ready again for action, the reader is no longer convinced of the hero’s sanity. In the words of Kingsley Amis: “Brainwashing and de-brainwashing have evidently taken their toll” (43). Transferring neurosis It is, of course, not by accident that such a conflicted 007 never quite found his way into the movies. Furthermore, it does not come as a surprise that the cinematic adaptations of both You Only Live Twice (1967) and The Man With the Golden Gun (1974) have virtually nothing to do with the novels of the same title. However, from that point of view, the rebooting of the Bond movie franchise with Daniel Craig as 007 seems all the more interesting, as it lets resurface the internal conflicts and <?page no="54"?> 54 Johannes Binotto contradictions that are at the same time present and held at bay in the novels. In particular, the second to last installment of the Bond film franchise, the rather harshly criticized Quantum of Solace (2008) becomes all the more intriguing in comparison to the novel’s neurotic undertones. Here I would claim that internal contradictions are played out more strongly and radically than ever before - although with a twist. What makes the movie so interesting is the fact that it does not so much psychologize the Bond character but, rather, that the film addresses the problem of internal psychic conflict in its very use of cinematic technique. While, in the novels, emotional distress is evaded by spurring Bond into action, in the film Quantum of Solace, the “abysmal psychic zones” (Antonini 162) are exposed by transposing them onto the cinematic form itself. Thus, the movie’s complex visual strategies, its overrapid editing and the often incomprehensible mise-en-scène so deplored by many critics are the sites where the movie succeeds in confronting what has been formerly repressed. A sequence which may serve as both an example of and allegory for what the whole movie wants to do is when Bond, while on mission in Bolivia, contacts the MI6 headquarters in London in order to obtain information about a certain Dominic Green, the suspect he is tailing. While Bond is sitting in his car talking on his cell phone, headquarters operate the computers in the office of Bond’s superior M. The glass wall enclosing M’s office turns into a computer screen on whose semitransparent surface MI6 runs through all the files containing the suspect’s name, simultaneously showing stylized maps with Bond’s location as well as those of other interlocutors such as agents from the CIA . As excessive as the digital graphics on the computer screen already are, things become even more complicated when, in addition to the graphics, we also see reflections on the glass as well as glimpses of what is happening in the offices behind it. As the scene progresses, we even have reverse-shots of Bond in his car in which the view through the windshield is superimposed with the imagery of the MI6 computer screen. The sequence thus turns into a contradiction in itself: Bond is asking for identification (of the villain), the movie’s imagery however makes it almost impossible to identify where we are and what we see. In blinking letters on the semi-transparent computer screen, it says “Signal Rerouting.” And that is, of course, also what the images do: constantly rerouting signals and our gaze with them. Conflicting data is visually interlaced; different people and locations are mapped onto one another. Bond’s portrait merges with the silhouette of his superior, and the London MI6 headquarters overlaps with the headquarters of the CIA in Langley and, eventually, with every corner of the world. Former James Bond actor Sir Roger Moore was reported to have said about the <?page no="55"?> Internal Conflict of Digital Media 55 film: “There didn’t seem to be any geography and you were wondering what the hell was going on” (Setchfield). Although this was meant as criticism, this comment actually points out the movie’s true ambition: it is precisely by superimposing different actions and geographies, different sites and sights onto each other that the movie dislocates both narrative and the characters. Even if we study the above-mentioned sequence frame by frame, we will have to admit that we cannot really tell what we are looking at. Are we seeing through the semi-transparent screen or are the people we believe to see in the background simply reflections on that very screen? What is background and what is foreground anyway? Where is our point of view and what is our focal point? Such are the questions that the image poses but refuses to answer (Figure 1). Figure 1: Quantum of Solace (digital frame enlargement) Digital everywhere What we have here is, of course, digitally enhanced cinema at its most obtrusive. The visual regime of the digital media is literally everywhere since it is present both on the level of the enunciated as well as on the level of enunciation. Not only are we shown a computer producing graphics within the diegesis, but the film itself we are watching is also obviously digitally enhanced, interlacing its analogue shots with computerized imagery. Thus, I would argue that one could read this sequence as an allegory for the digital image as such. The impossibility of deciding what is foreground and what is background and the inability to distinguish between actual presence and mere reflection, between a signal and <?page no="56"?> 56 Johannes Binotto its re-routing, is precisely the predicament which lies at the heart of the digital image. The pathos of analogue photography - as a theorist like Roland Barthes would define it - resides in its ability to capture what at a certain moment in time actually is in front of the photographer’s lens. The seen object - such was Barthes’ claim - literally engraves itself onto the photographic film (Barthes 80). “Photography” here is taken literally as a “scripture of light.” In the digital format, however, such an immediate relation between object and its representation in the medium ceases to exist. Instead, what is captured by the apparatus is translated into the digital code of ones and zeroes, thus also making obsolete the distinction between what is photographed in reality and what is created on the computer. Manipulation, which had already been considered both an asset and a danger of analogue photography, has become the allencompassing principle in the digital age. Or as Lev Manovich puts it: In fact, the very distinction between creation and modification, so clear in film-based media (shooting versus darkroom processes in photography, production versus post-production in cinema) no longer applies to digital cinema, since each image, regardless of its origin, goes through a number of programs before making it to the final film. (Manovich 302) There is no outside After all, since all the images are generated by the same code, formed out of the same pixels, this ultimately means that any image can turn into any other image by a mere re-arrangement of its components. This is in fact Gilles Deleuze’s claim at the end of his second book on cinema, where he argues the following about those new electronic images of the future: The new [digital] images no longer have any outside (out-of-field), any more than they are internalized in a whole [. . .] They are the object of a perpetual reorganization, in which a new image can arise from any point whatever of the preceding image. [. . .] And the screen itself, [. . .] rather constitutes a table of information, an opaque surface on which is inscribed “data.” (Deleuze 265) While on an analogue filmstrip every new frame literally replaces the previous one when running through the projector, in digital cinema images do not replace but rather morph into one another. In digital format, the image’s frame, like the computer screen, remains the same, <?page no="57"?> Internal Conflict of Digital Media 57 while the data within this frame or on the screen is rearranged. Every new image emerges out of the previous one through a process of constant fragmentation and crystallization. In analogue film, the impression of a moving image is an effect of our persistence of vision and the so-called phi phenomenon, which renders the actual gaps between the single images invisible. What is in fact a series of still photograms, rushing through the projector with a speed of 24 images per second, thus appears to our eyes as a continuous movement. In the digital format, however, it is only the individual pixel changing its color thus transforming one image into the other. While in analogue film images are (re)moved as a whole, in digital cinema it is now the “insides of the image,” so to speak, which are in continuous flux and metamorphosis. Analogue film consisted in series of separate images. In contrast to that, digital cinema seems to consist of only one image, which is constantly reshaped. Following Deleuze, one could argue, that one finds all possible views compressed into one single view - at least virtually. The digital image always also contains its own opposite; every shot is potentially also its reverse-shot. Thus, the digital image per se is contradictory, pitted against itself as it were, pixel by pixel. In sequences such as the one described above which so heavily emphasize their digitalness, there is more at stake than a gratuitous exercise in style. In fact, visually overdetermined shots such as these are meant to direct the attention of the viewer to the complexity and the conflict that lie at the heart of the digital medium as well as in the soul of our super-agent. Once aware of this aspect of the digital as overdetermined and contradictory, one finds it repeated and rerouted throughout the movie. Even in scenes shot with analogue cameras, we find the same complex visual strategy. Although shot traditionally, the mise-en-scène emulates the aesthetics of the new medium. One might notice, for example, how frequently scenes are shot through glass, most notably in the sequence in which Bond overhears a meeting of the villain’s organization Quantum during a performance of Puccini’s opera Tosca at the Bregenz Festival. Time and again, the viewer is confronted with shots in which a certain view through a glass surface is interlaced with what is only a reflection on that very surface (Figure 2, see next page). Similar to what Deleuze describes as the digital image’s ability to let “a new image [. . .] arise from any point whatever of the preceding image” (Deleuze 265), here we also find opposing and contradictory perspectives embedded within each other. Additionally, one might note the movie’s fascination with the breaking of glass, from an early fight sequence in which Bond and his enemy crash through the glass ceiling of an atrium in Siena to the ending when the glass-furnished lobby of a <?page no="58"?> 58 Johannes Binotto hotel in Chile’s Atacama desert is blown to pieces. This obsessively repeated imagery of breaking glass might well be read as a metaphor for the fragmentation and pixilation of the digital image. It is indeed interesting that the last Bond movie Skyfall (2012) picks up on this visual strategy in a scene where Bond follows an assassin to the top of a glass tower in Shanghai. Like the character, the viewer’s eye is trapped between glass walls reflecting Bond, the assassin and digital imagery of a billboard advertisement in the background. The scene seems all the more poignant since Skyfall is the first Bond movie shot entirely in digital format. While large parts of the movie seem eager to conceal this fact, scenes such as this one reflect - both in a literal and a metaphorical sense - the essence of the new digital medium and what it entails. Figure 2: Quantum of Solace (digital frame enlargement) From split subject to the lacking Other What is gained by these complex visual strategies is precisely that it lets resurface an internal conflict the Bond of the novels has always tried to escape. The conflicting film image could thus be read as a displacement, as a symptom of Bond’s internal conflict. Certainly, the character is more detached than ever, without psychological depth, “a blunt instrument.” Yet, the split and fractured imagery enacts the (psychic) distress the character cannot face. The repressed unconscious and its traumatic messages return to the medium itself. “Trauma,” meaning literally “wound,” returns in the form of the pores of the digital interface, the tiny wounds of the pixels through which one image morphs from the previous one. <?page no="59"?> Internal Conflict of Digital Media 59 However, it seems that the use of the digital medium in Quantum of Solace entails even more. To argue that the contradictory and conflicted images of the film are to be read as allegories for the conflicted and destabilized soul of the male hero may well be considered somewhat banal or even sentimental. It seems crucial to note that by transposing internal conflict onto cinematic form, the psychic conflict is raised to a more general and abstract level. The contradictory images of Quantum of Solace make clear that not only the character has become ambiguous, but also actually the very situation in which he is involved has become contradictory. Not only is the hero split and traumatized, the whole world has become neurotic. In Lacanian terms, one would describe this as a movement from the split subject (sujet barré) to the split big Other (L’Autre barré). For Lacan, the Other designates the site where language and law are constituted. The Other stands for the symbolic order which regulates the subject’s conscious behavior as well as its unconscious desire. The Other is hence the matrix on which one’s reality is based. It is the authority in command over the subject. However, in his paper “Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in Freudian Unconscious,” Lacan argues that there is “a lack inherent in the Other’s very function as the treasure trove of signifiers” (693). Not only is the subject marked, traumatized and traversed by unacknowledged desires, but the whole symbolic universe is in fact ill-grounded and inconsistent: “the most radical dimension of Lacanian theory lies [. . .] in realizing that the big Other, the symbolic order itself, is also barré, crossed-out, by a fundamental impossibility, structured around an impossible/ traumatic kernel, around a central lack” (Zizek 122). Far from presenting a perfect illusion, which glosses over all contradictions and replaces reality with a perfect simulacrum which digital imaging is so often accused of, the digital medium points to precisely this. By representing, by re-routing reality in contradictory images, digital cinema shows nothing other than the traumatic lack behind reality, the inadequacy of any conception of the symbolic order and its representative the big Other understood as coherent and in command. The digital image may no longer be realistic, but it is all the more truthful for hinting at the discomforting Real hidden behind the screen of reality. This transference of psychic trauma onto the technical apparatus may also be seen in the way 007 uses his equipment. Bond’s beloved gadgets threaten to turn against their owner. <?page no="60"?> 60 Johannes Binotto Dysfunctional gadgets In his reincarnation as Bond at the turn of the millennium, Pierce Brosnan was still able to master the new technologies. In order to fight the techno-terrorist of the future, he simply became the most ingenious of them all, setting off bombs as well as steering his BMW via remote control. By relying on gadgetry more than ever before, he presented himself as the ultimate hero for the digital age and tried to convince us that anything is possible with new and better electronic equipment. The absurdity to which such a faith in technology will lead can be seen in the inane Die Another Day when Bond is provided with an invisible car. In Quantum of Solace, however, all the gadgetry defeats its purpose. Not only is Bond no longer in control of the machines, but even the big Other, who is calling the shots, does not know what he is doing. Similar to what Garrett Stewart has argued so compellingly in regard to recent American war movies, digital imaging no longer provides the cool look from a distance it once was so fetishized for. The “psychic defense mechanism” (Stewart 47) implemented in the new technologies begins to stutter. This way, not only does a subjective suffering come into view again, but rather a dysfunction on a much grander scale becomes obvious. It is this radical move from the subject’s trauma to a punctured symbolic universe which makes Quantum of Solace both a consistent and transgressive adaption of the Bond novels. While in the Fleming books the agent is able to escape from his contradictory self into the cold-war conflict with its clear-cut oppositions, Quantum of Solace takes places in a world where such lines of demarcation - distinguishing neatly between the good and the bad - have ceased to exist. Although we still have Dominic Greene, the prototypical villain, with whom we are so familiar from earlier Bond movies, he, too, eventually turns out to be only one minor representative of a global cooperation in which all political parties, dictatorships as well as western democracies are involved. The enemy Bond is fighting against turns out to be part and parcel of the very same system he claims to defend. In his intriguing reading of the 2006 movie Casino Royale, Jason Sperb has shown how this film circles constantly around the metaphor of “the big picture,” that larger purpose which “drives” both Bond and the narrative (Sperb 64). Yet, although all the characters keep mentioning the big picture, it is never completely revealed, probably because the ultimate purpose for Bond’s fight has become as elusive and shifting as the evil he is fighting against (Sperb 63). It might be that evil is so difficult to track because it cannot really be distinguished from its opposite. In that regard, it is all the more interesting that near the end of the novel Casino Royale a Russian agent carves his signature - an “inverted <?page no="61"?> Internal Conflict of Digital Media 61 M” - into Bonds hand (Fleming, Casino Royale 121). It is as if to insinuate that the enemy is nothing more than the mere double, the inverted mirror image of Bond’s boss M. The Bond universe with its abbreviations has always been a perfect illustration of the Lacanian notion of the symbolic order with M standing for the Master Signifier, representing nothing else than ultimately the big Other himself on whose orders 007 goes into battle. If Bond’s enemy Le Chiffre turns out to be really nothing more than what his name says - a cipher without meaning and completely replaceable - M is also an empty sign. The big Other is lacking and there is no master who anchors the symbolic order, granting its authority. “I have no guarantee of any kind that this Other [. . .] can give me [. . .] truth. There is no [. . .] Other of the Other” (Lacan 1959). Nor is M the stern but loving mother, as the sentimental ending of Skyfall wants to have it. In fact, M is just another name for the gaping hole at the heart of the symbolic order both camouflaging and signaling its inconsistency. This deconstruction of the symbolic order is already hinted at in the movie Casino Royale whose obsession with gaps and ellipses makes it ultimately “a film about incompleteness” (Sperb 53). Quantum of Solace, however, makes this deconstruction complete. Not only does the film begin at exactly the point where Casino Royale left off, thus turning the movie into a direct sequel of the previous one, but also on a more abstract level, the second movie wants to explore what has been left unseen in the first one. In Casino Royale the big picture, which, as Sperb puts it, “sits just beyond the narrative,” is finally encountered but only to discover its deficiency. The big picture, like the Lacanian big Other, turns out to be far too contradictory to offer any stable frame of reference since it mixes and interlaces what was once considered to be incompatible. Hence, even Bond’s final, utterly cruel victory over Dominic Greene does not change a thing about the big picture of which both villain and secret agent are only tiny pixels. As the digital image recomposes as quickly as it falls apart, so too will the global network called “The Quantum Group,” formed out of politicians and assassins, of economy and contraband, democratic leaders and ruthless dictators, continue to exist. Ironically, the death of the villain Dominic Green is the ultimate proof that nothing has really changed, as it is his own organization that executes him. Like single pixels switching their color, the now vacant positions within the big picture will simply be filled with new personnel. It is not that there are no conflicts any more; on the contrary, conflict is everywhere. There are no longer different political systems opposing each other, but there is only one big system, the big Other, which is pitted against itself. Thus, even the very last shot of the film becomes <?page no="62"?> 62 Johannes Binotto an ironic statement. After having hunted down those who forced Vesper Lynd, his lover from Casino Royale, to commit suicide, Bond is finally able to return to duty. In the last exchange of dialogue, M says to Bond, “I need you back,” and he answers, “I never left.” As if to prove his professionalism, he drops the deceased Vesper’s necklace into the snow. As a visual equivalent to Fleming’s line “The bitch is dead,” this gesture is meant to be read as Bond finally overcoming all the painful emotional attachments of the past. Traumatic loss is simply shrugged off, literally dropped. Once again, Bond escapes into action and reverts to being a successful “blunt instrument” unhindered by any twitch of neurosis. Yet, the escape is futile, and the final image tells us so (Figure 3). In the close up of the snow with its tiny crystals of ice, we find the fractured and pixilated visuals of the new media once again, re-routed. What we see is nothing other than digital noise, commonly referred to as “snow.” Bond dodges internal psychic conflict only to be engulfed by an even more conflicted war zone. His escape from personal neurosis has led him right into the neurosis of the world. Figure 3: Quantum of Solace (digital frame enlargement) <?page no="63"?> Internal Conflict of Digital Media 63 References Amis, Kingsley. The Bond Dossier. London: Jonathan Cape, 1965. Antonini, Fausto. “Psychoanalyse von James Bond.” Der Fall James Bond. Ed. Oreste del Buono and Umberto Eco. Munich: dtv, 1966. 145- 170. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Trans. H. Tomlinson and R. Galeta. London: Continuum, 2005. Eco, Umberto. “Narrative structures in Fleming.” Popular Culture: Past and Present. Ed. Bernard Waites, Tony Bennett, and Graham Martin. Milton Keynes: Open University, 1977. 242-262. Fleming, Ian. You Only Live Twice. New York: New American Library, 1964. . Casino Royale. Las Vegas: Thomas and Mercer, 2012. Lacan, Jacques. “Session 16 - 8.4.1959” from Seminar VI: Desire and its Interpretation. 1958-1959. Unpublished seminar. Translated by Cormac Gallaghar. http: / / www.lacaninireland.com (accessed 10 December 2012). . “Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in Freudian Unconscious.” Ecrits. The First Complete Edition. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 2002. 671-702. Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002. Pearson, John E. “Rough Rise of a Dream Hero.” Life (14 October 1966): 113-128. Setchfield, Nick. “Bond 50 Quantum of Solace.” SFX (18 October 2012). http: / / www.sfx.co.uk/ 2012/ 10/ 18/ bond-50-quantum-ofsolace (accessed on 6 December 2012). Sperb, Jason. “Hardly the Big Picture: The Ellipsis and Narratives of Interruption in Casino Royale.” Revisioning 007. James Bond and Casino Royale. Ed. Christoph Lindner. London, New York: Wallflower Press, 2009. 50-66. Stewart, Garrett. “Digital Fatigue: Imaging War in Recent American Film.” Film Quarterly 62.4 (Summer 2009): 45-55. Stock, Paul. “Dial M for metonym: Universal Exports, M’s office space and empire.” The James Bond Phenomenon. A Critical Reader. 2nd edition. Ed. Christoph Lindner. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009. 251-267. Zizek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London, New York: Verso, 1989. <?page no="65"?> “Are You Watching Closely? ”: The Conflict of Mind-Tricking Narratives in Recent Hollywood Film Cornelia Klecker Although films with alternative plotting to traditional cinematic storytelling have existed since the earliest days of the medium, the trend seems to have gathered steam recently. Complex narrative is, of course, a rather broad term that covers a large number of films. In my article, I would like to focus on, what I will be calling, mind-tricking narratives, a subcategory of complex narrative. I use this term to classify a rather new phenomenon in contemporary mainstream film. As the expression already suggests, these are narrative techniques that deliberately play with the viewers’ experience, response, and expectations during the viewing of a film usually featuring an utterly surprise outcome in the end. The main issue in my article is how film plots have to be structured in order to achieve the desired goal, i.e. to trick the audience’s minds. How can a filmmaker withhold the necessary facts for the viewers to deduce, conclude, perhaps even predict, the unavoidable outcome, yet at the same time, present enough information so that the story holds true and sustains the audience’s re-evaluation or even reviewing? For that reason, I will compare the narrative structures of the two 2006 films, The Prestige and The Illusionist, directed by Christopher Nolan and Neil Burger, respectively. In a “dos” and “don’ts” analysis The Prestige will serve as a prime example for a mind-tricking narrative while The Illusionist fails to live up to the task. In 2006, Hollywood produced and released two films about magicians. At a first glance, they seem to have a lot in common. Their protagonists are magicians played by well-established and famous Hollywood actors. Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 65-78. <?page no="66"?> 66 Cornelia Klecker They are set in a European capital around 1900. Both are adaptations of literary works published in the 1990s. Both are essentially told in one long flashback. And, perhaps, most importantly both attempt to be twist movies, or mind-tricking narratives, as I prefer to call them. Simply put, what mind-tricking narratives try to do is to deliberately fool and mislead the audience in order to completely and wholly stun them. They employ narrative techniques that play with the viewers’ experience, response, and expectations during the viewing of a film and feature an utterly surprising outcome in the end. A famous example would be David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), in which one of the main characters, played by Brad Pitt, turns out to be a mere schizophrenic hallucination by the other main character, played by Edward Norton. Another example is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999). “Oh my goodness - he is dead! ” is the mental “gasp” that the great majority of viewers experience after watching this particular film. This reaction is, of course, also exactly the kind of response the filmmakers intended. When I say that mind-tricking narratives attempt to employ a plot structure which will lead to such a reaction, then I mean that not all of them succeed in doing so. It is an extremely difficult and elaborate way of telling a story. Mind-tricking narratives offer a meticulously designed distribution of information, break basic narrative conventions, and, in turn, provide two distinct and conflicting readings of the same text. Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige is the prime example of an extraordinarily well-done mind-tricking narrative while Neil Burger’s The Illusionist rather fails in the attempt. By comparing these two films, this paper seeks to work out the “dos and don’ts” of mind-tricking narratives. At the core of this kind of storytelling lies a big conflict: on the one hand, enough information has to be held back in order to create the mind-boggling twist in the end. But, on the other hand, the right amount of information has to be provided in order to perfect the twist by retrospectively giving it the feel of inevitability. In other words, the central issue is what information is revealed when - which clues are given, which questions raised, and which are finally answered. First of all, however, we need to elaborate on what exactly is meant by the term mind-tricking narrative. 1 Basically, these narratives are a sub-type of what is now often simply referred to as complex narrative. Despite David Bordwell’s postulation that complex plots are merely a slight deviation and/ or addition to the simple plot and can, consequently, be “squeezed” into the pattern of Classic Hollywood narrative, 2 1 For an in-depth analysis of mind-tricking narratives, see Klecker. 2 Compare, for instance, his reading of Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), another example of a mind-tricking narrative, in Bordwell’s The Way Hollywood Tells It. <?page no="67"?> “Are You Watching Closely? ” 67 this is an area of film studies, which has been discussed at great length in recent years: Bordwell’s “forking-path narratives” (Bordwell, “Film Futures”) and Allan Cameron’s “modular narratives” (Cameron, Modular Narratives) are two prominent examples. The focus there has essentially been on films with “unusual” plot structures, i.e. all varieties of fragmented, discontinuous, and simultaneous narratives. However, despite their continually rising popularity since the midnineties, mind-tricking narratives have largely been ignored. In his anthology Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, Warren Buckland explains that the notion of the complex plot does not quite grasp the scope of puzzle plots. He considers the puzzle plot a third kind of plot - after Aristotle’s simple plot, which stresses the importance of the unity of action, time, and place, and the complex plot, which is based on the simple plot with the additional features of reversal and recognition that introduce a new line of causality. The puzzle plot goes beyond the complex plot. The distribution of information is obscure and deliberately misleading; “the events are not simply intertwined but entangled” (original emphasis, Buckland 3). However, even this definition of puzzle plots remains rather vague as it covers a wide range of films. They span from rather experimental split-screen editing as in Timecode (2000), over non-linear narratives as in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours (2002) and 21 Grams (2003), to films that have a jumbled time conception on a story level, such as Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber’s The Butterfly Effect (2004) and Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001), to films whose story is simply confusing, such as Spike Jonze’s Being John Malkovich (1999) and, probably, David Lynch’s entire body of work. Puzzle films comprise more or less everything that is in some way(s) out of the ordinary. Mind-tricking narratives are a very specific instance of a puzzle plot. One core aspect of them is that they do not simply “make people think” but deliberately deceive them. They hold back some vital information until the very end of the film. The instant this piece of information is finally revealed, the audience will experience the ultimate epiphany. This moment of recognition is, of course, a standard element of classical narration, yet, in mind-tricking narratives, it has no cathartic value (at least not in an Aristotelian sense). On the contrary, the film’s resolution will more often than not be the most unsettling scene. It creates a big conflict as it changes the entire reading of the film. In The Sixth Sense, for instance, the final and vital input that the character played by Bruce Willis has been dead all along forces the audience to re-interpret the story and completely disregard previously established hypotheses. The provision of two conflicting readings of the same text is the defining characteristic of mind-tricking narratives. <?page no="68"?> 68 Cornelia Klecker *** In order to finish this paper in high spirits, let us start with the negative example and leave the epitome of a mind-tricking narrative for later. Neil Burger wrote and directed the film The Illusionist, which is loosely based on Steven Millhauser’s short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” published in 1990. The cast includes none lesser than Edward Norton playing the protagonist Eisenheim, Jessica Biel playing his love interest, and Paul Giamatti playing Chief Inspector Uhl. The basic story is fairly simple. The childhood sweethearts Eisenheim and Duchess Sophie von Teschen are separated because of the inappropriateness of their relationship created by their difference in their social status. They are coincidentally reunited as adults in Vienna, even though Sophie is more or less engaged to the Crown Prince Leopold, played by Rufus Sewell, which proves to be quite an obstacle. When their affair comes out, the prince kills Sophie in an outburst of anger. Using ghostly apparitions of different people and, eventually, Sophie herself in his shows, Eisenheim manages to accuse the prince of her murder. The prince shoots himself when Inspector Uhl finally confronts him. However, what we find out only in the very last montage sequence is that Sophie, in fact, is still alive and that everything has been an elaborate set-up by Eisenheim to free Sophie from her oppressive relationship with the prince. This very condensed plot summary actually suggests the perfect make-up of a mind-tricking narrative. The final all-important twist is certainly there. The problem, however, is that it is a twist that the audience will hardly care about. A closer look at the plot structure and the film’s distribution of information will explain why that is the case. As mentioned previously, the film is told in one big flashback. It starts at, what will turn out to be, Eisenheim’s last performance. He is about to be arrested by Chief Inspector Uhl, who then talks to the Crown Prince. The prince asks about events in Eisenheim’s past that might be used as leverage. This triggers off the flashback that is narrated by Uhl, who has done a lot of research on Eisenheim. After a brief sequence that provides background information on Eisenheim’s childhood we return to Vienna, where we see the adult Eisenheim performing tricks on stage. Chief Inspector Uhl is in the audience. Since it is through Uhl’s eyes that we see the entire film, let me provide a few insights into his character. He, like Eisenheim, comes from a lower social class. He is essentially a well-meaning human being but has been corrupted somewhat by being too close a friend of the Crown Prince’s in order to move up on the career ladder. One of his most important character traits is his inquisitiveness. He loves magic tricks, enjoys being stunned by them but also always tries to figure them out. <?page no="69"?> “Are You Watching Closely? ” 69 Crown Prince Leopold shares this particular character trait even though he hates being fascinated by magic tricks. He simply and only wants to find out how they work, which in Eisenheim’s case, he never can. This means that in this film we have two dominant characters that constantly try to work out various magic tricks. Therefore, even if viewers by their own nature and inclination do not attempt to figure them out, they do so due to the fact that two characters constantly “make” them do so. As a matter of fact, the film places much more importance on the workings of the magic tricks than on the actual murder. After Eisenheim provoked the prince during a private performance at the Hofburg (the court palace in Vienna) and his plan to elope with Sophie is revealed, the prince kills Sophie, or so the viewers assume without any suspicion. Though we never actually see the murder itself, it is essential to point out that not the tiniest seed is planted that Sophie is still alive. Not the slightest doubt is raised, neither at the time of the murder nor later on when her body is found. For the viewers - and I would like to argue, even the most attentive one - Sophie is, in fact, dead. Another voiceover by Uhl allows the film to jump in time. The police arrested someone for Sophie’s murder and Eisenheim is about to start a new magic show. In this show, he performs the most stunning trick of them all. He conjures up spirits live onstage. The audience sees apparitions standing next to Eisenheim, talking to the audience, responding to their questions, and on one occasion even walking down the aisle next to the seating area of the theater. Uhl as well as the prince are awestruck and deeply unsettled by this trick. They try - as usual - to figure it out and so several possible ways of performing such a trick are presented in the film. None of them, though, can really live up to the perfection of Eisenheim’s version. The viewers, too, are “forced” to think along. They try to explain for themselves how this trick might be done and, perhaps, even wonder whether Eisenheim does, in fact, have supernatural powers that enable him to conjure up real ghosts. When he finally has Sophie’s ghost appear, Uhl attempts to arrest him for implicitly accusing the Crown Prince of her murder. However, Eisenheim turns out to be an apparition himself. Eventually, Uhl has gathered enough circumstantial evidence against the prince so that he is truly convinced of his guilt. He visits the prince at his residence to confront him. At this point, the story has finally caught up with the beginning of the film - the flashback is over. As the prince realizes his defeat, he shoots himself. Uhl leaves the Hofburg and a little boy hands him an envelope containing the explanation of one of Eisenheim’s main tricks. He spots Eisenheim, disguised with a beard, on the street and follows him all the way to the train station. He misses Eisenheim by seconds. And this is when Uhl experiences an epiphany visualized by a rather short <?page no="70"?> 70 Cornelia Klecker montage sequence. The Chief Inspector realizes that Sophie is still alive. She drugged the prince and pretended to be dead while Eisenheim planted fake evidence against the prince. At the end of the film Sophie and Eisenheim are happily reunited at some undisclosed location. The final reaction of the average film viewer is utter surprise. No one could have ever seen that coming. And, in this case, that is exactly the problem. As previously mentioned, at no point did the film hint at even the slightest possibility that Sophie might still be alive. No inconsistencies in terms of her death are ever shown. To put it provocatively, the audience will simply not care about the fact that she is still alive. Emotionally, they will be happy for Eisenheim but filmically, in terms of the narrative presented, they will experience frustration. Instead of revealing how the magic tricks are done, the viewers are presented with an almost pointless twist ending that does not at all reward them for all the hard mental work they invested into watching and following the film. In an interview, director and screenwriter Neil Burger explained what he thinks the movie is about: “The movie is less about how does [Eisenheim] do these tricks? How is it done? Than this sort of uncanny sense that nothing is what it seems. I want the movie to inhabit this realm of dream and mystery” (“The Making of The Illusionist” 14: 20 - 14: 35). I see his point. The question whether Eisenheim has supernatural powers or not most definitely goes into that direction. On the other hand, though, he employs two characters, Uhl and the prince, who spend a lot of time investigating these tricks. Therefore, I find it extremely hard to argue that this is not what the movie is about. As mentioned previously, the film does not merely invite but practically forces us to think along - if not with the prince then most definitely with Uhl as he is our narrator. Interestingly enough, Neil Burger’s own audio commentary on the DVD version of The Illusionist supports this point. While discussing his film, he spends a great amount of time explaining how the tricks work and not only in a filmic sense, i.e. which special effects they used, but more importantly, he explains how similar versions of the tricks were actually performed by magicians who lived around 1900. This means that Burger must be aware of the fascination people have for how magic tricks work. Therefore, I find it extremely surprising that he would “miss” that aspect in his own film. To sum up this analysis of The Illusionist, in a “proper” mind-tricking narrative the filmmakers must answer all big questions raised in the film. Conversely, it is fairly pointless to answer questions a viewer would not, or is at least very unlikely to, raise. The aha-effect of “Sophie is still alive,” which is in a way the opposite of “Bruce Willis’s character is dead” in The Sixth Sense, is completely drowned out by the frustration <?page no="71"?> “Are You Watching Closely? ” 71 the audience goes through when the main question of “how are these tricks done” is never answered. *** Keeping all this in mind, I would like to move on to the role model of mind-tricking narratives. Christopher Nolan wrote and directed The Prestige, which is based on Christopher Priest’s novel of the same name. In this film, two magicians share an equally important role. Christian Bale plays Alfred Borden and Hugh Jackman incorporates the role of Robert Angier. Again, the basic story is easily summarized. Two rivaling magicians try to outdo each other with their magic tricks, in particular the socalled “Transported Man.” Angier is the less skilled magician but a much better showman. His competitiveness stems mostly from his blaming Borden for his wife’s death. Borden, on the other hand, is a brilliant mind and, thus, a much better magician. Unfortunately, he does not really know how to “sell” his tricks properly. His rivalry comes from his utter dedication to magic as an art form and his conviction as well as desire that no one can or ever will outthink him. In the end, both of them die, and then again they do not really. But let us start from the beginning. The film starts with a short montage sequence of Angier’s death in a water tank and John Cutter, Angier’s ingénieur 3 played by Michael Caine, who performs the very common trick of a little bird disappearing from a cage. Cutter’s voiceover explains: Every magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called the Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary, a deck of cards, a bird, or a man. He shows you this object; perhaps, he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is, indeed, real. Yeah, unaltered, normal. But of course, it probably isn’t. [. . .] The second act is called the Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now, you’re looking for the secret, but you won’t find it. [. . .] But you wouldn’t clap yet because making something disappear isn’t enough. You have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act. The hardest part. The part we call the Prestige. (The Prestige 01: 02 - 03: 08) What I would like to argue here is mainly two things. First of all, I would like to illustrate that Christopher Nolan designed the plot of the film exactly according to this structure of a magic trick, namely, the 3 The technician of a magician. He is the one who really comes up with the magic tricks. <?page no="72"?> 72 Cornelia Klecker Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige. Secondly, I would like to point out that The Prestige, unlike The Illusionist, does not only raise and answer the “right” questions but, additionally, plants clues for the audience to pick up on throughout the movie and, thus, greatly enhances the pleasure of repeated viewings. But let us start with the former. In an interview, Christian Bale explained how he shares this notion of The Prestige being structured like a magic trick: That’s what I think Chris [Nolan] did so well is, you know, doing a movie about rivalry, happens to be about magicians and explaining this whole notion of the Pledge, the Turn, the Prestige, of how a magic trick works. And then, without really realizing it, the viewers are also being shown an absolute magic trick throughout and they’re being told they’re being shown a magic trick but you don’t kind of realize it or you don’t believe it. (“Das Notizbuch des Regisseurs” 14: 31 - 15: 00) In other words, a film as the ultimate sleight of hand. The devices that Nolan used in order to achieve this are manifold. Similar to The Illusionist, the entire story of The Prestige is also told in a flashback, or two to be precise. One is folded into the other. The actual discourse Now is the time when most of the story has already happened. Being accused of Angier’s murder, we find Borden in jail. He is given Angier’s journal and starts to read in his cell. This is when the first flashback starts. Accompanied by Borden’s voiceover that slowly merges into Angier’s, we see Angier in Colorado Springs, where he tries to meet the scientist Nikola Tesla, played by David Bowie. Tesla, however, refuses to see him, and so, back at the hotel, Angier starts reading Borden’s notebook. It starts only days after Angier and Borden met for the first time. This, again, triggers off a flashback, in other words, a flashback within a flashback. Angier’s voiceover, that now slowly changes back into Borden’s, takes us back in time to the Orpheum Theatre in London, where the water tank trick 4 is performed on stage. A brief montage sequence of Angier reading in Colorado and Borden reading in his cell reminds the viewer of the double flashback structure of these scenes. Soon afterwards, we again jump back in time and witness the decisive water tank accident. Angier’s wife does not manage to get out and drowns, perhaps, because Borden tied the wrong knot. Angier ends up blaming him for his wife’s 4 Angier’s wife Julia McCullough, played by Piper Perabo, is tied up by two volunteers from the audience. These “audience members” are actually plants by the magician - Borden and Angier. She is dropped into a big tank filled with water. This tank is locked and then covered with a big red curtain. Within less than a minute she manages to free herself and stands next to the tank when the curtain is pulled back up. <?page no="73"?> “Are You Watching Closely? ” 73 death. After the tank accident, both Angier and Borden start to set up their own magic shows. The rivalry begins. Angier, using the stage name “The Great Danton,” is supported by Cutter, who now works as his ingénieur, and a female assistant called Olivia Wenscombe, played by Scarlett Johansson. Borden gets emotional support by marrying Sarah, played by Rebecca Hall, who soon has his daughter. Angier and Borden start to spy on and even sabotage each other, so much so that Borden’s left hand gets partly mutilated. In the midst of this account of how these two magicians became highly successful, the film keeps cutting to Borden in jail and Angier in Colorado Springs. These scenes give more details about what happens (in Borden’s case) and happened (in Angier’s case) there. 5 About fifty-two minutes into the film, we reach the Turn. With Angier spying in the audience, Borden performs his master trick “The Transported Man” for the first time. Explained in a very simplified manner, this trick constitutes one door on the left and one on the right end of the stage. Borden goes through and disappears in one and comes out of the other practically the same second. The audience at the magic show is stunned and Angier is completely dumbfounded. But not only Angier, also the film viewers are utterly surprised. For the first time, they ask themselves, how this trick is done. Also for the first time, the film does not reveal the mechanics of a trick. Something ordinary, the story of two rivaling magicians, that is, has been turned into something quite extraordinary by the filmmaker. Not only Angier and Cutter but also the viewers try to get behind the secret of “The Transported Man,” but of course they cannot. Therefore, this question will linger until the end of the film, the third act, the Prestige. Still in the second act, the Turn, a lot of story information is given. Angier and Cutter try to copy “The Transported Man” by using a double, a hired actor who looks stunningly like Angier (and is, in fact, played by Hugh Jackman himself). Knowing that his act is not even closely as good, he sends his assistant, Olivia, to spy on Borden. She cannot uncover the secret but steals Borden’s notebook and brings it to Angier. At this point, we find out how Angier obtained this journal. Since this notebook is written in cipher, he blackmails Borden into revealing his secret. Borden tells him that it is Tesla. Angier travels to Colorado Springs, Tesla’s current residence, and asks him to build him a machine for the trick. Here, the film has come full circle in terms of the flashback within the flashback, the period of time when Angier starts 5 One has to keep in mind that the time level of Borden being in jail constitutes the actual discourse Now while Angier’s time spent in Colorado Springs is part of a flashback and therefore in the past. <?page no="74"?> 74 Cornelia Klecker deciphering and reading Borden’s notebook. On the last page, a huge shock awaits him. Borden directly addresses Angier, thus, revealing that this entire notebook was a fake. It is part of a meticulously designed diversion premeditated by Borden a long time before. The viewers are just as shocked as Angier. Most of what the film has presented them so far is now subject to complete re-evaluation. Borden has revealed himself as a completely unreliable narrator. Angier also finds out that Tesla, in fact, never built a machine for Borden. All the more surprisingly, Tesla and Angier find out that it actually works. The machine that Tesla has built for Angier manages to duplicate top hats and cats. Reassured, Angier travels back to London, where he experiments with the machine. Angier’s voiceover explaining how he tried to duplicate himself leads us to Borden again sitting in his cell reading Angier’s journal. All of a sudden, Angier directly addresses Borden revealing that he knew that Borden would be in jail reading this notebook, awaiting his death for Angier’s murder. This time, the viewers feel Borden’s terror. This journal, too, was an elaborate set-up, except that this one was a frame to murder that will lead to Borden’s death sentence. The next sequences are rather difficult to place, not in terms of the storyline as it is a mere continuation of what happened upon Angier’s return to London, but regarding the narration itself. Since both flashbacks are most definitely over, it is not at all clear who the narrator of the following is. Is it Borden’s memory or Angier’s or that of both? If so, it is not indicated accordingly. This is either the only narrative inconsistency that Christopher Nolan lets pass, or it is the beginning of the actual discourse Now. In other words, these are all the story events that happen right before Borden is accused of murder and starts reading Angier’s journal. Be that as it may, these story events are very important. Angier reunites with Cutter and sets out to perform exactly one hundred shows featuring his improved version of the trick, now called “The Real Transported Man.” Upon seeing this, Borden starts agonizing about how this trick is done but simply cannot figure it out. He keeps coming to Angier’s shows in disguise until he finally, in his utter frustration, sneaks backstage where he witnesses Angier drown in the water tank. In other words, the story has finally caught up with the very beginning of the film. Borden is arrested, tried in court, and found guilty. However, shortly before Borden is hung, Angier turns up at the jail disguised as a man called Lord Caldlow. Borden recognizes him and suffers his second shock - he will be killed for the murder of a person who is still alive. Cutter, who was appointed to deliver Angier’s belongings to “Lord Caldlow,” finds out about Angier’s plot and is deeply appalled. The next sequence crosscuts between them, Angier and Cutter, hiding the machine in some kind of storage room and Borden being hung. <?page no="75"?> “Are You Watching Closely? ” 75 With Borden’s last words before his death, namely, “abracadabra,” the third act, the Prestige, finally starts. Someone sneaks up on Angier in the storage room - Cutter is already gone - and shoots him. The shooter turns out to be none other than Borden himself as if he were resurrected from the dead. In his final moments, Angier has an epiphany and, thus, figures out what really happened. The following voiceover by Angier and Borden alternatingly revealing the true story is visualized by a fast-cut montage sequence of already seen scenes as well as some new material. Borden had a double, his very own twin brother, and they shared one identity their entire life. Therefore, “one” Borden was actually killed by hanging, but the other one is reunited with his daughter at the very end of the film. The secret of “The Transported Man” is revealed. With this close reading of The Prestige I hope to have illustrated why it is the perfect embodiment of a mind-tricking narrative. By not only explaining the basic structure of a magic trick but also employing it as the plot structure of the film, Nolan managed to turn a movie into a sleight of hand. It astounds and impresses the audience just as much as if they were to watch a person disappear and reappear on stage. One of the most important aspects is that, unlike The Illusionist, it answers the same question that it raises. The final moment of revelation that Nolan creates, the shock the audience experiences, ties in with the questions they have been puzzling about for the better part of the film. An artful and thoughtful distribution of story information is the key, as Nolan himself explains: The filmmaker almost more so than the novelist has a very close relationship with a magician in terms of the way in which we’re using the release of information, what we tell the audience when, the point of view that we’re drawing them into. We use those techniques to fool an audience, to engage an audience in all kinds of blind alleys and red herrings and so forth and then ultimately, hopefully, a successful narrative payoff. (“Das Notizbuch des Regisseurs” 14: 03-14: 28) The technique of telling the story in two flashbacks is one essential aspect of achieving this narrative payoff. Apart from the fact that with these two narrators we get two subjective narrations that combined result in a rather omniscient view, Nolan also created a mimetically motivated selection of the information that is concealed. Since the notebooks were not authentic but written in order to manipulate and fool the other character, it makes perfect sense that decisive information, such as having a twin brother and duplicating oneself a hundred times <?page no="76"?> 76 Cornelia Klecker with a machine, is withheld - and not just from the respective characters but also from the audience. The truly fascinating thing about The Prestige, though, is not all the story information that is concealed but really all the information that is given. The narrative payoff is greatly heightened by all the clues that are planted. Some of them are quite subtle and can really only be detected after second and third viewings. Others are blatantly obvious - in retrospect, that is. During the big final revelation montage sequence, viewers will remember certain things that they have been told or they have seen and they will find it difficult to believe that they did not figure this out by themselves. One aspect that, in retrospect, seems almost comical is the fact that the film actually immediately gives away the twist ending by telling us quite upfront how Borden performs his trick. Upon Angier’s question addressed to Cutter, he instantly replies, “he uses a double” (The Prestige 52: 38 - 52: 39). Of course, Cutter is merely referring to this particular trick and not Borden’s entire life, but still, he is exactly right. Furthermore, the film shows several analogies to Borden’s situation. The bird trick, for instance, can be seen as such. When the birdcage is smashed and the bird inside “disappears,” what really happens is that the bird is killed and another one, a double, is brought back by the magician. During a performance of this trick, a smart little boy starts crying because he is convinced the magician killed the bird. When Borden shows the other bird to reassure him that it is fine, the boy simply remarks, “but where is his brother? ” (The Prestige 18: 34 - 18: 35). A similar analogy can be found in the Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo. Cutter sends Angier and Borden to his magic show in order to figure out the “fishbowl trick.” The key for this trick is that Chung Ling Soo is actually really strong. He only pretends to be a weak elderly man, a character he has to play not only on but also off stage. While watching Chung Ling Soo walking toward his carriage - slowly, bent over, and supported by a cane, Borden explains to Angier with great admiration, at the same time hinting at his own life: “This is the trick. This is a performance right here. This is why no one can detect his method. Total devotion to his art. Utter self-sacrifice” (The Prestige 15: 58 - 16: 11). Talking to his wife about this, Angier remarks, “I couldn’t fathom it. Living my whole life pretending to be someone else” (16: 46 - 16: 49). Of course, this is exactly what Borden has been doing. I could list a great number of further clues, some of which are revisited in the final montage sequence and some of which can really only be detected after a second viewing. The question remains, why viewers do not pick up on them. Why are we not able to predict this twist ending? One possible reason might be that part of us does not really want to figure it out. Similar to Chief Inspector Uhl from The Illusionist, we want <?page no="77"?> “Are You Watching Closely? ” 77 to know how it works and yet again love to be fascinated and stunned by a magic trick. The final voiceover by Cutter suggests just that: “Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because, of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled” (The Prestige 01: 59: 30 - 01: 59: 49). The viewer’s desire to be fooled is one of the main reasons why films with mind-tricking narratives have been so successful in recent years. The two films discussed merely serve as a representation of so many other puzzle films that Hollywood has released lately. In many ways, they work according to the same formula that I have tried to work out in my analyses. The interplay of giving and withholding information is most vital. What I really wanted to point out, though, is that a good mind-tricking narrative does not just produce any kind of twist ending. The challenge goes far beyond that. While it is important not to leave any questions unanswered, it is just as vital that the ending fills gaps that have been previously created. Otherwise, the audience might not even care about the twist. The final revelation has to reward the viewers and not frustrate them. <?page no="78"?> 78 Cornelia Klecker References Bordwell, David. “Film Futures.” SubStance Vol. 31. No. 1.97: Special Issue: The American Production of French Theory (2002): 88-104. . Narration in the Fiction Film. London: Routledge, 1985. . The Way Hollywood Tells It: Stories and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. , Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. 1985. London: Routledge, 2006. Buckland, Warren. Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Cameron, Allan. Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema. London: Palgrave/ Macmillan, 2008. The Illusionist. Dir. Neil Burger. Perf. Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Jessica Biel. Momentum Pictures: 2007. DVD . Klecker, Cornelia. “Mind-Tricking Narratives: Between Classical and Art Cinema Narration.” Poetics Today 33: 4 (Winter 2012): 625-52. “The Making of The Illusionist.” Special Features. The Illusionist. Dir. Neil Burger. Perf. Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti and Jessica Biel. Momentum Pictures: 2007. DVD Millhauser, Steven. “Eisenheim the Illusionist.” The Barnum Museum: Stories. Normal: Dalkey Archive Press, 1997. 215-37. “Das Notizbuch des Regisseurs.” Special Features. The Prestige. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman and Michael Caine. Warner Home Video: 2007. DVD . The Prestige. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, and Michael Caine. Warner Home Video: 2007. DVD. Priest, Christopher. The Prestige. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996. <?page no="79"?> Narrative Conflicts and Violence of Reading in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy Anna Iatsenko In her ninth novel entitled A Mercy, Toni Morrison explores the beginnings of America. Set in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the novel engages with such problematic issues as the institutionalization of slavery, forceful conversion to Christianity of the native peoples, the sale of European women for overseas marriages and other instances where different cultural, religious and economic epistemes enter into direct and oftentimes brutal conflict. To illustrate the consequences of this systematic and institutionalized violence, Morrison creates a character - Florens - a young slave girl who tells a story of her abandonment by her mother. By investing Florens with narratorial authority, Morrison makes her character manipulate the readers’ trust only to upset it in the very last pages of the novel. This narratological tour de force not only mirrors the abdication of agency that Florens performs as a character, but also echoes the readers’ transferral of agency onto the narrator, allowing Florens to govern her own reading of the story she tells. Ultimately, the structure of A Mercy and the use of the narrative technique expose the violence inherent in the act of reading by putting into tension the narrative structure and reading practice. The plot of Toni Morrison’s ninth novel A Mercy takes the reader back into the time of early colonial America. Set between the 1680s and the early 1690s, the novel explores the disturbing political and social landscape of early America as a site of ongoing European land squabbles, escalating institutionalization of slavery, eradication of native peoples and endless religious conflicts. Slowly simmering in a cauldron of disease, human greed and fear, America ceases to be a promised land of po- Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 79-91. <?page no="80"?> 80 Anna Iatsenko tential good beginnings and becomes the site of unbearable nightmares where dreams disintegrate rather than prosper and where irreconcilable individual and collective cultural differences constantly enter into deadly conflict. In order to exemplify the ongoing territorial, economic and religious disputes on this large national and international scale, Morrison also sets up the private microcosm of a farm owned by Jacob Vaark and the four women who help him run the estate. These five characters - of completely different origins and languages, cultural and social practices - are momentarily able to put aside their differences in order to work, as a collective, for their estate. This success, however, is only short-lived and tensions begin to surface rapidly after Jacob’s death, underlining the total dependence of the women on Jacob and each other. What the text makes apparent in these tensions is the fact that the women, each with their own initial story of trauma, have completely abdicated their agency by transferring onto each other and Jacob the responsibility for their physical, emotional and psychic well-being. This will be the point of departure of this essay in which I will explore some of the textual strategies that Morrison uses to investigate the mechanism by which one hands over responsibility for oneself to another. I will argue that the characters’ experiences of the world in these early stages of the makings of America - experiences which are heavily mediated by the characters’ individual traumas arising from their brutal contact with colonial epistemes of conflicting European cultures - create a deep emotional lack which they see as being fulfilled only by an outside presence. Moreover, Morrison’s text inscribes this argument as a problem of reading: the architecture of A Mercy and the telling of the narrative constantly call upon readers to adjust our existing reading strategies and judgments as to how the text constructs and deconstructs meaning during the reading process exposing problematic mechanisms in our culture of reading. The theoretical framework in which this paper is rooted is situated within the narratological theory of the literary text that engages with the internal structure of a narrative and, most importantly, enlightens the relationship between the text, the narrator and the reader. Wolfgang Iser’s research provides the operative mechanics behind this essay because Iser considers the practice of reading as a dynamic process which influences the experience of reading but also illuminates the experience of life outside the text. Particularly in his work The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett, Iser addresses the issue of a phenomenological approach to a literary text grounded in the idea of the experience of the world which becomes crucial in understanding Morrison’s construction of A Mercy and the ways in which intradiegetic communication creates extradiegetic effects on the reader. Furthermore, Monika Fludernik’s work on the unreliable narrator and <?page no="81"?> Narrative Conflicts 81 its functions in the literary work encouraged a further investigation into the underlying forces behind the interactional principles between the reader and the narrator. However, whereas Fludernik purports a correlation between unreliability, readerly expectations and intentionality of the implied author, in A Mercy this relationship is disturbed by the introduction of a first-person narrator who holds a position of an author within the narrative - a position rendered more visible by the fact that the narrator is a young slave woman who, historically, is denied access to the practice of writing. Ultimately, unlike the previous research in the domain of narratology, this essay makes use of the psychoanalytic concept of anaclisis as a possible model to the type of relationship A Mercy creates between the reader and the first person narrator. 1 As with most of Morrison’s novels, the chronological plot of A Mercy is relatively simple in comparison to the structure of the narrative. The chronology tells a story of a man - Jacob Vaark - who, believing himself an orphan, unexpectedly inherits a farm from a distant relative to which he brings a wife whom he “buys” from England and three women as domestic and farm help whom he acquires during his numerous business travels. While Jacob is alive, the household cohabits peacefully, concentrating its efforts on building the large house Jacob insists on having and fighting the hardships of the farm and social life in early America. However, as soon as Jacob dies of pox, the sudden vulnerability with which the women are faced exposes various cracks in their relationships, which begin to expand and ultimately fissure the union of the household. How this simple plot is told is a much more complex matter because in A Mercy Morrison once again creates a narrative with multiple narrators, voices, and background stories, which echo her previous novels Jazz and Beloved. Unlike in her previous novels, however, Morrison also further experiments with narrative technique and strategies which problematize the traditional notions of narratorial reliability and reading practice where the readers’ responsibility for making meaning heavily relies on the narrator’s trustworthiness. Indeed, the telling of A Mercy becomes a venture into the problem of reading and the violence inherent in this act. 1 Although not directly engaged with in this particular essay, other determining works which concern the issue to narratological analysis are important to acknowledge. On the subject of the development of the narratological theory I will encourage the reader to refer to Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale where he develops the model of the “spheres of action” and “functions” of the narrative, Tzvetan Todorov who in his seminal work Grammaire du Décameron coins the term “narratology,” Gérard Genette’s work on the narrative act in the collection Narrative Discourse: An Essay In Method and Roland Barthes’ S/ Z in which he proposes a matrix of codes that govern the “writerly” text. <?page no="82"?> 82 Anna Iatsenko A Mercy has two distinct major narrators: Florens - a young, literate slave woman - and an omniscient, third person narrator who relies heavily on the technique of focalization. Florens and the omniscient narrator tell their stories in parallel and they intertwine and overlap, supplementing each other, but remaining quite individual with respect to the voice and points of view. Whereas the omniscient third person narrator presents background and chronological histories of most characters except for Florens and her mother, Florens tells a more enigmatic, personal story in a difficult and broken form of expression heavily marked by grammatical reductions into the present tense and a disconnected story line. In her article entitled “Failed Messages, Maternal Loss, and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy” Jean Wyatt argues that the ungrammaticality of Florens’s expression echoes her initial trauma of abandonment: “the stasis expressed by the unvarying present tense reflects the way time stopped in a single horrific moment . . .” (141). Although Wyatt’s observation is pertinent with respect to some passages of the text, this is not necessarily the case throughout the novel. For example, the beginning of the novel presents a slightly different case; in the opening lines Florens articulates complex perfect tenses rooted in the anterior past: Don’t be afraid. My telling can’t hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark - weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more - but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog’s profile plays in the steam of a kettle. Or when a cornhusk doll sitting on a shelf is soon splaying in the corner of a room and the wicked of how it got there is plain. Stranger things happen all the time everywhere. You know. I know you know. One question is who is responsible? Another is can you read? If a pea hen refuses to brood I read it quickly and, sure enough, that night I see a minha m-e standing hand in hand with her little boy, my shoes jamming the pocket of her apron. Other signs need more time to understand. Often there are too many signs, or a bright omen clouds up too fast. I sort them and try to recall, yet I know I am missing much, like not reading the garden snake crawling up to the door saddle to die. Let me start with what I know for certain. (1-2) This strange, rather poetic opening paragraph, composed of what seem to be relatively disconnected sentences in the style of interior monologue or stream of consciousness technique, is not understandable to the reader straight away. The lack of understanding is produced not so much by the incomplete sentences, but by their curious and seemingly unrelated phrasal juxtapositions and internal meanings, creating an im- <?page no="83"?> Narrative Conflicts 83 pression that whoever is speaking here is speaking in a secret undecipherable code. Only at the end of the novel does the reader begin to realize that these words are uttered in retrospect to the events. More precisely, the words are written down or scratched into the walls of a room with a nail by Florens. The quotation above also begins to establish Florens as a narrator through her ability to read and, at the same time, anchors her reliability and trustworthiness. By offering the question “. . . can you read? ” (1) Florens positions herself as a reader of signs and openly confesses that some signs are too complex to be deciphered and that she may not be as proficient in reading as she would like to be. This fact is also reinforced through the phrase “. . . yet I know I am missing much . . . ” (2). This initial confession of her imperfection as a reader firmly roots Florens as trustworthy, objective and slightly critical of her own capacity for treating information. Indeed, as in Jazz, where Morrison presents us with a narrator who is able to recognize her interpretative mistakes and apologize for them to the reader, thus making us reconsider our harsh judgments of her mistakes, Florens’s admission of her lack of proficiency ultimately makes her more human. By providing such confessions at the beginning of the novel, the text also echoes the experience of reading Florens’s words - the reader is placed in the same situation as Florens because being thrust in medias res into her narrative, a narrative that displays fragmented and complex associations in the manner of a stream of consciousness, the reader is not proficient in deciphering the meaning in the signs on the page. This link between the reader and Florens is further strengthened by the use of the second person “you.” Without any introduction to the narrative, the reader has no knowledge of the addressee and is put in the position of supplementing the gaps in meaning. Without further information about the identity of this second person pronoun at the beginning of A Mercy, it is tempting to imagine that Florens addresses the reader because among the incomprehensibly assembled phrases, the “you” does stand out in its interpellative properties. This is also a technique that was used by Morrison in her previous novel Jazz where, at the very end of the novel, in the closing paragraph, the narrator launches into a monologue where she declares her love to a “you” and forces the reader to ponder the meaning of the attribution of this addressee. Whereas the narrator of Jazz uses this interpellative technique at the very close of the novel and thus never provides the elucidation of the pronoun, throughout the telling of A Mercy and particularly at the novel’s end, the addressee does become apparent: Florens addresses her lover, the blacksmith. In the meantime, however, the “you,” reinforced by Florens’s seemingly objective criticism of her reading skills, serves to <?page no="84"?> 84 Anna Iatsenko create a link of trust and proximity with the reader, a sense where reliance on Florens as a narrator is established but which will later be suddenly severed, leaving the reader to ponder the mechanism by which he/ she has constructed the meaning of Florens’s story. While Florens has her reader’s attention and trust, she begins to tell a complex story where, as Wyatt points out, the grammatical structures begin to morph into the timeless present but also to move between different levels of meaning. The second paragraph of Florens’s story reads: The beginning begins with the shoes. When a child I am never able to abide being barefoot and always beg for shoes, anybody’s shoes, even on the hottest days. My mother, a minha m-e, is frowning, is angry at what she says are my prettify ways. Only bad women wear high heels. I am dangerous, she says, and wild but she relents and lets me wear the throwaway shoes from Senhora’s house, pointy-toe, one raised heel broke, the other worn and a buckle on top. As a result, Lina says, my feet are useless, will always be too tender for life and never have the strong soles, tougher than leather, which life requires. Lina is correct. Florens, she says, it’s 1690. Who else these days has the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady? So when I set out to find you, she and Mistress give me Sir’s boots that fit a man not a girl. They stuff them with hay and oily corn husks and tell me to hide the letter inside my stocking - no matter the itch of the sealing wax. I am lettered but I do not read what Mistress writes and Lina and Sorrow cannot. But I know what it means to say to any who stop me. (2) Fluctuating between the anterior past and more recent past of her story Florens also seems to jump in the content of her telling. Starting with the shoes that occupy the primary position in her story, she suddenly reveals her enslaved condition, and also the fact that despite being a slave, she is lettered. It is interesting that the shoes are foregrounded to the detriment of Florens’s thoughts on her indentured condition, suggesting a certain thwarted perspective the young Florens has of slavery. In her article, Wyatt argues that this fact is related to Florens’s general inability to read at a deeper level: the initial shock of separation from her mother does not allow Florens access to meta-interpretative levels and she “stop[s] at the visual surface of things” and people (141). Ultimately, Wyatt states that “Florens seems to lack what cognitive scientists call Theory of Mind, the ability to attribute thoughts and feelings to others. That lack is characteristic of autism” (142). Indeed, Florens’s readings do, at times, prove to be quite juvenile and Wyatt provides a number of interesting examples, always locating them in a larger context of slavery and the traumatic effect this practice has on the psyche and identity formation. However, Florens’s readings are often corroborated by the third person anonymous and fully omniscient narrator as in the case of <?page no="85"?> Narrative Conflicts 85 the shoes, which, throughout the novel, begin to transform from an object into a trope for the abandonment that Florens constantly experiences. In the second section of the novel, where the omniscient third person extradiegetic narrator presents us with Jacob’s story, the shoes resurface again. This time, however, the story is told from Jacob’s and, therefore, a grown man’s perspective, and it positions the shoes at the heart of a gruesome transaction which takes place between Ortega and Jacob. The Portuguese planter, unable to pay the debt he owes Jacob, proposes to requite his dues by giving Jacob slaves. Although opposed to the exchange at first, saying that “flesh was not his commodity” (20), Jacob finally agrees to take payment in human bodies out of loss of patience with Ortega, but also because of a curious detail provided to us by the narrator. Although, initially, Jacob’s choice seems to settle on an older woman, Ortega refuses to concede saying that she’s the cook and too valuable to let go. At this point, the following scene is described by the narrator: Just then the little girl stepped from behind the mother. On her feet was a pair of way-too-big woman’s shoes. Perhaps it was that feeling of license, a newly recovered recklessness along with the sight of those little legs rising like two bramble sticks from the bashed and broken shoes, that made him laugh. A loud, chest-heaving laugh at the comedy, the hopeless irritation, of the visit. His laughter had not subsided when the woman cradling the small boy on her hip came forward. Her voice was barely above a whisper but there was no mistaking her urgency. “Please, Senhor. Not me. Take her. Take my daughter.” Jacob looked up at her, away from the child’s feet, his mouth still open with laughter, and was struck by the terror in her eyes. His laugh creaking to a close, he shook his head, thinking, God help me if this is not the most wretched business. (24) Here, the content of the passage echoes Florens’s previous words - the combination of Jacob’s discomfort with the situation, the sight of Florens’s legs rising from the shoes and the look of terror in the mother’s eyes. As in Florens’s introduction, the shoes appear first and signal some comical relief from the tense situation with Ortega, but at the same time they hold Florens in Jacob’s field of attention. Even when he hears the mother utter the words that mark her rejection and abandonment of her daughter, Jacob does not look at her directly, but “away from the child’s feet”: a phrase which marks the trajectory of his gaze for the reader, thus confirming again the importance of the presence of the shoes on Florens’s feet. Furthermore, as in Florens’s second paragraph, the shoes in Jacob’s description are juxtaposed with the act of <?page no="86"?> 86 Anna Iatsenko rejection and act here as an introduction to the event of the sale about to take place. The dissonance that is created in this juxtaposition of shoes and the abandonment Florens experiences confers the aura of a fetish onto the shoes. Indeed, throughout the novel, the shoes resurface numerous times in Florens’s life: on her journey to Jacob’s farm, in Lena’s expression of affection towards Florens which comes in the form of rabbitskin shoes, in her fear of the disappearance of shoes when she arrives at the blacksmith’s cottage. Indeed, the shoes in A Mercy seem to take on more importance than that accorded to a very scarce object. 2 The importance of the shoes for Florens is most powerful when, feeling rejected by the blacksmith, Florens says, “I have no shoes. I have no kicking heart no home no tomorrow” (156). The convergence of the loss of shoes and the rejection by her lover triggers a pattern of traumatic repetition in Florens - for her the rejection by the blacksmith repeats the event she had lived at an earlier stage of her life when her mother prompted her transfer to Jacob. The phrase “I have no shoes. I have no kicking heart no home no tomorrow” (156) also reveals a gap between the complexity of Florens’s experience and the literalness of the level on which she reads this experience, making the reader wonder whether Florens’s mother really abandons her daughter because of a pair of shoes. Indeed, by juxtaposing the shoes and the heart, a place of belonging and her future, Florens expresses her profound misunderstanding of the situation which is unraveling before her. Furthermore, being raised on the tobacco plantation, Florens is an integral part of a system dictated by slavery where 2 Here one may recall the description made by Frederick Douglass in his autobiographical account Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself where he presents his readers the description of the slaves’ clothes: The yearly allowance of clothing was not more ample than the supply of food. It consisted of two tow-linen shirts, one pair of trowsers of the same coarse material, for summer, and a woolen pair of trowsers and a woolen jacket for winter, with one pair of yarn stockings and a pair of shoes of the coarsest description. Children under ten years old had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trowsers. They had two coarse tow-linen shirts per year, and when these were worn out they went naked till the next allowance day - and this was the condition of the little girls as well as of the boys. As to beds, they had none. One coarse blanket was given them, and this only to the men and women. The children stuck themselves in holes and corners about the quarters, often in the corners of huge chimneys, with their feet in the ashes to keep them warm. (Online) Indeed, Douglass’s description makes apparent the importance of footwear especially for children. <?page no="87"?> Narrative Conflicts 87 people and objects are mutually replaceable. The novel thoroughly problematizes this fact in the depiction of the horrific transaction between Ortega and Jacob where, unable to deliver goods or money, Ortega offers his slaves as payment of his debt. Florens also internalizes this blurring of boundaries between people and objects and reenacts it with respect to shoes which become invested with the emotional energy and affect that normally would be reserved for the child’s mother. In short, Florens is unable to read the situation in all its complexity not because of her intellectual capacity, but because the slavery system demands this of her. Indeed, as a young girl, Florens is simply unable to withdraw herself from a system which names people as objects and to render meaningful the complexity and the emotional dissonance of the event of separation from her mother that she experiences. However, another force that comes into play here is Florens’s instinct for survival: in order to survive, she must conform to the system that demands she cease to differentiate between people and objects. Here, it becomes interesting to read the relationship Florens has with shoes through the Freudian notion of propping which is later absorbed into the concept of the anaclitic by the translators of his works. As Jean Laplanche explains in his essay “The Order of Life and the Genesis of Human Sexuality”: . . .the term anaclitic was introduced by the translators in a text later than the Three Essays, the essay “On Narcissism” (1914), in which Freud contrasts two types of “object choice,” two ways in which the human subject selects his love object in his own image, and an “anaclitic” object choice (Anlehnungstypus, in the German) in which . . . one’s sexuality is based on the object of the function of self-preservation. Thus the term propping has been understood in this tradition as a leaning on the object, and ultimately a leaning on the mother. . . . The phenomenon Freud describes is a leaning of the drive, the fact that emergent sexuality attaches itself to and is propped upon another process which is both similar and profoundly divergent: the sexual drive is propped upon a nonsexual, vital function or, as Freud formulates it in terms which defy all additional commentary, upon a “bodily function essential to life.” (emphasis in the original; 119) Considering the definition provided by Laplanche and the system of signification Florens integrates, it is possible to think of Florens not only as acting out an “anaclitic object choice” (opposed to the “narcissistic object-choice”), but also to read the “object” as having multiple replaceable denominators - as a person but also as a literal object. Such a mechanism of defense seems to work for Florens as long as the shoes are available to her; their presence soothes Florens and replaces the lost mother. However, once Florens loses both her shoes and the black- <?page no="88"?> 88 Anna Iatsenko smith, the anaclitic object is no longer available and this loss throws Florens into the anxiety of repetition of the original abandonment by her mother. This precipitates a rejection of the object, a rejection that the text presents as a moment of destruction. When the experience of rejection is repeated at a later stage in her life with the blacksmith, the difficulty of reconciling the simultaneity of the feelings of love and rejection overwhelms her and she lashes out at her lover with teeth, fists and tongs with the intention of destroying the object of her desire. Through this act of extreme physical violence Florens severs herself from her anaclitic object embodied by the blacksmith and she is able to partially fabricate a self that stands independent of the smithy and, consequently, partially recover her abdicated agency. 3 Her telling ends with the following words: See? You are correct. A minha m-e too. I am become wilderness but I am also Florens. In full. Unforgiven. Unforgiving. No ruth, my love. None. Hear me? Slave. Free. I last. . . . M-e, you can have pleasure now because the soles of my feet are hard as cypress. (159) In this desperate act of self-making, the harshness of Florens’ words - especially the “No ruth my love. None” - appear contradictory with respect to the title of the novel A Mercy. Speaking of herself via negation, she completely distances herself from any possibility of feeling compassion, pity, distress for the others and, therefore, the text suggests that she loses a part of her humanity while attempting to shield herself with numbness against the pain of rejection. Although the last paragraph seems to recover some of this numbness, as the last section of the novel will shortly reveal, Florens is completely wrong about her mother’s motivations for giving her daughter away. The final section of the novel is told by Florens’s mother - an unnamed slave woman brought from Angola to Maryland via Barbados. Although her telling is short, it is intensely packed with information, emotional tensions and grief. As the mother explains her decision to give her daughter away to Jacob, she justifies her act by the fact that she wanted to protect her daughter from Ortega’s sexual assault. Speaking directly about her own “breaking in,” Florens’s mother says the following: 3 The text of the novel embodies the concreteness of her gesture when, at the very end of the novel, we realize that Florens’ words are actually written down - or rather scratched into the floor and the walls of the room of the new house on the Vaark estate with a nail. <?page no="89"?> Narrative Conflicts 89 . . . There is no protection. To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below. . . But you wanted the shoes of a loose woman, and a cloth around your chest did no good. You caught Senhor’s eye. After the tall man dined and joined Senhor on a walk through the quarters . . . I heard their voices and gathered you and your brother to stand in their eyes. One chance, I thought. There is no protection but there is difference. You stood there in those shoes and the tall man laughed and said he would take me to close the debt. I knew Senhor would not allow it. I said you. Take you, my daughter. Because I saw the tall man see you as a human child, not pieces of eight. I knelt before him. Hoping for a miracle. He said yes. It was not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human. I stayed on my knees. In the dust where my heart will remain each night and every day until you understand what I know and long to tell you: to be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of yourself to another is a wicked thing. Oh Florens. My love. Hear a tua m-e. (161-65) Here, the mother’s words completely overturn Florens’s presentation of her personal story - the shoes are not the cause of her initial decision to give her daughter away. In an attempt to protect her daughter from the unavoidable sexual assaults due to her position as a slave on the plantation the mother sees Jacob as an opportunity for her daughter to have a different life from her own. It is here that we understand to what extent Florens misreads her mother’s gesture and the importance of the words that her mother says. This misreading leads Florens to enact precisely the opposite of what the mother had wished for her daughter. Her fear of abandonment and hunger for recognition make Florens give herself over completely to another man, thus committing the “wicked” deed that her mother warns her against and setting herself up for yet another act of abandonment, forcing Florence to steel herself against pain, but also against any possible positive interactions with others. It is here that Florens’s initial questions “Who is responsible? ” and “Can you read? ” begin to acquire their polysemous aura. Very pertinent in the context of her own story, the first question can be read as an attempt to find someone accountable from Florens’s trauma. However, this question also has a larger historical scope because, ultimately, slavery is responsible for her inadequate responses and she stands as an innocent victim of human greed. Moreover, along with the second question “Can you read? ” both are pertinent with respect to the narratological structure of the text: as readers of the novel, we have conferred re- <?page no="90"?> 90 Anna Iatsenko sponsibility for understanding the story onto a young girl and an omniscient narrator without questioning the motives and the mechanics which have led Florens’s mother to commit her act. Via this question, the reader is also confronted with the mechanism of narratorial anaclisis - the dependency on and the transference of responsibility onto the narrator because, throughout the novel, we believe Florens who says that her mother wanted to protect her infant son rather than an unworthy daughter who wanted shoes. By traversing the intraand extra-textual levels of the narrative via this simple question of responsibility, the novel indeed questions our own readerly responsibility and our capacity to offer mercy as a gesture towards the mother and Florens. Thus, the question “Can you read? ” is not exclusively directed at the smithy, but expresses concern with respect to the conflicts within and the violence inherent to the act of reading as well. By constructing this narratologically intricate story set in early America, Morrison creates a narrative which reveals the complexity of the mechanism of trauma propagated by colonial epistemes. Taking possession of a human being as an object leads to the abdication of personal agency which becomes extremely difficult to reclaim. In attempting to reclaim her agency and a self, Florens steels herself against the surrounding world, Jacob’s wife turns to religion, Sorrow renames herself “Complete” only after she has a child and completely loses herself in the baby. Jacob, resolved to build the big fancy house which neither he nor his family need, but who is persuaded that a man is measured by what he leaves behind, dies of pox in the process of construction, leaving an empty shell of masonry which Florens fills with her writing like empty pages. Following the initial shock of her husband’s death, Rebekka turns to Christian fundamentalism and chases the other women from her house, forcing them to sleep outside regardless of the weather and forbidding Lina her native practices. Indeed, all the characters display some type of anaclitic behavior which leads to deep conflict and where the other becomes a cause of their well-being or lack of it. These are the foundations of America that Morrison depicts in her novel where acts of mercy become quickly forgotten in favour of greed, religious fanaticism, and the hope that mercy will come from the outside and not from within. Indeed, the text that Morrison creates does not only display this problematic as a theme, but inscribes conflict within the very structure of her narrative where conflict becomes embodied within the language and the structure of the telling, making the reader acutely aware to what extent reading is a cultural and conflicting practice. <?page no="91"?> Narrative Conflicts 91 References Barthes, Roland. S/ Z. Paris; Seuil, 1970. Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself. Boston: De Wolfe and Fiske Co., 1892. Documenting the American South. 1999. University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 26 November 2012. http: / / docsouth.unc.edu/ neh/ douglasslife/ douglass.html Fludernik, Monika. An Introduction to Narratology. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Freud, Sigmund. Three Essays On Sexuality. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. VIII. Ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1953. 222. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay on Method. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1980. Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Laplanche, Jean. “The Order of Life and the Genesis of Human Sexuality.” Modern Critical Views: Sigmund Freud. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1985. 111-127. Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. London: Chatto and Windus, 2008. . Beloved. London: Vintage Books, 1997. . Jazz. London: Vintage Books, 2005. Propp, Vladimir. Morphology of the Folk Tale. 1929. 2nd edition, rev. and ed. with preface by Louis A. Wagner. Introd. Alan Dundes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. Todorov, Tzvetan. Grammaire du Décaméron. The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1969. Wyatt, Jean. “Failed Messages, Maternal Loss, and Narrative Form in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 58. 1 (Spring 2012); 128-151. Project Muse. 26 November 2012. http: / / muse.jhu.edu/ journals/ modern_fiction_studies/ v058/ 58.1.wyatt.html. <?page no="93"?> The Conflict of Voice in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance Barbara Straumann Taking as my theoretical point of departure Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia and Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of culture as a battleground of conflicting opposites, I argue that there is a conflict of voice at the centre of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance. To be more precise, the text foregrounds a power struggle between the voice of the feminist performer Zenobia and the voice of the first-person narrator Miles Coverdale. Coverdale’s narrative is motivated by his wish - and failure - to read Zenobia, who defines herself by virtue of her perpetual performance. Disturbed by the fact that Zenobia has a position of her own, Coverdale seeks to contain her powerful voice, which continues to haunt him twelve years after her death. In my paper I trace how the conflict of voice between the dead performer and the haunted narrator is inscribed textually as well as the ways in which this highlights a cultural conflict over the woman’s voice. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance (1852) revolves around a conflict of voice that is closely linked to a cultural conflict having to do with the woman’s voice. The most prominent voice in Hawthorne’s narrative about a utopian New England community is that of Zenobia, a renowned feminist and brilliant performer. When the performer appears in the text for the first time, she presents herself in grand theatrical fashion. Already her pseudonym “Zenobia” forms part of her selfperformance. Harking back to an ancient Syrian queen, it is the nom du plume she has assumed as the author of feminist tracts and magazine stories. As pointed out by Miles Coverdale, the first-person narrator of The Blithedale Romance, her pseudonym matches her queenly attitude and Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 93-107. <?page no="94"?> 94 Barbara Straumann pride, “it accorded well with something imperial which her friends attributed to this lady’s figure and deportment” (13). Coverdale, who has just arrived in the utopian community of Blithedale, meets the famous Zenobia for the first time as she enters the parlour at Blithedale Farm. She welcomes the new members to the Blithedale community and addresses them individually as if she were holding court. The scene revolves around her voice in so far as she uses the occasion for her selfperformance, while the newcomers are made to serve as her passive audience. Zenobia not only emerges as the main speaker, but she also has a “voice” in a figurative sense as her self-assured speech and regal presence allow her to virtually transform the parlour into a stage for her magnificent self-dramatization. Hawthorne’s Zenobia is one of many female performer figures that appear in nineteenth and early twentieth-century narrative fiction. Novels of this period feature a striking abundance of female singers, actresses and speakers, which bespeaks a paradoxical fascination for the female voice performing in public at a time when bourgeois culture largely relegates and restricts women to the private sphere. 1 But how can we read this cultural fascination? By having their performers speak or sing in public, these texts raise the question of what it means for women to have a public voice. Indeed, by putting the voices of their performer figures centre stage, these novels can be seen to tap into the woman’s question and its central demand that women get a voice in public. This political dimension can be observed in texts about theatre performers, and it is even more pronounced in the case of political speakers such as Zenobia, who explicitly addresses feminist issues. Many novels foreground the public triumphs of their female performers. The fact that more often than not the performer eventually loses her voice, however, points towards the contemporaneous cultural anxiety over the figure of the woman who speaks in public. Like many other performer novels, The Blithedale Romance highlights the powerful “voice” Zenobia possesses as a result of her self-assured performance as well as the ultimate loss of her living voice. However, 1 The context of this article is a larger book project in which I focus on female performers - actresses, singers, speakers and preachers - in American and British narrative fiction. The project reconstructs a largely neglected, yet culturally resonant tradition of public feminine articulation, which ranges from mid-nineteenth-century representations of the emerging star performer to the early twentieth-century suffrage novel and the “voice” of authorship in modernist writing. At the same time, the study is also conceived as a theoretical contribution to current debates over voice, body, embodiment, performance and performativity. Examples I discuss include texts by George Meredith, George Eliot, George Du Maurier, Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Elizabeth Robins, Virginia Woolf and Isak Dinesen, among others. <?page no="95"?> The Conflict of Voice in The Blithedale Romance 95 what distinguishes Hawthorne’s text from other examples is the way in which it juxtaposes Zenobia’s voice with the voice of Coverdale, the narrator. Hawthorne’s text is almost unique among performer narratives in that it uses a homo-diegetic narrator, who also appears as a character in the story he tells. 2 Coverdale relates the story of the Blithedale community twelve years after the events. He writes in order to contain and dispel the disturbing effect of Zenobia’s voice through his poetic writing, seeking to gain control over the past that is still haunting him. The conflict of voice I am concerned with can be described as a conflict between different medial modes, namely between the voice Zenobia projects as a performer and the voice Coverdale wishes to have as a narrator and poet. Yet even more important is the conflict between the different ideological interests and positions that are represented by their voices. In fact, the conflict that arises as a result of Zenobia’s vocal selfassertion on the one hand and Coverdale’s containment of her voice on the other refers us to a crucial cultural conflict defining nineteenthcentury America, namely the debate over the question whether woman can speak for herself, whether she has a voice of her own. Written at the very cultural moment when America first saw the emergence of an organized women’s movement, 3 The Blithedale Romance highlights the strong vocal presence of Zenobia as well as Coverdale’s attempt at its erasure. 4 The feminist performer falls silent when she dies towards the end of the text. However, rather than silencing Zenobia, Hawthorne’s treatment of the voices in his novel refers us to an irresolvable conflict. His text privileges neither of the two voices and, instead, shows how, even after her death, Zenobia’s voice returns to haunt Coverdale’s narrative. As has often been noted, the voice is a curiously elusive phenomenon, which cannot be pinned down to a single category. The voice oscil- 2 Another similar example in which several characters narrate the stories of their respective encounters with one and the same performer is Isak Dinesen’s “The Dreamers” from her collection entitled Seven Gothic Tales. 3 The Seneca Falls Convention, held on 19-20 July 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, was the first national women’s rights convention and is commonly regarded as the founding moment of the women’s movement in the USA. In 1845 Margaret Fuller published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the first feminist manifesto written in America. Critics have often pointed out that the figure of Zenobia is in part modelled on Fuller (see for example Bardes and Gossett 59; Tanner 18). Zenobia dies by drowning similar to Fuller, who in 1850 died in a shipwreck off Fire Island on her return from Europe, where she had worked as the first female newspaper correspondent for several years. For a general discussion of Hawthorne and the woman’s question see Alison Easton. 4 Another American novel that revolves around a female public performer and the containment of her powerful voice is Henry James’s The Bostonians. <?page no="96"?> 96 Barbara Straumann lates, for instance, between body and spirit, presence and evanescence. 5 Vocal sounds immediately start to fade away as soon as they are produced. At the same time, they can have a powerful impact on the listener. The voice does not only, and not always, convey semantic meaning, but it inevitably also carries a particular affective intensity, rhythm, tone and timbre. As Roland Barthes points out “there is not a single human voice in the whole wide world which is not an object of desire - or revulsion: There is no neutral voice [. . .]” (280; my translation). On the contrary, the voice harbours a surplus or excess in its power to seduce, fascinate, irritate and disturb. But how are voices inscribed and marked in literary texts? How can the voice be conceptualized for a discussion of narrative fiction? Clearly there is no concrete sound that can actually be heard in a novel. The voice is, in other words, alien to - or perhaps even in conflict with - the type of literary language under discussion. Nevertheless, narrative texts evoke textually what escapes them medially. Similar to concrete voices, which are shot through with various colours, affects, moods and intonations, textual voices are marked by a multi-layered complexity they introduce into a text. An important approach for our discussion is Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the novel as a multi-voiced genre. According to Bakhtin, narrative fiction occupies a special status as a literary genre and aesthetic medium as it juxtaposes different voices and, in so doing, confronts different social accents, positions and perspectives with each other. “The novel can be defined as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices organized” (Bakhtin 262). Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia is particularly useful for a discussion of the conflict of voice in The Blithedale Romance. He uses this concept in order to describe the clash and collision between different textual voices - namely those of various characters, the narrator and the implied author - and the different social positions they stand in for. 6 What the concept of heteroglossia allows us to foreground is the ideo- 5 For a description of the voice as a paradoxical threshold phenomenon combining both body and soul, materiality and spirit, the individual and the social, see Doris Kolesch and Sybille Krämer in their introduction to the interdisciplinary volume Stimme: Annäherung an ein Phänomen (12). 6 As Bakhtin writes: “The novel orchestrates all its themes, the totality of the world of objects and ideas depicted and expressed in it, by means of the social diversity of speech types [. . .] and by the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions. Authorial speech, the speeches of narrators, inserted genres, the speech of characters are merely those fundamental compositional unities with whose help heteroglossia [. . .] can enter the novel” (263). <?page no="97"?> The Conflict of Voice in The Blithedale Romance 97 logical discord or cultural conflict between different textual voices. As mentioned above, Hawthorne’s performer and narrator use different modes of expression, namely speech and writing. However, in marking a conflict between different ideological positions, they also recall Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia. Zenobia challenges the gendered separation of the spheres as she makes her feminist speeches. Coverdale, on the other hand, writes his text in an attempt to contain her powerful feminine voice. Another aspect that is important for our discussion of Hawthorne’s performer text is the close link between the performer voice as a narrative theme and voice as a trope for feminine empowerment and selfexpression. Thematically, the narrative of the performer novel usually revolves around the voice of the performer, i.e. the way in which the performer constructs herself through her voice as well as the way in which she gains and often loses her voice. Many texts also offer descriptions of the sound quality of the performer’s voice. However, what is at stake is never just her concrete voice but also “voice” in a metaphorical sense. In what is her most explicit speech about the woman’s question, Zenobia argues that in order to achieve their rights, women need to assert themselves in “the living voice” (120). 7 In so doing, she suggests that the concrete voice is closely linked to “voice” in a figurative sense. Especially since the emergence of emancipatory discourses, the voice has turned into a privileged trope for political agency as suggested by expressions such as “getting a voice” and “raising one’s voice.” 8 However, having a voice is not the same as having a voice of one’s own; in order to have a voice of one’s one, one also needs to be heard, acknowledged and recognized by others. 9 In The Blithedale Romance, the conflict of voice hinges on a complex layering of various aspects of voice and takes place at different levels. A first instance of conflict can be observed in the tension between the different modes, namely Zenobia’s speech and Coverdale’s attempt to 7 Also note the following passage in Zenobia’s speech, in which she makes a claim for the eloquence of women, which so far has not yet found any expression: “It is my belief [. . .] that, when my sex shall achieve its rights, there will be ten eloquent women, where there is now one eloquent man. Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole heart and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! ” (120). 8 In some languages there is even a direct relation between the voice and the political vote (note, for example, the French donner sa voix, compter les voix, or the German seine Stimme abgeben, Abstimmung, Stimmauszählung). On this linguistic coincidence also see Mladen Dolar’s chapter on “The Politics of the Voice” (104-124). 9 This idea is derived from Stanley Cavell’s discussion of George Cukor’s 1944 film Gaslight (A Pitch of Philosophy 134-136; Contesting Tears 47-78). <?page no="98"?> 98 Barbara Straumann contain the disturbing effects of her voice in and through his poetic writing. At the same time, their voices stand in for conflicting social positions in the sense of Bakhtin’s heteroglossia. In so doing, they also mark a cultural conflict which, importantly enough, revolves around the woman’s voice, namely the question of whether or not she has a “voice” that translates into political and cultural power. This conflict is already staged in the parlour scene at the very beginning when Coverdale meets Zenobia for the first time and notes that she addresses the newcomers “in a fine, frank, mellow voice” (14). “She had something appropriate [. . .] to say to every individual” (14), he adds. And he then goes on to quote at length and in direct speech her remarks on his poems, which she says he will hear her sing sometimes in the summer, as well as on the social situation of women in general and at Blithedale in particular. She seems to continue to dominate the scene as the main speaker. But as she is talking to his companions, Coverdale’s attention begins to drift off. Instead he comes to focus on her appearance: “Her hair - which was dark, glossy, and of singular abundance - was put up rather soberly and primly, without curls, or other ornament, except a single flower” (15). In stark contrast to her simple dress, the exotic hothouse flower marks her as a figure of excess: So brilliant, so rare, so costly as it must have been, and yet enduring only for a day, it was more indicative of the pride and pomp, which had a luxuriant growth in Zenobia’s character, than if a great diamond had sparkled among her hair. (15) By being so enthralled not just by her extravagant ornament but also by her mature figure and her radiant vitality - “Zenobia’s bloom, health, and vigor, which she possessed in [. . .] overflow” (16) - Coverdale shifts from the sound quality of her voice and the content of her speech to her visual appearance. In fact, he moves into his fantasy realm as if to counteract and contain Zenobia’s vocal self-dramatization. He gives in to an impulse, which, he says, is “hardly felt to be quite decorous,” and pictures the “perfectly developed figure” of Zenobia in the nude, or in his words, “in Eve’s earliest garment” (17). As Coverdale notes in retrospect, Zenobia’s “free, careless, generous modes of expression often had this effect of creating images” (17). Her speech arouses erotic fantasies, Coverdale claims, as it were against his will. 10 Zenobia and the complexity she marks as a politically positioned feminine subject are thus re- 10 Coverdale’s argument recalls a long-standing cultural tradition in which female expression is regarded not just as improper but also as indecent. See Bardes and Gossett (59) for a reading of The Blithedale Romance that foregrounds this tradition. <?page no="99"?> The Conflict of Voice in The Blithedale Romance 99 duced to what Lauren Berlant in her reading of the novel calls a “sex effect” (35). In fact, the shift of focus in Coverdale’s account from the sound of Zenobia’s voice to Coverdale’s mental image is crucial for the conflict of voice in The Blithedale Romance. Zenobia has a “voice” in this passage because she manages to turn the parlour into her own stage, a space that is completely dominated by her self-performance. Confronted by her powerful voice, Coverdale can but subject himself to her selfperformance. This is the reason why he turns away from the voice she has as a performer and instead seeks to transform her into an erotic image which he can shape and control by virtue of his own imagination, thus shifting from her theatrical self-performance to what he will later call his inner “private theater” (70). In fact, in writing his text, Coverdale tries to absorb her into his imagination together with the characters surrounding her and even refers to them as “actors in a drama” that unfolds on “my mental stage” (156). 11 The fierce power struggle that develops between Zenobia’s selfperformance and Coverdale’s containment of her feminine voice by virtue of his own imaginary redefinition suggests Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of culture as a battleground of opposing forces. According to Nietzsche, cultural values emerge from a violent struggle between different ways of interpreting the world. Any cultural system is defined by values and interpretations that have triumphed over another set of values and interpretations. This renders culture a perpetual process of overpowering, in which different descriptions and interpretations compete with each other for dominance as they seek to overwhelm, subdue and vanquish each other. 12 While Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia highlights the clash between different social voices, positions and perspectives, Nietzsche foregrounds the violent conflict between different interpretations. The violence of interpretation is a useful notion to examine the clash between Coverdale and Zenobia in terms of a cultural battle revolving around the voice of the woman. What is at stake in their power struggle is the question whether woman can represent herself, or whether she is 11 Zenobia’s half-sister Priscilla is also a public performer. However, as a medium who is mesmerized and ventriloquized by her master Westervelt, she has no “voice” of her own. 12 Note the following salient passage from Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: “[. . .] anything which exists, once it has somehow come into being, can be reinterpreted in the service of new intentions, repossessed, repeatedly modified to a new use by a power superior to it; [. . .] all overpowering and mastering is a reinterpretation, a manipulation, in the course of which the previous ‘meaning’ and ‘aim’ must necessarily be obscured or completely effaced” (57-58). <?page no="100"?> 100 Barbara Straumann defined and described by a voice other than her own. As a performer figure, Zenobia uses theatrical means for her public self-presentations. She entertains the Blithedale community with theatre performances, tableaux vivants, Shakespeare readings and her improvised story telling. But even aside from her explicit theatrical playacting, she never stops performing. Quite on the contrary, she is an arch-performer who continually stages herself and performs a drama of her own by presenting a series of extravagant gestures and melodramatic poses. It is by fashioning herself in and through her self-performances that she positions herself as a self-determined “voice.” Coverdale, on the other hand, is relegated to a position from which he can only passively witness her powerful presence. Zenobia and her entourage form “the vortex of my meditations around which they revolved, and whitherward they too continually tended” (70). But although these “characters figured so largely on my private theatre, I [. . .] was at best but a secondary or tertiary personage with either one of them” (70). Playing no actual role in Zenobia’s life, 13 Coverdale turns into a compulsive voyeur who wishes to gain both knowledge and power by virtue of his spying. 14 Trying “to live in other lives” (160), he constantly watches and eavesdrops on the performer as she is interacting with other characters. When Zenobia, who feels observed by him, asks him what he wants to discover in her, he replies: “The mystery of your life [. . .]. And you will never tell me” (47). What he seeks to do is to read her against her wish and to dispel her powerful voice by replacing the performer’s self-definition with his own description of her. It is in this sense that the conflict of voice in The Blithedale Romance can be described as a Nietzschean struggle for power: With Coverdale and Zenobia, we have two opposing interpretations of the feminine voice which compete for dominance over one another. 15 13 See Mary Suzanne Schriber, who writes: “Zenobia’s independence and seeming selfsufficiency give Coverdale, unimaginative and conventional as he is, no role to play in her presence” (66). 14 For a detailed discussion that puts the spying narrator and artist manqué Coverdale into the American context see Tony Tanner. 15 The conflict of voice between Coverdale and Zenobia is not the only power struggle in The Blithedale Romance. Virtually all the characters are linked to each other by mysterious power relationships. Zenobia and Priscilla, for instance, fall under the potent spell of the former blacksmith and prison reformer Hollingsworth, a massive figure of rude strength, and almost everyone seems to compete for control over the weak Priscilla. In his discussion of the novel, Tony Tanner writes that “[p]sychologically, Hawthorne was clearly […] interested in how relationships could in fact be power struggles [. . .]” (25). What distinguishes the conflict between Coverdale and Zenobia from the other power struggles in the text is their will to vocal power as well as the cultural conflict over the woman’s voice this highlights. <?page no="101"?> The Conflict of Voice in The Blithedale Romance 101 A key moment in the power struggle between the narrator and the performer is the strange episode during Coverdale’s temporary stay at a hotel in the city. As Coverdale is looking out of his rear window, he can see the back façade of a stylish boarding house right opposite his hotel. The following night he has a bizarre dream about Zenobia. And the next day, he positions himself again at the window. What he sees initially appears as though it were produced by his imagination: There was a presentiment in my mind [. . .]. At any rate, it was no positive surprise, but as if I had all along expected the incident, that, directing my eyes thitherward, I beheld - like a full-length picture, in the space between the heavy festoons of the window-curtains - no other than Zenobia! (155) Zenobia appears in the window as if conjured up by Coverdale’s dream and premonition. Moreover, he looks at her figure as though she were a painting - a gesture which repeats his earlier attempt to reduce the embodied performer to a disembodied image controlled by his (erotic) imagination. As he is spying on her, Coverdale notices that Zenobia is joined by another character. He continues to watch them “transfixed” (157), trying to figure out the precise nature of their relationship. What this passage highlights is Coverdale’s desire to read Zenobia. At the same time, the scene also dramatizes Zenobia’s insistence on her self-definition. Coverdale is first recognized by the other character. But it is Zenobia who makes sure that Coverdale can no longer observe them: She signified her recognition of me by a gesture with her head and hand, comprising at once a salutation and a dismissal. The next moment, she administered one of those pitiless rebukes which a woman always has at hand, ready for an offence, [. . .] by letting down a white linen curtain between the festoon of the damask ones. (159) Coverdale comments that Zenobia’s intervention to obstruct his view of her “felt like the drop-curtain of a theatre, in the interval between the acts” (159). However, what Zenobia signals is clearly no intermission. She closes the curtain because she wants to defend the privacy of her drawing room from his intrusive gaze. Indeed, she protects her own “private imagination and history” (Levine 217) throughout the text and never agrees to disclose them to Coverdale. Coverdale’s peculiar reaction underlines his unwillingness to acknowledge her self-definition as an independent subject. He still attempts to decipher her and thus continues to watch her window. But all he can see is the light of a lamp shining through the white curtain. <?page no="102"?> 102 Barbara Straumann “The shadow of a passing figure was now-and-then cast upon this medium, but with too vague an outline for even my adventurous conjectures to read the hieroglyphic that it represented” (161-162). Coverdale is unable to make out the action of the moving shadows that are projected onto the curtain fabric. His spontaneous subsequent visit to her luxurious drawing room echoes the earlier scene of their first encounter in the Blithedale parlour. But this time Zenobia meets the gaze of her visitor by wearing “costly robes” and “flaming jewels” (163) and, in so doing, presents herself as a self-created “work of art” (164). Coverdale believes that he is now finally able to unmask the performer. However, his triumph in condemning her spectacular selfdramatization is only brief as we can see in his description of their Nietzschean power struggle: . . . the next instant, she was too powerful for all my opposing struggles. I saw how fit it was that she should make herself as gorgeous as she pleased, and should do a thousand things that would have been ridiculous in the poor, thin, weakly character of other women. (165; emphasis added) Instead of arriving at an interpretation and judgment of the extravagant Zenobia, he finds his desire thwarted by her perpetual performance. Literally dazzled by her brilliant self-presentation, he notes that no matter what guise she adopts, there is always “something like the illusion which a great actress flings around her” (165). Coverdale’s effort to interpret the performer and reveal her “true character” (165) turns out to be futile. Zenobia can never be unmasked, never pinned down to any fixed identity. As suggested earlier, the episode in the city illustrates the struggle between Coverdale’s will to interpretation and Zenobia’s insistence on her self-definition. We have already seen the narrator’s attempt to contain the power of the performer and absorb her into his imagination in his mental striptease in the Blithedale parlour scene, in which he turns her into an erotic image. However, as the scene in Zenobia’s elegant drawing room shows, the dazzling surface of the performer persona cannot be penetrated. In fact, it is no accident that throughout the text, the performer is referred to by her pseudonym “Zenobia,” which is “merely her public name; a sort of mask in which she comes before the world, retaining all the privileges of privacy” (8). 16 Although we never 16 Coverdale’s wish to find a hidden meaning behind real material surfaces is reminiscent of the Puritan allegorical tradition as well as Transcendentalist philosophy, both of which emphasize the discovery of a spiritual dimension in their reading of natural signs. In the case of Coverdale, however, this hermeneutic practice no longer seems to work. Picking up on Foucault’s discussion in “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx,” one <?page no="103"?> The Conflict of Voice in The Blithedale Romance 103 learn whether Coverdale knows her actual name, the constant use of her nom de plume underscores the “voice” she has as a result of her selffashioning as a performer. But how is Zenobia’s voice marked in the narrative of Coverdale, who is intent on effacing her voice? Given that Coverdale is the narrator of the text, anything we learn about Zenobia is refracted through his narration. This would seem to give him an advantage over her in their struggle for dominance. However, the implied author continually points to the limitations and discrepancies of Coverdale’s text. Not only do we realize as readers that Coverdale cannot acknowledge the voice Zenobia has as a result of her self-definition as an independent subject, that instead he seeks to supersede her “voice” with his own narration and definition of her. But his entire narrative is underpinned by a paradoxical gesture - the fact that he needs to evoke the voice he wants to erase and exorcize. In other words, Coverdale’s wish to assert his power over Zenobia means that he has to continually invoke her powerful voice. At the same time, even as he represents the performer in his text, he fails to read her. And it is precisely by emphasizing his failure to read her that Hawthorne’s text allows us to hear Zenobia’s voice. The ultimate obstacle to Coverdale’s interpretation of Zenobia is posed by her death. Towards the end of the text, the self-assertive performer suffers a tragic fate as her love-interest leaves her for her younger, self-effacing half-sister Priscilla. When Coverdale and two other men recover Zenobia’s drowned corpse from the depths of the river, they are confronted with a disturbing sight. They try to mitigate “the perfect horror of the spectacle” (235). Yet they fail not only to manipulate the appearance of Zenobia’s corpse but also to interpret her posture. Her lifeless body offers a grotesque refiguration of the tableaux vivants which she used to perform in front of the Blithedale community. Her arms have “grown rigid in the act of struggling” (235), and her legs are bent, too. In order to aestheticize what he sees, Coverdale describes the final rigid pose in which her lifeless body is arrested as “the marble image of a death agony” (235). However, although the performer has fallen silent for good, she remains a figure of struggle and thus resists any appropriation. 17 This is illustrated by the violent but unsuccessful might say that Coverdale’s search for the true interior character of Zenobia posits a depth that is criticized by Nietzsche as an illusion: “in reality, when one interprets one can trace this descending line only to restore the glittering exteriority that was covered up and buried” (Foucault 273). 17 Note Elisabeth Bronfen’s suggestion that even in her death Zenobia remains an “agent of strife” (245). <?page no="104"?> 104 Barbara Straumann attempts the men make to put her defiant body at rest. One of the men tries to rearrange her arms into a more peaceful pose. Because of the rigidity her struggling arms have assumed, he applies sheer force: “He endeavoured to arrange the arms of the corpse decently by its side. His utmost strength, however, scarcely sufficed to bring them down; and rising again, the next instant, they bade him defiance exactly as before” (236). In a similar effort to contain Zenobia’s outrageous gesture, Coverdale would like to imagine that her pose signifies an “attitude of prayer” (235). But he finds his reading contradicted by her hands, which are “clenched in immitigable defiance” (235). Zenobia’s body thus yields neither to physical force nor to Coverdale’s will to interpretation. There is an excess of “voice” even in her death pose, which makes it impossible to absorb her and turn her into a mute “marble image.” Instead her final tableau mort presents a spectacle of irresolvable conflict. 18 The novel, Bakhtin writes, “often deliberately intensifies difference” between languages, “gives them embodied representation and dialogically opposes them to one another in unresolvable dialogues” (291). What our focus on the conflict of voice between Zenobia and Coverdale allows us to see (or rather hear) are their conflicting interests as well as their will to power. The Blithedale Romance is both Nietzschean and compelling as example for a discussion of cultural conflict because the novel does not offer any resolution to the cultural conflict it evokes through its heteroglossia. In fact, it makes sense to talk not just about the voices in the text but also the “voice” of the text, namely the tone that emerges as a result of the way in which the text orchestrates the different textual voices. Here, too, conflict is sustained because significantly enough, the text does not align itself with either one of the two voices. Hawthorne, as the implied author, juxtaposes the voices of Coverdale and Zenobia in their gendered power struggle. But he privileges neither one of them. Instead, by having them clash over the question of the woman’s voice, the text appears to imagine culture - and, more specifically, the American cultural project - in terms of a continual struggle without closure. The fact that Coverdale writes his entire narrative twelve years after the events renders their power struggle all the more paradoxical. Zenobia has lost her voice as a result of her death. Coverdale is the 18 In his reading of the death-scene, Ffrangcon Lewis goes as far as to suggest that “Zenobia’s final gesture is [. . .] an eloquent piece of self-conscious self-dramatization” (78). In her “final role as actress and tragic queen,” she offers a macabre mockery of the previously enacted tableaux vivants, speaking out “not with her ‘living voice,’ but with the silent and appalling eloquence of her dead body” (79). <?page no="105"?> The Conflict of Voice in The Blithedale Romance 105 surviving figure and could theoretically position himself as the predominant voice. However, his narrative highlights Zenobia’s continuing presence. Although the performer cannot sustain her living voice, she keeps haunting Coverdale from beyond the grave. He attempts to turn her into an image, a text, in short, an aesthetic representation created by himself, but he cannot subsume her under his imagination. Wishing to possess an artistic voice, the artist manqué is instead possessed by the voice of the dead Zenobia. As a result, what is at stake in The Blithedale Romance is a curious struggle between the voice of the surviving narrator and the voice of the dead performer. Rather than being able to absorb the performer into his fantasy and writing, he realizes that he is captivated by Zenobia and her closest companions - they “had absorbed my life into themselves” (194). At the end of the text, we learn that by the time Coverdale writes his narrative, he has turned into a middle-aged bachelor who has lost his artistic creativity (246). The text thus juxtaposes the depletion of Coverdale with the survival of Zenobia’s energy. In a paradoxical reversal of life and death, Zenobia’s voice returns to speak through Coverdale’s writing. This shows that their conflict of voice persists even after her death. Zenobia’s voice continues to provoke conflict and struggle and, as a result, keeps its powerful presence. <?page no="106"?> 106 Barbara Straumann References Bakhtin, Mikhail. “The Discourse of the Novel.” The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Ed. Michael Holquist. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. 259-422. Bardes, Barbara and Suzanne Gossett. Declarations of Independence: Women and Political Power in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. New Brunswick, London: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Barthes, Roland. “Die Musik, die Stimme, die Sprache.” Der entgegenkommende und der stumpfe Sinn. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990. 279-285. Berlant, Lauren. “Fantasies of Utopia in The Blithedale Romance.” American Literary History 1.1 (Spring 1989): 30-62. Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992. Cavell, Stanley. A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press, 1994. . Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Dinesen, Isak. “The Dreamers.” Seven Gothic Tales. 1934. London: Putnam, 1969. 327-430. Dolar, Mladen. A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press, 2006. Easton, Alison. “Hawthorne and the Question of Women.” The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Richard H. Millington. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 79-98. Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx.” Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Michel Foucault, Vol. 2. Ed. James Faubion. London: Penguin, 1998. 269-278. Fuller, Margaret. Woman in the Nineteenth Century. 1845. New York, London: Norton, 1998. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Blithedale Romance. 1852. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. James, Henry. The Bostonians. 1886. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Kolesch, Doris and Sybille Krämer, eds. Stimme: Annäherung an ein Phänomen. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2006. Levine, Robert S. “Sympathy and Reform in The Blithedale Romance.” The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ed. Richard H. Millington. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 207-229. Lewis, Ffrangcon. “Women, Death and Theatricality in The Blithedale Romance.” Journal of American Studies 26.1 (1992): 75-80. <?page no="107"?> The Conflict of Voice in The Blithedale Romance 107 Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic. 1887. Trans. Douglas Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Schriber, Mary Suzanne. “Justice to Zenobia.” The New England Quarterly 55.1 (1982): 61-78. Tanner, Tony. “‘A Summer in the Country’: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance.” The American Mystery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 9-38. <?page no="109"?> “Based on Entirely Coincidental Resemblances”: The Legal Disclaimer in Hollywood Cinema Johannes Mahlknecht Every Hollywood film includes in its paratext at least one statement clarifying the relation between real life and the events and characters it presents. A film is either “based on a true story” or it is “a work of fiction,” in which every similarity to facts in the actual world “is entirely coincidental and unintentional.” As reliable statements about individual films’ relationship to reality, however, such claims and disclaimers prove highly inadequate. As practical tools for raising audience interest and/ or protection against legal action, they reflect the conflict between Hollywood’s enthusiasm for real-life stories and simultaneously its fear of them. This article defines and discusses functions, manifestations, problems and legal as well as narrative relevance of the Hollywood claims and disclaimers. Located at the margins of most films and thus often unnoticed by the viewer, these elements on the one hand mirror prevalent notions about truth status versus fiction in Hollywood filmmaking. On the other hand, by shifting our viewpoint from the viewer’s impressions to the producer’s own statements, they provide interesting incentive for reevaluation. It is nothing new that Hollywood filmmakers, faced with the choice between portraying real events in an authentic manner and half-real events in a spectacular manner, tend to choose the latter. Examples abound of films that supposedly tell true stories. In order to achieve a dramatic effect, however, they twist and distort the source material until little truth is left in the final product. Hollywood films that claim to be “based on a true story” are released on a regular basis, but more regular still are films that are explicitly fictional, with standard disclaimers like the following from Made of Honor (2008, Paul Weiland): “This is a work Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 109- 122. <?page no="110"?> 110 Johannes Mahlknecht of fiction. The characters, incidents and locations portrayed and the names herein are fictitious, and any similarity to or identification with the location, name, character or history of any person, product or entity is entirely coincidental and unintentional.” While much has been written about the difficult relationship between fact and fiction in American narrative cinema, 1 film scholars have given little attention to what the films themselves have to say about their own truth status. This perhaps because the answer to this question is simple: not much, except for one or two short sentences at the beginning and/ or end claiming that the film is based on fact or that it is not - and sometimes, as we will see, both. This article defines and discusses functions, manifestations, problems and legal as well as narrative relevance of the small paratextual elements located at the margins of most films and often unnoticed by viewers. These elements either mirror prevalent notions about truth versus fiction in Hollywood filmmaking or shift our perspective from the viewer’s impressions to the producer’s own statements. In both cases, they lend themselves to probing into larger questions concerning the status of fact and fiction in film in general. The term “disclaimer” mostly occurs within a legal framework and is in its broadest sense, “a statement that denies something, esp. responsibility” (“Disclaimer”). Companies use such statements in order to warn customers of possible defects in their products. They do this out of necessity, since, as Heafey and Kennedy state, “courts have long held that the failure to warn of a products’ hazard is a defect of the product itself, invoking all the trappings of product liability” (2f). Disclaimers are thus intended to protect a company from potential legal complaints by individuals who feel that said company has treated them unjustly. Concerning film, possible complaints usually emerge if one or more individuals feel they have been portrayed in a negative light on screen, or portrayed without previously having been asked permission. The film disclaimer thus serves “a disclosure made with the purpose of clarifying potentially misleading or deceptive statements” (Stutts and Hunnicutt 41). The mere presence of such a disclaimer is, however, not sufficient to give production companies absolute protection against legal actions. If similarities between a particular character and an actual person are strong enough, the above denial and a (possibly) changed name will not automatically prevent courts from hearing the case. Especially problematic - and thus prone to legal disputes - are cases in which a film does 1 To name but three books: Aquino, Truth and Lives on Film; Bingham, Whose Lives Are They Anyway? ; Vankin and Whalen, Based on a True Story. <?page no="111"?> The Hollywood Disclaimer 111 not deny but explicitly claim a certain truth status for its story, usually by presenting at the beginning of the film the words, “based on a true story,” “inspired by real events,” or a similar statement to the same effect. Since Hollywood producers know how problematic such claims are, they place a disclaimer at the end to (belatedly) modify the opening claim. Capote (2005, Bennett Miller) features one such standard disclaimer: This story is based upon actual events. However, some of the characters and incidents portrayed and some of the names herein are fictitious, and with respect to such characters and incidents, any similarity to the name, character or history of any person, living or dead, or any actual event is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Although the disclaimer is primarily used for legal purposes, and it is thus the legal department of a production company that determines its exact wording (see Clark and Spohr 290), it can have other functions as well. It helps viewers who simply might want to know whether or not the film they have just seen is based on fact. If they have the feeling that it is, although no claim to that effect has been made at the beginning, then the disclaimer sets the record straight. But besides its legal implications, there is at times also a more creative dimension to claims and disclaimers, as is the case at the beginning of Inglorious Basterds (2009, Quentin Tarantino). The film’s first chapter heading, “Once upon a time . . . in Nazi-occupied France,” not only introduces the setting, but also indirectly serves as its disclaimer. The words “Nazi-occupied France” inevitably suggest a specific historical situation during the early 1940s, and viewers consequently might expect a reasonably faithful treatment of the subject - were it not for the initial words “Once upon a time,” the universally known fairy-tale opening and thus a clear marker of fictionality (see Genette et al. 771). These first four words greatly conflict with the realism suggested in the last three. This contrast implicitly justifies portrayals of some events in the film that by conventional standards would be considered outrageous violations of historical facts - most notably, the violent deaths of Adolf Hitler and many of his fellow-Nazis in a Parisian movie theater. The tension between the two parts of the chapter heading in Inglorious Basterds also features in the way they are presented on the screen. At the beginning we only see the first part of the sentence: “Once upon a time. . . .” Only after a few seconds’ pause do the words “in Nazioccupied France” also appear, heavily indented and beneath the first part. In only seven words we are told everything we need to know about <?page no="112"?> 112 Johannes Mahlknecht the truth status of the film, namely that fiction (“Once upon a time”) 2 meets fact (“in Nazi-occupied France”) and that the two overlap. There is one more textual element at the beginning of Inglorious Basterds besides the “in Nazi-occupied France” that contrasts with the disclaiming “Once upon a time.” Only seconds after the chapter’s title we find, superimposed over the first moments of principal photography, the year in which the events unfold: 1941. Technically speaking the presence of “Once upon a time” disqualifies any precise time specification. But a director like Quentin Tarantino apparently need not worry about such trifles. Inglorious Basterds’ official disclaimer at the very end of the film essentially repeats the opening (dis-)claimer but in a more soberly explicit manner. Although largely corresponding to standard practice, it is nevertheless surprisingly elaborate: This motion picture is based, in part, upon actual events, persons and companies. However, numerous of the characters, incidents and companies portrayed and the names used herein are fictitious. Any similarity of those fictitious characters, incidents or companies to the name, attributes or actual background of any actual person, living or dead, or to any actual event, or to any existing company, is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Like Inglorious Basterds, The Constant Gardener (2005, Fernando Mereilles) also tries to have it both ways, i.e. to fulfill the studio’s legal obligation of having a disclaimer while at the same time asserting the film’s bearing on reality. Its disclaimer appears when we expect it to - at the end of the end credits - but not as a statement by the production company’s legal department. Instead we get a quote by John le Carré, from the opening of his novel on which the film is based: Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world. But I can tell you this; as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard. This statement ingeniously manages to minimize the risk of any potential legal complaints by any pharmaceutical corporation (in the film, one such corporation - a fictional one, to be sure - is depicted as utterly corrupt). It allows for serious criticism while at the same emphasizing the 2 Jack and the Beanstalk (1952, Jean Yarbrough) features a similarly minimalist text to the effect that the events, characters etc. are fictitious. It simply reads, “This is a fable.” <?page no="113"?> The Hollywood Disclaimer 113 film’s fictional status. Being a quote, it furthermore automatically transfers responsibility from the producers to the author of the source novel. The opening statement of Braveheart (1995, Mel Gibson) is one more instance of filmmakers clandestinely getting their claims past their disclaimers. The statement is presented in voiceover narration by one of the film’s characters, Robert the Bruce, who is based on a historical figure: “I shall tell you of William Wallace. Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes.” This meta-statement, disguised by being embedded within the diegesis, anticipates criticism of the film - of which in fact it received plenty upon its release (see Lawrence and Jewett 163-4) - and as a preventive measure lashes out at historians by, essentially, accusing them of murder. The producers of Braveheart, of course, had no cause to fear any legal steps taken against them. The farther back in time a story is set - and Braveheart is set in the fourteenth century - the less filmmakers need to worry about matters of accuracy, for the obvious reason that persons long dead cannot file complaints. Other films that are verifiably based on real persons and events, however, nevertheless possess an “all persons fictitious” disclaimer. In her essay “‘Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead: ’ Film and the Challenge of Authenticity,” Natalie Zemon Davis mentions as examples the films Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese), Platoon (1986, Oliver Stone) and Danton (1983, Andrzej Wajda). Here the disclaimer denies what has clearly been (to some extent at least) the filmmakers’ intention: a depiction of reality. Nevertheless the motivation for its presence is easily understood. After all, narrative filmmaking is by default largely fictional. Even the most thoroughly researched biopic must use dialogue, characterization, events or set designs that cannot be supported by historical documents because no history book can offer every detail that the film wants to present. Gaps have to be filled and events need to be altered for the screen or interpreted in a particular manner. And almost inevitably not everybody will be happy with it. Legally speaking, then, it is safer to renounce all claims of authenticity because with it one renounces all responsibility for potential misrepresentations of fact, whether willful or accidental. As the ironic definition at the beginning of Dogma (1999, Kevin Smith) pointedly states, a disclaimer is after all “a statement made to save one’s own ass.” Perhaps the most drastic conflict between a claim and disclaimer can be found in Fargo (1996, Joel Coen), where the disclaimer at the end directly contradicts the explicit claim of authenticity at the beginning. The most commonly used claim of authenticity, “Based on a true story,” still justifies a disclaimer at the end, since the words “based on” leave <?page no="114"?> 114 Johannes Mahlknecht room for creative license. “Inspired by a true story” (Murder in the First [1995, Marc Rocco]) leaves even more room, and “Based on a sorta true story” (The Kid and I [2005, Penelope Spheeris]) more still. Fargo’s opening claim, however, leaves next to no room at all. Presented directly before principal photography sets in, it reads: THIS IS A TRUE STORY. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred. Considering these opening lines, the only valid disclaimer at the end would be one stating that any resemblance to actual names is coincidental, but what we get is the full treatment: “The persons and events portrayed in this production are fictitious. No similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is intended or should be inferred.” Which of the two statements are cinemagoers to believe, the one at the beginning or the one at the end? As John Sterritt observes in “Fargo in Context: The Middle of Nowhere? ”: If casual moviegoers and careless critics tend to believe the first of these mutually canceling statements, it is for three reasons. First, the opening statement is foregrounded by its stark presentation in the film’s first moments; second, there’s no self-evident reason not to believe it; and third, the closing statement that contradicts it may not be heeded or even noticed by spectators accustomed to exiting the theater or hitting the fast-forward button long before the end credits are over. (17) Furthermore, we might assume that the presence of the final disclaimer might have been carelessness on the part of those responsible for the final paratext (see Sterritt 18). After all, adding a disclaimer at the end is standard procedure, and they simply could have forgotten to adapt it. Although the story takes some rather strange turns, they are not strange enough for us to think them impossible to have actually happened. 3 And since few viewers will wait until the very end of the end credits to read the disclaimer, many will leave the cinema believing the opening 3 Consider Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels, which, in its first pages, goes to some lengths trying to convince us that the events told in the book are authentic. But given the fact that they include dwarfs, giants, and talking horses, not even the most gullible will actually believe the opening statement. In film, similarly, we have obviously fake opening claims of authenticity, which are clearly intended - and easily identified - as a joke. The Return of the Living Dead (1985, Dan O’Bannon) features both zombies and the statement at the beginning that “The events portrayed in this film are all true.” <?page no="115"?> The Hollywood Disclaimer 115 statement. In truth, however, no crimes depicted in the film ever occurred in Minnesota in 1987 (see Sterritt 18), or at any other time or place. Is Fargo’s opening claim meant to deceive us? To make audiences believe that what they are about to see actually happened in the real world arguably increases their emotional investment in the story. As Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen write: Inspirational stories are more inspiring if they’re true. Feel-good movies feel better if we know that the events they depict really happened. Films with messages of social import seem more important if they are anchored in reality. Even horror movies tend to be that much more horrifying when the opening credits inform us that the terrors we are about to witness are not completely fake, even if the special effects are. (XV) One can also say, however, that it does not matter whether the story is true or not, as long as it is good. And if the reception of Fargo - it was one of the Coen Brothers’ most commercially successful films at the time and was nominated for seven Oscars (see Russell 140) - is anything to go by, its story is good indeed. The presence of the fake claim at the beginning therefore seems all the more surprising; the film does not need this prank, one that Sterritt thinks is ingenious and compelling (see 17), but that others might see as a cheap way of misleading the audience. The only element in Fargo’s opening claim that might in fact betray it (perhaps paradoxically) as a paratextual marker of fictionality is its excessive authority. How is it humanly possible, even for directors committed to an authentic portrayal of events and characters, to retell a story on film “exactly as it occurred” (my italics) in the real world? Some perspicacious viewers, especially if they are familiar with the Coen Brothers’ other works (and their general offbeat attitude towards filmmaking) might have grown suspicious right there. 4 While the Coen Brothers might have included the claim just “for laughs,” the contradiction between it and the disclaimer at the end poses a potentially serious problem: the fact that the directors got away with their joke as easily as they did lessens, or even destroys, the authority of such opening claims in general. If one film can pull such a trick with impunity, then what reason is there to believe that others cannot do the same? This is especially problematic when a film’s dramatic development depends on audiences’ belief in the opening claimer, as is the case 4 Suspicion is also appropriate when reading the opening (dis)claimer of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004, Adam McKay) - where, it must be admitted, less perspicacity is required than in Fargo’s case: “Based on actual events. Only the people, places and events have been changed.” <?page no="116"?> 116 Johannes Mahlknecht with Changeling (2008, Clint Eastwood). The plausibility of the events in that film largely relies on the story being on real events. In fact, according to the words presented directly after the title at the beginning of the film (as well as above the title on the poster), it is not only based on a true story, it is “A true story.” I mentioned earlier that it does not necessarily matter to the viewer whether a story is true or not, as long as it is good. In Changeling, however, the story may only be deemed good because it is true. Would we, were we not told that this actually happened in real life, be able to suspend our disbelief? Would we believe that the whole police force of Los Angeles conspired against a single mother by replacing her missing child with another and declaring her insane because she insists that the boy returned to her is not her son? Would we believe that a police psychiatrist, after she has irrefutably proved that the boy is shorter than her son, tells her that traumatic experiences might cause a child to shrink? That the police lock her away to avoid having to admit to their bungled investigation? Perhaps not. While in other films the “based on real events” claimer can be used to help increase the audience’s emotional investment in the story, in Changeling it is used to prevent audiences from eventually ceasing to invest any emotions at all. In other words, some events that are presented seem so unlikely that, were we not told that they actually occurred, we would soon lose interest in the story. The final paratextual clarification about the extent of truth in Changeling is perhaps particularly disappointing. Here an extensive clarification might be useful and intriguing more than in other films. As it is, it reveals the disclaimer’s general inadequacy. At the very end of the film we only read, “While this picture is based upon a true story, some of the characters have been composited or invented, and a number of incidents fictionalized.” Which characters? Which incidents? We are never told. So far, this paper has discussed the disclaimer mainly in connection to the authentic or inauthentic portrayal of characters and events. These are, however, not the only elements whose authenticity the disclaimer may deny. At the end of Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott), for instance, we find an appropriate example for a “thorough” version of the disclaimer: “The story, all names, characters and incidents portrayed in this motion picture are entirely fictitious. No identification with actual persons, institutions, places, buildings and/ or products is intended or should be inferred.” Each of these elements - names, institutions, places and buildings, and products (firms are also sometimes mentioned) - when referred to in the disclaimer, raise further questions and pose further problems. As for names, what do we do with a title such as Being John Malkovich (1999, Spike Jonze)? It features actor John Malkovich <?page no="117"?> The Hollywood Disclaimer 117 playing a character named John Malkovich who, just like the real John Malkovich, happens to be a well-known Hollywood actor. Despite the disclaimer’s denial, the effect of the title rests entirely on the audience’s awareness of the existence of a real John Malkovich. 5 Concerning buildings and products, Blade Runner’s disclaim of any relation to reality also ill fits with what we see and hear onscreen. If no identification with actual institutions, places, buildings and products is intended, why is the film set in a place called Los Angeles, and why does it feature an institution like the Los Angeles Police Department, a building called the Bradbury, and advertisements for products such as Budweiser, TDK , Atari, and, most prominently, Coca Cola? Blade Runner may be set in the future (in 2019, to be precise), which automatically distances the diegesis from our world of the present (or from the world as it was in 1982, when the film was made), but the names themselves do exist in the real world. If filmmakers had not wanted us to associate the fictional Los Angeles with the real one, they could easily have chosen a fictional name. If we see the fictional Los Angeles of the future, it is virtually impossible not to associate it with the real Los Angeles of the present, and it is unreasonable to think that the filmmaker did not intend such a connection. The interiors of the Bradbury building, for instance, where the film’s showdown is set, look exactly like the real ones (many scenes were, in fact, shot inside that building). How is it possible not to link the fictional building with the real one, as a well as the fictional Los Angeles with the real one? There is, however, one valid argument concerning the supposed fictionality of Los Angeles, namely the fictionalized geographical arrangement. The film includes typical (futurized) landmarks of the metropolis, but their placement does not correspond. As Will Brooker points out in his essay “The Blade Runner Experience: Pilgrimage and Liminal Space”: “Blade Runner [. . .] blatantly warps [LA’s] space. [. . . The film] has not lifted the real LA to cinema, respecting its layout and special relationships between places; it has selectively picked out interiors and transferred them into an entirely new creative geography that makes no sense in ‘real’ terms.” (14f) 5 Even though Being John Malkovich is a uniquely problematic example, the “all names fictitious” disclaimer almost always conflicts with a film’s content. Which film does not at one point or other mention one person that also exists outside its diegesis? By any strict standards, a conscientious filmmaker should at least include a list of the exceptions. <?page no="118"?> 118 Johannes Mahlknecht Brooker also states that the film “is not a symphony to the real Los Angeles; the title card identifying the city was a necessity, not an aesthetic choice” (11). The action could just as well have been set in a futuristic New York or Chicago (Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the 1968 novel Blade Runner is based on, is set in San Francisco). Being a Hollywood production, the use of the nearby Bradbury building was simply convenient, and as a consequence, the city had to carry the name where the famous monument, which many viewers are bound to recognize, is located. But only few viewers will notice that most of the architecture of the fictional Los Angeles does not coincide with that of the real one (and would not be plausible even in 2019). As most people are not familiar with the metropolis, the connection to the real city inevitably remains in their minds. And Blade Runner is no exception. Films set in places that exist in the real world rarely present an accurate geography of them. Rumble in the Bronx (1995, Stanley Tong) ostensibly set in Boston, was shot entirely in Vancouver (see Druick 85). And to take an opposite example, in which a fictitious location looks, at least partly, very real, The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan), set in the fictional metropolis of Gotham City, was shot in Chicago (see Rousseau). New Zealand’s landscape, finally, famously served as the fictional Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-3, Peter Jackson). In any narrative film, a character may exit a particular city’s church, walk around the corner and, after a cut, stand in front of the museum, even if in the real city the two buildings are miles apart. As long as viewers do not realize the inaccuracy, there is no problem. If they do, however, the film disrupts the illusion. An otherwise dramatic scene may now seem highly ridiculous. Here, just as in the other examples, the “fictional contract” between the filmmaker and the audience is broken. We must, however, be careful in presupposing negative reactions in the viewer as a consequence of what Erving Goffman calls a “frame break.” According to Goffman, “a proceeding which does not fit into the restriction of the frame results in bewilderment and chagrin on the part of the participants and constitutes a frame break” (345ff.). Even if the appearance of a real landmark in a supposedly fictitious environment constitutes such a frame break, it does not necessarily make viewers angry. The knowledge that the landscapes seen in The Lord of the Rings films actually exist in the very real New Zealand does not spoil the enjoyment. In fact, tourist travel to New Zealand greatly increased after the success of the trilogy (see Mathijs 48). We do not automatically dismiss a film if we find out that there is something suspicious about its geography. Apparently viewers are more aware of the fictionality of the film they are watching than one may think. <?page no="119"?> The Hollywood Disclaimer 119 Like its relation to geography, Blade Runner’s claim that “no identification with actual [. . .] institutions [. . .] is intended or should be inferred” is charged with conflict. Just as we associate the fictional Los Angeles with the real Los Angeles do we also associate the fictional Los Angeles Police Department with the real one. While the film’s LA of the future, however, has left a number of recognizable traces of the present - like Union Station, 2nd Street tunnel, and the aforementioned Bradbury building (see Brooker 16) - we cannot say the same about the LAPD . The uniforms look different, and in reality there exists, of course, no Blade Runner special unit whose task it is to kill (or “retire”) replicants on the run. Apart from the name and the general function of upholding the law, there is little or nothing that Blade Runner’s Police Department has got in common with its real counterpart. Thus, even if the behavior of the police in Blade Runner is morally questionable, there is no reason for the real police to feel offended. But what about the representation of institutions in films set in the past or in the present, and which seem realistic in their depiction? Particularly problematic are, of course, films that show the police in a negative light. As a precaution, therefore, The Gauntlet (1977, Clint Eastwood), for instance, features a disclaimer reading, “Law enforcement procedures depicted in this film do not necessarily depict those of any law enforcement agency mentioned herein.” Once more, Hollywood’s maxim here seemed to be: Better safe than sorry. Natalie Zemon Davis states that “the ‘coincidence’ and ‘fictitious’ disclaimers are inadequate summaries of the truth status of many films to which they are appended” (458). And never are they more inadequate than when it comes to the truth status of firms and products. If the honesty of the disclaimer’s statement may at times seem questionable, in relation to products, especially in a film like Blade Runner, the term “honesty” does not apply at all. Not only do the brand names of Atari and Coca Cola feature repeatedly on gigantic billboards in the film and correspond to actual firms, they even keep their original trademark design and style of lettering. Add to this the fact that both Atari and Coca Cola paid good money to have their brands represented in the film (see Lehu 66), for marketing purposes clearly aimed at an extradiegetic audience, and there remains no doubt about the disclaimer’s blatant dishonesty. The abundance of such deliberate product placement risks making the film as a whole appear as what it, in fact, is: a commodity. 6 6 For a detailed discussion of product placement in film, see Segrave. <?page no="120"?> 120 Johannes Mahlknecht As the above analyses have shown, claims and disclaimers very often increase, rather than solve, the conflict between fact and fiction in Hollywood cinema. And even though it is common knowledge that the relationship between Hollywood’s “true stories” and actual true stories is difficult, it still surprises to see to what extent claims and disclaimers may at times contradict each other. In taking a close look at a claim like “inspired by a true story” one becomes aware of how little it actually means. It is obvious that nobody who goes to see a Hollywood film expects a list (let alone footnotes within the film) 7 of sources used for research that prove the authenticity of all elements dealt with in a film that claims to be based on real events. Nor do we expect an exact listing of those elements that have been added to fill gaps or, as the disclaimer for The Amityville Horror (1979, Stuart Rosenberg) states, “to heighten dramatic effect.” 8 However, since the tools of claimers and disclaimers exist and are regularly used, there is no reason for filmmakers not to use them more conscientiously. But to demand that Hollywood reconsider its use of the disclaimer is fighting a losing battle. At least it seems that the industry is aware of their oftentimes blatant inadequacy, when we consider the many claim/ disclaimer spoofs in comedies such as Wrongfully Accused (1998, Pat Proft), which opens with the line: “The following dramatization is true, based on real events, from other actual movies.” 7 Examples of footnotes within a film do exist, however. At one point during the first few minutes at the beginning of In Our Hospitality (1923, John G. Blystone, Buster Keaton) a photograph of an old farmhouse serves to introduce the setting of the scene that follows. Beneath that photograph, marked with an asterisk, are the words, “from an old print” (which, admittedly, is not a very precise indication of source). D. W. Griffith was also fond of footnotes that named the sources of inspiration for his films. They appear repeatedly, for instance, in both Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). 8 The full Amityville Horror’s disclaimer: “This motion picture is based on the book ‘The Amityville Horror.’ Certain characters and events have been changed to heighten dramatic effect.” <?page no="121"?> The Hollywood Disclaimer 121 References Aquino J. T. Truth and Lives on Film: The Legal Problems of Depicting Real Persons and Events in a Fictional Medium. Jefferson: McFarland, 2005. Bingham, Dennis. Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic As Contemporary Film Genre. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Brooker, Will. “Pilgrimage and Liminal Space.” The Blade Runner Experience: The Legacy of a Science Fiction Classic. Ed. Will Brooker. London: Wallflower, 2005. 11-30. Capra, Frank. The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: Macmillan, 1971. Clark, Barbara, and Susan J. Spohr. Guide to Postproduction for TV and Film: Managing the Process. Burlington: Focal Press, 2002. Davis, Natalie Zemon. “‘Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead’: Film and the Challenge of Authenticity.” Yale Review, 86.4 (1987): 457-82. “Disclaimer.” New Oxford American Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Druick, Zoë. “Framing the Local: Canadian Film Policy and the Problem of Place.” Canadian Cultural Poesis: Essays on Canadian Culture. Ed. Sheila Petty, Garry H. Sherbert and Annie Gérin. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006. Genette, Gérard, Nitsa Ben-Ari and Brian McHale. “Fictional Narrative, Factual Narrative.” Poetics Today 11.4 (1990): 755-774. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1974. Heafey, Richard J. and Don M. Kennedy. Product Liability: Winning Strategies and Techniques. New York: Law Journal Press, 2006. Lawrence, John Shelton and Robert Jewett. The Myth of the American Superhero. Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2002. Le Carré, John. The Constant Gardner. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2001. Lehu, Jean-Marc. Branded Entertainment: Product Placement and Brand Strategy in the Entertainment Business. London: Kogan Page, 2009. Mathijs, Ernest. The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context. London: Wallflower Press, 2006. Rousseau, Caryn. “Dark Knight’s Kind of Town: Gotham City Gets Windy.” USA Today. Gannett, 21 July 2008. http: / / usatoday.com- / life/ movies/ 2008-07-21-1853397642_x.htm (accessed 21 March 2013). Russell, Carolyn R. The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Jefferson: McFarland, 2001. <?page no="122"?> 122 Johannes Mahlknecht Segrave, Kerry. Product Placement in Hollywood Films: A History. Jefferson: McFarland, 2004. Sterritt, David. “Fargo in Context: The Middle of Nowhere? ” The Coen Brothers’ Fargo. Ed. William Luhr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 10-32. Stutts, Mary Ann and Garland G. Hunnicutt. “Can Young Children Understand Disclaimers in Television Commercials? ” Journal of Advertising 16.1 (1987): 41-46. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. 1726. London: Penguin Books, 2001. Vankin, Jonathan and John Whalen. Based on a True Story: Fact and Fantasy in 100 Favorite Movies. Chicago: A Cappella Books, 2005. <?page no="123"?> Revolutionary Writing: The Symbiosis of Social and Literary Conflict and Aesthetic Production in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Bryn Skibo-Birney The American Sixties was an era of social and cultural conflict, the effects of which created groundbreaking new aesthetic products. Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters played a major role in creating these conflicts and their subsequent aesthetics, as they experimented with LSD , linguistic expression and the limits of the body and mind during their Acid Tests. At the same time, journalists like Tom Wolfe created a radical form of literary expression with New Journalism, combining the nonfiction subjective journalism with fictional social realism, resulting in immersive, emotionally-involving true stories that “read like novels” (The New Journalism 22). These controversial figures, their conflicts and aesthetic products are brought uniquely together in Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which, this paper proposes, acts as a symbiotic vehicle of expression between the socio-cultural and literary upheavals that helped shape the Sixties. The controversial style of subjective journalism accurately portrays the intersubjective, present-tense aesthetics of the Pranksters by adopting their techniques into its language. Consequently, this relationship of style and subject calls into question the very nature of how a conflict is “written” into the public zeitgeist. The zeitgeist of the American 1960s is one of conflict: the Black Power Movement; the Women’s Liberation Movement; the Peace Movement; Rock ’n’ Roll; the Psychedelic Movement were just a few of the social and cultural revolts that defined the era. Yet, considering the groundbreaking nature of these conflicts and their innovative techniques and aesthetic products, how could traditional, objective journalism accurate- Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 123- 139. <?page no="124"?> 124 Bryn Skibo-Birney ly document the events? Scholar Nicolas Mills, author of The New Journalism: A Historical Anthology, believes that it could not, saying: [the] who, what, where, when, why style of reporting could not begin to capture the anger of a black power movement or the euphoria of a Woodstock. [. . .] it was necessary to report events from the inside out, and this is what the new journalism attempted to do. (emphasis added; Mills xvii) Thus, one revolution creates another: the social revolts effectuated by the Black Power Movement and the hippies of Woodstock, to take Mills’s examples, rippled through the literary echelons, where battles were waged over language, description, and punctuation, resulting in a controversial literary aesthetic called New Journalism. Stemming from a combination of non-fiction, subjective journalism and fictional socialrealism, New Journalism “styled itself as an alternative to more standard media renderings of social reality, promising to deliver a ‘more real’ reality, the truer story of the many social crises splitting American society in the sixties” (Staub 55). Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were one of these “many social crises” documented through New Journalism, specifically in Tom Wolfe’s classic The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The work can be seen as an aesthetic revolution in its own right, a vehicle of symbiotic expression between the respective socio-cultural and literary upheavals of both the Pranksters and the New Journalists. As a result, this essay proposes that it is precisely this controversial negotiation of subjective journalism and literary social-realism, applied to the often inexpressible techniques and aesthetic product of the Pranksters, that makes Wolfe’s text one of the most accurate accounts of the Sixties’ psychedelic movement. This method of writing a conflict with a conflict subsequently heralded a new method of “writing” the zeitgeist: by speaking with the voice of the times to express the conflicts of the age. 1 Though Wolfe’s text covers the majority of the Pranksters’ history - with Kesey’s initial discovery of LSD in 1959, the creation of the Pranksters in 1963, their infamous road-trip across the United States in 1964, and the group’s eventual disbandment in 1966 - it is his narration of the group’s linguistic, psychological, and physical experimentation that most clearly demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between the conflicts 1 The idea of “accuracy” in literature, fiction or nonfiction, can be tricky even in the best cases. In this essay, “accuracy” refers to the journalistic ideal of presenting the truest form of the “real story” as it happened, without authorial interference or bias. Complete impartiality is impossible, thus, with “accuracy,” what is being suggested is that New Journalism approaches a closer understanding to what actually happened during the Pranksters’ experiments than attempted-objective journalism as both the Pranksters and the New Journalists aimed for total audience immersion. <?page no="125"?> Revolutionary Writing 125 and aesthetic products of both the Pranksters and the New Journalists, as both groups attempted to achieve a new means of expression, of total audience immersion and intersubjectivity, and of the true present-tense. For example, Kesey and the Pranksters experimented with different forms of expression, such as spontaneous “rapping,” ululation, and musical and poetic improvisation. In his text, Wolfe describes “rapping” as: a form of free association conversation, like a jazz conversation, or even a monologue, with everyone, or whoever, catching hold of words, symbols, ideas, sounds, and winging them back and forth and beyond . . . the walls of conventional logic. (EKAT 58) The goal of “rapping” was to bring the participants closer, to reach a level of linguistic unity as one participant adopted and rephrased the words of the previous speaker. Likewise, the bus itself was equipped with speakers, microphones, and variable lag machines, so that the sounds of the road, the environment, and the people outside, could be mixed into the “rapping” sessions, thus, bringing the outside in and the inside out. The Pranksters also practiced musical improvisation such as making “Human Tapes,” during which they wrote musical scores, assigned each other instruments, and then “sang” the score, as described in EKAT : They would take wax pencils, different colors, and scrawl out symbols for each other to improvise on: Sandy the pink drum strokes there, and he would make a sound like chee-oonh-chunh, chee-oonh-chunh, and so forth, and Kesey the guitar arrows over there, broinga broinga brand brand [. . .]. (57) Like “rapping,” the sessions brought the participants together by removing the standard conventions of speech and allowing the participants to dictate each other’s expression through mimicry or “scoring.” As a result, a sense of intersubjectivity or the “group-mind” develops between participants. The “group-mind” is the psychologically-disorientating sensation of group intersubjectivity often felt during an acid high, where “the barrier between the subjective and the objective, the personal and the impersonal, the I and the not-I disappear[s] . . . that feeling . . .” or “the Unspoken Thing” ( EKAT 45, 114). In order to artificially reproduce this sensation, the Pranksters experimented with music, films, strobe lights, and dance. The aim was to overload the body’s senses and bring everyone into the same experience so that “‘the audience forgot it was an audience and became part of the action. . . . A man could become - for a <?page no="126"?> 126 Bryn Skibo-Birney while, at least, - any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary’” (Children’s End qtd. in EKAT 208). 2 Just as Pranksters brought the noises outside of the bus inside and the inside noises outside, they also tried to exchange their own experience of an acid high with that of another user. Finally, in combination with the experimental forms of linguistic expression and the psychological manipulation of intersubjectivity, the Pranksters also tested the means through which they could bypass the body’s physical limitations of sense. By reducing the average sensorial lag-time of one-thirtieth of a second, they believed that a feeling of the true present, the “whole other world that LSD opened your mind to [. . .] - Now” would be realized. The Pranksters’ Now is similar to that of Walter Benjamin’s “Now-time” (Jetztzeit), described as follows: History is the goal [Ziel] that would be arrived at, or produced by, a construction, the place of which is imag[in]ed or made [bildet] by a structure of temporality: the time of Jetztzeit. This time is filled or fulfilled [erfüllte] according to the structure of metalepsis and metaleptic prolepsis which conceives of a present fulfilling a past and, therefore, of a past filling or determining a present. (Bahti 11) As in Benjamin’s Jetztzeit, Wolfe relies upon metalepsis (specifically, a metaleptic narrator) and the historical present to portray a literary version of the Now in EKAT . In contrast, Kesey’s understanding of the LSD Now is the very absence of past and future; the “structure of temporality” does not exist beyond the moment itself. It is the sensation of one’s entire being focused and connected on the very moment. Despite these differences in definition, ultimately, Kesey considered the task impossible, saying: 2 In his article, “The Roots of the 1960s Communal Revival,” Timothy Miller writes that communes were not shaped by the hippie movement but were, rather, “crucibles that played a major role in shaping and defining hip culture” and “developing new subcultural mores” of the hippie movement (75). In comparison, Miller states, LSD was a “pivot of the hip experience” but “it did not become a symbol of and vehicle for rejecting the dominant culture until mid-decade, when Kesey staged a year of Acid Tests” (74). As such, the intersubjectivity of the Acid Tests and LSD, though a key component of the eventual image of the Sixties’ counterculture, could be considered a psychedelic search for a sublime commune. For the purpose and scope of this essay, it suffices to say that communal thinking - from living situations to the psychological framework - was a definitive characteristic of the hippie movement, which Wolfe subsequently responds to with a subjective, immersive narration that attempts to blur the lines of audience and actor. <?page no="127"?> Revolutionary Writing 127 We are all of us doomed to spend our lives watching a movie of our lives - we are always acting on what has just finished happening. [. . .] We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past, and we will really never be able to control the present through ordinary means. That lag has to be overcome some other way, through some kind of total breakthrough. (EKAT 132) This “total breakthrough” culminated in the Acid Tests, arguably Kesey’s most influential aesthetic product. 3 Designed to simulate the kairos, the mystical experience of an acid high wherein all of these barriers - of expression, of audience versus actor, and of physical sensation - are erased: sequential time has no meaning and a new, intersubjective ever-present dimension is experienced. 4 Kesey’s eventual goal for the Acid Tests was to achieve the kairos without the assistance of LSD , instead relying upon the disorientating effects of multi-media entertainment - lights, film, photography, music, dance, and chants - to help the attendee reach the mystical sublime without psychedelic assistance. While the success or failure of this acidfree high can be argued, the Tests themselves, as a unique aesthetic product, greatly influenced the Sixties’ society and culture, with artists like Roy Sebern, writers like Hunter S. Thompson, the Hells’ Angels, local and national reporters, journalists from Vogue and Women’s Wear Daily, the local police, and the FBI in attendance. Fellow artist of the times, Joe McDonald, founder and lead singer of “Country Joe and the Fish,” goes so far as to claim that San Francisco’s “Summer of Love,” kickstarted by Kesey and the Pranksters, “became the template: the Arab Spring is related to the Summer of Love; Occupy Wall Street is related to the Summer of Love. [. . .] It became the new status quo” (Weller 64). 3 In a similar vein, some critics have argued that the bus, the Acid Tests, and the techniques used therein were Kesey’s most post-modern aesthetic product, saying “that in pursuit of the ephemeral NOW, Kesey and the others created an aesthetic form whose abrupt departure from pre-existing ones connects it with Lyotard’s philosophical notion of the postmodern as a probing of the edge of representability’” (Whelan 69). As a result, Whelan continues, “Any place at all, any social reality, can be invested by the Pranksters, by their disruptive presence and representational machinery, with aesthetic status” (72). 4 Wolfe documents the fundamental mysticism behind this search for the kairos likening it to the “flashes” that illuminated the beginnings of the major religions: “Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, [and] Hinduism” (EKAT 116-17). Kesey, however, constantly refutes his position as leader of a mystical group by calling himself the “non-navigator,” or “the non-teacher” or by dismissing the argument entirely, saying “Too much, too much” (EKAT 115). <?page no="128"?> 128 Bryn Skibo-Birney With these techniques and the subsequent social influence of Kesey’s Acid Tests in mind, the question remains: how does the method of documentation effect how a social conflict, like the Pranksters, is written into the zeitgeist? In a recent interview, Ken Babbs, a pseudo second-in-command to the Pranksters, said of Wolfe’s text: If Tom Wolfe’s book never came out, the Pranksters would be nobodies. Thousands of people in San Francisco did the same things we did. But because of Tom Wolfe, and because Kesey was a writer, our story was remembered. (Babbs, Interview with Donaghey) Likewise, in one of the first reviews of EKAT , journalist Eliot Fremont- Smith writes that the text is “A genuine raz-daz high, courtesy of Tom Wolfe. And it’s done with words. What Ken Kesey could not quite manage, an ‘acid graduation,’ a great turn-on without drugs, Mr. Wolfe brings off” (Fremont-Smith 33). Arguably, Wolfe achieves this level of success by adopting the Pranksters’ techniques into his own writing, using New Journalism to reach a literary kairos in order to document the Pranksters’ own mystical search. In doing so, Wolfe also makes Kesey a character, a cultural (anti)hero, rather than simply a criminal or fugitive. As critic Charles S. Ross said, referring to Wolfe’s The Right Stuff: “He defines the character of Chuck Yeager by telling a story about a nerveless, drawling airline pilot. As a result, he defines reality, but he also enlarges it” (Ross 118). Thus, an analysis of the New Journalism techniques as applied in EKAT demonstrates that Wolfe is able to accurately document the Pranksters’ activities specifically by refuting the conventions of traditional journalism, subjectively immersing the reader into the subjects’ thoughts, actions, and emotions; in doing so, Wolfe writes not only the Pranksters, but also New Journalism, into the zeitgeist of the Sixties. Immediately separating the New Journalists from more conventional journalists is, as Mills says, their method of reporting from “the inside out” (Mills xvii). Rather than simply interviewing for objective facts, they attempted to create a highly personal and internally-focalized experience, in order to give the impression of being there and seeing the action, rather than being told about it. To do this, the New Journalists reduced their use of the traditional, covert and understated “beige narrator” - so called for its determination to be neutral and unobtrusive - and replaced it with a subjective, overt, and metaleptic narrator - Wolfe’s “Hectoring Narrator” - who would report on the story but also speak directly to the reader or heckle the characters (The New Journalism <?page no="129"?> Revolutionary Writing 129 31). 5 Wolfe would also employ the novelistic omniscient third-person narratorial point-of-view; from this perspective, the narrator was not limited to the personal experience of one character but could convey the thoughts and emotions of many characters. To this point, Wolfe said, “What I try to do is re-create a scene from a triple point of view: the subject’s point of view, my own, and that of the other people watching - often within a single paragraph” (qtd. in Schafer 63). The result gave the impression of experiencing the scene from “the eye sockets . . . of the people in the story,” or like watching a parade from the perspective of someone marching, someone watching, and someone broadcasting (The New Journalism 32). Subsequently, by replacing the traditional, objective “beige” narrator for a more subjective, yet still omniscient, narrator, the New Journalists gave a more personalized, internal view of the reported events; bringing the reader inside the story. Yet for these internal events to be believably from a variety of different, real-world perspectives, the New Journalists had to have intimate knowledge of the characterizing details of their speakers, much like social-realist novelists. To this end, the New Journalists would spend long periods of time investigating the characters and events in order to narrate scene-by-scene and quote a significant amount of real dialogue. When real dialogue was not possible, Wolfe would employ the “downstage voice,” wherein the narrator adopts language similar to the main subject in order to create realistic dialogue while condensing information from perhaps multiple interviews and “creat[ing] the illusion of seeing the action through the eyes of someone who was actually on the scene and involved in it, rather than a beige narrator” (The New Journalism 32). Although similar to free indirect discourse, the “downstage voice” differs subtly in that the former can implicitly connect a specific character to the unattributed dialogue - often through proximity or a continuation of subject matter - whereas the latter simply carries the same language as the main character, but without the sense of indirect attribution. 6 Thus, rather than giving the narrative control to the charac- 5 Due to this metaleptic “hectoring narrator,” critic Dwight MacDonald famously called New Journalism “the buttonhole school of writing,” for the reader is “grabbed by the lapels” and offered no objective distance between writer and topic, between reader and characters (“Parajournalism” 4). 6 The “downstage voice” is similar to Kenner’s “Uncle Charles principle,” where “the neutral narrative vocabulary [is] pervaded by a little cloud of idioms which a character might use if he were managing the narrative” (Joyce’s Voices 17). Wolfe’s “downstage voice” is the reversal of the “Uncle Charlie principle” in that it is not the character “managing the narrative,” but the narrator imitating the character in order to give additional information without disturbing the scene through an unnatural, “neutral” narrative voice. <?page no="130"?> 130 Bryn Skibo-Birney ter, the omniscient narrator maintains control of the language, adopting the character’s language for the fluidity of the scene. Just as point-of-view and language work to seamlessly immerse the reader into a variety of perspectives and characters, so too does Wolfe’s use of punctuation and setting. Wolfe took inspiration for his nowsignature unorthodox punctuation from Yevgeny Zamiatin who, he says, “constantly breaks off a thought in mid-sentence with a dash. He’s trying to imitate the habits of actual thought, assuming, quite correctly, that we don’t think in whole sentences. We think emotionally” (Wolfe, Interview with George Plimpton). 7 Likewise, the New Journalists’ minute description of detail, or “status life,” worked to make the real-life subjects into more rounded characters, as Wolfe says in his anthology: [the] everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs, styles of furniture clothing, decoration, [. . .] plus the various looks, glances, poses, styles of walking and other symbolic details [. . .] through which people express their position in the world [. . .]. (The New Journalism 47) This seeming minutia operates within a non-fiction story in the same manner as Barthe’s l’effet de réel operates in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; the objects not only add an effect of having occurred in a real place, such as Rouen, a courtroom, or La Honda, but also characterize the figures placed within; for example, Madame Bovary, a crime boss, or Ken Kesey (Barthes 84-5). The combination of l’effet de réel with the aforementioned perspectives and language allowed the New Journalists to not simply tell a gripping and true story, but to provide interiority, to get inside the minds and thoughts of the people who were there, to provide a detailed scene as they saw it and in doing so, to place the reader within the story. As a result of these techniques, the boundary between subject and object, spectator and spectacle would be erased; readers could feel emotionally involved in the non-fiction story, much as they would reading novels. However, the negotiation of the genres of non-fiction journalism and fictional social-realism created not only a new aesthetic product, namely New Journalism, but also a major upheaval within the literary social strata. In his concise elucidation of Sixties’ New Journalism, scholar Michael Staub writes that, “Self-identified fiction, as none other than The Harper American Literature matter-of-factly informs students, temporarily 7 Like Wolfe’s adoption of unconventional punctuation, as per “The Brothers Serapion,” he adopts the use of the historical-present from fellow-writer Emil Ludwig (see Wolfe, Interview with George Plimpton). Also like the emotional punctuation, the use of the historical present reduces the objective distance as the narrator gives the impression of being in or near the action as it happens. <?page no="131"?> Revolutionary Writing 131 lost its charms, as precisely the destabilizing hecticity of the era made life seem more interesting than art” (Staub 55). With this social turn, from art to life, the assumption would be that traditional journalism would grow in popularity, but again, Staub argues, that was not the case: For it was not only a loss of interest in fiction that engendered the search for a new style. It was, probably even more significantly, precisely the atmosphere of social crisis that had begun to make the traditional media seem so suspect and that had called attention to the way the media’s claim to be “objective” was frequently a smokescreen for bias. (Staub 55) This claim of bias in objective journalism implicitly argues a lack of accuracy; that in the journalists’ determination to present an optimal image of Vietnam, for example, they neglected to present the true story. As a result, amid cries of hackery, inaccurate reportage, “antics,” “parajournalism,” and “entertainment rather than information” (adapted from Dwight MacDonald, “Parajournalism”), the subjective New Journalism emerged as a champion of the story that would not be heard elsewhere, in a language that, despite its unorthodox nature, removed the smokescreen of a biased, objective narrator and placed the reader inside a subjective, yet accurate portrayal of the events. As Gay Talese, one of the first New Journalists, was quoted as saying, “[The New Journalism] is, or should be, as reliable as the most reliable reportage although it seeks a larger truth than is possible through the compilation of verifiable facts” (emphasis added; qtd. in Hartstock 193). It is this “larger truth,” despite the often lack of “verifiable facts,” that Wolfe searched for in 1965, when he began reporting on Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as he attempted to “not only to tell what the Pranksters did but to re-create the mental atmosphere or subjective reality of it” ( EKAT 367). As a result, the all-present, intersubjective kairos and the subjective, immersive New Journalism achieve symbiotic, mutual expression. For example, the unusual spelling, syntax, and typography used to narrate Kesey’s paranoia of FBI surveillance, while on the run in Mexico, recall the Pranksters’ linguistic experimentation: Haul ass, Kesey. Move. Scram. Split flee hide vanish disintegrate. Like run. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrevrev or are we gonna have a late Mexican re-run of the scene on the rooftop in San Francisco and sit here with the motor spinning and watch with fascination while the cops they climb up once again to come git you - THEY JUST OPENED THE DOOR DOWN BELOW, ROTOR ROOTER, SO YOU HAVE MAYBE 45 SECONDS ASSUMING THEY BE SLOW AND SNEAKY AND SURE ABOUT IT . <?page no="132"?> 132 Bryn Skibo-Birney Kesey sits in a little upper room in the last house down the beach, $80 a month on paradise-blue Bandarias Bay [. . .] ( EKAT 255) The prolonged onomatopoeia (“Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrevrev . . .”), though attributed to the Wolfe-narrator, recalls Sandy and Kesey’s language as they imitated drums and guitars in the “Human Tapes”: “chee-oonh-chunh, chee-oonh-chunh [. . .] broinga broinga brand brand” ( EKAT 57). Similarly, the development of the list of imperative verbs also calls to mind the “rapping” sessions; the initial complete sentence, “Haul ass, Kesey,” degenerates to single-word commands until finally reaching a list of imperatives with no grammatical compunction: “Scram. Split flee hide [. . .]” Like the Wolfe-narrator’s previous implicit participation in the “Human Tapes,” here the Wolfe-narrator holds a free-form word association conversation with himself, a “jazz conversation,” building the different modes of escape on top of each other before finally returning to relative narrative “normality” with “Like run.” Thus, without explicitly referring to them, Wolfe’s text clearly replicates some of the Pranksters’ experimental means of expression. In addition to the irregular syntax and spelling, the narrative perspective and typography create a sense of literary intersubjectivity. For example, by the end of the second paragraph, the Wolfe-narrator adopts a familiar “downstage voice” of Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia. Known for her country-lingo and drawl, the phrase “come git you” is repeatedly attributed to her throughout EKAT . Thus, though she is not physically present with Kesey, by adopting her language, her “outside” presence is re-imagined into the metaphysical space of his hotel room. Likewise, the section in capital letters is emblematic of Kesey’s mental state, speaking in his characteristic language (“ ROTOR ROOTER [. . .] they be slow and sneaky”) and referring to himself in the second-person (“you”). The typography also characterizes this section as Kesey’s unspoken, internal monologue as the capitalized letters emphasize his DMT -induced paranoia. This paranoia is further off-set from the rest of the overall section with the return to narrative “normality,” as the scene is established in a near-journalistic fashion, where the rules of grammar, spelling, syntax, and language are more present than in the preceding lines. Thus, within a relatively short paragraph, the changes in literary methods - from novelistic and almost free-verse poetry, to internal monologue and nonfiction description - place the reader within the mind-set of three characters, the Wolfe-narrator, Mountain Girl, and Kesey, while also characterizing Kesey’s altered consciousness on DMT . Perhaps more importantly, however, through these methods, Wolfe’s text produces this literary intersubjectivity by adopting the Pranksters’ linguistic and psychological experiments. <?page no="133"?> Revolutionary Writing 133 In a similar manner, Wolfe documents the Pranksters’ attempts to bypass the body’s sensorial lag-time by manipulating the narrative verb tense, as seen during a meeting between Wolfe, the Pranksters, and several LSD groups in San Francisco: I’ll have to hand it to the heads. They really want to end the little games. Their hearts are pure. I never found more than one or two cynics or hustlers among them. [. . .] And the Pranksters . . . by and by . . . I find them in the Calliope garage on Harriet Street, the old garage, the ex-pie factory in the bottom of the old hotel. I kept peeking around in the crazy gloom of the place [. . .] and I couldn’t figure out what they had to be so exultant about. It beats me. As I look back on it, they were all trying to tell me . . .” (emphasis added; EKAT 334). The section opens with the future (“I’ll have to hand it”) and present tenses (“They really want” and “I find them in the Calliope hotel”), which imply that the Wolfe-narrator centralizes the narrative- NOW and the story- NOW , intensifies the narrative, and achieves a literary sense of the Pranksters’ Now: the narration and the events are happening at the same time. These future and present tenses are, however, refuted with the phrases “I couldn’t figure out” and “As I look back on it.” With the first example, an analysis could claim that the Wolfe-narrator could not discern the reasons for the Pranksters’ exaltation while he was with them at the garage. However, the following present tense phrase, “As I look back,” implies remembering and reflecting upon a past situation - i.e. that of the Pranksters’ exaltation - from a more recent narrative timeframe. As a result, the Wolfe-narrator demonstrates that even the literary Now is unachievable as the narrative was never present-tense but rather, a memory considering during the act of writing; the initial present tense was, in fact, historical present. Thus, in non-fiction, as in life, the narrative mix of past and present allows the reader to “think we’re in the present,” only to realize that “the present we know is a movie of the past” ( EKAT 132). From these examples, New Journalism’s unique negotiation of subjective journalism and fictional social-realism allows Wolfe to accurately document the activities and techniques of the Pranksters leading up to the Acid Tests. Wolfe does not just describe, or simply tell, what happens during Kesey’s time in La Honda, Mexico, or San Francisco, but instead, he shows how the events occurred, the noises that were made, even the delirium that was felt; subsequently, the reader is placed within the story, within the minds of the characters who were there. In addition to this immersion, Wolfe’s focus on the mannerisms, gestures, and lan- <?page no="134"?> 134 Bryn Skibo-Birney guage of several key figures creates recognizable characters out of complex real people: Kesey becomes the flawed hero of a band of cultural rebels, rather than simply a wanted criminal. While the previous examples demonstrate the use of individual Prankster techniques with individual New Journalism techniques, the following example analyzes how these respective techniques come together within the text to express the eventual aesthetic products of both groups: the sense of total audience immersion into a continuouslyunfolding, present-tense stream of action, the literary achievement of the LSD kairos, as seen through Kesey’s most successful Acid Test: They come piling into Big Nig’s, and suddenly acid and the worldcraze are everywhere, the electric organ vibrating through every belly in the place, kids dancing not rock dances, not the frug and the - what? - swim, mother, but dancing ecstasy, leaping, dervishing, throwing their hands over their heads like Daddy Grace’s own stroked-out inner courtiers - yes! - Roy Seburn’s lights washing past every head, Cassady rapping, Paul Foster handing people weird little things out of his Eccentric Bag, old whistles, tin crickets, burnt keys, spectral plastic handles. Everybody’s eyes turn on like lightbulbs, fuses blow, blackness - wowwww! - the things that shake and vibrate and funnel and freak out in this blackness - and then someone slaps new fuses in and the old hulk of the house shudders back, the wiring writhing and fragmenting like molting snakes, the organs vibro-massage the belly again, fuses blow, minds scream, heads explode, [. . .] a mass closer and higher than any mass in history, it seems most surely, and Kesey makes minute adjustment, small toggle switch here, lubricated with Vaseline No. 634-3 diluted with carbon tetrachloride, and they ripple, Major, ripple, but with meaning, 400 of the attuned multitude headed towards the pudding. (EKAT 211-12) Throughout the entire passage, the subjective, interfering narrator uses the historical present and gerunds to give a sense of immediacy; the narrative timeframe is reduced to the immediate actions. Unlike the previous examples, the sense of the Now, be it the Story-Now, Discourse- Now, or the Prankster-Now, is maintained throughout the majority of the Acid Test narrative. Like the present-tense in creating the sense of Now, the interrupted and rapidly-changing narrative voice creates a sense of a critical mass, of many voices speaking and responding to each other, with only a shade of coherence to hold the wildness of the party together. Despite the seeming inaccuracy in this section - stemming from the narrator’s apparent loss of understanding, with “it seems most surely” and “-what? -,” by displaying the overall scene as a wild, incoherent mass of thronging partiers, Wolfe sacrifices minor details for an accurate depiction of the <?page no="135"?> Revolutionary Writing 135 overall party. The resulting sense is one where the specifics no longer matter in the thronging mass of dancers; only the actions are important. The narrator eventually loses control of the description, giving only the most basic indications of what is happening, with “and then someone slaps new fuses it” and “minds scream, heads explode, neighbors call the cops.” No specificity is given, in contrast to the previous lines, where Roy Seburn, Cassady, and Paul Foster are explicitly mentioned. Adding to this sense of the crowd, the “downstage voice” frequently interrupts the narrator to answer his questions, as with the dancers who answer, “swim, mother,” to other anonymous speakers with “-yes! -” and “wowwww! -.” Likewise, the “downstage voice” is applied again towards the end of the section, as the narrator indicates Kesey - making changes on the dials - before adopting a common Kesey phrase with “ripple, Major, ripple,” to describe the crowd’s movement. Thus, the rapid shifts between narrative point-of-view and different characters’ language give the sense of a crowd, of a variety of voices speaking almost simultaneously. As a result, the conventional journalistic aim of objective description is sacrificed; yet, the immersive quality of the narrative, from language and perspective, creates a far more accurate image. Equally characterizing is the description of the setting and the presentation of the status-life that characterizes the figures of EKAT . In this passage specifically, Foster is known for the random objects (“tin crickets, burnt keys”) within his Eccentric Bag. Like an unusual form of objective correlative, the setting is also described like random objects, emerging through poetic-devices: similes and consonance (“wires writhing and fragmenting like molting snakes”), spondaic rhythms (“fuses blow, minds scream, heads explode”), repetition and anaphora (the electric organ, blackness and “fuses blow”), contradictory images (“eyes turn on like lightbulbs [sic], [. . .] blackness”) and objective correlative (“the old hulk of a house shudders back”). Through the repeated use of these literary devices, Wolfe presents a scene of crazed movement, incoherent speech and noise, and, subsequently, of intersubjectivity for it is never clear whose “minds scream” and whose “heads explode.” The immediate answer would be those audience members at the Acid Test but it can just as easily apply to the reader, who struggles to follow and understand the unorthodox narrative. Just as the voices and descriptions immerse the reader into the scene, so too does the punctuation. To read the section aloud is to speak in an excited and uncontrolled manner, with the italics creating emphasis and the pauses and abrupt shifts creating an abundance of breath. In spite of these pauses, however, the lack of full stops accelerates the narrative speed, mirroring the wildness of the scene. The combination of so many literary devices within a relatively short space not only creates an ab- <?page no="136"?> 136 Bryn Skibo-Birney sorbing and vivid sense of movement, of action, of crowded spaces with noise and voices, but also “excites the reader intellectually and emotionally” (The New Journalism 28). Thus, in these passages illustrating the individual techniques and the combined aesthetics in the Acid Test, Kesey’s conflicts - linguistic, psychological, and physical - find a unique means of expression in Wolfe’s conflicting techniques - applying novelistic devices to subjective journalism. As a result, EKAT does not simply document the historical-cultural conflicts involved in the Pranksters’ activities; rather, the text embodies the very form of these conflicts and their eventual aesthetic products: Kesey’s search for the mystical kairos becomes Wolfe’s search for a subjective, emotionally-involving nonfiction narrative. Beyond the pairing of social and literary conflicts, however, is the question of “writing” the zeitgeist of the Sixties. While critics of New Journalism argued that the use of social-realism in journalism reduces the objective distance between journalist and subject and, therefore, reduces the journalistic accuracy, Wolfe’s text nonetheless remains, as Fremont-Smith wrote in 1968, “not simply the best book on the hippies, it is the essential book” (Fremont-Smith 33). Though Wolfe was not physically on the bus, nor did he witness the large majority of what he documents in EKAT , he is nevertheless awarded an honorary place on it by Robert Stone, a pseudo-Prankster who spent time with them in New York City; as he says: Who was actually on the bus? I, who waited, with the wine-stained manuscript of my first novel, for the rendezvous in New York, have a count. Tom Wolfe, who did not see the bus back then at all but is extremely accurate with facts, has a similar one. (Stone 120) Thus, the question of accuracy in subjective journalism, at least in Wolfe’s case is unquestioned; his text is widely considered to be the definitive account of the Sixties’ psychedelic counter-culture. In comparison to other non-fiction works on the Psychedelic movement, Wolfe has “the literary leg-up on the competition [by] having a genuine hero - Kesey - who can carry his epic story about the origins of a new culture” (Schafer 61). Thus, Wolfe and the New Journalists not only documented the social conflicts around them but “enlarged the reality” of the Sixties zeitgeist with the voice of a literary conflict, using the controversial New Journalism to create heroes out of men, to “show” rather than to “tell” the story, and to place the reader emotionally and intellectually into the story through language and perspectives. As a result, New Journalism became the voice of the Sixties, the source of accurate documentation through subjective immersion. An era of social and cultural upheaval <?page no="137"?> Revolutionary Writing 137 demands a literary upheaval: conflict writes conflict and symbiotically documents a new social, cultural, and literary aesthetic. <?page no="138"?> 138 Bryn Skibo-Birney References Babbs, Ken. “Cleaning Out Sheds with the Merry Pranksters’ Ken Babbs.” Interview with River Donaghey. Vice (6 December 2012). http: / / www.vice.com/ read/ cleaning-out-sheds-with-the-merrypranksters-ken-babbs (accessed 14 January 2013). Bahti, Peter. Review of History as Rhetorical Enactment: Walter Benjamin’s Theses “On the Concept of History” “Über den Begriff der Geschichte,” by Walter Benjamin. Ed. Peter Bulthaup. Diacritics, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Autumn 1979): 2-17. Barthes, Roland. “L’effet de réel.” Communications 11 (1968): 84-89. Fremont-Smith, Eliot. “Books of The Times: Freak-Out in Day-Glo.” The New York Times (12 August 1968): 33. Hartstock, John C. A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. Kenner, Hugh. Joyce’s Voices. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. MacDonald, Dwight. “Parajournalism, or Tom Wolfe and His Magic Writing Machine.” The New York Review of Books (26 August 1965): 3- 5. Miller, Timothy. “The Roots of the 1960s Communal Revival.” American Studies Vol. 33, No. 2 (Fall 1992): 73-93. Mills, Nicolaus. The New Journalism: A Historical Anthology. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974. Ross, Charles S. “The Rhetoric of The Right Stuff.” The Journal of General Education Vol. 33, No. 2 (Summer 1981): 113-122. Schafer, Jack. “Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” Second Read: Writers Look Back at Classic Works of Reportage. Ed. James Marcus and the staff of the Columbia Journalism Review. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. 60-66. Staub, Michael E. “Black Panthers, New Journalism, and the Rewriting of the Sixties.” Representations No. 57 (Winter 1997): 52-72. Stone, Robert. Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties. New York: Harper- Collins, 2007. Weller, Sheila. “Suddenly that Summer.” Vanity Fair No. 623 (July 2012): 64-71. Whelan, Brent. “‘Furthur’: Reflections on Counter-Culture and the Postmodern.” Cultural Critique No. 11 (Winter, 1988-89): 63-86. Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. London: Black Swan Books, 1989. . The New Journalism. 5th edition. London: Pan Books Ltd, 1977. <?page no="139"?> Revolutionary Writing 139 . Interview with George Plimpton. Paris Review No. 123, “The Art of Fiction” (Spring 1991). http: / / www.theparisreview.org/ interviews/ 2226/ the-art-of-fiction-no-123-tom-wolfe (accessed 10 January 2013). <?page no="141"?> A Tug of War with Silky Strings: Struggles for Power Between Human Puppets and their Puppeteers Roberta Hofer Movies like Being John Malkovich or Stranger than Fiction, and books like Slow Man by J. M. Coetzee confront us with the idea of human puppets - which in itself, of course, creates a conflict of logic and feasibility. Additionally, however, these real-life marionettes are always part of a far graver conflict with their human puppeteers; they fight for power, control, and for independence. Connected by strings and emotions, it is often the puppet masters which end up getting caught in the ties that they established, dependent of the thing they created. This swap of dominance, of course, poses a challenge to the standard narratological settings: questions of authorship and narrative authority arise and points of view shift dramatically. The main conflict is a metaleptic one as borders between diegetic worlds are annihilated and redefined in very paradox ways. This article explores these clashes by applying concepts of puppeteering, as well as metalepsis, to the media of film and literature. The analysis of key scenes will illustrate that underlying the superficial levels of absolute dominance and submission, we can, in fact, find a twisted mise en abyme - mirror-images where the reins have quite literally been grabbed by the once enslaved marionettes. Humans as puppets are an ancient motif throughout many cultures, myths, religions and ages. The notion of ultimately being only a helpless figure on a string, pulled, controlled by, and at the mercy of forces greater than oneself, is a frightening one, yet at the same time so intriguing that over the centuries, many artists have used it as a strong motif of their works (cf. Drux and Gross 6f.) - in books and also on screen. Fa- Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 141- 157. <?page no="142"?> 142 Roberta Hofer mous metaphorical examples of human puppets, of course, include legendary films like The Godfather (1972) or the The Truman Show (1998) as the ultimate filmic representation of the Big Brother nightmare. In recent years, however, stories about very literal human marionettes, as well as fictional characters, caught in a struggle with their creators, have found their way into popular culture. These real-life puppets and their puppeteers present us with an array of new psychological, physical, and contextual challenges. It is essentially, as also Brian McHale argues, a very postmodernist theme, as they all play with the desire to put characters “under the irresistible control of some other human being” (257). This article will analyse three such works in detail: Spike Jonze’s film Being John Malkovich (1999), Mark Forster’s film Stranger than Fiction (2006), and John Maxwell Coetzee’s novel Slow Man (2006). All of them present us with the concept of human puppeteering, spinning their strings through storylines full of mindboggling twists and turns. Most importantly, however, in doing so, they produce an often intricate layer of conflicts, rooted deep in questions of dependency, dominance and control. Very strikingly, this often results in traditional narratological concepts being challenged, even reversed: authors become caught in their own plotlines, dependant characters emancipate themselves into confident narrators, and points of view become almost absurd as, for instance in Being John Malkovich, the storyteller physically merges with his main protagonist. The paradox nature of these goings on is hard to grasp - however, the narratological concept of metalepsis does provide a crucial means of interpretation and understanding: ultimately, in each of these works, diegetic borders are strangely crossed, blurred, often even brutally violated. Indeed, it becomes very tricky to define where reality ends, and where fiction starts - and to pinpoint which of the characters the extradiegetic force is that actually controls the plotline. In order to analyse and fully understand these developments and struggles, it is necessary to move away from the media of film and literature as such - and resort back to the original source of inspiration: puppetry. Applying both scholarly theories and concepts, as well as observations by experienced puppeteers, the films’ and book’s conflicts for power and [in]dependence unfold. It becomes apparent how such (dis)connections can arise in the first place, what maintains them, and what breaks them in the end. On closer inspection, it shows that it is not always the puppeteer pulling the strings. In all cases, the puppet masters (or mistresses) themselves turn out to be governed by an abundance of aversive forces: inner conflicts, desires - and not least surprisingly, by the very marionette they once thought to control. “I am sick of being a puppet,” exclaimed the famous marionette Pinocchio already in 1881 (Collodi 87). “I want to become a real boy.” This basic - very <?page no="143"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 143 metaleptic - wish has prevailed. Whether in a movie, or in a book - we can still witness the puppets struggling free from their ties, determined, and gradually more empowered by the wish to become an independent individual. In Being John Malkovich, Craig Schwartz, an unemployed puppeteer, takes on a new job in a curious company. One day, as he moves office furniture, he discovers a secret door that teleports him into the head of actor John Malkovich (played by the very one himself). Taken aback at first, Craig soon sees the potential of the strange discovery. He begins to nest inside Malkovich like a parasite: at first only occasionally, but slowly for extended periods of time, ultimately using him as a life sized puppet, and putting on a real-life show. After all, he says, “it is sort of like puppeteering.” As strange as this story may sound, it is not entirely unique, as seven years later, Stranger than Fiction made its appearance on screen with a similar theme. In this film, protagonist Harold Crick starts hearing the voice of a female narrator. He soon realises, with horror, that he seems to be only a figment of author Karen Eiffel’s imagination, as he turns out to be the main character in the new book she is working on. Every word she types becomes real for him, and Harold has to struggle against the literally lethal storyline that he seems to be a part of. Interestingly, in the same year as this movie was released, Coetzee published his book Slow Man which deals with the very same dilemma: a fictional character, Paul Rayment, encounters his author, Elizabeth Costello, and although he does not quite understand it, he realises their complicated entanglement. “All the time,” we learn, “he thought he was his own master he has been in a cage like a rat, [. . .] with the infernal woman standing over him, observing, listening, taking notes, recording his progress.” But how do seemingly normal human beings achieve such god-like power over these individuals? And why do the latter find themselves as helpless victims in their predicament? Most importantly, and very logically, this dependency is created by the direct physical connection - the strings. In the art of puppetry, they are an immediate extension of the puppeteer’s hands, attached to both the puppet, as well as the puppeteer’s paddle. Consequently, they transfer even the slightest of movements from the hand of the player to the played, representing thus the essential means which, in an almost metaleptic fashion, bridge the gap between the worlds. Originally, the term “metalepsis” stems from Greek rhetoric, denoting a figure of speech. However, in 1972, French literary scholar Gérard Genette adapted the concept for a phenomenon in narratology. What he calls metalepsis is the “passage from one narrative level to another” (243), it is the transgression “between two worlds: the world where narration takes place and the world which is narrated” <?page no="144"?> 144 Roberta Hofer (245) - the extradiegesis and the diegesis. When it comes to puppeteering, of course, these two realms would be the world of the puppeteer and his theatre, and the puppet’s world that unfolds on stage. As already hinted at, these levels are bridged by the physical connection. In other words: the strings alone make it possible to influence, and indeed create, the action in the diegesis from an extradiegetic position. Physically, of course, the puppet master usually remains outside the story world, which is why we cannot talk about a real case of metalepsis yet. However, through his tools, she or he nevertheless retains a direct link to the diegetic marionette: “[Y]ou feel the puppet’s life extending backward into the impulses of a living body, becoming a gesture of that body that itself presses forward into the puppet,” (55) argues Kenneth Gross. “What you feel is the presence of a composite or double body, animate and inanimate at once, a relation perhaps echoing some image of a soul within a body” (ibidem). The strings are like veins bringing life from the metaphorical heartbeat of the player’s hands into the puppet’s dead limbs. Indeed, as Gross points out, “the ancient Greek word for marionette is neurospaston, ‘pulled by strings’” (56) - the term neuron being also used to denote “sinew, tendon, nerve” (ibidem). At the same time, however, this physical connection of strings creates a narratological paradox: while the puppeteer is well-aware of them, they are normally not part of the diegetic world as such. The audience can often clearly see them, the puppet master can as well, but the unspoken rule is that in normal puppet plays, they are non-existent in the marionette’s diegesis. It cannot “see” or “feel” them, even though they are clearly there. Addressing them would severely disrupt the story world (“surprised” puppets which try to cut these strings are, nevertheless, a curious idea that many puppeteers do play with, often even due to this, again, metaleptic element - cf. Gross 55f.). In the case of Being John Malkovich, puppeteer Craig is extraordinarily trained at operating his puppets on a string: Already in the first opening scenes, we witness an impressive example of his skills, as he puts on a complicated and very intricate dance with a replica puppet of himself. As he, however, discovers the path into Malkovich’s head, he has to employ another, very different, control mechanism, also taken from puppetry. He gains power by replacing the usual strings with a literal physical, i.e. bodily, connection, slipping into the actor like into a ventriloquist’s dummy. The puppeteer, so to speak, melts into the puppet, merges, literally becoming a part of it. Gross calls this concept the “separate whole” (51): <?page no="145"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 145 The simple glove puppet, the hand puppet, shows the hand’s power here most immediately. [. . .] The hand, the extension and tool of our will, becomes the moving force - physical and spiritual - of a thing with a will and life of its own, a will that yet remains tied into the bodily, psychic motion of the manipulator. (ibid.) In Craig Schwartz’s case, of course, it is his whole body that becomes one with the puppet’s “shell.” This, indeed, presents the first very clear case of metalepsis - in Genette’s sense, and as redefined and expanded by Austrian scholar Werner Wolf who called it “a usually intentional paradoxical transgression” (91). The paradox in the above example is obvious: While remaining the narrator, the puppeteer also embodies the main character, as he simultaneously also physically steps from his extradiegetic position into the puppet’s story world. Of course, the environment technically remains the same: Both Craig and (the movie’s version of) Malkovich are real humans who live in the real world (of the film). However, at the same time, they gain an artificial quality: as the actor becomes controlled and ultimately fictionalised, also his surroundings are no longer only a part of normal reality. Although there are no visual changes to the setting, it nevertheless turns into a backdrop for the plotline that Craig has decided on. This, indeed, presents a very novel type of metalepsis which has not been explored before: The actor and the puppeteer live in the same world. Craig does not shrink John Malkovich down, or magically turn him into a lifeless doll and put him on a puppet stage. Instead, he makes the world around him one large stage, and he fictionalises John Malkovich right then and there. Malkovich remains in the real world, and is yet at the same time a character in Craig’s play. 1 At the same time, Craig remains the controlling puppeteer, while simultaneously being inside the controlled marionette. In Gross’s words, the puppeteer “becomes both object and source of animation” (51). Similar ties also exist in Stranger than Fiction and Slow Man, even if they are not as extreme. In both of those examples, the connection and thus means of control is the typewriter. One of the key scenes of Stranger than Fiction shows a close-up of Karen Eiffel’s hands as she types the letters, delicately moving her hands over the keyboard. At first glance, this is a plain visual reference to literary practice. However, on closer inspection, Karen’s movements are not unlike the dance of Craig’s fingers when he 1 For a discussion of a different kind of performance-based metalepsis which, however, equally reunites fictional and non-fictional characters in the same, real world, see my article on “Holographic Projections of the Cartoon Band ‘Gorillaz’ as a Means of Metalepsis.” <?page no="146"?> 146 Roberta Hofer puts on a puppet show. It is, yet again, not the spoken word that governs the life of the characters, but the art of puppeteering: The madness lies in the hidden movements of the hand, the curious impulse and skill by which a person’s hand can make itself into the animating impulse, the intelligence or soul, of an inanimate object - it is an extension of that more basic wonder by which we can let this one part of our body become a separate, articulate whole, capable of surprising its owner with its movements, the stories it tells. (Gross 1) Whenever the author affirmingly ends a line with a full stop, the content of the sentence manifests itself in reality - and protagonist Harold experiences it (literally) first-hand. It is as if this punctuation mark is the final twitch in the metaphorical wires and strings that have an instant effect on the main character’s life. In Coetzee’s Slow Man, a typewriter is also a crucial connection between author Elizabeth Costello and her character Paul Rayment. On the first few pages, when Rayment is in an ambulance after a severe accident, drifting in and out of consciousness, Costello seems to be typing directly into Rayment’s mind. It is as if he assumes her point-of-view as she sits at her desk: Something is coming to him. A letter at a time, clack clack clack, a message is being typed on a rose-pink screen that trembles like water each time he blinks and is therefore quite likely his own inner eyelid. E-R-T-Y , say the letters, then F-R-I-V-O-L , then a trembling, then E , then Q-W-E-R-T-Y , on and on. (3) “ Q-W-E-R-T-Y ,” of course, is the exact sequence of letters found on an English keyboard - or, in Rayment’s words, on some sort of “occult” (19), “celestial typewriter” (123). Additionally the main character - like Malkovich - feels like something is inside of him: [“] I have always felt myself to be a ventriloquist’s dummy. It is not I who speak the language, it is the language that is spoken through me. It does not come from my core, mon coeur.” He hesitates, checks himself. I am hollow at the core, he was about to say - as I am sure you can hear. (198) “[Y]ou cannot even walk,” the author agrees. “[Y]ou are nothing but a lump of all too solid flesh” (ibid.). Slow Man and Stranger than Fiction are also strong examples for metalepses: the authors, Karen Eiffel and Elizabeth Costello, are in an extradiegetic setting, and from this position, they create fictional, hypodiegetic worlds which are inhabited by equally fictional characters, Har- <?page no="147"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 147 old and Rayment. Then, suddenly, the metaleptic conflict of logic happens. Harold hears the narrator’s voice, resulting in him contacting and ultimately visiting Karen. Rayment, too, catches a glimpse of his narrator’s storytelling, before he finally meets the author face to face. In Stranger than Fiction, however, as with Being John Malkovich, the metalepsis is not clear-cut - in the sense that we do not witness a literal physical transgression, nor does the film really elaborate on the crossing of the diegetic boundaries. Harold simply realises that he and his author live in the same world - and so he calls and meets her. He does not have to crawl out of a written page or a book to do this. He and Karen Eiffel are both humans, part of the same universe - and yet, at the same time, he is a fictional creation of hers. We never learn how this is possible. Both movies seem to hint at the possibility of a sort of same-level metalepsis. The environment remains the same, while simultaneously being a fictional backdrop for a story, as well as the actual world of the author. Yet the paradox act of real-world puppeteering makes it possible, that a metaleptic crossover can take place, and that reality mixes with fiction - on seemingly the same level. Slow Man is essentially another example of metalepsis, but a more straightforward one. Elizabeth Costello hints at the fact that here, indeed a physical transgression has taken place, that she has come from a world different to Rayment’s. This fact, however, is the source of other kind of problems and conflicts, which will be discussed later in this essay. For now, one can conclude that whether it is Craig Schwartz, Karen Eiffel, or Elizabeth Costello - and whether they manipulate their puppets with strings, hands, or words as means of direct control: With great power comes great responsibility. Puppeteer Craig clearly abuses his influence. Although married, he tries to impress his attractive co-worker Maxine who, however, is only attracted to him when he is inside Malkovich’s body. After a few failed attempts, Craig manages to remain inside for an endless period of time. “It’s all about making friends with the Malkovich body,” he tells his lover with pride. “Rather than thinking of it as an enemy that has to be pounded into submission, I begun imagining it as a really expensive suit that I enjoy wearing.” Even though one links the notion of total auctorial control to the art of puppetry, the professionals of the trade argue that the relationship between the puppet and its puppeteer is not as clear-cut, as one of them, John Bell, wrote: Puppeteers are often asked, “Oh, don’t you love Being John Malkovich? ” [. . .] This has nothing to do with real puppetry, and is instead a misdirected metaphor about puppets: the idea that the goal of puppet performance is complete control of the object. Nothing could be further from the truth. <?page no="148"?> 148 Roberta Hofer [. . . P]uppeteers again and again describe a process of figuring out “what the puppet wants to do.” (17) Bell stresses a certain “lack of control” inherent to the trade. A lack, that is, which makes puppeteering interesting as well as challenging. What Bell also expresses is the idea that puppeteering is a constant “give-andtake” (ibidem), resulting in a special kind of interdependency. Similarly, Gross refers to puppeteering as “the hand’s power and pleasure in giving itself over to the demands of the object” (1). Puppeteering, to him, is like the symbiosis of a soul and a body - a beneficial cooperation for both parties. When Craig first starts his act of human puppetry, he seems to adhere to this rule. His intentions are, nevertheless, deeply manipulative from the very start. Not unlike a virus, he settles in carefully, so as not to be attacked and rejected by Malkovich’s “immune system” - namely his consciousness. During these first “occupations,” Malkovich does not sense the invader. Soon, however, his routine of playing Malkovich becomes the very opposite of the gentle, equal relationship of perfect puppeteering. Indeed, the process feels incredibly brutal and violent to the abused victim. When briefly regaining consciousness, John Malkovich exclaims in horror: “I was so freaked out [. . .] Somebody was just moving all the way through me. Moving my arms, moving my hands, talking for me [. . .] Someone was talking through my mouth! ” He consequently tries to fight the invader, and so Craig, while puppeteering him, has regular “fits” of Malkovich trying to come through - but to no avail. Malkovich remains trapped, and Craig only comments on the actor’s rebellious efforts by referring to him as a “selfish bastard,” claiming the body for himself, not intending to ever give it back to its real owner. One can, at this point, hardly ignore that acting and actors themselves are often linked to the idea of marionettes, and have been for a long time (cf. Rosenberg and Olf). Actors, to put it simply, could be seen as human puppets. They are, after all, put into a costume and onto a stage or a film set, and utilised to play out a story that is usually not their own. They not only play a character, but - to a certain extent - become a character. Like Craig Schwartz can simultaneously be the puppeteer, as well as (at least physically) the puppet, actors take on two identities at the same time. Of course, there is nothing metaleptic about this practice, as, according to Werner Wolf’s definition, the paradox element is missing. They simply do their job. In doing so, however, actors adopt an almost puppet-like quality: They behave how the director of the play or movie wants them to, and, like a ventriloquist’s dummy, speak the words the playwright or screenwriter puts into their mouth. Indeed, there are many accounts of actors taking on this kind of passive <?page no="149"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 149 role - or rather: being forced into it. Austrian filmmaker Fritz Lang, for instance, was notorious for exercising a despotic kind of control over his actors, using them like puppets, controlling and dictating their every move, and every gesture (Lang X, also cf. Drux 11). In Being John Malkovich, the actor loses all his power and freedom to the puppeteer, his new, personal director, his narrator, so to speak. After playing him for a while, Craig decides to change Malkovich’s career, quit acting, and turn him into a puppeteer as well. In a TV special, we see a fictional People magazine cover, showing the converted superstar John Malkovich, and quoting him as stating: “I will act no more.” Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth, as he essentially becomes a permanent actor in his own life. This aspect is especially noteworthy, when one considers that after all, the real actor John Malkovich had also been casted to play his movie-self, as imagined by the film’s screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. The metaphor, so to speak, extends into the real world - and thus ultimately concerns the cast of the film as much as the plot itself. When comparing acting and puppeteering, a notable name is Edward Gordon Craig, a celebrated English puppeteer from the early decades of the twentieth century. The fact that the puppeteer in Being John Malkovich has the same name is no coincidence - as the real and the fictional Craig have many things in common. Craig, indeed, saw the similarities between actors and puppets, but did not put them on even levels, as director Fritz Lang would have. In Craig’s opinion, humans lacked important qualities, which only puppets could offer. In his controversial 1907 manifesto “The Actor and the Über-Marionette” he demands: Do away with the actor and you do away with the means by which a debased stage-realism is produced and flourishes. No longer would there be a living figure to confuse us into connecting actuality and art; no longer a living figure in which the weakness and tremor of the flesh were perceptible. The actor must go, and in his place comes the inanimate figure - the Über- Marionette. (159) Craig suggests eliminating real actors all together, replacing them with the puppet instead, and calling it a “faithful medium for the beautiful thoughts of the artist,” which enables total control and reliability. He was convinced that only a marionette could be the ideal actor, never inappropriate, never emotional, never physically limited - a perfect vessel for the director’s phantasy. The German poet Heinrich von Kleist explored very similar ideas in his 1810 essay “Über das Marionettentheater” (“On the Marionette Theater”): The narrator meets a ballet dancer who he has often seen in the audience of a marionette play. Grace, the <?page no="150"?> 150 Roberta Hofer dancer explains, “appears most pure in the sort of body which either has no consciousness at all, or infinite consciousness, i.e. the puppet, or God.” 2 Interestingly, also the German medical author Justinus Kerner shared some of Craig’s thoughts. He, however, despite being a medical doctor, saw the puppets’ biggest potential in their paradoxical naturalness: “It is strange, but to me, marionettes seem a lot more effortless, more natural than live actors. They manage to deceive me better […] Marionettes [. . .] do not have a life outside the theatre” 3 (Güntter 232; cited in Taube 122). Fellow contemporary puppeteer Joan Baixas seconds this notion: Puppets, he confirms, ultimately are “the imaginary incarnate, in bodily form.” In the movie, Craig Schwartz fully realises what his namesake only dared to dream about: by gaining literal physical control over Malkovich, he manages to “do away” with him, imprisoning him inside his own body, and replacing him with a life-sized Über-Marionette. No longer is the actor able to express his emotions - which is not a bad thing in David Mamet’s view, a contemporary playwright, director, and acting teacher: Nothing in the world is less interesting than an actor on the stage involved in his or her own emotions. [. . . O]pen the mouth, stand straight, and say the words bravely - adding nothing, denying nothing and without the intent to manipulate anyone . . .” (24) “. . . but be manipulated instead,” one wants to add - according to the wishes of her or his director, author, narrator, keeping still, a voiceless dummy. Craig Schwarz has succeeded in implementing this wish and the vision has become reality. In Stranger than Fiction, author Karen Eiffel handles her character a little more gently, never intending to follow Edward Gordon Craig’s suggestion. At first, the level of control seems minor. Harold wakes up one day, to hear a voice commenting everything he does. He does find it very off-putting, but not yet frightening: “The voice isn’t telling me to do anything,” Harold confesses to his psychiatrist. “It’s telling me what I’ve already done. [. . .] I’m somehow involved in some sort of story. Like I’m a character in my own life.” Soon, however, it dawns on him 2 My translation. The original reads: “. . . in demjenigen menschlichen Körperbau am reinsten erscheint, der entweder gar keins, oder ein unendliches Bewußtsein hat, d. h. in dem Gliedermann, oder in dem Gott.” 3 My translation. The original reads: “Es ist sonderbar, aber mir wenigstens, kommen die Marionetten viel ungezwungener, viel natürlicher vor als lebende Schauspieler. Sie vermögen mich viel mehr zu täuschen. [. . .] Die Marionetten [. . .] haben kein außertheatralisches Leben.” <?page no="151"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 151 that the outcome might not be a positive one. As he resets his watch, resulting in the time being slightly off, he can hear the narrator comment that “this simple, seemingly innocuous, act would result in his imminent death.” Harold, now panic-stricken, asks a professor of literature for help, who, however, recommends him to “do nothing.” Total apathy, he reckons, could stop the plot from developing, as Harold will not do anything to move the story forward. The plan, however, fails miserably, and a giant bulldozer “accidentally” starts demolishing his apartment. “Harold,” the professor concludes drily, “you don’t control your fate.” Coetzee’s Slow Man, brings similarly bitter realisations for main character Paul Rayment, who furiously confronts the author, Elizabeth Costello: “You treat me like a puppet,” he complains. “You treat everyone like a puppet. You make up stories and bully us into playing them out for you. You should open a puppet theatre, or a zoo. [. . .] Rows and rows of cages holding the people who have, as you put it, come to you in the course of your career as a liar and fabulator. . .” (117) Although, in contrast to Harold, he is not quite able to put his finger on it, Rayment feels “hollow at the core,” as already mentioned (198). Something essential is lacking - and he is convinced that the author holds this missing piece. Rayment is outraged by the idea that another human being might have such a strong influence on him. He begs the author to release him from her control, which seems to have him dangling from her strings: “Drop me, I beseech you,” he pleas. “[L]et me get on with my life” (ibidem). The solution, however, seems to be more complicated than this. “‘If I left you alone,” the author replies “[. . .‘] what would become of you? ’” Indeed, this is the very question that haunts all human marionettes as they try to struggle free from their oppressors, fighting against their status as mere “Über-Marionettes,” and reclaiming their independence. At one point in each story, the roles are reversed, and the power is shifted. Malkovich, as discussed earlier, has little luck with breaking free from Craig’s control - as much and as desperately as he tries to. At the same time, however, Craig himself becomes somewhat of a marionette, at least metaphorically (and not in the extreme, metaleptic way as Malkovich became one). In countless scenes, we see Craig playing with a miniature-puppet of himself: In the opening sequence, he puts on an emotional dance with his puppet. As the story unfolds, he uses marionettes to act out his desires for Maxine. Later on in the film, when Craig is already controlling Malkovich, we see the former actor (now puppet- <?page no="152"?> 152 Roberta Hofer eer) manoeuvre a large, life-sized puppet replica of Craig - an “Über- Marionette” by Edward Gordon Craig standards. He moves it on a large stage, acting out dramatic moves as he makes it interact with real ballet dancers. Eileen Blumenthal notes that, indeed, a fairly popular current phenomenon in modern puppet theatre is “teasing the audience into guessing and second-guessing which actors are really alive [and which are fake]” (80). Later, he does a similar thing on a smaller scale, as he plays a small Craig-puppet, which in turn holds a Malkovich-puppet: The puppeteer plays the actor who plays the puppeteer who plays the actor, so to speak. In this very scene, the intricate mise en abyme structure of the story really becomes visible. Roles are duplicated, reversed, mirrored and twisted. At this point, it is very clear that Malkovich is not the only one that is under foreign control, as it is really Craig’s love interest Maxine who is in charge. She forces him to stay inside Malkovich’s body because only then can she love him. When Craig, the parasite, has made Malkovich a famous puppeteer himself, we see a documentary about Malkovich’s surprising new choice of career. A large amount of airtime is dedicated to Maxine, now pregnant with his child and called “the woman behind the man.” - “Pulling the strings,” one wants to add. Craig becomes a metaphorical puppet himself, driven by her will - and ultimately, also by the obsession of “[b]eing John Malkovich” in order to please her. In the end, however, the story takes a puzzling turn: a large group of elderly people, the boss of which is the owner of Craig’s company, want to enter Malkovich, hoping to gain eternal life by using the younger body as a vessel. As long as Craig occupies the puppet, they will only get deported into Malkovich’s subconscious, so they trick him into thinking they will kill Maxine if he does not leave. Indeed, this works - and Craig gives in and exits. When the movie ends seven years later, Maxine’s child has grown up, and as she sits and watches her mother, we see the scene from the girl’s eyes. In the background, Craig’s voice desperately calls: “Maxine, Maxine, I love you, Maxine. Oh, look away. Look away. . .” It seems, Craig has entered the secret door again - only to be now forever trapped in the child’s head, suffering eternally, as he can only watch, but not interfere and puppeteer anymore. In a similar way, Harold, the puppet in Stranger than Fiction, tries to struggle free from the author’s influence. Blumenthal refers to this phenomenon as “puppet mutiny” (80): “Puppet insurrectionists,” she writes, can “even assault their handler” - often even leading to the staged death of the puppeteer (83) - a notion which conjures up the image of Frankenstein and other homunculi. In the film, the character’s intervention takes place to prevent death - if not that of the puppet master, then his very own. Once he has learned that he is destined to <?page no="153"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 153 die, Harold visits Karen and forces her to change the ending: “Now, since we’ve met and you can see that I exist,” he asks, “you’re not gonna kill me, right? ” The author, however, hesitates, as she has already written an outline, which Harold gives to the professor to read. The expert’s conclusion is simple: “You have to die [. . .] it’s a masterpiece.” Harold, shocked but also encouraged, now dares to read about his own death, resulting from being hit by a bus when he is saving a child. Author Karen Eiffel, on the other hand, is in a serious crisis. “How many people, do you think, I have killed? ” she asks her assistant in tears. She decides against the continuation of the book, but Harold visits to give his consent. By now, the roles have clearly been reversed, the puppet has emancipated itself. It is now the main character who writes the plot, deciding that (and how) the story should end, and the author only unwillingly giving in. Indeed, Harold lives his last remaining days very consciously. The knowledge of his time and manner of death empowers him, enabling him to do many things he had always wanted to do. Karen, on the other hand, suffers tremendously. As she puts down the final words, rendering him dead on the paper, she breaks down crying. A close up shows that she has typed “Harold Crick was de” - the rest is still missing. As it turns out later, Karen decides not to kill Harold after all: He is badly injured, but survives. Karen even rewrites the rest of the book to fit with the new ending. “I just realized I couldn’t do it,” she concludes. “It’s a book about a man who doesn’t know he’s about to die.” Consequently of course, learning about his fate had changed this whole idea. Harold had turned from the unsuspecting, helpless puppet into an enlightened, independent, and, most importantly, real character. And this is what irked Karen: “[I]f the man does know he’s going to die, and dies anyway, dies willingly, knowing he could stop it, then. . . I mean, isn’t that the type of man you’d want to keep alive,” she wonders. Originally having set out to end her book like all her others, with the death of the main protagonist, she changes her mind and reverses the roles. Ultimately, it is Harold and his involvement that decide the story’s ending, Karen is only the marionette that types the words. Coetzee’s book also shifts the attention from the despair of the helpless, puppet-like main character to the seemingly equally desperate author. As Paul Rayment asks Elizabeth Costello to leave him alone, her answer reveals her as a very insecure writer, at the end of her tether: I myself am not exactly rejoicing, I assure you [. . .] the sooner you settle on a course of action and commit yourself to it, the sooner you and I, to our mutual relief, will be able to part. What that course of action should consist in I cannot advise, that must come from you. If I knew what came next there would be no need for me to be here, I could go back to my own life <?page no="154"?> 154 Roberta Hofer [. . .] But until you choose to act I must wait upon you. You are, as the saying has it, your own man. (136) These, indeed, are strange words to come out of the mouth of the inventor of the storyline. One would, naturally, assume that she has it all figured out, knows the plot, and is in charge. From the above example, however, it is clear that the author is actually very dependent on her “puppet.” While Harold was not, at first, expected to influence the development of the storyline, Rayment has to. It appears that the lack of ideas and progression have drawn the author into the fictional world or diegesis; an environment, however, which Elizabeth Costello does not seem to be made for, as she gets weaker by the day: “The tiredness I refer to has become part of my being. [. . .] I feel, to use Homer’s word, unstrung. A word with which you are familiar, I seem to remember. No more tensile strength,” she complains (160). Her choice of words is, of course, strongly reminiscent of puppeteering. Costello is like a limb marionette, unstrung from any kind of controlling device that could help her gain back movement and vitality. The ends of the strings are connected in a dependency of life and death, and with such entanglement it is hard to tell who the puppet is, and who the puppeteer, author and protagonist: “For me alone,” the writer states, “Paul Rayment was born, and I for him. His is the power of leading, mine of following; his of acting, mine of writing [. . .]” (233). In the very end, Rayment decides to abandon Costello, finishing the plotline along different lines than she had imagined. In a way, this final act almost gives her back her independence, her ability to decide her fate as the puppeteer of her own life. “[‘W]hat am I going to do without you? ’” the author asks anxiously, and Rayment answers: “That is up to you, Elizabeth” (263). As all these examples show, human puppets and puppeteers bring an interesting potential for different conflicts into the old theatrical art. While lifeless marionettes are literally just objects on a string, gaining all their lifelikeness from the puppeteer’s manipulation, the story becomes clearly a very different one when playing and controlling people. Firstly, the biggest source of struggle lies in the suppression of the individual. While actual puppeteers insist that a successful performance is based on a sort of “negotiation” with the marionette, and characters like Karen Eiffel or Elizabeth Costello seem to be at least partly able to follow this rule, figures like Craig Schwartz opt for a very totalitarian approach. Schwartz does, indeed, fully realise his (real-life) namesake’s fantasy of the “Über-Marionette,” by eventually replacing the actor with a malleable version of Malkovich. <?page no="155"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 155 Secondly, however, the maybe even bigger conflict lies in the puppets’ rebellion against their puppet player’s control, the “mutiny” (Blumenthal 80). Characters like Harold Crick and Paul Rayment regain their confidence, ultimately turning against their authors, cutting themselves free - or at least pleading for a change in the storyline. In the same vein, the once almighty puppet players can find themselves trapped, tied by invisible strings that, in many ways, the puppet seems to hold. In Craig Schwartz’s case, of course, the ultimate puppeteer is not Malkovich, but Maxine, who has taken complete control over her lover’s life. Thirdly, and probably most importantly, all of these examples put a strong focus on the main narratological concepts and paradoxes, concerning author(ship), narrators, characters, plotline, and point-of-view. While in the beginning of each story, these aspects are introduced in their conventional form, they soon become twisted and alienated. In Slow Man and Stranger than Fiction, both female protagonists seem to be both, the authors and the narrators of the plotline, only to gradually lose the influence that is connected to both of these statuses, as soon their main characters take over these roles, and with them control. In Being John Malkovich, Craig, the “author,” and simultaneously narrator, of the play redefines the common conception of “point-of-view,” when he can literally see the story unfold from Malkovich’s eyes, having physically become his main character - a paradox which is only possible through a physical, metaleptic crossover. As discussed, it is also metalepses that both create and solve the essential paradox of human puppeteering. In a novel form of this phenomenon, fictional characters are united with their puppet masters, in most cases, however, (apart from Slow Man) without stepping out of their diegetic worlds. Instead, the diegeses and extradiegeses inhabit the same setting, and, defying all logic, the invented protagonists share the same space as their extradiegetic creators. No clear-cut boundaries exist, no explicit transgression has taken place, and yet, the impossible becomes reality. One can definitely say that however different and varied these cases are, they do have one thing in common: Through the motif of “human puppeteering,” they both confirm as well as playfully apply the rules and relationships in puppet theatre to new fields and media such as film and literature, even narratology. In the end, the silky strings might be so twisted that no one can tell anymore for sure who the puppet is, and who the puppeteer. Never, however, are these strings without any tension. <?page no="156"?> 156 Roberta Hofer References Being John Malkovich. Dir. Spike Jonze. Perf. John Malkovich, John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, and Catherine Keener. 1999. Bell, John. “Playing with a lack of control.” The Puppet Show. Ed. Carin Kuoni and Ingrid Schaffner. Philadelphia: Institute of Contemporary Art and University of Pennsylvania, 2008. 17. Blumenthal, Eileen. Puppetry: A World History. New York: Abrams, 2005. Coetzee, John Maxwell. The Lives of Animals. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. . Elisabeth Costello: Eight Lessons. London: Secker and Warburg, 2003. . Slow Man. London: Random House UK Ltd., 2006. Collodi, Carlo: The Adventures of Pinocchio. New York: Random House, 1988. Craig, Edward Gordon. “The Actor and the Über-Marionette.” The Twentieth Century Performance Reader. Ed. Michael Huxley and Noel Witts. London: Routledge, 2002. 159-166. Drux, Rudolf. Marionette Mensch: ein Metaphernkomplex und sein Kontext von Hoffmann bis Büchner. Munich: Fink, 1986. Genette, Gérard: “Discours du récit: essai de méthode.” Figures III. Paris: Seuil, 1972. 65-282. Gross, Kenneth. Puppet. An Essay on Uncanny Life. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011. Güntter, Otto. “Zur schwäbischen Romantik. Zwei Briefe von Kerner an Uhland. Mitgeteilt von Otto Güntter.” Dichtung und Volkstum. Neue Folge des Euphorion. Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1979. 75-101. Hofer, Roberta. “Holographic Projections of the Cartoon Band ‘Gorillaz’ as a Means of Metalepsis.” Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Ed. Karin Kukkonen and Sonja Klimek. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011. 232- 251. Kleist, Heinrich: U ber Das Marionettentheater. Mainz: Eggebrecht-Presse, 1952. Lang, Fritz: Interviews. Ed. Barry Keith Grant. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Mamet, David: True and False. New York: Pantheon, 1997. McHale, Brian: Constructing Postmodernism. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Olf, Julian: “The Man/ Marionette Debate in Modern Theatre.” Educational Theatre Journal 26. 4 (December 1974). 488-494. Poyner, Jane. J. M. Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. <?page no="157"?> Power Struggles in Human Puppeteering 157 Rosenberg, Marvin: “Elizabethan Actors: Men or Marionettes? ” PMLA 69. 4 (September 1954). 915-927. Stranger Than Fiction. Dir. Marc Forster. Perf. Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Dustin Hoffman. 2006. Taube, Gerd. Puppenspiel als kulturhistorisches Phänomen: Vorstudien zu einer “Sozial- und Kulturgeschichte des Puppenspiels.” Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1995. The Godfather. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Perf. Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, and James Caan. 1972. The Truman Show. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Jim Carrey, Ed Harris, and Laura Linney. 1998. Wolf, Werner: “Metalepsis as a Transgeneric and Transmedial Phenomenon: A Case Study of ‘Exporting’ Narratological Concepts.” Narratology beyond Literary Criticism: Mediality, Disciplinarity. Ed. J. C. Meister. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005. 83-107. <?page no="159"?> Colors in Conflict: Light vs. Dark Reloaded; or, the Commodification of (Black) Beauty Simone Puff If we believe recent studies “biracial” has now become the new beauty ideal in the US. This move away from a “white” standard to one that better reflects the realities of a twenty-first century multi-racial America, however, only extends skin color privilege to the group that is closest to those being “white.” In other words, while there is a trend towards a broadening of beauty ideals, this does not necessarily imply that old standards vanish, merely that they become less obvious when they are perpetuated. This essay discusses conflicts of “Light vs. Dark” based on different shades of skin color among African Americans. Approaching a series of articles and advertisements in Ebony magazine from a critical discourse analysis viewpoint, I argue that the dichotomy between economic interests on the one hand and the magazine’s attempt to instill in its readers a positive sense of Blackness on the other hand makes for a complex set of (color) narratives. They are in constant conflict with each other, having their roots in the commodification of a racialized version of Black beauty that is still biased towards the lighter shades of brown skin. How you see yourself is through representation - how the world represents you. You want what you are shown, what is presented and promoted as privileged. - Heidi Safia Mirza 1 This past April People magazine declared songstress Beyoncé Knowles as the “Most Beautiful Woman in the World in 2012.” The cover image of 1 Qtd. in Bim Adewunmi, “The Many Shades of Racism.” Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 159- 176. <?page no="160"?> 160 Simone Puff the April 27 issue shows her wearing a snow white gown and sporting a blond straightened hairdo. Thus, Beyoncé - a light-skinned African American woman - emerges as an almost uncanny look-alike of German supermodel Heidi Klum. Ironically, Beyoncé not only resembles Klum in appearance, with both the dress and hair color accentuating her near-white skin, but she even wears the former model’s very own necklace that she allegedly borrowed for the photo shoot. In 22 years Beyoncé is only the second Black 2 woman awarded that title, and looking at light-skinned actress Halle Berry who made the list in 2003, it seems that the idea of beauty in the United States - and around the world - is inclusive of non-white models only in appearance; in actual fact, it is still a narrowly defined one. This “light is right” attitude that Black people are encouraged to internalize by the media and the American society at large leads to bitter color conflicts within the Black community. “Light vs. Dark” is as much an issue today as it was in the past, except that today an ever increasing multi-billion dollar cosmetics and beauty industry promises to offer cures to what is still presented as undesirable: dark skin (see Glenn). Even though the US likes to portray itself as “color-blind” and “postracial” in today’s day and age, certain shades of skin color still seem to be more valued than others. In this essay I elaborate on the conflicting discourses of skin color as seen in a discourse analysis of selected feature articles and advertisements from Ebony magazine, a general interest monthly targeted at African Americans. Based on a larger research project this paper looks at the commodification of (Black) female beauty that informs the discourse of skin color even in the twenty-first century. 3 2 I use the words Black and African American synonymously. While the term Black is capitalized when it refers to the racial group, the term white is intentionally spelled with a lower-case “w.” When used to refer to people, the label white has always been considered the human “norm,” and continues to be used for the group of people that is considered as having no race, as being unmarked, and as being attributed with all the power in majority-white Western societies (see, for example, Dyer 1-4). I intentionally want to draw the reader’s attention to that social imbalance by lower-casing the term. 3 The author would like to thank Dr Linda Carty and Dr Rennie Simson from the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York for valuable scholarly advice and feedback on this project. <?page no="161"?> Colors in Conflict 161 Colorism in Context: Which Black Is Beautiful? “If you’re light, you’re all right, if you’re black get back.” - The children’s rhyme that many African Americans recited while growing up was more often than not an early recognition of how they were perceived in the racist America they were raised in. Today, the meaning of this saying still has serious implications for Black people in the US, particularly for Black women. The US is still a society that continues to be dominated by “racial formation” (Omi and Winant) and the racialization of all of its non-white citizens. It also remains a society based on a patriarchal system of valuing women in terms of their beauty, which is seen as a valuable form of “social capital” (Hunter, Race, Gender 5). It comes as no surprise, then, that one such currency is light skin color. The Black body, as Charles W. Mills points out, has historically been considered intellectually, morally, and aesthetically inferior, because it does not comply to the “somatic norm” of the white body (61, 120). Moreover, Blackness long served as what Patricia Hill Collins calls a “badge of inferiority” (53). The celebration of white aesthetics thus implies the necessity to try and emulate the white body for all others who want to reach full personhood (Mills 120). Additionally, as Margaret L. Hunter argues, women’s bodies in general are “manipulable commodities objectified for male consumption” (“Light, Bright” 31). Consequently, it would be naïve to see beauty as simply in the eye of the beholder. Rather, beauty needs to be conceived as an ideological product which is clearly based on the conception of a white supremacist as well as a patriarchal society (ibid., 30). The internalization of white values was coined as colorism by novelist Alice Walker. As such it is a global phenomenon among people of color, but it is particularly prominent in the African American community, who, ever since the era of slavery, learned that lighter skin equals more privilege in the United States (see Myrdal, Sterner, and Rose; Drake and Cayton Jr.; Frazier). What Alice Walker called “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people” (290) is an age-old hierarchy and a form of racism based on skin color, hair texture, and other physical features within a racial or ethnic community. In this hierarchy light skin is seen as the standard of beauty, while dark skin is labeled as undesirable. Despite the obvious reference to skin color in the word colorism, the meaning of the term goes beyond someone’s complexion: “‘Color’,” as the sociologist Mark E. Hill emphasizes, “is used . . . to refer to physical traits commonly associated with racial ancestry such as skin tone, hair texture, and facial morphology“ (1,439). <?page no="162"?> 162 Simone Puff Preference for light skin and other facial features that are closer to European standards of beauty in white America has had long-lasting effects on communities of color. One such consequence is that those communities have come to internalize dominant standards of what race critic bell hooks calls the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (22). Despite all the progress that was made during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s and the subsequent “Black is Beautiful” movement, Black people, as hooks argues, “continue to be socialized via mass media and non-progressive educational systems to internalize white supremacist thoughts and values” (hooks 18; original emphasis). In other words, the popular 1960s slogan “Black is Beautiful” never took hold in the US society at large, and due to the pervasiveness of normative Eurocentric standards of beauty it quickly lost momentum in the Black community, too. Looking at some of the most successful “Black” American female celebrities today, the front of what sociologist Margaret Hunter calls the “beauty queue” (Race, Gender 69) is mostly occupied by women who look like Beyoncé Knowles, Mariah Carey, and Halle Berry. What these women have in common is not only their A-list celebrity status as singers, entertainers, and actresses, but also that all of them are light-skinned African American women. Coincidence or not, none of these Black female celebrities look anything like Kelly Rowland, India.Arie, or Gabrielle Union, who are all dark-skinned and display Afrocentric physical features. Coincidence or not, none of the latter three are as successful in the entertainment industry as their lighter-skinned counterparts. Taking into account findings from a 2011 study which proclaims the biracial look to be the new ideal (Harris, “Economies of Color” 4; Penrice) I argue that the slogan “light is right” still rings far more true than the affirmative folk saying “the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” Exceptions prove the rule, as the saying goes, but when examining, for example, America’s film and music industry, many of the Black female celebrities of the twenty-first century closely resemble the twentiethcentury trailblazers Lena Horne, Eartha Kitt, and Dorothy Dandridge (Russell, Wilson, and Hall 135-162). In the United States light skin has been - and in many instances continues to be - the “gold standard for beauty and desirability” (Harris, “From Color Line” 56), particularly for Black women. 4 This is true for 4 With Black male actors, the color issue is often reversed, as dark skin comes to stand for “virility, menace, or sexiness” (Russell, Wilson, and Hall 135), which are attributes often desired for Black men in the movies. <?page no="163"?> Colors in Conflict 163 real life 5 as much as for the media and is reflected in various media outlets on screen and “on the page.” While in the past the media was seen as a mirror held up to society, mass communication scholars today grant the media some agency in producing meaning, too. In other words, media outlets constitute and are themselves constitutive of social reality. This social reality is shaped by both editorial and advertising content alike, with the latter still reflecting the commodification of a narrowly defined white beauty ideal. The Beauty Myth, Advertising, and Ebony Magazine Historically, as Kevin L. Keenan maintains in a study of Black people in magazines, “[a]dvertising has been criticized as inherently racist” (907) - as well as sexist, as I would add here. This is reflected not only in the models that are chosen but also in the products that are advertised. Over-featuring light-skinned (and white) models and excessively advertising beauty products that promote light skin and straight hair are common. Such practices send one clear message to Black consumers, above all, Black women: being light and bright is acceptable and desired, while being black and brown is not. The possibility to reap what can be called light skin privilege thus causes many Black women to try and approximate this light-skinned beauty ideal. “Blinded” by the white, so to speak, consumers are encouraged to buy into America’s white-controlled beauty myth that even Black-oriented magazines cannot fully escape. 6 Advertisements of beauty products targeted at Black women in monthly consumer magazines like Ebony use emotional messages to pretend “that intangibles like love, popularity, and beauty themselves could be bought” (Susannah Walker 6). Because African American beauty culture has always been influenced by a white commercialized beauty standard, ads for skin bleaching products, for example, relate “light skin with femininity, beauty, and romantic success” (109). Studies of such cosmetics ads trace the development from overtly devaluing “the dark, ugly tones of the skin” like a Nadinola skin bleaching ad from the 1920s suggested (qtd. in Susannah Walker 38), to more covert language that portrayed light skin as the desired ideal. This is expressed by, for example, referring to Black men’s preferences in women, who - according to 5 Attesting to this fact is the 2012 documentary Dark Girls, an independent production that features numerous testimonials of dark-complexioned African American women who tell their stories of yearning for light skin. 6 I borrow the term “beauty myth” from Naomi Wolf’s book by the same title. <?page no="164"?> 164 Simone Puff ads from the 1950s and 60s - would “notice and admire girls with clear, bright, Nadinola-light complexions” (ibid. 109). In its early years Ebony, an African American consumer monthly first published in 1945, was known for having openly adhered to traditional (white) notions of American beauty by favoring light-skinned models on its covers and elsewhere. Additionally, it printed decidedly anti-Black advertisements for skin bleaching products that promised a better life to consumers who could get rid of, for example, “dull, dark, drab skin” (“Black and White Bleaching Cream,” Ebony, August 1961, 94). Confirming this practice, Washington Post correspondent Eugene Robinson remembers that “[t]he black-oriented magazines that came to our house, Ebony and Jet, were full of ads for ‘miracle’ creams that would lighten your skin” (112). Several advertising campaign series that ran in Ebony in the late 1950s and early 1960s even played with the pervasive belief that Black men would find light(er) skin more attractive in Black women. In one blackand-white ad of the series, a woman receives flowers from her love interest, replete with his note saying “I want these roses to see how lovely you are.” The ad then assures the reader that “Wonderful things happen when your complexion is clear, bright, Nadinola-light,” while the text of the ad’s body encourages its female readers like this: “Don’t let a dull, dark complexion deprive you of popularity. . . . Chase away those badcomplexion blues with Nadinola Bleaching Cream” (Ebony, November 1959, 24). In another full-page (and full-color) ad, a light-skinned woman looks playfully up in the air while the Black man next to her seems to whisper something in her ear. This image is paired with the slogan “Life is more fun when your complexion is clear, bright, Nadinola-light” (Ebony, January 1962, 13). And yet a final example suggests more popularity and sexual attractiveness for the Black woman using the bleaching cream: “Look how men flock around the girl with the clear, bright, Nadinola-light complexion” (Ebony, October 1961, 8). What merits attention when looking at all these ads is the decidedly white middle-class touch of the 1950s and 1960s, by showing women wearing pearl earrings and sporting well-maintained, “classic” (white) feminine hairdos. Conspicuous is that all models appear as very lightskinned, both in the black-and-white and in the full color ads, with almost no traces of “African” facial features. Their physical appearance makes them look racially ambiguous and - in a different context - suggests they could have just as well “passed” for white women. This calls to mind what Paul du Gay et al. wrote about representation in advertising in Doing Cultural Studies: <?page no="165"?> Colors in Conflict 165 [T]he language of advertising, and the ways it works by attaching meanings to identities, suggests that representation is not so much about reflecting the identities we already have as telling us what sorts of identities we can become - and how. (39; original emphasis) In the case of these Nadinola ads, the representation of Black women constructs them as having more success and status when they bleach their skin, by telling them how to adopt new identities, in other words how to become. A cultural shift in both journalistic and advertising content only came in the 1960s with the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. Since then Ebony has been firm in denying that it ever practiced a skin color hierarchy at all. Laura B. Randolph, one of the magazine’s columnists, even claimed that the magazine “was the first to celebrate the rainbow of our beauty” (“The Write Stuff” November 1995, 18L). This, however, was not expressed in the magazine until the late 1960s; before the beauty idea was, at best, one-sided and “lightened” (see Brown). Even from the 1960s onwards, the magazine has kept an ambiguous relationship to Black beauty, as is expressed in the continued practice to print advertisements for skin lightening creams. During the “Black is Beautiful” era the sales strategy for what were essentially the same products has been cleverly adapted. Nadinola, for example, started to advertise its skin bleaching products by commodifying the slogan “Black is Beautiful” as well as suggesting that women using the product could still love their “natural” complexion (Ultra Nadinola, Ebony, April 1971, 182). Other tactics were to use subliminal messages, such as the promise that Nadinola “fades away dark spots” (Ebony, August 1986, 132). In addition to these more subtle cues, products were in most cases no longer advertised as bleaching or skin lightening creams. Rather, euphemisms such as “fade creams” or “dark spot removers” have become part of the discourse in order not to offend a new group of customers who need to be convinced that they are not selling out to a white beauty standard but are merely enhancing their natural skin tones. As is implied by the word fade, two synonyms of which are “to grow pale,” and “to cause to lose colour,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the side effect may be a lighter hue of skin. This is, in and of itself, a pleasant consequence for many in a society that continues to adhere to a “light is right” mentality. <?page no="166"?> 166 Simone Puff Writing about Black Beauty: A Discursive Case Study Looking at specific articles and advertisements from Ebony magazine in each decade after the 1960s allows important insights into the discourses of skin color that shaped the representation (and commodification) of Black beauty. The 1970s, for example, were a decade in which “Black is Beautiful” aesthetics were still unapologetically celebrated. The outlook into the future, as expressed in the journalistic content of Ebony’s magazine articles on Black beauty, was positive, although progress was noted as happening only at a snail’s pace. The feature article, “Have Black Models Really Made It? ” (Rowan, May 1970), is a fitting example for the slow path to equality when it comes to beauty standards. In one paragraph the author mentions the fact that “blackness became a commodity” on Madison Avenue, but only at the threat of the advertising industry losing money if it failed to recognize Black purchasing power (160). The article also demonstrates that even though Black became a “fad” in America in the late 1960s, Black models in the 1970s were still faring worse financially than their white counterparts (153). The six-page feature story focuses mainly on the inroads Black models were making into what used to be a business celebrating ivory-white beauty. Along these lines, the relevance of different shades of Black skin is also briefly addressed. One model is described as having had difficulties in getting a job in the past because she was once considered “too dark.” Now, however, she is in high demand because those who are “very black and very kinky-headed” became en vogue with the advent of “Black is Beautiful.” By the same token, another model is quoted to have experienced problems (in the 1980s) due to her light skin color because she was no longer considered “Negro enough” (158). This, of course, was a by-product of changing social norms in the Black community. With that, mainstream America as well as some Black people started putting down African Americans of lighter hues. Essentially, some were no longer considered “Black enough” to represent the “Black race.” As Rowan concludes, “[s]uch ironies are a rather bitter truth for black models who range in skin color from café au lait to very black” (158). 7 In light of the analytical conclusion on the part of this Ebony writer it is quite incongruous that on the page before the article as well as on its last page readers find ads for bleaching creams. The full-page color ad 7 Over the years, Ebony has repeatedly returned to the topic of Black models. As Constance C. R. White aptly professes in her feature on Black models in September 2008, “[m]odels are an ideal. They are standard-bearers of what a society considers beautiful, attractive or acceptable” (100). Taking this argument a step further, models and beauty queens can be seen as the litmus test for Black beauty and racial progress in America. <?page no="167"?> Colors in Conflict 167 for “Ultra Bleach and Glow Skin Tone Cream” (May 1970, 151) shows the face of a racially ambiguous woman with an immaculate clear and light complexion. A few pages later, a quarter-page ad for Dr. Fred Palmer’s “Ultra Bleach and Tone Cream” also features a light-skinned woman with the ad’s slogan promising the user “brighter, clearer skin” (160). Such dichotomies are common and demonstrate that advertising content continues to reproduce some of the dominant structures that seem to have already been overcome in the editorial content sections of the magazine. While the feature story on Black models in the 1970s specifically dealt with the perception of models, some articles in Ebony at that time also focused on the “everyday” concept of “Black beauty.” One example is Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s “What is Black Beauty? ” that was first published in November 1980 and later reprinted in June 1984 in the wake of the controversy over light-skinned model Vanessa Williams becoming the first Black Miss America. Bennett starts out with an epigraph by W. E. B. Du Bois in which the scholar praises the beauty of Black women (159). This intertextual reference to one of the most prominent African American intellectuals of the twentieth century is extended later in the text when Bennett cites a lengthy fictional dialogue about Black beauty from Du Bois’s essay “Dusk of Dawn” (160-161). Together with the closing quote of the article by the ancient Queen of Sheba - “I am black and comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem . . .” (161, original emphasis) - it seems as if Bennett wanted to “evoke” Black ancestors from the past, to show Ebony’s readers that Black female beauty has always been celebrated all over the world. This impression is intensified, on the one hand, by the image on the first page of the article, which is a reprint of the artist Charles White’s charcoal drawing, “Negro Woman.” This black-and-white drawing of almost a dozen Black women, many with decidedly African facial features and textured hair, was originally used to illustrate the cover of an Ebony special issue on “The Negro Woman” in August 1966. On the other hand, Bennett starts his feature story with a personal account of meeting a Nigerian soldier at an arts festival in Lagos, Nigeria. As Bennett writes, the soldier was exhilarated at the sight of African American women whom he considered to be “the most beautiful women in the world” (159). The Nigerian’s account is used in contrast to the view of “many White Americans, and unfortunately, some Black Americans who find it difficult to give Black beauty its due” (159). This, effectively, gets Bennett into the topic of his article, which demonstrates progress but also some remaining ambivalence towards the meanings of Black beauty. Bennett continues by juxtaposing results from a nation-wide survey by Kenneth and Mamie Clark (“What Do Blacks Think of Them- <?page no="168"?> 168 Simone Puff selves? ”) 8 with a readers’ poll that invited Ebony readers to nominate everyday Black women for the title “Most Beautiful” (“Ten Most Beautiful Black Women”). The women selected in the poll “represent all shades,” according to the lead text (163). Taking this as his main argument for progress, Bennett, in his own article, comes to six conclusions that read like a paean to Black beauty. One of his core messages is that “Black beauty cannot, should not, and must not be appraised by alien standards” (160). Furthermore, he promotes a strong sense of inclusiveness, employs the metaphor of Black beauty being like a rainbow, and evidently embraces the necessity to celebrate all shades of skin color: “There are many mansions in the house of Black beauty, and they are all lovely, and Black” (161). 9 By heralding all these “mansions,” race unity is clearly emphasized. This seems to be an overt attempt to counter post-1960s views that some shades of “Black” were better than others. Concurrently, pre-1960s standards of “light is right” are suggested to be equally passé. Bennett’s prime example is Lena Horne, who was long regarded as the epitome of Black female beauty. She is now seen - according to the writer - as “one segment of the Black continuum” (161), not more and not less. Bennett also stresses that Black beauty needs to be defined by both external as well as internal factors and heralds the magazine’s readers for whom Black beauty is “not a purely ornamental concept” (161). He concludes with the remark that this inclusiveness, which is in the “soul of the Black beholder,” would also be the “standpoint of Ebony,” praising the magazine for seeing that “every Black woman is beautiful in her own way” (161). Despite the fact that, in the early 1980s, Ebony might have been accepting a greater range of skin color than before the call for “Black is Beautiful,” white America did not necessarily agree. This becomes transparent in the controversy around the election of Vanessa Williams as the first Black Miss America. In the cover story of December 1983, which celebrated this milestone in Black history, Lynn Norment cites the psychiatrist Alvin F. Poussaint who maintains that, “[u]ntil you get a Miss America with Negro features, I don’t think you can say color was irrelevant to her selection” (133). Vanessa Williams’s crowning as Miss America became an important media event in the discourse of skin color in Ebony that year. An extended discussion among Ebony readers 8 Kenneth and Mamie Clark were two well-known psychologists whose doll tests had become iconic in the context of the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. The 1980 survey was commissioned for Ebony by the magazine’s founder and publisher John H. Johnson. 9 This alludes to the Biblical passage “In my Father’s house are many mansions” (John 14: 2 King James Version). Bennett seems to suggest that not only are the different shades “lovely,” but they are also God-made and therefore good. <?page no="169"?> Colors in Conflict 169 and the general public provoked extensive further coverage. This started with a reprint of Bennett, Jr.’s 1980 feature story “What is Black Beauty? ” in Ebony’s June 1984 issue. In this case, the “raging dispute” (48) over Black beauty standards, as it was called in the reprinted version of the article, had a lasting effect on the discourse of skin color. This is shown in many follow-up articles on Black beauty and the significance of different shades of skin color. As the June 1984 reprint of Bennett’s article explained, the fact that it seemed that Williams’s election was based on externally defined white beauty standards led to an intra-racial dispute. Some African Americans even claimed that the only reason Williams won was because of her near-Caucasian looks. Ironically, the very same issue of Ebony confirms this view - although perhaps inadvertently. An ad for a “fade cream,” which features a light-skinned woman and promises that “[n]othing else . . . does the job of fading the way Palmer’s Skin Success Cream does,” supports the notion that beauty is, indeed, still defined by external non-Black standards (22; my emphasis). In the 1990s, based on the articles in Ebony, standards of Black beauty were expanding to also include women of color in mainstream America. Lynn Norment’s article “Black Beauty is In” (September 1990) emphasizes that it is not just one type, but “various shades of brownblack skin” complete with full lips and sometimes short-cropped hair that could make it in the model and fashion industry (25). Even so, the same magazine issue once again contains advertisements for bleaching creams. Among these is an ad for Vantex Skin Bleaching Creme (94) distributed by Fashion Fair Cosmetics. This is a division of Johnson Publications that was founded in 1973 by John H. Johnson’s wife Eunice W. Johnson (“Fashion Fair Cosmetics,” November 1992, 71). The fact that the Johnson Publishing Company is a stakeholder in a company which sells beauty products to Black women - including skin lightening products - makes for an interesting conflict of interest. Until today, Fashion Fair Cosmetics promotes and sells this specific skin bleaching cream, which was once described as one of Fashion Fair’s “most popular products” (“Fashion Fair Cosmetics” 74). It was advertised in full-page color ads in Ebony until the mid-2000s. 10 Even more striking is that after that time, it remained a part of the editorial content in Ebony’s beauty sections. In October 2008, among other products, it was listed in the magazine’s beauty section to help improve one’s complexion (“On the Spot”, 65), and in September 2009 it was ranked as the number one product in a list of “Black Beauty Bests” (112). It remains an inherent contradiction that throughout the years of promoting Black 10 It seems as if the last time a full-page ad for Vantex ran in Ebony was in December 2006 (131). <?page no="170"?> 170 Simone Puff beauty in all its shades Ebony continued the advertising of a bleaching cream that would only promote a light-skinned version of Black beauty. Black beauty continued to be covered in Ebony in the 2000s, both on an “external” or physical level as well as on an “internal” or spiritual and cultural level. The former category mainly includes covering Black models and the beauty industry. The article “The Business of Black Beauty” (Welteroth, September 2009), for instance, discusses the variety of products that are now available: “Black women are overwhelmed by marketers competing for our dollars. Whether dark-chocolate or tawny-hued, relaxed, natural or weaved, today, Sisters have options in the beauty aisle” (110). It is this availability of options that is presented as a sign of racial progress, yet the aforementioned contradictions with regard to skin bleaching creams remain. A good example for beauty from “within” is the September 2007 column “Two Sides,” in which two young Black women relate their personal understandings of Black beauty (“Is Black Still Beautiful? ”). One of them is Kiri Davis, who directed the award-winning short documentary A Girl Like Me (2007). Her key argument in the opinion piece is that beauty is cultural and defined by Black people’s “distinctive and unique roots” (Ebony, September 2007, 233). Thus, Black beauty mainly comes from accepting oneself from within and from refusing to take someone else’s standards for one’s own. This is not always that easy, particularly because mainstream American society still continues to define the standards of beauty. While there is clearly more diversity than in the past, some standards have not changed in four decades. An example of this is the story of a Black model from the popular television show America’s Next Top Model in the feature article “Black Out: What Has Happened to the Black Models? ” (September 2008). As Ebony editor Constance C. R. White records, a hairstylist favorably commented on a hair-straightening job of a Black model on the show by saying to her, “[n]ow you look beautiful because you really had nappy hair” (100). Such comments, even in light of the recent “Afro-Renaissance,” which involves more Black women in the public sphere going “natural,” speak to the fact that Black women’s looks are still often measured against a white-defined gold standard. It is thus not surprising that until this day, ads for chemical hair relaxers and skin bleaching creams - although less frequent than in the past - are still promoted through the advertising pages of Ebony. In spite of the magazine’s attempt in the editorial sections to endorse a unique standard of Black beauty that is based on self-definition, throughout the time period studied there is almost no critical discussion of skin lightening creams. This is conspicuous in light of the fact that excessive skin bleaching has harmful side effects, and products sold in <?page no="171"?> Colors in Conflict 171 neighborhood stores and on the Internet often contain toxic ingredients such as mercury, steroids, and the lightening agent hydroquinone (Downie, Cook-Bolden, and Nevins Taylor; Hunter, Race Gender). 11 There are likely several reasons for largely neglecting the discourse strand of health as a physiological aspect of the complexion discourse. For one, it can be assumed that Ebony’s parent publishing house Johnson Publications’ interest in increasing the profits of one of its own businesses is a contributing factor. It follows, then, that the magazine’s dependency on advertising revenue from other cosmetic companies might prevent an honest discussion of, for example, health risks associated with bleaching. These advertising companies might see such criticism as a direct attack on their clients’ products, and consider suspending their advertising in the magazine. Another, yet unrelated, reason could be that skin bleaching became even more of a taboo issue with the call for “Black is Beautiful,” for it entirely contradicts what was suddenly seen as a progressive Black aesthetic based on loving one’s natural Black self. It seems plausible that Ebony wanted to be careful not to offend its readers by criticizing what, for some, was an entirely personal and, for others, a deeply politically-charged issue. For these reasons, criticism of skin bleaching is simply in the realm of the “not sayable” in the discourse of skin color (see Foucault 51). The concepts of the “sayable” and the “not sayable” show the “blind spots” of certain discourses, in other words, the things that are not addressed. In addition, certain power structures are exposed, among these the gate-keeping function Ebony’s editorial board might have exercised. 12 Two likely reasons are the wish not to aggravate white corporate advertisers and consequently harm its own business on the one hand, and, on the other, the fear to broach issues that are considered too sensitive and socially undesirable among its readership. 11 Until the mid-1960s, skin bleaching creams were advertised as containing ammoniated mercury, which was - at that time - seen as the most “dependable bleaching ingredient,” as an ad for “Palmer’s Skin Success Bleach Cream” promised in Ebony (May 1963, 100). Hydroquinone is still advertised as an ingredient in “fade creams” like Ambi and Vantex, and this despite the fact that Ronald Hall describes the chemical as possibly carcinogenic according to some scientists. It is banned in the European Union, Japan, and Australia but approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States. Every few months, or so it seems, the FDA issues a warning against mercury and other toxic ingredients found in cosmetics. In March 2012, another such statement warned that women in at least seven states were found to have poisoned themselves by using toxic lightening creams, soaps, and lotions (Alexander). 12 Basically gate-keeping refers to “the process through which certain information passes a series of checkpoints (‘gates’) before being finally accepted as news material” (Fourie 76). <?page no="172"?> 172 Simone Puff It is more than just a little ironic that Ebony, the name of which stands for very black color, often featured light-skinned Black people on its early covers, and that some of its advertisements have continuously heralded light skin color as the epitome of beauty. To this day, skin lightening products are featured in the popular African American periodical, although to a lesser extent than in the past. Ebony, just like any other (Black) consumer magazine, operates in what Cornel West sees as the “ever-expanding market culture that puts everything and everyone up for sale” (xvi). Taking this as a prerequisite, Stuart Hall’s quote on popular culture - which the mass market magazine Ebony has certainly become a part of - offers useful insights as a conclusion to the previous analysis: [P]opular culture, commodified and stereotyped as it often is, is not at all, as we sometimes think of it, the arena where we find who we really are, the truth of our experience. It is an arena that is profoundly mythic. It is a theatre of popular desires, a theatre of popular fantasies. It is where we discover and play with the identifications of ourselves, where we are imagined, where we are represented, not only to the audiences out there who do not get the message, but to ourselves for the first time. (Hall 477; original emphasis) It is the idea of being imagined and represented based on popular desires and fantasies that should be stressed here. Evidently, what is desired is often colored - no pun intended - by what mainstream society dictates. A magazine like Ebony, which Michael Leslie once called an “advertising vehicle” (431) will, therefore, always find itself waging battles between “Light vs. Dark.” These dichotomous conflicts of color arise from an external societal desire for a white (or light-skinned) beauty ideal and a more internal desire of the magazine’s African American readership to appraise and celebrate Black beauty in all its shades. Ultimately, intra-racial color conflicts still exist in today’s society because beauty is still commodified along color lines and shades of skin. As long as Black women like Beyoncé Knowles and Halle Berry are the only ones to make it to the top of “Most Beautiful” lists in mainstream America, and as long as skin bleaching creams continue to be advertised to Black women in African American magazines, the battle between “Light vs. Dark” will continue to appear as a remake, both in Black America and in the US society at large. <?page no="173"?> Colors in Conflict 173 References Adewunmi, Bim. “The Many Shades of Racism.” The Guardian, 5 October 2011. 6-9. A Girl Like Me. Film Clip. Directed by Kiri Davis. Reel Works Teen Filmmaking. 2006. http: / / www.mediathatmattersfest.org/ films/ a_girl-_like_me/ (accessed 28 February 2011). Alexander, Brian. “Poisoned Lotion? ” FDA Warns of Mercury in Cosmetics.” NBC News. 6 March 2012. http: / / vitals.nbcnews.com- / _news/ 2012/ 03/ 06/ 10594705-poisoned-lotion-fda-warns-of-mercuryin-cosmetics (accessed 4 June 2012) Brown, Korey Bowers. 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Ebony Articles and Advertisements Bennett, Jr., Lerone. “What Is Black Beauty? ” Ebony, November 1980, 159-161. . “What Is Black Beauty? ” Ebony, June 1984, 44-50. “Black and White Bleaching Cream.” Advertisement. Ebony, August 1961, 94. “Black Beauty Bests.” Ebony, September 2009, 119. Clark, Kenneth B., and Mamie B. Clark. “What Do Blacks Think of Themselves? ” Ebony, November 1980, 176-182. Davis, Kiri, and Katherine van Heidrich. “Two Sides: Is Black Still Beautiful? ” Ebony, September 2007, 232-233. “Dr. Fred Palmer’s Ultra Bleach and Tone Cream.” Advertisement. Ebony, May 1970, 160. “Fashion Fair Cosmetics.” Ebony, November 1992, 70-74. “Nadinola Bleaching Cream.” Advertisement. “Life is more fun . . .” Ebony, January 1962, 13. . Advertisement. “Wonderful things happen . . .” Ebony, November 1959, 24. . Advertisement. “Look how men flock around . . .” Ebony, October 1961, 8. “Nadinola Skin Fade Cream.” Advertisement. “Beauty Begins with Your Skin.” Ebony, August 1986, 132. Norment, Lynn. “Black Beauty Is In.” Ebony, September 1990, 25-28. . “Here She Is . . . Miss America.” Ebony, December 1983, 132- 136. “On the Spot.” Ebony, October 2008, 65. “Palmer’s Skin Success Bleach Cream.” Advertisement. Ebony, May 1963, 100. <?page no="176"?> 176 Simone Puff “Palmer’s Skin Success Cream.” Advertisement. Ebony, June 1984, 22. Randolph, Laura B. “The Write Stuff.” Ebony, November 1995, 18L. Rowan, Carl T. “Have Black Models Really Made It? ” Ebony, May 1970, 152-160. “Ten Most Beautiful Black Women.” Ebony, November 1980, 163-168. “Ultra Bleach and Glow Skin Tone Cream.” Advertisement. Ebony, May 1970, 151. “Ultra Nadinola.” Advertisement. “Black is Beautiful.” Ebony, April 1971, 182. “Vantex Skin Bleaching Creme.” Advertisement. Ebony, September 1990, 94. . Advertisement. Ebony, December 2006, 131. Welteroth, Elaine. “The Business of Black Beauty.” Ebony, September 2009, 110. White, Constance C. R. “Black Out: What Has Happened to the Black Models? ” Ebony, September 2008, 98-100 <?page no="177"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole”: Locker- Room Dramas of Sexual Violence Against Males in Sports Ralph J. Poole Sexual abuse against boys and men in sports has rarely been studied, since the majority of harassed and assaulted victims indeed are female. There has been, nevertheless, substantial institutionalized violence against boys in school sports and sports teams, and colleges have a longstanding tradition of ritually hazing freshmen. Films like The Basketball Diaries and TV series like CSI and Blue Mountain State have picked up these traditions and practices, approaching this male-on-male violence from radically differing perspectives and formats however, reaching from fictionalized documentary to farcical comedy. This paper attempts to assess a double conflict that reflects the still largely tabooed topic of violence against males in both research and representation: based on reviewing the scant research on sexual violence against males from a historical and social perspective, the focus will be on examining the conflicting ways mainstream visual media have taken up the challenge to represent such undocumented and illicit violence. It was at a later time - and we shall tell how - that he realized the falsity of what he had blurted out one evening: “A male that fucks another male is a double male.” (Jean Genet) 1 1 The motto is taken from Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers (158), the latter part of which is also a quote in Scacco’s study Rape in Prison re-quoted in Segal’s Slow Motion (247). Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures. SPELL: Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29. Ed. Christina Ljungberg and Mario Klarer. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. 177- 198. <?page no="178"?> 178 Ralph J. Poole In 2010, the Gender Research Platform at Salzburg University felt the need to take up the recent abuse scandals in Austrian and German educational institutions, many of which being run by the Catholic Church. While large parts of the public and media seemed outraged and aghast due to the sheer number of cases of physical and sexual violence against mostly boys, it was our aim to move away from sensationalist journalism and look at our respective disciplines to reconsider what they had to say about such cases in terms of critical contributions and historical discourse. In the two-session workshop on “Sexuelle Gewalt gegen Kinder: Reflexionen aus der Perspektive der Gender Studies” ([Sexual Violence Against Children: Reflections from the Perspective of Gender Studies] 5 November and 17 December 2010), it was, for example, particularly enlightening to look at German reform pedagogy or scholarship of feminist theologians of the 1970s and ’80s. My own findings were quite disturbing for two reasons. First, as an Americanist, I could claim that such cases were far from being “new,” the American Catholic Church in particular being targeted already years ago, for example in Louisiana in 1985, Massachusetts and Indiana in 1992, Texas in 1993, and then resurfacing again with old and new instances regularly from 2002 onwards (“Timeline”). But then, as a literary scholar, I was astounded about the dearth of research on sexual abuse of boys or even on male-to-male sexual violence more generally. Within literary criticism, I was not able to find a single study, with the exception of bits and pieces on prison rape (see Wooden and Parker as well as reviews by Kaiser and Stannow on recent studies and statistics). Thus, I had to turn to social sciences to find some sound research, and it was three institutional fields being targeted that I could make out: the church, educational institutions (including religious schools but also detention centers), and sports, the latter of which I will concentrate on here. 2 Taking the Penn State scandal as recent and widely discussed case in point, I will then look at the some ways in which film, television and the internet represent sexual violence against boys within a sports setting. 2 In the paper given at the Salzburg conference, I addressed the filmic representation of sexual violence in a variety of settings, i.e. prison rape in Die Konsequenz (Germany, 1977, Wolfgang Petersen), Sleepers (USA, 1996, Barry Levinson), sexual abuse within a family context in Prince of Tides (USA, 1991, Barbra Streisand), Festen (Denmark, 1998, Thomas Vinterberg) and Postcard to Daddy (Germany, 2010, Michael Stock), and sexual harassment in Catholic schools in La Mala Educación (Spain, 2004, Petro Almodóvar) and Doubt (USA, 2008, John Patrick Shanley). <?page no="179"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 179 “Only the boys in the shower weren’t laughing.” Locker-Room Jokes at Penn State In April 2012, Sara Ganim was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for her coverage of the Penn State incidents that revolved around football coach Jerry Sandusky’s sexual assault of boys and the covering up of the impending scandal by university officials. The laudation read: “Awarded to Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff, Harrisburg, Penn., for courageously revealing and aptly covering the explosive Penn State sex scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky” (“The 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners”). Ganim, a crime reporter for The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was the first to take notice of the grand jury investigation in March 2012 against Sandusky (Ganim, “Jerry Sandusky”), and she was severely reprimanded by the public for doing so. 3 But even more to the point is her disclosure of the years of silencing allegations dating back first to 2009, when a 15year-old claimed inappropriate behavior of Sandusky over a period of four years, starting when the boy was 10. Not only had the grand jury meetings been going on for 18 months already, there was no reporting and Penn State continued to decline comment. In the course of the hearings, more and more victims showed up and it was revealed that Sandusky’s sexual assaults actually dated back to the early 1990s. The abusive activities included several incidents in Penn State locker rooms and showers, which he used in his function as founder and organizer of the charity for disadvantaged boys, Second Mile. Amongst other disclosed offenses, Sandusky performed oral sex on a boy between the ages of 11 and 13 (Fall 2000, witnessed and related to university officials by a janitor without ever resulting in an official report) and subjected a boy about 10 years old to anal intercourse (March 2002, witnessed by a graduate assistant who reported to university officials, but was never questioned by police until testifying in the grand jury years later). 4 In November 2011, finally, Sandusky was arrested and released on 100,000 dollars bail after being arraigned on 40 criminal counts (“Sandusky, Penn State Case Timeline”). 3 Ganim’s colleague David Newhouse commented later in 2011: “The national media ignored it. Locally, we mainly received anger from some readers. ‘It truly is troubling to me to see a “reputable” newspaper such as The Patriot-News carrying this type of sensationalist story,’ wrote one. ‘Shame on those who have tried to defile the legacy that Jerry Sandusky has worked so hard to build,’ wrote another.” 4 See for detailed timeline and analysis of circumstances the Freeh Report, an independent report by Louis Freeh and his law firm, Freeh Sporkin and Sullivan, LLP, of 12 July 2012 (Freeh, Report) as well as The Chronicle’s article on that report (“The Freeh Report”). <?page no="180"?> 180 Ralph J. Poole The secondary scandal in the Sandusky affair revolves around the failure of the Penn States’ officials (especially coach Paterno, athletic director Curley, senior vice president for finance and business Schultz, and president Spanier) to file charges against Sandusky, even after repeated incidents of sexual assaults were reported by colleagues, parents, and students, and especially after Sandusky himself had testified at the university police as early as 1998 that he had showered naked with boys hugging them and had promised not to do that ever again. No criminal charges were pressed then and the case was closed - for the time being, at least. Penn State, like all other universities, offers websites for help in cases of sexual assault. In the “Woman’s Health” section of the university’s Student Health Services one can read under the header “If you are a victim of sexual assault . . .”: Sexual assault is an unwanted sexual act that occurs because of force, threat, intimidation, or the inability of the victim to give consent. Approximately 25% of college women and between 3 and 7% of college men are victims of actual or attempted sexual assault. Sexual assault is never the fault of the victim - it is solely the fault of the perpetrator. There are many resources available at Penn for victims. (“Sexual Assault”) These claims are followed by a list of 24/ 7-telephone hotlines to assist female and male victims (and although the latter are referred to the “Men’s Health” section of the Student Health Services, that site then does not mention sexual assault as one of their prime concerns). Rutgers University, to take a more commendable example, has an “Office for Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance” that offers a specific website with statistics on sexual violence against males as well as links to help organizations. Here we learn that a study from the National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of 1998 found that 3% of the male population in the US have been victims of sexual assault in their lifetime. And a more recent study of those institutions shows that 1 in 6 men were sexually abused before the age of 18 (figures from 2006). The site further claims: “These statistics should be considered conservative, as we know that a majority of all acts of sexual violence are not disclosed or reported. Additionally, many victims, including male victims do not identify or label the experience they have had as a criminal sexual act” (“Male Victims”). 5 5 Strangely though, a much more detailed website, accessed in 2010, is no longer available. There Rutgers’ Office for Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance had given <?page no="181"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 181 Generally, experts claim that information on same-sex rape involving male college students “is frequently absent in campus rape education and prevention programming because the general public and popular culture have traditionally viewed rape in a context of violence against women” (Scarce, “Same-Sex Rape”). Particularly significant for the Sandusky case are the conclusions of Holmes and Slap, who in their meta study on 166 studies on sexual abuse of boys conducted from 1985 to 1997 found that “boys at highest risk were younger than 13 years, nonwhite, of low socioeconomic status, and not living with their fathers. Perpetrators tended to be known but unrelated males.” They concluded that sexual abuse of boys “appears to be common, underreported, underrecognized, and untertreated” (Holmes and Slap 1855). As far as the rates of disclosure are concerned, it has been stated that “[t]he fear of reprisal, stigma against homosexuality, and loss of self-esteem make boys less likely to disclose the abuse than girls. Rates of sexual abuse of boys vary from 4% to 16%” (Valente, “Sexual Abuse”). These statistics point towards two significant - and yet hardly surprising - facts: boys and young men tend to be even more reluctant to disclose sexual violence they suffer from than girls and women are; and “[a]lthough scientists have studied sexual abuse of girls, young male victims have remained relatively unexamined” (Valente, “Sexual Abuse”). But not only do they remain unexamined, there seems to be a tacit, “gentlemanly” agreement that there is no real need for that. Journalist Maureen Dowd, writing for The New York Times, speaks of an “American Horror Story,” witnessing the courtroom trial of Sandusky. She observes the coach’s behavior as being far from showing signs of guilt or repentance. Instead, it relies on jocular homosocial bonding: “Jerry Sandusky [. . .] laughed and reminisced with friends in the front row of the courtroom” (Dowd, “American Horror Story”). Taking the locker and shower rooms as “gateway to horror where innocence was devoured by evil, over and over and over again, without a word being said,” she pointedly, if in a rather sensationalist manner, paints a harrowing, yet paradoxical picture of silenced noise: “rhythmic smacking and slapping noises, silent screams, gutted psyches” (Dowd). Witnessing the psychic breakdown of the trial’s lead witness during his testimony, Dowd asserts one important fact in this scenario: “Like pedophile priests, Sandusky was especially vile because he targeted vulnerable boys. Later, when victims finally spoke up, there was a built-in defense: those boys were trouble; you can’t believe them” (Dowd). Sanmany more statistics on sexual violence against males, especially also on male childhood sexual abuse including a list of references and help services. http: / / sexualassault.rutgers.edu (accessed 21 December 2010). <?page no="182"?> 182 Ralph J. Poole dusky acted as substitute for the boys’ mostly absent fathers, providing all kinds of favors and thus making them co-dependent and complicit in accepting and giving sexual “favors” in return. Blackmailing and stalking were only some of the techniques Sandusky applied in keeping the boys quiet. The acquiescing homosocial climate at Penn State was yet another modus operandi that Sandusky could rely on: “It was an open joke in Penn State football circles that you shouldn’t drop your soap in the shower when Jerry was around,” Maureen Dowd claims and the facts of this “American horror story” certainly do not contradict such an assumption. What took years to surface, however, was yet another fact, silenced and ignored: “Only the boys in the shower weren’t laughing” (Dowd). 6 When it comes to the realm of sports and sexualized violence, there accordingly are two crucial aspects, a double conflict, as I claim, both in terms of academic research and media representations. The first aspect concerns sexual violence against young males by coaches. While this seems an obvious setting, i.e., the abuse by an authority figure, it is actually hardly approached at all in research literature and even less, as far as I could see, in the visual media. This will be, however, my first example and it highlights the lack of any deeper exploration into the issue. In contrast, the second aspect refers to a form of ritualized violence that has caused quite a bit of media attention in the last years, namely “hazing.” There has been not a whole lot, but a substantial amount of research on that particular rite of passage and it has been dealt with in several films and television productions. What strikes the viewer, however, is that except for its treatment in crime series like CSI , cinematic and televised depictions of hazing are mostly light in tone, comic in appeal, hardly critical in approach, and highly eroticized in their visual representation. 6 See also the anonymous post commenting on the announcement in The Chronicle of Higher Education of 18 November 2011, that Penn State’s faculty senate requested an independent investigation of the alleged sex-abuse crimes at the university: “Great! This is exactly what college faculty need to busy themselves with - gossip. Can we please please please get past the Penn State rape scandal in the Chronicle? I am truly burnt out on reading about prepubescent boys, showers, and Jerry Sandusky’s lecherous homosexual adventures. Why not talk about the student debt crisis? ” (“Penn State’s Faculty Senate”). <?page no="183"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 183 Grooming the Victim: Marginalizing Authoritative Abuse in The Basketball Diaries The 1995 film The Basketball Diaries by Scott Kalvert is based on Jim Carroll’s autobiography of 1978, by now a cult classic. It recounts Carroll’s youth in New York during the early 1960s, where he is a student on a sports scholarship in an elite Catholic school. Jim gets beaten by his Catholic teacher and is sexually harassed by his basketball coach. He then gradually slides into a circle of drugs and crime that leads first to another assault by his gym teacher, then to being dispelled from school, turning to prostitution, and finally ending in a detention center, all of which set an end to his dream of becoming a basketball star, but put him in the spotlight as successful writer instead. The film has been discussed for a drug induced dream sequence in which Jim fantasizes a killing spree that has been compared to the Columbine High School massacre of 1999 (Carter, “Linking”; “Moral Panics”). Furthermore, there was a (dismissed) lawsuit that claimed that the film instigated 14-yearold Michael Carneal’s shooting of a prayer group at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky (Chalk, “Legally Insane”; “Moral Panics”; “Media Companies”). Given the prominent status the film has earned, there is, however, a stunning lack of discussion on the repeated incidents of sexual harassment and violence that the film depicts - or rather refrains from depicting, as the case is. There are five occasions of sexual violence in the film, spanning the whole viewing time. The initial incident takes place at the very beginning of the film. The first aural and then visual impressions the spectator gets is the sound of whipping, then reactions on the faces of students, and only then does the camera focus on Jim and the teacher, who physically beats him. While this sets the tone and atmosphere of the film by immediately launching the viewer into a scenario of violence and abuse, the incidents are not discussed or referred to in any way. But they serve as antecedents of further abusive behavior in an educational institution that is clearly sanctioned and not pursued. Thus, shortly after, there are two more incidents of violence, which now have overt sexual implications and a visible and palpable effect on the course of the main character’s development. In contrast to the first, indirectly sequenced occasion, these two incidents of harassment by the gym teacher are represented in a straightforward, realistic manner. The locker-room and shower-cabin settings are depicted without any delay, distortions or other illusionist features. At first, the coach only suggests spending more time together, he invites Jim to his place for dinner, joking: “We’ll make a night of it.” Although his interests are quite obvious (to the viewer as well as to Jim himself), nothing physical yet occurs. But in the second scene, the coach <?page no="184"?> 184 Ralph J. Poole looks for Jim and finds him in the shower, still fully dressed. He reaches out, offering money and asserting “We understand each other,” and then starts to grab Jim’s groin. As Jim offers resistance and even hits the coach, the latter first presents yet more money, but next tries to appease Jim saying “You can’t blame me for trying. I made a mistake all right. Let’s just pretend it never happened. [. . .] Keep the money. Just don’t tell anybody, all right? ” (The Basketball Diaries). Taken together, the scenes show how the coach “grooms” his victim, i.e., grooming here understood, as sports researcher Celia Brackenridge explains, as “the process by which a perpetrator isolates and prepares an intended victim” (35). This process is a focal point of the abuse relationship, since the “athlete builds trust in the coach [. . .] because he offers the [. . .] athlete tangible, extrinsic rewards for good performance” (36). It is a parent-like relationship, as Brackenridge asserts, “providing a mixture of discipline and affection upon which the athlete gradually becomes reliant” (36). Just like in Sandusky’s case, in this film and in Jim’s case this succeeds here particularly well, because Jim’s father is absent and his mother is overburdened, and so the coach can easily assume the role of a surrogate father. After his acquittal from school and increasing drug abuse, the fourth incident of sexual violence is remarkable in that it mixes a realist setting, a public restroom, with a fantasized representation. While Jim for the first time turns to prostitution and lets a customer perform fellatio on him, he has a drug-induced hallucination of his coach being present and laughing at him. All we hear in this scene is psychedelic music, Jim’s heavy breathing, and the coach’s malicious laughter. This not only reconfirms the link between Jim’s hustling and the earlier sexual assaults, indirectly claiming that one led to the other, it also shows the traumatized state of the boy’s mind. The facial contortions can hardly be related solely to the sexual act itself or the influence of drugs, but rather to the continuing physical and mental violence experienced at the hands of his teachers. The pain and suffering that are reflected in the boy’s countenance can therefore be assumed to lead to a psychotic breakdown at this moment precisely by the confluence of experienced trauma and current sexual activity. Yet again, the film refrains from explicitly discussing the psychic effects of the sexual abuse that Jim has been subjected to. It is solely up to the spectator to draw conclusions here. The fifth and last incident, finally, where sexual violence occurs is remarkable for totally different reasons. While listening to Jim’s tale as voice-over and seeing nothing but a black screen, we are told of his stay in the detention center, where he was continuously raped by prison guards. What we finally see is Jim facing the camera and telling his story, when the perspective opens up to a performance setting: Jim is on stage <?page no="185"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 185 in a small theater, sitting behind bars and telling his life-story. The film ends with his bow and the audience’s applause. This radical break in illusion leaves us wondering whether the whole film is meant as a theatrical performance, being told retrospectively, and thus is supposed to function as a self-reflexive meta-narrative. Or asked another way: Does it make a difference whether we watch this film as a fictional drama of a coming-of-age story or as a staged performance of a stylized bio-pic? I believe so. In terms of sociologist Erving Goffman’s frame-analysis, there is an essential difference between an actor on stage and the role he plays. A major gap between film and theater lies in the fact that in a theater, according to Goffman, the audience in no way believes that what it sees is real life: “at no time is the audience convinced that real life is going on up there. [. . .] it is perfectly obvious to everyone on and off the stage that the characters and their actions are unreal” (Goffman 136). The audience accepts the fact that theater deals with make-believe. By way of contrast, a film - and particularly in the tradition of classic Hollywood cinema - has established the possibility through various spatial and visual means (such as the cause-effect chain or continuity editing [see Bordwell and Thompson 102-103, 236-237]) to increase the dramatic illusion leading to an act of identification between audience and character on the one hand, and actor and role on the other. If a film like The Basketball Diaries, however, insists on breaking the illusion and creates a frame around the narrative instead, the play as such is made transparent as an illusion. In this particular case, I would claim that the reluctance to show any graphic detail of sexual violence and stressing the constructed staging indeed decreases the possibilities of identification with the victim, but increases the authenticity of the narration as autobiography. The abusive behavior of figures of authority remains on the margins of the film’s interest nevertheless. This is in accordance with the argument Celia Brackenridge unfolds in her study Spoilsports: Understanding and Preventing Sexual Exploitation in Sport: The sexual harassment and abuse of males is often regarded as more shocking than that of females because of widespread homophobic and misogynistic attitudes within society and because male-to-male abuse is falsely associated with predatory homosexuality. (67) Unfortunately, Brackenridge does not shed more light on such false accusations, but instead concedes somewhat contradictorily: “Although both male and female victims are of concern here, since large numbers of both sexes are engaged in sport, most of the research data reported in this book concern the effects of sexual exploitation on girls and young <?page no="186"?> 186 Ralph J. Poole woman in sport” (67-68). While this regrettably reflects the overall dismal research situation concerning sexual violence against males in a sport setting, Laura Robinson, another sports scholar, tries to make sense of the silence surrounding such incidents and she succinctly speaks of “the secrecy created by the pseudo-religious mystique of the locker-room, homophobia, and intimidation” (6). Basketball Diaries simultaneously does two notable things here: while it addresses sexual abuse within a sports context, it only hints at its scope instead of probing deeper into the layers of abusive institutional power. And furthermore, instead of making transparent the dichotomy of power and sexuality that feminist criticism on rape has insisted on for decades now, the film conflates the two and shows the male-to-male abuse precisely associated with predatory homosexuality, and not detached from it. 7 Therefore, the film does nothing to analyze the abusive structures supported by the institutional setting; on the contrary, by relocating the violence into an individualized and therefore sexualized behavior of a single teacher, the film fatally supports the popular lore of equating male violence against males with homosexual behavior. As the following examples will show, there is a precariously thin line of distinction between showing such abusive behavior as suppressed homosexual leanings that often go hand in hand with explicit homophobic outbursts including sexual violence, and a deeper analysis of ritually performed, sanctioned and institutionalized forms of violence against hierarchically subordinate males that reflect an underlying homosocial, yet ultimately pervasive homophobic structure of those very institutions. Queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has pointed out that there is a “potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual - a continuum whose visibility, for men, in our society, is radically disrupted” (1-2). Thus, when speaking of homosocial structures that characterize social interactions between males, the paradox of the term “homosocial” needs to be stressed: “it is a neologism, obviously formed by analogy with ‘homosexual,’ and just as obviously meant to be distinguished from ‘homosexual’” (Sedgwick 1). Homosocial male bonding therefore at the same time marks the avowedly non-sexual, heteronormative social interactions between men and is often characterized by severe homophobia. Such fear and hatred of homosexuality in turn may break loose and yet is institutionally tolerated or even silently encouraged. It is the paradoxical manifestation of such violent abusive out- 7 See Michael Scarce, who in his study Male on Male Rape presents empirical data and survivor testimony to debunk the myth that male rape is a violent outbreak of homosexual culture. For older, book-length studies on male rape, see McMullen; Mezey and King; and the two studies by Scacco. <?page no="187"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 187 breaks that characterizes the secrecy of the locker-room dramas. The question is whether research efforts as well as media representations are willing to probe the volatile distinction between homosocial, homosexual and homophobic roots of male-to-male sexual violence, or are refraining from disclosing the locker-room secrecy instead. “You’re my bitch for the week: ” Hazing as Rite of Passage Gone Wrong Yet another variant of interlinking institutionalized power structures and sexual abuse is that of “hazing.” I want to look at some television genres that deal with this sexualized initiation ritual in order to test whether these offer more and deeper insights into the dynamics of sexual violence against males. As far as research is concerned, there surprisingly is no link between sexual violence against males by authority figures like coaches and sexual violence performed by the senior members of the victim’s team or fraternity. Researchers seem to separate different categories of male-to-male sexual violence, creating a blind spot that ignores the obvious connection arising through the tacit sanction of institutions. After all, like the “gentlemanly” joking in Sandusky’s circle, hazing takes part in a longstanding tradition of codified homosocial behavior within the educational system. “Hazing,” also called “fagging,” is “by definition a rite of passage wherein youths or rookies are taken through traditional practices by more senior members in order to initiate them into the next stage of their cultural, religious, academic, or athletic lives” (Trota and Johnson x). In education, this ritual dates back to the medieval university and was “created primarily in order to weed out those who didn’t have the physical and mental capacity to reach the status of professor” (Trota and Johnson xi). In the American context, hazing began in the midseventeenth century with the founding of Harvard and Yale and the rise of fraternities. Although the term “hazing” was not used until after the Civil War, the first incident of hazing was recorded in 1657, and the first known death in the course of hazing practices occurred at Cornell University in 1873. Also, the first known punishment for participation in hazing dates back to 1684, that is shortly after hazing was practiced on university campuses (Trota and Johnson xi-xii). Like sports, fraternities are particularly available for hazing rituals because of their inherently gendered structure. Robinson speaks of male team sport in particular as an ambivalent manifestation of a highly (homo-)eroticized and at the same time sexually repressive culture that due to its worship of the young, male body for its physical prowess triggers paradoxical and often homophobic behavior. The same can be said <?page no="188"?> 188 Ralph J. Poole about fraternities with the celebration of male bonding, of codes of male behavior like bragging and boasting, and of creating severely hierarchical and gendered structures of aggressive dominance and blind submission. These kinds of sexualized rituals preclude other than violent interactions between males and any “gay” male-to-male behavior that is perceived as willfully seeking an emotional or sexual attachment (instead of being ritually forced to do so in the course of hazing procedures) will strictly be disciplined: At the end of the initiation, any soft, empathetic, or slightly female side of a male has been cleansed through this theatre of violent masculinity. He emerges as a dutiful killing machine: a man who does what he’s told by his superiors and does not question the intent or the ethic. The rookie has entered the world of male violence and aggressive team sport where he is constantly reminded that even the symbolic presence of women is to be denigrated. “You’re my bitch for the week,” the new player on the team would be told by a senior player when he first joins the team. (Robinson 4) Media attention dealing with incidents of hazing has risen since the late 1990s. There have been stories documented on HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel and ESPN has a series as well as a website called Outside the Lines covering occasions of hazing. One of the web entries starts out as follows: Athletes abusing athletes In Vermont, hockey players grab each other’s genitalia and parade around in a freshman initiation ceremony. In Connecticut, a high school wrestler is hog-tied and sodomized with the blunt end of a plastic knife. In Oklahoma, a football player suffers a head injury after being jumped by teammates. (Farrey) Hank Nuwer, one of the leading researchers, has developed several websites providing information about hazing and its consequences (see, for example, http: / / www.hanknuwer.com/ , but also Nuwer, Wrongs of Passage, and his Hazing Reader). Most US college and university Greek systems, i.e., the sororities and fraternities, have announced anti-hazing policies (see Crow and Phillips 27). Here is an example from the Phi Gamma Delta website at the University of Georgia that is typical of most Greek organizations: <?page no="189"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 189 No chapter of Phi Beta Sigma shall indulge in any physical abuse or undignified treatment (hazing) of its members or prospective members. Hazing is defined as: any action taken or situation created intentionally or unintentionally, whether on or off Fraternity premises, to produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule. Such activities and situations include, but are not limited to: • paddling in any form • creation of excessive fatigue • physical and psychological shocks • quests • treasure hunts • scavenger hunts • road trips or any other activities carried outside the confines of the campus or chapter house • wearing publicly apparel which is conspicuous and not normally in good taste • engaging in any public stunts and buffoonery • morally degrading or humiliating games and activities • late work sessions (past midnight) which interfere with scholastic activity • any other activities which are not consistent with Fraternal Law, Ritual, or Policy or with Regulations and Policies of the educational institution. Hazing is forbidden by the Fraternity’s Constitution and by public laws of the various states. (“Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc.”) Historically, hazing in general and athletic hazing in particular have been created to enhance team cohesion. As Margery Holman claims, however, hazing rituals “have no singular purpose and no singular outcome” (54). She rather speaks of a cycle created by annual hazing rituals “whereby initiates (the hazed) eventually become the veterans (the hazers),” a process that “re-establishes the team hierarchies at the beginning of each season” (51). Hazing seen in that light supports a system of control and male authority: “The diminishing of other human beings through the use of insults, inferiorizing, and subservience is a form of intimidation that coerces others to accept the autocracy and inequality of the structure, in this case, of sport” (Holman 51). Stripping rookies of their identity and humanity furthermore brings them close to the structural position of females within a male autocracy. The process of degradation, of proving to them that they are something less than a “real man,” is played out not only in physical actions, but also linguistically by using misogynist and homophobic words like “bitch,” “fag,” etc. This is <?page no="190"?> 190 Ralph J. Poole also the case in female hazing, which is not my interest here, 8 but either way hazing rituals are highly gendered in their methods of denigration and subordination, and thus contribute “to the social reproduction of masculinity and femininity” (Holman 54). The problem with anti-hazing codes is that hazing rituals have moved into the college subculture, becoming even more prone to violence. Figures seem to suggest that 80% of male athletes have experienced hazing in transition to a team, especially in collision sports like football and hockey (Allan and DeAngelis 61). “this just seems a little . . . gay? ”: Hazing in Television Series As far as the representation of hazing practices on television programs is concerned, it is especially criminal series like CSI that make a serious effort in telling stories where such incidents are pursued as severe crimes. The episode “Pledging Mr. Johnson” is a notable case in point. Investigators Nick Stokes and Sara Sidle are dealing with an apparent suicide at a fraternity house. It turns out that the victim James Johnson died in the course of pledging, suffocated by a strip of raw liver that had been shoved down his throat. While questioning members of the fraternity, Nick and Sara unearth that James’ death occurred as part of hazing practices (revolving around humiliation by having to find girls to sign the pledges’ penis) and that the suicide therefore was staged. More interestingly, Nick is confronted with his own history of pledging at a fraternity. While he is conflicted about his own background and therefore tends to sympathize with the perpetrators, his colleague Sara pursues a relentless path of crime disclosure, causing friction between them. One could be annoyed by the fact that it takes a morally ultra-righteous female character to “right the wrongs” that the morally dubious and chauvinist male characters, including her partner, have committed. In a review, Kristine Huntley, however, makes the crucial point that while Sara “is the one with the nagging suspicion throughout that the fraternity boys are lying,” it actually is Nick who is finally able to get one of the frat boys “to crack by appealing to his sense of community within the fraternity, telling him that unless he levels with the CSI s, the house will go dark. Though Sara’s instincts were dead on, it is Nick who speaks the language of the boys they’re dealing with” (Huntley, “ CSI ”). The frat 8 The coming-of-age comedy Dazed and Confused (USA, 1993, dir. Richard Linklater), set in the 1970s, for example, includes scenes of male and female hazing. See also the episode “Greek Tragedy” of the mystery series Ghost Whisperer about sorority hazing (season 4, episode 15, aired 13 February 2009). <?page no="191"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 191 boys’ futile effort in trying to make a distinction between “hazing” and “initiation,” well knowing that the former is strictly prohibited, culminates in the admittance that it is all about the wish to “belong.” The specific irony here is that James Johnson was continuously humiliated because it took him so long to get his “johnson,” i.e., his penis, signed. All he wanted - desperately - was to belong, and in that wish he proved to be weak in the eyes of the others. Instead of admitting to the paradox, the frat boys defend themselves, claiming, “You are only as strong as your weakest link,” whereupon Nick now remembers his own fraternity creed and acknowledges its ultimate lethal logic if taken to its extreme: “humiliation - initiation - appreciation” (“Pledging Mr. Johnson”). 9 Contrary to this play between insider sympathetic knowledge and outsider’s blatant disgust, comedy college and sports series choose a different path in dealing with hazing, namely that of making fun of hazing rituals. Glory Daze, for instance, is a college comedy series, set in the 1980s, with some rather graphic depictions of hazing. There are instances of threats of branding, for example. Overall, however, the series tends to be a light comedy, without any ironic overtones. In contrast, the series Blue Mountain State is more interesting here. From the very start, it takes up hazing rituals as a main focus of sports college life. My first take on that series was to find it a silly, over-the-top parody bordering on slapstick of what it is like to be freshmen at a college. But revisiting the abundance of scenes of hazing depicted in that series, I began to see the truly ironic commentary at work. The first incident of hazing occurs after only five minutes into the series’ pilot episode. The college freshmen and football team rookies are seen in the shower, teamed up in pairs and being instructed to shave each other’s groins. The overall tone seems ludicrously comic, and yet there is a discernible undercurrent of threat and violence. While the team captain Kevin welcomes all “Freshies” to “Freshmen Hell Week” and gives orders to his “Ladies” and “little pieces of shit,” Alex, one of the rookies, jokingly questions Kevin’s rules: “First you ask us to shave each other’s nuts, and then to protect each other’s secrets. [. . .] Can’t you just beat us up or something, this just seems a little . . . gay? ” Outraged, Kevin retorts: “Gay? [. . .] It’s called hazing, asshole, look it up” (“It’s Called Hazing”). The scene has all the elements of “toxic testosterone.” Helen Jefferson Lenskyj uses this term in reference to John Loy’s description of such sport teams as “fratriarchy,” a modern kind of “tribal subculture” that celebrates male prestige, physical prowess, and violent masculine styles 9 See also CSI: Miami, season 7, episode 10, aired 8 December 2008, for yet another crime investigation related to hazing practices. <?page no="192"?> 192 Ralph J. Poole (Loy 267, qtd. in Lenskyj 88). As such, fratriarchies exemplify hypermasculinity as an exercise of force to dominate others. My point here is that Blue Mountain State, contrary perhaps to initial reactions, does not exaggerate these rituals on the level of representation; there are many empirical sources and eye-witness accounts of exactly such hazing rituals. While at first sight, this scene may be taken as exaggeration for the purpose of a spoofing parody, such performances of hypermasculinity instead are, as Michael Kimmel explains, distorted initiation rituals that not only establish internal hierarchies, but are driven by misogyny and homophobia (Kimmel 5, qtd. in Lenskyj 88). In this series, we see male sport being re-confirmed as one of the remaining bastions of male supremacy; at the same time, the inherent sexual sadism of these hazing rituals is turned inside out by its main players. It is Alex, the new backup quarterback, who serves as guide through these initiation processes. His funny comments and wisecracks are more than just comic interludes, they serve as critical subterfuge instead. His “normal” position would be to succumb to all the pledges in order to prove his team spirit and manliness. But while he has no aim to move from back-up to leading quarterback and physically does not represent the hypermasculine super-stud, his strength lies in his incorruptible character. Speaking out what he thinks, namely that he finds those rituals silly and “a little gay” and thus claiming the connection between “hazing” and “fagging” to be a literal one instead of a symbolic rite of passage, he speaks a truth that cannot be said and tolerated, namely that social practices like hazing rely on forcing quasi-gay actions on its victims without any link to homosexual leanings on behalf its practitioners. These fraternity “rituals,” therefore, are but a cynical mocking of homosexuality and in truth speak of the inherent homophobia of such fratriarchies. The ironic twist here, however, is that instead of striving for the accolade of athletic championship and fraternal companionship, Alex forms his own unlikely circle of friends made up of the virgin jock Craig and the team’s mascot Sammy. All three of them join to dismantle the team captain’s hypermasculine and homophobic attitude as indeed being driven by sadistic “toxic testosterone.” In a second, drastic hazing scene that also serves as cliffhanger of this pilot, the atmosphere of toxic testosterone becomes blatantly obvious, as do the “little gay” innuendos. The “ritual” is called the cookie race. In the midst of night, the freshmen trio is dragged out of bed and onto the field, where in front of the whole team watching, the three of them have to perform in the cookie race. The rules are: they have to place a cookie between their butt-cheeks, run across the field, and whoever drops it, has to eat it. Like the various rituals that revolve around shaving, such races are well-known hazing practices. Robert Giannetto, <?page no="193"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 193 a former junior player in a Canadian hockey team, relates a very similar incident he experienced himself: Finally, there was the “cracker race.” Run like a conventional relay race, the naked rookies were organized into teams and an obstacle course established. The baton in this instance, however, was a Ritz cracker that was inserted in the cleft of one player’s sweaty ass and handed off, after running the course, by removing it with one’s lips and inserting it into one’s own sweaty ass. Breaking or dropping that cracker during the race resulted in the horror of having to eat it and start over. Losing the race meant eating the other team’s cracker. (qtd. in Robinson 17) The scene in Blue Mountain State again takes on a parodic approach, relinquishing the acerbic violence, but reinforcing the queerness of the “ritual,” i.e. its underlying homophobic mocking of homosexuality. The idea is to expose and humiliate the aberrant trio surrounding Alex. But Kevin, the team captain and prime instigator of the nightly event, seems so turned on by the prospect that he joins the trio in the race. This is not only highly illogic given his authoritative status that he endangers with such participation; above all it marks his hidden queer interest that can only be released in such forced practices. The captain’s heteronormative position thus is precariously at stake, since he seems to feel safe enough to overcome his usual homophobic rants reveling in this ridiculous “manly” ritual instead. In the end, the ritual is doubly undermined. When Alex drops his cookie and has to eat it accordingly, he is joined however by his two friends to prove their “outlaw” team spirit. The three of them can be seen, munching their cookies with great disgust. The purpose of specifically humiliating Alex has therefore failed; instead of succumbing to Kevin’s degrading threats and conforming to the proper team, the friends form an even closer bond - a team of their own - that relegates them to the margins of Kevin’s football team. But the final frozen image of the episode is of Kevin, who although having won the race, watches the defeated, yet united trio, and secretly and with great delight devours his own cookie. This sublime, yet ultimately perverse moment undermines any notion of such hazing practices forging team cohesion, thus forcefully debunking the myth of hazing as ritual enhancing belonging. Instead, it unearths the mechanisms of such false initiation rites relying on sexual degradation, sexual assault and physical humiliation with sexual overtones, the three categories that researchers have found to make up “the sex + violence agenda” of male sport hazing practices (Lenskyj 86-87). Hazing supposedly builds up a system of “male solidarity,” essential especially for collision sports, with rookies having undergone hazing initiations and thus posing less threat <?page no="194"?> 194 Ralph J. Poole to the power structure, “because they have conformed to the group by following orders and placing themselves in compromising positions for the perceived good of the group” (Allan and DeAngelis 72-73). This system relies on the code of silence, it plays on the shame that rookies experience making them docile and malleable. A rookie who speaks up and out, as Alex does, unmasks hazing as something that Allen and DeAngelis call “nothing more than one group of individuals abusing power over others. Humiliation and violence are not ties that bind groups together [. . .]” (79). Hazing rituals are supposed to prove athletic prowess, manhood - and heterosexuality. But one wonders why these rituals of the male athletic locker room take on such overtly sexual forms, rather than “simply” the form of physical assault as Alex quite succinctly asks in the shaving scene. How is it that a team captain’s sexual victimization of other men proves his proclaimed heterosexual superiority, and not his hidden homosexual interest - as we could see here? Thirty-five years ago, Susan Brownmiller already examined the underlying homophobic dimensions of gang rape (although not using the word “homophobic”) when she claimed that the sexual excitement associated with it was “largely a relationship between the boys rather than between any of the boys and the girl involved” (197, see also Sanday). While in Blue Mountain State, there is no actual gang rape going on, there are lots of males watching other males engaged in sexual or sexualized activity that shows more or less violent elements. And whereas Alex repeatedly comments on the closeted gayness of such gang activities and thus helps to probe the paradoxes of homosocial institutions such as fratriarchies, gay porn sites openly embrace the sadism of hazing, accentuating the “toxic testosterone” as stimulating aphrodisiac (see, for example, http: - / / www.hazehim.com/ ). Whether such visual representations of hazing as pornographic sexuality are in any way subversive remains to be discussed and calls for another paper altogether. <?page no="195"?> “It’s Called Hazing, Asshole” 195 References Media “It’s Called Hazing, Look It Up.” Blue Mountain State. Season 1, Episode 1. Written by Eric Falconer and Chris Romano. Directed by Brian Robbins. Spike. 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New York: Plenum Press, 1982. <?page no="199"?> Notes on Contributors JOHANNES BINOTTO is research and teaching assistant at the English Department of the University of Zurich and works as a free author. He is a regular contributor to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the film journal Filmbulletin. He has also been teaching “Film and Psychoanalysis” at the Zurich Lacan-Seminar since 2005 and at the Psychiatric Hospital Burghölzli since 2009. In his research he is focusing on the intersections of psychoanalytical theory, literature and film. His doctoral dissertation on the Freudian uncanny and its spatial representation in art, literature and cinema was awarded the Faculty prize for best dissertation and will be published by diaphanes in autumn 2013. ISABEL CAPELOA GIL is Associate Professor of Cultural Theory at the Catholic University of Portugal and Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of London. Her main research topics are German modern culture, intermedia studies as well as visuality and violence. Her most recent work discusses strategies of visual fetishism. She is also the author of Mythographies. Figurations of Antigone, Cassandra and Medea in German 20th Century Drama (Impresa Nacional - Casa de Moeda, 2007) and Literacia visual: estudos sobre a inquietude das imagens [Visual Literacy. On the Disquiet of Images] (Edições 70, 2011). Together with Catherine Nesci (University of South Carolina Beaufort) she is the general editor of the series “Culture and Conflict” with de Gruyter Publishers. Isabel Gil is a strong advocate of transnational research cooperation as a result of her experience as a visiting professor at universities in Europe (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, University of Hamburg, National University of Ireland, University of London) the USA (West Michigan University, Stanford) and Asia. She was a Fulbright Scholar and a Gulbenkian Scholarship recipient. On the institutional level, Isabel Capeloa Gil is also the Director of the International Ph.D. Programme in Culture Studies at Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon ( UCP ) and its collaborative research network, The Lisbon Consortium. She is currently Vice-Rector for Research at UCP . <?page no="200"?> 200 Notes on Contributors ROBERTA HOFER is currently a student at the University of Innsbruck. Having worked as a radio and TV journalist for the Austrian Broadcasting Company ( ORF ), her research interests are mainly based in new media, film, performance and narratology. She explored many of these concepts in her previous publication “Holographic Projections of the Cartoon Band ‘Gorillaz’ as a Means of Metalepsis” for the DeGruyter Narratologia series. Her latest research (published in the film journal Scandinavica) focuses on Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier and his unconventional rendering of cinematic time in his unfinished movie Dimension. In addition to that, Hofer is currently working on her dissertation project on human marionettes and puppeteering. ANNA IATSENKO is currently teaching African American and Postcolonial literatures in the English Department at the University of Geneva and finishing a Ph.D. research project in African American literature which focuses on the later works of Toni Morrison. She is particularly interested in developing a new critical approach to Morrison’s texts which, rather than being situated in the traditional historico-political versus formalist dichotomy, is centred on black aesthetic forms. Her other interests include West African and South African literatures, literatures of the Caribbean, the relationships between language and music and theories of embodiment. MARIO KLARER is Chair of the American Studies Department at the University of Innsbruck and President of the Austrian Association of American Studies. He was Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland as well as visiting professor in the English Departments of Columbia University (New York), University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia), and University of Regensburg. He spent several years as an Erwin-Schrödinger Fellow at the Getty Center in California and as a Rockefeller Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. His published books include Frau und Utopie ( WBG , 1993); Einführung in die anglistischamerikanistische Literaturwissenschaft ( WBG , 2011); An Introduction to Literary Studies (Routledge, 2013); Literaturgeschichte der USA (C. H. Beck, 2013); Ekphrasis: Bildbeschreibung als Repräsentationstheorie bei Spenser, Sidney, Lyly und Shakespeare (Niemeyer - Buchreihe der Anglia, 2001), as well as the business communication handbooks Meetings auf Englisch (Redline, 2007) and Präsentieren auf Englisch (Redline, 2012). His essays have appeared in journals such as New Literary History, the Journal of American Studies, Mosaic, Word and Image, and Amerikastudien. <?page no="201"?> Notes on Contributors 201 CORNELIA KLECKER completed her dissertation “Spoiler Alert! Mind- Tricking Narratives in Contemporary Hollywood Film” in 2011. From July 2008 to June 2009, she was a research assistant for the “Framing Media: Periphery of Fiction and Film” project funded by Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung and since July 2009 she has been an Assistant Professor (pre-doc) at the Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck. From October 2009 to November 2010 she was the secretary of the Austrian Association for American Studies ( AAAS ). Her publications include the articles “Mind-Tricking Narratives: Between Classical and Art Cinema Narration” in Poetics Today (2012) and “Chronology, Causality, . . . Confusion: When Avant-Garde Goes Classic” in the Journal of Film and Video (2011). BARBARA KLINGER is President-Elect of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and Interim Chair and Professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University in Bloomington. She teaches and writes on cinema and new media, fan and reception studies, and film and media history and historiography. She is author of Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk (Indiana University Press, 1994) and Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home (University of California Press, 2006). She has also published numerous anthology essays and articles in journals, including Film Quarterly, Screen, and Cinema Journal. CHRISTINA LJUNGBERG is Privatdozentin for English and American Literature at the University of Zurich and a Fellow of the Myrifield Institute for Cognition and the Arts. She was a Visiting Benjamin Meaker Professor at the University of Bristol and has taught at the universities of Amsterdam, Prague, Geneva and Bern. Her work focuses on narrativity and visuality, in particular the intersection of cognitive science and the arts. Her publications include the monographs To Fit, to Join, and to Make (Lang, 1999), Creative Dynamics: Diagrammatic Strategies in Narrative (Benjamins, 2012) and numerous articles on narrativity and visuality. Together with Winfried Nöth, she has coedited The Crisis of Representation (DeGruyter, 2003), with Elzbieta Tabakowska and Olga Fischer, Insistent Images (Benjamins, 2007), with Jørgen Dines Johansen and Harri Veivo, Redefining Literary Semiotics (Cambridge Scholars’, 2009), with Jac Conradie et al, Signergy (Benjamins, 2010), with Pascal Michelucci and Olga Fischer, Semblance and Signification (Benjamins, 2011), and with Lars Elleström and Olga Fischer, Iconic Investigations (Benjamins, 2013). She is the coordinator of the International Iconicity Research Project together <?page no="202"?> 202 Notes on Contributors with Olga Fischer, an Expert at the Forum for Intermediality Studies, Linnaeus University, and General Editor of the series “Iconicity in Language and Literature ( ILL )” (John Benjamins). JOHANNES MAHLKNECHT is assistant professor (pre-doc) at the University of Innsbruck, Department of American Studies, where he teaches courses on film genres, film adaptation and American literary history. In 2011 he finished his doctoral thesis, Writing on the Edge - Paratexts in Narrative Cinema, in which he explores various manifestations of word-and-image combinations within filmic paratexts, including titles, cast of characters, and movie taglines. His most recent publication on the subject is “The Hollywood Novelization: Film as Literature or Literature as Film Promotion? ” in Poetics Today (2012). RALPH J. POOLE is Professor of American Studies at Salzburg University. He taught at the University of Munich, Germany, and at Fatih University in Istanbul, Turkey. He was also visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Studies in Theater Arts at City University New York. His publications include a study on the Avant-Garde tradition in American theatre focusing among others on Gertrude Stein and Robert Wilson, a book on satirical and autoethnographical “cannibal” texts from Herman Melville to Marianne Wiggins, and most recently a collection of essays on “dangerous masculinities” as well as several essays on Caribbean writers (e.g. Shani Mootoo) and transatlantic cross-currents (e.g. French surrealism and the Caribbean). Together with Ilka Saal, he co-edited Passionate Politics: The Cultural Work of American Melodrama from the Early Republic to the Present (Cambridge Scholars’ Press, 2008), and with Annette Keck a double issue of Gender Forum on “Gender and Humour: Re-Inventing the Genres of Laughter” (2011). His research interests include film, television, drama, gender/ queer/ masculinity studies, popular culture, and transatlantic negotiations. SIMONE PUFF is a lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies at Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt in Austria and in the Department of British, North American, and Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany. She received her Ph.D. in English and American Studies with emphases on African American Studies and Gender Studies from Alpen-Adria- Universität Klagenfurt. Her doctoral dissertation, which she is currently revising for publication, looks at the significance of skin colour in the <?page no="203"?> Notes on Contributors 203 Black community as seen through a discursive analysis of Ebony magazine. Her other research interests at the moment include Black women writers, representations of diversity in US media, Black feminisms, and contemporary ethnic American literature. She is the treasurer of the Austrian Association for American Studies. BRYN SKIBO-BIRNEY was educated at American University, Washington DC before moving to Switzerland. She has previously worked in editing publications for international organizations and non-profits and is currently completing a masters’ degree at the University of Geneva with a thesis on altered-state narratives in post-modern literature. BARBARA STRAUMANN is Senior Assistant in the English Seminar at the University of Zurich. Her research interests include literary and cultural theory, psychoanalysis, gender, film and visuality. She is the coauthor, with Elisabeth Bronfen, of Die Diva: Eine Geschichte der Bewunderung (Schirmer/ Mosel, 2002) and the author of Figurations of Exile in Hitchcock and Nabokov (Edinburgh University Press, 2008). She has published a series of articles on celebrity culture, Germaine de Staël, Henry James, Willa Cather and Isak Dinesen. Her current projects are a monograph on female performer voices in nineteenth and twentieth-century narrative fiction and another book on the cultural afterlife of Queen Elizabeth I. <?page no="205"?> Index of Names Abbasi, R. Umar, 36 Adewunmi, Bim, 159 Alexander, Brian, 171 Allan, Elisabeth J., 190, 194 Almodóvar, Pedro, 178 Amis, Kingsley, 53 Antonini, Fausto, 51, 54 Aquino, John T., 110 Aristotle, 67 Babbs, Ken, 128 Bahti, Peter, 126 Baixas, Joan, 150 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 93, 96-99, 104 Bale, Christian, 71-72 Bardes, Barbara, 95, 98 Barthes, Roland, 56, 81, 96, 130 Baum, Frank, 25 Bell, John, 147-148, 155 Benjamin, Walter, 40, 126 Bennet, Lerone, Jr., 167-169 Berlant, Lauren, 99 Berman, Nina, 43 Berry, Halle, 160, 162, 172 Biel, Jessica, 68 Bingham, Dennis, 110 Blashko, Fritz, 41 Blumenthal, Eileen, 152, 155 Blystone, John G., 120 Bordwell, David, 66-67, 185 Bowie, David, 72 Brackenridge, Celia, 184-185 Bress, Eric, 67 Bronfen, Elisabeth, 103 Brooker, Will, 117-119 Brosnan, Pierce, 60 Brown, Korey Bowers, 165 Brownmiller, Susan, 194 Buckland, Warren, 67 Burger, Neil, 65-66, 68, 70 Butler, Judith, 33, 35 Caine, Michael, 71 Cameron, Allan, 67 Cameron, David, 20 Capra, Frank, 22-23 Carey, Mariah, 162 Carneal, Michael, 183 Carroll, Jim, 183 Carter, Nich, 183 Carty, Linda, 160 Cassady, Neal, 134-135 Cather, Willa, 94 Cavell, Stanley, 97 Cayton, Horace R., Jr., 161 Chalk, Andy, 183 Clark, Barbara, 111 Clark, Kenneth, 167-168 Clark, Mamie, 167-168 Clausewitz, Carl von, 33 Coen, Ethan, 115 Coen, Joel, 113, 115 Coetzee, John Maxwell, 141- 143, 146, 151, 153 Collodi, Carlo, 142 Cook-Bolden, Fran, 171 Cook, Greg, 44-45 Cottingham, Laura, 44 Craig, Daniel, 53 Craig, Edward Gordon, 149- 150, 152 Crow, R. Brian, 188 Crowther, Bosley, 22 Cukor, George, 97 <?page no="206"?> 206 Index of Names Curley, Tim, 180 Daldry, Stephen, 67 Dalglish, Lucy A., 34 Dandridge, Dorothy, 162 Davis, Kiri, 170 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 113, 119 DeAngelis, Gennaro, 190, 194 Deleuze, Gilles, 56-57 Dick, Philip K., 118 Dinesen, Isak, 94-95 Dolar, Mladen, 97 Donaghey, River, 128 Douglass, Frederik, 86 Dowd, Maureen, 181-182 Downie, Jeanine, 171 Drake, St Clair, 161 Dreiser, Theodore, 94 Druick, Zoë, 118 Drux, Rudolf, 141, 149 Du Bois, W. E. B., 167 du Gay, Paul, 164 Du Maurier, George, 94 Dyer, Richard, 160 Easton, Alison, 95 Eastwood, Clint, 116, 119 Eco, Umberto, 51 Elias, Norbert, 32 Eliot, George, 94 Elsaesser, Thomas, 27 Farrey, Tom, 188 Fincher, David, 66 Finke, Nikki, 20 Flaubert, Gustave, 130 Fleming, Ian, 51-53, 60-62 Fludernik, Monika, 80-81 Forster, Mark, 142 Foster, Hal, 43 Foster, Paul, 134-135 Foucault, Michel, 41, 102-103, 171 Fourie, Pieter J., 171 Frazier, Edward Franklin, 161 Freeh, Louis, 179 Fremont-Smith, Eliot, 128, 136 Freud, Sigmund, 87 Fuller, Margaret, 95 Fullerton, John, 19 Ganim, Sara, 179 Genet, Jean, 177 Genette, Gérard, 81, 111 Giamatti, Paul, 68 Giannetto, Robert, 192 Gibson, Mel, 113 Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, 160 Goffman, Erving, 118, 185 Gomery, Douglas, 22 Gorman, Bill, 20 Gossett, Suzanne, 95, 98 Goya, Francisco de, 34 Grainge, Paul, 24 Griffith, D. W., 120 Gross, Kenneth, 141, 144-146, 148 Gruber, J. Mackye, 67 Guerra, Carles, 35 Haggis, Paul, 39 Hall, Rebecca, 73 Hall, Ronald, 162, 171 Hall, Stuart, 172 Harris, Angela P., 162 Hartstock, John, 131 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 93-105 Heafey, Richard J., 110 Herbert, Daniel, 28 Hill Collins, Patricia, 161 Hill, Mark E., 161 Hirsch, Marianne, 40 Hitler, Adolf, 111 Holman, Margery, 189-190 Holmes, William C., 181 hooks, bell (Gloria Watkins), 162 Horne, Lena, 162, 168 Hunnicutt, Garland G., 110 <?page no="207"?> Index of Names 207 Hunter, Margaret L., 161-162, 171 Huntley, Kristine, 190 Huppertz, Gottfried, 27 Hussein, Saddam, 45-46 India.Arie (India Arie Simpson), 162 Iser, Wolfgang, 80 Jackman, Hugh, 71, 73 Jackson, Peter, 118 Jahn, Peter, 41 James, Henry, 94-95 Jewett, Robert, 113 Johansson, Scarlett, 73 Johnson, Eunice W., 169 Johnson, Jay, 187 Johnson, John H., 168-169 Johnson, Scott, 39 Jonze, Spike, 67, 116, 142 Kaiser, David, 178 Kalvert, Scott, 183 Kaplan, Amy, 39 Katovsky, Carlson, 36 Kaufman, Charlie, 149 Keaton, Buster, 120 Keenan, Kevin L., 163 Kelly, Richard, 67 Kennedy, Don M., 110 Kenner, Hugh, 129 Kerner, Justinus, 150 Kesey, Ken, 123-137 Kimmel, Michael, 192 King, Michael B., 186 Kino, Carol, 35 Kitt, Eartha, 162 Kleist, Heinrich von, 149 Klum, Heidi, 160 Knowles, Beyoncé, 159, 162, 172 Kolesch, Doris, 96 Kompare, Derek, 25 Krämer, Sybille, 96 Lacan, Jacques, 52, 59, 61 Lang, Fritz, 18, 27, 149 Lansbury, Angela, 25-26 Laplanche, Jean, 87 Lawrence, John Shelton, 113 Le Carré, John, 112 Lehu, Jean-Marc, 119 Lenskyj, Helen Jefferson, 191- 193 Leslie, Michael, 172 Levine, Robert S., 101 Levinson, Barry, 178 Lewis, Ffrangcon, 104 Linklater, Richard, 190 Loy, John, 191-192 Ludwig, Emil, 130 Lynch, David, 67 MacDonald, Dwight, 129, 131 Maffesoli, Michel, 17 Malkovich, John, 116-117, 141- 155 Mamet, David, 150 Manovich, Lev, 56 Mathijs, Ernest, 22, 118 McDonald, Joe, 127 McHale, Brian, 142 McKay, Adam, 115 McMullen, Richie J., 186 Meredith, George, 94 Mereilles, Fernando, 112 Mezey, Gillina C., 186 Miller, Bennett, 111 Miller, Timothy, 126 Millhauser, Steven, 68 Mills, Charles W., 161 Mills, Nicolas, 124, 128 Mirza, Heidi Safia, 159 Mirzoeff, Nicholas, 32 Monegal, Antonio, 34 Moore, Roger, 54 Moroder, Giorgio, 27 Morrison, Toni, 79-83, 90 <?page no="208"?> 208 Index of Names Mountain Girl (Carolyn Garcia), 132 Musser, Charles, 38 Myrdal, Gunnar, 161 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 31-32 Nevins Taylor, Barbara, 171 Newhouse, David, 179 Niedringhaus, Anja, 39, 46 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 93, 99- 100, 102-104 Nolan, Christopher, 65-66, 71- 72, 74-75, 118 Norment, Lynn, 168-169 Norton, Edward, 66, 68 Nuwer, Hank, 188 O’Bannon, Dan, 114 Olf, Julian, 148 Olsson, Jan, 19 Omi, Michael, 161 Parker, Jay, 178 Paterno, Joseph Vincent, 180 Pearson, John E., 52 Penrice, Ronda Racha, 162 Perabo, Piper, 72 Petersen, Wolfgang, 178 Phillips, Dennis R., 188 Pitt, Brad, 66 Plimpton, George, 130 Poussaint, Alvin F., 168 Priest, Christopher, 71 Proft, Pat, 120 Propp, Vladimir, 81, 87 Rajewsky, Irina O., 19 Randolph, Laura B., 165 Robert the Bruce, 113 Robins, Elizabeth, 94 Robinson, Eugene, 164 Robinson, Laura, 186-188, 193 Rocco, Marc, 114 Rose, Arnold, 174 Rosenberg, Marvin, 148 Rosenberg, Stuart, 120 Rosler, Martha, 31, 33, 35, 43- 47 Ross, Charles S., 124, 128 Rousseau, Caryn, 118 Rowe, John Carlos, 32 Rowland, Kelly, 162 Russell, Carolyn R., 115 Russell, Kathy, 162 Sanday, Peggy Reeves, 194 Sandusky, Jerry, 179-182, 184, 187 Scacco, Anthony M., Jr., 177, 186 Scarce, Michael, 181, 186 Schafer, Jack, 129, 136 Schechter, Danny, 34-35 Schmiegelt, Ulrike, 40 Schriber, Mary Suzanne, 100 Schultz, Gary, 180 Scorsese, Martin, 113 Scott, Ridley, 116 Seburn, Roy, 127, 134, 135 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 186 Segal, Lynne, 177 Segrave, Kerry, 22-23, 119 Sekula, Allan, 35 Selznick, David O., 20 Setchfield, Nick, 55 Sewell, Rufus, 68 Shakespeare, William, 100 Shanley, John Patrick, 178 Shyamalan, M. Night, 66 Simmel, Georg, 42 Simson, Rennie, 160 Slap, Gail B., 181 Smith, Iain R., 19 Smith, Kevin, 113 Sontag, Susan, 34-35 Spanier, Graham, 180 Sperb, Jason, 60-61 Spheeris, Penelope, 114 Spohr, Susan J., 111 <?page no="209"?> Index of Names 209 Stallabrass, Julian, 36-37 Stannow, Lovisa, 178 Staub, Michael, 124, 130-131 Sterner, Richard, 161 Sterrit, John, 114, 115 Stewart, Garrett, 60 Stock, Michael, 178 Stock, Paul, 53 Stone, Oliver, 113 Stone, Robert, 136 Streisand, Barbra, 178 Stutts, Mary Ann, 110 Swift, Jonathan, 114 Talese, Gay, 131 Tanner, Tony, 95, 100 Tarantino, Quentin, 111-112 Taube, Gerd, 150 Thomas, Evan, 39 Thompson, Hunter S., 127 Thompson, Kristin, 185 Todorov, Tzvetan, 81 Tomaso di Lampedusa, Guiseppe, 45 Tong, Stanley, 118 Trota, Brian, 187 Turner, Ted, 23 Union, Gabrielle, 162 Valente, Sharon M., 181 Vankin, Jonathan, 110, 115 Vinterberg, Thomas, 178 Virilio, Paul, 33 Wajda, Andrzej, 113 Walker, Alice, 161 Walker, Susannah, 163 Wall, Jeff, 34 Wallace, William, 113 Weiland, Paul, 109 Weller, Sheila, 127 West, Cornel, 172 Whalen, John, 110, 115 Whelan, Brent, 127 White, Charles, 167 White, Constance C. R., 166, 170 Williams, Vanessa, 167-169 Willis, Bruce, 67, 70 Wilson, Midge, 162 Winant, Howard, 161 Wolf, Naomi, 163 Wolfe, Tom, 123-137 Wooden, Wayne S., 178 Woolf, Virginia, 94 Wright, Evan, 36 Wyatt, Jean, 82, 84 Wyler, William, 39 Yarbrough, Jean, 112 Yeager, Chuck, 128 Young, John, 20 Zamiatin, Yevgeny, 130 Zelizer, Barbie, 34-36 Zizek, Slavoj, 59 <?page no="210"?> Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG ! "#! $ % www.francke.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Philipp Gwerder Gothic Identities War, Atrocities and Doubles in Philip Caputo’s Fiction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page no="211"?> Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de JETZT BESTELLEN! Deborah L. Madsen / Mario Klarer (eds.) The Visual Culture of Modernism Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 26 2011, 265 S. €[D] 49,00/ SFr 65,50 ISBN 978-3-8233-6673-7 The Visual Culture of Modernism offers a wide-ranging exploration of intertextual relations that bring together artists, artistic forms and artistic periods in response to the question: what is the relevance of early twentiethcentury American Modernism to our present historical moment? Scholars from Europe and America develop responses to this question based on the philosophical heritage of modernity and in the context of the range of Modernist cultural praxis. The essays collected here explore links between literary and cultural Modernism, the relationship between the concepts of modernity and Modernism, and the legacy of Modernism in the late twentieth century and the contemporary period. Cinema, cinematic paratexts, television, the visual arts of painting and photography, poetry, fiction, and drama are among the artistic forms discussed in terms of issues ranging from cinematic and stage reinterpretations of Modernist literary texts to the genre of televisual melodrama and the trope of racial passing. The essays argue that visuality remains an urgent concern, from the Modernist period to our present age of media revolution. 093911 Auslieferung Oktober 2011.indd 18 24.10.11 13: 59 <?page no="212"?> Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG ! "# % www.narr.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Annette Kern-Stähler / David Britain (eds.) English on the Move: Mobilities in Literature and Language & 3 4 @ A 6 % A ) )6 * & ) -. / * 1& 0 * ISBN 978-3-8233-6739-0 B( ) " % : )" " ) : "7 C &" & % D 8= % ) " "! E : " ) 4 % : =* ) ? 6 "! ) ) 8 % ) % ) : "! " ) : 4" 8 " ) " 8 < 6 ) * ) 8 % 6 )6 )6% * : " )8 % : "7 : ) 7 7 ) )) ) " ! " ) ) ) " % % English on the Move: Mobilities in Literature and Language $ )" ": "! ) ) ? 6 )" 4 " " : " ) * ") : 6 % % % : ) * 4 ) %* ) %* 4 ! " : % % ") ) % ) )6 % % "6 * ) 4 6 " % " ? 6 "! : " )8 " 6 % % ) <?page no="213"?> Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Gerhard Bach / Johannes-Peter Timm (Hrsg.) Englischunterricht UTB M * $)6 ) (6Z ,* [* , & ) -. / * 1& , * ISBN 978-3-8252-4037-0 Der „Bach / Timm“ mit seinem Konzept der Handlungsorientierung hat sich seit mehr als zwei Jahr- ' ) &) % % $ % A 6 6 % -fortbildung bewährt. (6Z ) ) % 4`% " * fachlichen und strukturellen Herausforderungen, die den fremdsprachlichen Unterricht gegenwärtig prägen: Anfangsunterricht in der > 6 % 6 * + 6 & ! 6 ) )* Diskussion um Bildungsstandards und Kompe- ) '4 "; * %6 ) " ) y" ' 4) * 3 " ' 6 % A " ) 6 * A 6)" ": * &) ) ! ; ' ) A * ) $6 )6 6 % 4 "{ $) '" A ` ) Grundlagenkapitel wurden ebenso auf den neuesten Forschungsstand gebracht wie die Kapitel zu den gegenwärtigen Brennpunkten des Englischunterrichts, darunter „Neue Medien“ oder „Bildungsstandards“. <?page no="214"?> Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@francke.de • www.francke.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Jörg Roche Fremdsprachenerwerb - Fremdsprachendidaktik UTB basics , * 7" )` % ) ) (6Z , 336 Seiten €[D] 19,99/ SFr 28,00 ISBN 978-3-8252-4038-7 Der Band führt in die Grundlagen der Fremdsprachenerwerbsforschung und -didaktik ein. Mit der Behandlung linguistischer, psycholinguistischer, kognitions- und lernpsychologischer, interkultureller und sprachdidaktischer Aspekte gibt er einen Überblick über die Parameter, die beim Erwerb fremder Sprachen eine Rolle spielen. Die theoretischen Grundlagen nehmen stets auf die Lern- und Lehrpraxis Bezug, zahlreiche Beispiele und Illustrationen erleichtern den Zugang zu einem Thema, das im Zeitalter von Migration, Mobilität und Kommunikation alle betrifft. % )) * 7 ) ) (6Z ) ) ) nur bekannte Positionen aus heutiger Sicht neu, sondern beleuchtet darüber hinaus aktuelle Aspekte der Kognitions-, Mehrsprachigkeits- und Interkulturalitätsforschung mit Blick auf das Entwicklungspotenzial der Fremdsprachendidaktik in der Zukunft. <?page no="215"?> Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG ! "# % www.narr.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Daniela Elsner / Jörg-U. Keßler (eds.) Bilingual Education in Primary School Aspects of Immersion, CLIL, and Bilingual Modules )6% ,* 0 & ) -. / * 1& * ISBN 978-3-8233-6782-6 + 6 %6 ) " ": : {" ) % ) "6 "6) : 6 ) 6 @6 "4 ") ) 4 : 8 % " % 8 "" 7 ""$ "! ! " % % ! % 8 ) "%6 ) " )" 6 ) % ) 4 : 8 "" 7 <) 4 "7 % ) ) "! ) ) "7 7 "! 6 ) 44 " * 6 * 6 ) * % ) 4 ) "! 6 %6 ) " ) 4 : 8 "" ""$ )) 8 " % 4 ) ) ; % "! 6 %6 ) " % %% 6 7 )8 )6 % ) * ) ) 7 ) <) 6 % ! " ! )6%8 46 4" ! " 6 7 )8 : 6) " ! " 6 " " * % "! ) ) ) " "! 6 ) % 4 " : : 6 5A<A* <: : " * " + 6 "%6 7 % % 4 ) " ) % : ) "! 6 "": % @ 4) 6% " ) ) "%6 ) " * 4 % 4" ) % ) 7 ) * 6 ) " ! " 7 * Z ) " * % " "! ) )"4 % ": 4 % 8 ! 6 ) % 6 ) " ""$ ": 4 ) % 8 " 8* 6 : 4 : "%6 * % ) % " 4 8* % 6 { ) % <?page no="216"?> Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH+Co. KG • Dischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen Tel. +49 (07071) 9797-0 • Fax +49 (07071) 97 97-11 • info@narr.de • www.narr.de JETZT BES TELLEN! Stefan Keller Integrative Schreibdidaktik Englisch für die Sekundarstufe Theorie, Prozessgestaltung, Empirie Giessener Beiträge zur Fremdsprachendidaktik 2013, 319 Seiten €[D] 62,00/ SFr 79,80 ISBN 978-3-8233-6799-4 In dieser Studie wird der Frage nachgegangen, wie sich hochrangige und komplexe Schreib- und Ausdruckskompetenzen im Fach Englisch modellieren lassen und wie entsprechende Lernarrangements in der Praxis umgesetzt und evaluiert werden können. Im ersten Teil wird ein Lernarrangement für die Gymnasiale Oberstufe theoretisch fundiert und didaktisch ausgearbeitet. Dabei kommen peer-review, Musteranalysen und Lernportfolios zum Einsatz. Im zweiten Teil werden die Resultate einer Evaluation mit Versuchs- und Vergleichsgruppe geschildert. Dabei wird besonders auch auf Fragen der Messung und Evaluation von komplexen Schreibkompetenzen eingegangen. Im dritten Teil schließlich werden Konsequenzen für die Weiterentwicklung des Englischen Schreibunterrichts aufgezeigt, und zwar von der Unterstufe bis zum Ende der Sekundarstufe. Dabei wird ein integratives Modell der Schreibförderung dargestellt und begründet. <?page no="217"?> SPELL Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 29 Cultures in Conflict / Conflicting Cultures looks at the tensions and disputes that pervade American culture. Focusing primarily on various structural areas of confrontation, the essays in this collection explore the diverse forms of artistic expression these conflicts take in photography, film, television, digital technologies, and advertising.