Journal articles: 'Offensive offering' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

A checkers-like model game with a simplified set of rules is studied through extensive simulations of agents with different expertise and strategies. The introduction of complementary strategies, in a quite general way, provides a tool to mimic the basic ingredients of a wide scope of real games. We find that only for the player having the higher offensive expertise (the dominant player), maximizing the offensive always increases the probability to win. For the nondominant player, interestingly, a complete minimization of the offensive becomes the best way to win in many situations, depending on the relative values of the defense expertise. Further simulations on the interplay of defense expertise were done separately, in the context of a fully offensive scenario, offering a starting point for analytical treatments. In particular, we established that in this scenario the total number of moves is defined only by the player with the lower defensive expertise. We believe that these results stand for a first step towards a new way to improve decision making in a large number of zero-sum real games.

Abstract:

This article contends that considerations of continued human existence beyond this earthly life are advantageous both for defending against a key challenge to the existence of a good God (the evidential problem of evil) and for making a positive moral case for theism. On the defensive side, I address the charge that the amount and alleged gratuitousness of evil render God’s existence unlikely. On the offensive side, I leverage postmortem considerations to bolster a positive case for a good God by offering new arguments that God and an afterlife are key to making sense of moral rationality and morality’s overridingness.

Abstract:

In 1948, Hans J. Morgenthau wrote his classic text, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, that was largely responsible for establishing realism as the prevailing theory in the field of International Relations (IR). In 1979, Kenneth N. Waltz wrote an immensely influential book, Theory of International Politics, that resulted in a new structural version of realism – neorealism – becoming the dominant theory in IR. John J. Mearsheimer, who is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, has written a profoundly important book that rightfully deserves a prominent place along with Morgenthau and Waltz in the canon of realist thought about international politics. Mearsheimer's clearly written book puts forth a new structural theory of realism that he terms offensive realism. This version of realism argues that the observable patterns of behaviour among all of the great powers throughout history, most notably their ubiquitous power-seeking, can be explained by the fact that they exist in a condition of anarchy in which there is no higher source of authority above them. While sharing many of the same basic assumptions with neorealism, offensive realism, as elucidated by Mearsheimer, provides a fundamentally different account of the essential dynamics of international politics than that which Waltz and his students have been offering for the last twenty years or so.

Abstract:

Abstract Book reviews are important in offering guidance to prospective readers. What is expected from them is to be not only informative and evaluative but also unbiased and balanced. Therefore, the use of correct discourse is necessary to prevent asymmetrical domination of the reviewer, and to create a healthy setting to sustain credibility of book reviews in terms of prospective readers. In that sense, this study investigated two discourse devices, namely euphemism and dysphemism. Euphemism can be defined as polite and agreeable words or expressions that are used in place of harsh or offensive ones; however this research investigated if these expressions might lead to undue praise for a book. On the other hand dysphemism is a kind of language that uses disparaging and derogatory terms instead of complimentary or neutral ones. Reviewers may consciously or unconsciously use these linguistic devices in their critiques of books, however; the balance between them is of great importance because any unbalanced negative or positive critical act may bring about unfair judgements in would-be readers regarding the quality of the mentioned book. The present study investigated a hundred book reviews and picked up euphemistic and dysphemistic expressions. The result is of importance in helping the book reviewers to choose the true word of expression without being unnecessarily soft or offensive. Any possible biases against a book because of book reviewers’ inattentive word selection may be prevented in view of the present study. Finally, this study is important for instructors of academic writing to increase their awareness for the importance of discourse devices in book reviews, which is necessary for sustainable development of education; in other words, instructors of academic writing at universities may rearrange their instruction curriculums through saving a slot for euphemism and dysphemism for prospective students.

Abstract:

As students of the Law of Contract learn to their bemusem*nt, in Fisher v Bell,1 although caught by a member of the constabulary in the most compromising circ*mstances, the owner of Bell's Music Shop, situate in the handsome Victorian shopping Arcade in the bustling Broadmead area of Bristol, was unsuccessfully prosecuted for offering for sale a flick knife contrary to s.1(1) of the Restriction of Offensive Weapons Act 1959. The statute penalised “any person who manufactures, sells or hires or offers for sale or hire, or lends or gives to any other person” a flick knife. Mr Bell had done all in his power to make a sale. The switchblade had been displayed in his shop window with a label that read, “Ejector knife—4s”. The police officer, who spotted the display and then took the knife away to show to his superintendent, was told by the shopkeeper that he had had other policemen in the shop inquiring about the knives. When the officer returned to tell Mr Bell that he would be prosecuted, the latter simply retorted “Fair enough.”

Abstract:

This article discusses the Indonesian language used in online business communication. The object of research is devoted to online businesses through the marketplace. Marketplace is an online platform or system that mediates transactions between sellers and buyers. Marketplace has a means of communicating between the seller and the buyer which consists of product description pages, product discussion pages, product review pages, and personal message pages. Of the four communication facilities, only the product description page, product discussion page and product review page can be accessed by the public. Personal message pages can only be accessed by account owners who are communicating with other account owners. The rules for doing business through the marketplace, one of which is the necessity to communicate through the messaging tools available on the platform. Thus, communication can only be done with written variety. Language is very important in offering, attracting interest, responding, and retaining customers. In fact, not all marketplace users look at language usage so that it can be pragmatically considered offensive or likely to interfere with the continuity of business interactions. Analysis is emphasized more on the language of the seller, because in the business the buyer is the party that must be served. The sample of this study is Tokopedia and Bukalapak. The two marketplaces are the largest online business media in Indonesia. Keywords: pragmatics, business communication, marketplace, online business, business language

Abstract:

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review current knowledge, research and thinking about the difficulties facing public libraries offering internet access to their users in ensuring legally compliant and non-offensive use of this facility whilst still adhering to the professional value of freedom of access to information. Design/methodology/approach – A range of recently published sources (1997-2013) relating to the technical and organisational measures used to manage public internet access primarily in public libraries in the UK with some limited international examples were reviewed and analysed. This work was undertaken as the underpinning research for an AHRC-funded project, MAIPLE (Managing Access to the internet in Public Libraries). Findings – The provision of public internet access is a well-established component of the role of public libraries, but is seen as a potential problem due to the possibility of misuse, and it appears that simplistic technical solutions have disappointed. Legislation increases the need for more effective solutions that can provide a balance between the need for legal compliance, a welcoming environment for users, and the protection of key freedoms. A range of measures are being adopted worldwide in response to this dilemma. Originality/value – Research exploring internet access in public libraries and its management in the UK is numerically small and much of it dates back to the start of the twenty-first century. This review presents a comprehensive analysis of the available literature and is of relevance to practitioners and academics in the fields of public librarianship.

Abstract:

One of my favorite sayings——SITUated on the tenuous interface between humor and seriousness—is “Money isn't everything, but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place,” which is cynical and materialistic but impossible to completely reject. In our profession, one could plug in the word Spanish and derive the same results. At colleges and universities across the country, enrollments in Spanish language courses are growing out of proportion, while programs in other languages often struggle to attract students; some small language offerings have in fact become endangered species, and comparisons to the laws of natural selection permeate the discourse. To the many acronyms that pepper the jargon of our profession has been added LOTS—that is, languages other than Spanish—a disclaimer used whenever language programs and language enrollments are being discussed. This acronym is troubling, since it categorically removes Spanish from the discussion of language programs as being too big to handle or—even more sinister—as somehow constituting an obstacle to the teaching and appreciation of the remaining languages, that is, of the LOTS. Even more troubling are the constant references to the “Spanish problem,” heard among university administrators and language program directors, and the downright offensive comparisons between Spanish enrollments and gorillas of varying dimensions and body weight, depending on who is offering the simile. Why should one facet of the disciplines we hold most dear become a problem akin to a threatening beast escaped from the menagerie? I am aware of no global demonization of other trends found in the humanities (sarcastic and often politically incorrect backroom comments notwithstanding); we had no structuralist, deconstruction, feminist, Marxist, or postmodern problem, and the current attractiveness of such areas as applied linguistics, gender studies, and cultural studies is not seen as problematic except by a small group of professors whose own courses are perceived as losing enrollment to these upstart newcomer fields. Across universities no one speaks of the math problem, the science problem, the physical education problem, or even the English problem, despite the fact that all students are required to take courses in these areas and that staffing and resource issues often cause the shoe to pinch in many places simultaneously. To face these issues squarely, we need to examine facts and fantasies, pride and prejudice, public virtues and private vices, and reject the fratricidal vivisection of our profession in favor of a stance that is both ethically defensible and logistically realistic.

Abstract:

Critics of national injunctions are lining up. Attorney General Jeff Sessions labeled these injunctions “absurd” and “simply unsustainable.” Justice Clarence Thomas called them “legally and historically dubious,” while Justice Neil Gorsuch mockingly referred to them as “cosmic injunctions.” Scholars in leading law reviews have called for their demise. Critics argue that national injunctions encourage forum shopping, unfairly burden the federal government, and depart from the history of equity. They also claim that national injunctions contradict the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Mendoza to exempt the federal government from offensive nonmutual issue preclusion—a doctrine that permits nonparties to benefit from a prior finding against a party from an earlier case. Critics are right to identify the connection between national injunctions and nonmutual preclusion. Both of these doctrines describe when judgments can benefit nonparties. But critics are wrong to see Mendoza as an argument against national injunctions. For one thing, the rise of nonmutual preclusion that prompted Mendoza undercuts crucial arguments against national injunctions by offering an alternative explanation for the absence of analogous injunctions in the history of equity. For another, Mendoza was not preordained; instead, it was a highly policy-driven decision. And Mendoza’s policy arguments were dubious when it was decided and even more dubious today. Scrutinizing these arguments should make us less comfortable in extending Mendoza to a new context—as the Supreme Court may be poised to do. Indeed, this Article goes one step further. The Supreme Court or Congress should take advantage of the attention on nonparty relief to reconsider, and overrule, Mendoza. Federal-government litigants do not deserve special treatment with respect to preclusion in every case, and the existing rules of preclusion adequately protect the interests purportedly at stake in Mendoza. Moreover, rejecting Mendoza has feedback effects for the national-injunctions debate. Overruling Mendoza would not only reduce the need for national injunctions (because preclusion could do some of the work) but also provide a framework for limiting national injunctions without eliminating them completely. This is especially important given recent decisions that make relying on class actions a tenuous response. More generally, overruling Mendoza would create a system that is fairer to governmental and nongovernmental litigants alike while reaffirming each branch’s role in the making of national policy.

Abstract:

Among prison-incarcerated men in the United States, more veterans (35%) have a sexual offense conviction than nonveterans (23%). Limited research has investigated factors explaining the link between military service and sexual offending. Nationally representative data from prison-incarcerated men ( n = 14,080) were used to examine the association between veteran status and sexual offenses, adjusting for demographic, childhood, and clinical characteristics. Veterans had 1.35 higher odds (95% confidence interval = [1.12, 1.62], p < .01) of a sexual offense than nonveterans. Among veterans, those who were homeless or taking mental health medications at arrest had lower odds and veterans with a sexual trauma history had higher odds of a sexual offense compared with other offense types. Offering mental health services in correctional and health care settings to address trauma experiences and providing long-term housing options can help veterans with sexual offenses as they transition from prison to their communities.

Abstract:

Television commercials have been the main medium for advertising products/services/ideas to the masses. However, the use of controversial advertisem*nts has shown a manyfold increase in the recent past. Controversial advertisem*nts can be beneficial or harmful for the product; depending on how the target audience perceives them. Even though such advertisem*nts may cause offense to a certain consumer group(s), but advertisers still don’t refrain from using such advertisem*nts to market their or their clients’ product offerings in different segments namely products/services/ideas. Although the majority of research on consumer’s behaviour towards controversial advertisem*nts has been reported from Western countries, very little is known in Asian perspective. In the present study, we attempted to analyze the Indian perspective of consumer’s attitude towards controversial television advertisem*nts based on a survey of 609 respondents (312 males and 297 females). The results obtained indicated ‘political advertisem*nts’ as the most controversial offering to be advertised on television. Consumers were found to be more offended with advertisem*nts where ‘nudity’ was used as the main execution technique. Attitude of consumers towards controversial advertisem*nts and their effect on purchasing behaviour were found clearly correlated to demographic variables including age, education and gender.

Abstract:

Based on a specific case, it is investigated whether, in the context of the offense stipulated in art. 95 of L. 8.666/93, the formalization of an adjustment in legal transactions, guaranteed by a promissory note, which aims to remove another bidder by offering an advantage, can be considered as an unfavorable circ*mstance in the judicial determination of the provisional sentence (art. 59 of the Penal Code). For the answer, which will turn out to be negative, the questions of ne bis in idem and the relevance of the consequences that go beyond the specific legal definition of the offense in the judicial determination of the penalty are analyzed, especially in setting the provisional sentence.

Abstract:

The paper deals with the criminal offense of insurance fraud by analyzing the current provisions of the criminal legislation of the Republic of Serbia and countries in the region. From the neighbour countries, the author analyzes the provisions of the criminal legislation of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina regarding the prescribing of the criminal offense of insurance fraud. The aim of the paper is to point out different models of incrimination of this specific form of fraudulent behavior. In addition to comparative legal analysis, the author points out the types and forms of this criminal act, offering at the end of the paper suggestions for improving the activity in the field, counteracting this socially negative phenomenon.

Abstract:

Current debates on ‘crimes against humanity’ address its history and its potentially neo-imperial effects in international relations. In reference to these issues, this essay abstracts the idea of universal crime from the contemporary concept of ‘crimes against humanity’ and analyzes its mobilizations in early-modern perspectives on the legitimacy of European colonialism. First theorizing the easy union between notions of universal crime and arguments about European imperialism, I then draw on arguments by Vitoria, Gentili, and Grotius. I find that they rely on the idea of an offense injuring all mankind to negotiate colonial relationships between European powers and peoples abroad as well as between European powers vis-à-vis one another, both within Europe and in non-European spaces. The essay concludes by offering three venues for inquiry into the concepts of universal crime and crimes against humanity, namely their political productivity, their historical circulation, and their contemporary neo-imperial character.

Abstract:

After committing an offense, transgressors face an important decision regarding how to respond to the people they hurt. Do they make themselves emotionally vulnerable by offering high-quality, comprehensive apologies? Or do they seek to protect themselves with defensive strategies, such as justifications and excuses? In two studies, we examined the link between attachment styles and apology quality. We hypothesized that because people high in attachment avoidance are uncomfortable with emotional vulnerability and tend to defensively disengage from the emotional aspects of relationships, they would offer less comprehensive and more defensive apologies. In Study 1, participants imagined hurting a friend and then rated their likelihood of using each of eight apology elements and five defensive strategies. In Study 2, participants wrote a real e-mail to a person they had hurt. Our prediction was supported in both studies, suggesting that attachment avoidance plays an important role in how transgressors manage their offenses.

Abstract:

On November 2, 2004, California voters approved Proposition 69, “The DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime, and Innocence Protection Act” by a margin of approximately 60 to 40 percent. Given the limited amount of information provided to voters during the initiative process, it is unclear how many of the yea-sayers were apprised of the full implications of this measure. Indeed, by voting “yes” on Proposition 69, California has elected to house the most radical and costly state criminal DNA database in the country. This dangerous expansion of California's database poses tremendous threats to civil liberties and social justice while offering little, if anything, by way of increasing the safety of its citizens.Prior to November 2, California law required the permanent retention of DNA samples from felons convicted of serious, violent crimes. The new law expands the database to include DNA samples from all felons and individuals with past felony convictions - including juveniles - and, beginning in five years, all adults arrested for any felony offense.

Abstract:

The research objective was to determine the form of legal protection for medical personnel and patients or their families for criminal acts of medical negligence and the form of the mediation concept of penalties for medical negligence. This research uses normative juridical legal research, is descriptive analysis, data sources are primary and secondary legal materials. Medical negligence lies between deliberate and coincidence, the crime of medical negligence is not mens rea, culpa offense is a false offense. The concept of penal mediation for the criminal act of medical negligence is to bring together medical personnel with patients or their families directly, changing the perspective of criminal law towards a humanistic criminal law, because the main focus isn’t on retaliation but on efforts to restore and make peace. The concept of penal mediation isn’t intended to maintain discretionary measures by law enforcers but to provide a place for penal mediation for criminal acts of medical negligence in the criminal justice system in realizing legal protection for medical personnel and patients or their families. The concept of penal mediation in realizing legal protection for medical personnel and patients or their families is a reform of criminal law as a reflection of restorative justice that needs to be regulated and by offering conditional norms. Criminal law reform must be carried out by reviewing and reconstructing criminal law in accordance with the social central values and socio-cultural values of the Indonesian people so that Indonesia's criminal law in the future is filled with Pancasila values.

Abstract:

This article examines how religion contributed to the interconnectivity of the large geographical region of Laconia which was under Spartan control for most of the Archaic and Classical periods. With a particular focus on two Laconian sanctuaries, that of Apollo Maleatas and that of Apollo Tyritas, located in the area of the Thyreatis/Kynouria, which had traditionally been a disputed region between Sparta and Argos, it considers how sanctuaries played a part in Spartan–perioikic relations. The votives from the two sanctuaries vary: the sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas is rich in weapon dedications, while that of Apollo Tyritas has a diverse array of offerings, including bronzes, pottery and weapons. I argue that the sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas served as a central gathering place that united the Lakedaimonians, both Spartans and perioikoi, and where they celebrated the military qualities of Apollo. The sanctuary of Apollo Tyritas may reflect Spartan interests in the disputed region from the late seventh/early sixth century, and it too presents evidence for the military preoccupations affecting the area. The warrior-god Apollo, prominently worshipped in Sparta and Laconia, was appropriately offered offensive weapons of spears and arrowheads, both real size and miniature. The Spartans and perioikoi celebrated the Maleateia festival, at the sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas, which presented an opportunity for Spartans and perioikoi to gather together. A Laconian sacred landscape was formed through the celebration of common cults and festivals, thus uniting the centre (Sparta) with the Laconian (and Messenian) countryside.

Abstract:

Purpose This paper aims to define the term “socially unacceptable services” and call for novel research in these under-researched service industries. Design/methodology/approach Personal reflections. Findings Service offerings exist that, despite their ability to create value for customers, clients or partners, many in society at large deem to be offensive, inappropriate or harmful for a variety of reasons. Service researchers have ignored the existence and impact of socially unacceptable services on consumers and society for too long. Research limitations/implications Given the expanding role of the transformative service research (TSR) paradigm in the services marketing domain, especially given its emphasis on exchanges that influence consumer and societal well-being and the reality that many socially unacceptable services profoundly influence consumer and societal welfare in both positive and negative manners, the time is opportune for service researchers to begin exploring socially unacceptable services from a TSR perspective. Practical implications Given that buyers and sellers who enter socially unacceptable exchanges often seem satisfied by doing so, the authors encourage researchers to unearth how consumers obtain value from these exchanges and to explore whether consumers enter these exchanges with full information to make informed decisions. Originality/value This viewpoint is one of the first to provide authors with an impetus to begin research program in socially unacceptable services and offers researchers a list of potential research topics in this new area. The authors believe that socially unacceptable service research may emerge as a separate research paradigm.

Abstract:

One of the main responsibilities of the editorial office is to communicate effectively with authors through emails, formal letters, and most importantly through decision letters. Even when the content is informative and constructive and the editor has only good intentions, if the tone and level of formality are not managed properly, the image of the journal may be negatively affected, which may deter authors from submitting papers to the journal again. Despite their best efforts to treat authors respectfully, some editors may unintentionally cause offense if they lack the appropriate sociolinguistic knowledge required for effective English correspondence. In order to ease the burden of the editorial office, this tutorial aims to assist non-native English speaking editors by demonstrating the basic format and principles of writing formal letters and email, providing tips on how to select an acceptable level of formality, and offering strategies to avoid unintentional rudeness. Specific tips include framing issues positively, using indirect language, and using hedging. Through this tutorial, non-native English speaking editors are expected to develop sociolinguistic competence to write professionally and improve their efficiency in corresponding with authors.

Abstract:

Abstract: This article discusses about a criminal sanction of the standard clauses in a motor vehicle parking ticket for parking service manager according to article 18 paragraph (1) jo. article 62 paragraph (1) of Law No. 8 year 1999 about consumer’s protection. Standard clause is an agreement where the procedure of making it is unilateral. A standard clause listed on the ticket motorists has violated the provision of article 18 paragraph (1) letter a, namely “the businesses doers, in offering goods and/or services that are held for trading, are prohibited from making or including a standard clauses in each document and/or agreement if they had declare the transfer of responsibility of entrepreneurs”. The inclusion of a standard clause as mentioned in the above provisions can be categorized as a criminal offense. The criminal penalty of such act is imprisonment of a maximum 5 (five) years or a criminal sanction of a maximum Rp. 2,000,000,000.00 (two billions rupiah) as stipulated in article 62 paragraph (1) UUPK. In Islam, these are included a criminal act and they have not stipulated in the text yet. So that, it becomes the authority of ulil 'amri to determine the punishment.Keywords: Sanctions, criminal act, standard clause, motor vehicle

Abstract:

The first half of Aiskhylos' "Agamemnon" presents three crimes of the House of Atreus: the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (184-247), the wasting of young Argive lives at Ilion (355-487) and the treading of the materials as the victorious king reenters his palace (810-974). We argue that the sequential presentation of the crimes of the House, which are connected thematically, stylistically, and causally, radically redefines the nature of transgression within contemporary models of the polis community. Crime as defined in relationship to oikos alone is displaced by crime as defined in relationship to both oikos and the broader polis community; transgression moves from an aristocratic (oikos alone) to an isonomic (oikos within polis) context. This redefinition culminates in the "Carpet-Scene." We reread Agamemnon's nostos as a contest of epinikia. The king represents himself as victorious idiôtês, and Klutaimestra strives to figure him as returning tyrant. She succeeds in the stichomythia, where Agamemnon fails to recognize the crucial distinction between φθόνος and ζῆλος. Aristotle differentiates the terms at Rhet. 1387-88, where φθόνος is envy toward a social superior and ζῆλος the emotion one experiences in rivalry between equals; we document the development of the terms from the archaic period onwards, demonstrate that Aristotle's distinction is valid for the late archaic and classical periods, and suggest that it arose in an attempt to outline relationships of appropriate and inappropriate competition among fellow-citizens. Agamemnon's failure to recognize this important distinction betrays his misunderstanding of the dynamics of, and his agreement to walk on the materials is an offense against, isonomic community. The rearticulation of the nature of transgression completed by this crime of Agamemnon against the polis does fundamental ideological work for the rest of the Oresteia, offering an aetiology of the claims of the polis against the aristocratic oikos.

Abstract:

The story – we might almost saylegend – of how Dickens came to make the character of Riah inOur Mutual Frienda benign figure and a deliberate revision of fa*gin, underworld denizen ofOliver Twist, is well known. In 1860, an Anglo-Jewish couple, J. P. and Eliza Davis, bought Charles Dickens's London home, Tavistock House. Dickens remarked to his personal secretary, William Wills, that he could not recall any “money-making dealings . . . that have been so satisfactory, considerate, and trusting” (Johnson 487). This expression of relief and slight surprise that the sale of his property to a Jewish family was without complication followed on Dickens's suspicion, crudely expressed earlier in the negotiations, that the “Jew Money-Lender” (as he referred to J. P. Davis) would not come through on the deal (Stone 243). But, though the Davises proved surprisingly cooperative in this phase of the transaction as far as Dickens was concerned, Mrs. Davis did ultimately have a complaint to register with the great writer and delivered it politely in a letter three years later. It was not about the house or the terms of purchase but rather about the character of fa*gin, created by Dickens in 1837, some twenty-six years earlier. English Jews, she told him, had taken offense at this portrayal of one of their people and believed Dickens had done them a “great wrong” by offering the greedy, thieving, child-corrupting, sausage-eating criminal as representative of their “scattered nation” (Lane 98). Still, she added, while the author lived he might conceivably “justify himself or atone” for this deed. Apparently contrite and unaware of feeling any of the prejudices his portrait of the London fence might convey, Dickens declared in a letter back to Mrs. Davis that he had only “friendly feelings” for the Jews. His contrition did not end there. For the novel he was then beginning to write, Dickens would create a beneficent Jewish character, Riah, friend to the river dredger's daughter, Lizzie Hexam, and her misshapen companion, the dolls’ dressmaker, Jenny Wren. As the late-nineteenth century Anglo-Jewish poet and novelist Amy Levy put it, Dickens “trie[d] to compensate for his having affixed the label ‘Jew’ to one of his bad fairies by creating the good fairy Riah” (Levy 176).

Abstract:

Almost four decades after its discovery was initially announced, the Celtic necropolis in Karaburma, a suburb of Belgrade, is still one of the most important archaeological sites for the interpretation of the historical, economic, and cultural processes taking place in the central Balkans from the 4th to the end of the 1st centuries B.C. Most of all, it represents a wide-ranging source for explaining the chronology of the oldest Celtic presence in this area, also illustrating cultural exchanges in the network in which they were included. In this necropolis, belonging to the regional military elite, there are several graves in which, in addition to standard offerings relating to the regional material culture, items originating from a wider cultural area were found. Amongst these, grave number 22, the subject of our research, is especially important. In this grave were found objects mainly made of bronze and iron, with a smaller fragment of pottery. The iron items represent the attire of the deceased and his offensive weapons, while bronze items are characteristically imported vessels and a smaller bronze ring (figs. 1, 2). The imported vessels are represented by the well-known situla and cup. According to the basic typological scheme, we can classify the situla within the large group of ovoid situlae with the leaf-shaped or the so-called heart-shaped ornament under the attachment (figs. 1, 9; 2; 3, 7). According to the typological scheme here suggested, the situla found in Karaburma belongs to the first group, namely to its variant b (Ib), which is characterized by situlae with a leaf-shaped ornament on the attachment, separately cast and then pinned down or soldered to the body of the vessel (fig. 3, 7). Also belonging to this group are situlae from Skillountia, Goce Delcev (fig. 3, 8), V?rbica (fig. 3, 9) and from Chirnogi (fig. 3, 10). Situlae from Budva (fig. 3, 11) and Belgrade (fig. 3, 12) should also be included here, probably the one from Bitola as well. According to the analysis here presented, we have attributed the situla to the work of Macedonian workshops of the 4th century, to which other situlae, initially recorded in the contexts of Celtic provenance, have finally been included, and which ended up in the graves of Celtic dignitaries as exclusive imports of particular social conditions and ideological features. The other bronze vessel, considering its size, metric relations, technical and stylistic execution, we interpret as a cup, or at least as some kind of transitional form, since it is somewhat more shallow when compared to actual cups, and significantly taller compared to phiale (figs. 1, 10; 2). The context in which it was found indicates that it must have been used as a drinking cup in a set, together with the ovoid situla. Similar phiale were a very popular form in Thrace in the 4th century (fig. 7, 2-3), but the greatest resemblance can be seen in the phiale from Peretu, from the Thraco-Getian area to the north (fig. 7, 1). Characteristics of the form and style of the cup from Karaburma enabled its classification among the later variants or transitional forms of cups, seen in the context of the bronze production of Northern Greece, i.e. Macedonia. It is important for the period of the midto late 4th century, in other words, it completely matches with the chronological background and location of the ovoid situla with the leaf-shaped ornament under the attachment. In the analysis of weapons belonging to a Celtic warrior buried in grave 22, an iron sword with preserved fragments of a scabbard made of iron sheet (fig. 1, 1-2) stands out. Comparative analysis has characterized the sword as an exceptionally late form of the group Kosd D, attributed to the phase Lt B2. However, the slightly accentuated biconical shape of the scabbard?s end also points to certain elements of the group Kosd C. In the Carpathian basin the group Kosd C represents a rather rare form, which as a cultural innovation spread westwards, thus the Karaburma necropolis in Belgrade represents their southeastern, furthest point of expansion. To this same time frame also belongs the sword belt chain set (fig. 1, 5-6). Typological and spatial analysis has shown that chain belts with single figure-ofeight links, exactly the same as the ones found in grave 22, are relatively rare in that region. Asimilar sword belt set was found in the Benacci necropolis in Bologna, also containing a sword inside a scabbard decorated with a pair of dragons of the II type according to Jose-Maria De Navarro. Alongside it was also found a spear-butt with a spike which by its workmanship, closely resembles precisely the spear-butt with a long spike and the massive conical lower part from grave 22 (fig. 1, 4). Unlike the complete sword belt chain set and the sword, the spear-butt was isolated, but perhaps we can connect the bronze ring with it (fig. 1, 3). Given its size, it was probably the grip which was strengthening the spot at which the spear-butt was inserted into it. Aspecial feature of grave 22 are two highly fragmented remains of fibulae (fig. 1, 7-8). The spring of the larger fibula stands out, with two winders on each side, and with an external arch (fig. 1, 7), which dates from the late Lt B2 phase and the transitional horizon B2/C1. It has long been accepted as fact that the Celts inhabited the area between the rivers Sava and Danube from as early as the second half and towards the end of the 4th century, while the Scordisci, as such, formed only after the defeat at Delphi. However, the process of the Celtic expansion was already happening at the beginning of the 4th century, and it spread along the main communication routes, the rivers, with strategic points first to be settled. Only after several decades of consolidation, or only upon the return from the military expedition to the south of the Balkan peninsula, was the whole area inhabited by the Celts by the end of the 4th century. This historically suggested claim always necessarily led to the question of chronological positioning and the distance between phases Lt B2 and Lt C2. Most authors dealing with this matter have held that phase Lt B2 was supposed to have finished after the Celtic invasion of the southern Balkans, i.e. some time in the 3rd century. However, this assessment does not seem entirely correct, since most objects of La T?ne cultural provenance found in the Aegean region and Asia Minor stem from the initial Lt C horizon, which means that the expedition to Delphi cannot represent an absolute chronological border between the Lt B2 and C1. The absence of indicative elements of the material culture of the Lt B horizon in the Aegean area and Anatolia indicates that they already had to be completely out of fashion by the time of the expedition. In brief - after the dissolution of Lisimachus? kingdom and the murder of Seleucus I in 281 B.C., there was a military and political power vacuum in the region of Macedonia and Thrace. The opportunity was seized by Celts from the region of the lower Danube, who set out towards ?the South?. In 279 B.C. one of the three groups, led by Bolgios (i.e. Belgius), defeated the Macedonian royal army, and Ptolemy Ceraunus himself got killed. In the summer of the same year, Brennus reached central Greece, i.e. Delphi; having suffered a defeat, the larger portion of the army was stationed in the region of Thrace, after a logical retreat. There they received an offer from Nicomedus I of Bythinia who hired 20,000 of them as mercenaries, hence their penetration into Asia Minor in 278 and 277 B.C. On the other hand, the archaeological findings from the mentioned area, connected with these events, indicate that it can and must be classified within the Lt C1 phase. An additional argument in favour of an earlier dating is also offered by a pair of two-part anklets, with eight hollow semispherical bosses with no ornaments, found in the Spanos well in the vicinity of Poseidon?s sanctuary in Isthmia. Previously, Rupert Gebhard had held that these findings should be brought into connection with the incursion of 279 B.C., dating from his horizon 5, i.e. between c. 290 and 260 B.C. However, Isabelle Raubitschek demonstrated the opposite, pointing to several details: firstly, since the remnants of the Celtic army after their defeat withdrew through the Thermopylae, it is unlikely that on the way back anyone would pass through Isthmia; secondly, similar anklets were also found in the Heraion of Perachora, and finally and most importantly, that they were found in an enclosed context, together with the kylix-krater, meaning that they must date from the third quarter of the 4th century. To her conclusions we can now add two other possible perspectives: 1. - regarding the chronology, the most important fact is that the pair of two-part anklets is evidently much older than previously thought. From the historical perspective, the information on the enclosed context, i.e. that similar findings were also found in the complexes of Greek sanctuaries, is of great importance. 2. - dating clearly shows that these anklets cannot be connected with war or looting, i.e. cannot be seen as spoil from the expedition to Delphi to be sacrificed by the victors. In fact, that context points to a small, but recognizable segment from the range of diplomatic gifts which circulated between the Greek world and the Celtic aristocrats from the region of the middle course of Danube. On the other hand, among the graves of the La T?ne cultural provenance containing findings which originated from Greek, i.e. Macedonian workshops, and which predate the time of the military expedition to the south of the Balkan peninsula, apart from the finding of a bronze cup from the end of the 4th century found in Szabolc in Hungary, only Karaburma grave 22 stands out. Both findings were included by Miklos Szab? among those which preceded the expedition to Delphi, although it is possible that they reached the Celtic world after that event. He also mentioned that it was becoming increasingly evident that this was more than just a case of military spoil or loot, which he concluded on the basis of the presence of less valuable items. This claim led M. Szab? into a trap: if the items, mostly from the 4th century, presupposed contacts of the Celtic inhabitants with the Aegean world, it would be necessary to date their settlement, i.e. the phase Lt B2, in the 4th century, and thus in the period significantly earlier than the expedition to Delphi. Furthermore, a bronze lekythos was found in a slightly younger grave 18/64 on the Hurbanovo site, in the same cultural and historical context. This is a lekythos of the Talcot type, frequently found in Greece, Thrace and Macedonia, dating back to the end of the 4th and the first half of the 3rd century. On the mentioned site it was chronologically classified in the transitional horizon Lt B2/C1, which according to Jozef Bujna was the period after the military expedition to the Balkans. The same researcher held that the grave 22 from Karaburma should also be included in that time frame. However, what if J. Bujna was wrong on this matter, given that he opted for a conservative dating of the set of vessels? Based on the above, we might actually consider placing the absolute dating of the Lt C1 phase in the 4th century - the century during which the production of such lekythoi flourished, as did their laying in Macedonian graves. Implicitly, such dating is also confirmed by the items of the La T?ne provenance, found in the region of the southern Balkans, i.e. the Aegean area. They all exhibit formal characteristics typical of the Lt C. Consequently, it can be concluded that the beginning of the Lt C horizon must be sought in the period immediately preceding the expedition to ?the South?. In connection with that, it was precisely J. Bujna who demonstrated that certain graves in the necropolises of the Lt C were found on the periphery, which he interpreted as a possible clue for recognizing the newcomers, i.e. those who returned from the Balkan expedition. Aurel Rustoiu also came to a similar conclusion, having systematically analyzed the equipment of the warrior elites, the socalled mercenaries from the Aegean world. The declining number of male graves in the period between Lt B1 and Lt C1, among other things, also led Peter Ramsl to hypothesize that numerous warriors hired as mercenaries never returned to their homes. Related to this, significant data in the analysis of the share of warrior graves in the necropolises of the Carpathian basin was provided by A. Rustoiu. He showed that the share of warrior graves, i.e. graves with weapons in Lt B2 phase, is higher than of those in the Lt C1. However, the Karaburma necropolis is an exception also in this respect, since the share of the warrior graves is significantly higher than in the other necropolises belonging to both phases. Thus in the Lt C1 it is 48%, while in the Lt B2 it is as high as 70%. On the basis of the collected data, he hypothesized that there were two types of societies in the Carpathian basin: agricultural communities with reduced military elites, and military communities which represented social aristocracy and which formed the core for military and war expeditions, and also constituted the basis for the recruitment of mercenaries. The latter transcended ethnic bounds, given that they were selected on an individual basis, which is clearly reflected in the changeability and different origin of the equipment of warriors. Findings of bronze vessels tie in with this neatly, if we interpret them as a result of contacts and a substitute for the traditional late La T?ne pottery set, consisting of a ceramic bowl (phiale), and a vessel for liquids (situla-like pot or lenticular bottle). Both situla and phiale are standard items, frequent, widespread, and the most indicative parts of solemn ritual banquets and feasts, as shown by numerous and explicit findings from the rich graves of Thracia and Anatolia. However, they were still an essential part of the Greek culture, commonly used in religious, mystical ceremonies. Although we frequently encounter them in hoards and, of course, temples, with rare exceptions mostly due to insufficient knowledge on the item?s context of finding, those situlae and phiale were, almost as a rule, part of luxury sets, indicating rich graves of those belonging to the highest social and political strata of the society. This is the reason why they were often interpreted as burial insignia, used to sanctify the burial space and to encourage eternal deification, divine vitality and the rebirth of a deceased dignitary; in other words, it is thought that they exhibited power and authority in both Thracian and Getian graves. However, the Celts could also have used these vessels at funeral feasts and banquets, just as they were used in their country of origin, since we know that in the graves of the Celtic dignitaries everything was laid that they possessed in their lifetime, especially sets of dishes, for the purpose of ensuring an unbroken cycle of rebirth. It has been further suggested that the bronze vessels were used for the ceremonies of libation, but also for trade and exchange, while the silver drinking cups and luxury sets made of precious metals were used for burial feasts and diplomatic banquets during negotiations and/or when concluding agreements, simply as keimelia or as a ritual device for expressing deeply held and widely accepted eschatological practices and new trends. However, both could have been quite practically used for bribing - both people and gods! Finally, the imported vessels from Karaburma, classified as Macedonian products from the 4th century, should now be viewed as the northernmost findings of a complete symposiastic set, but also in the context of other vessels imported from Macedonia found in the graves with the features of the La T?ne culture. It is unlikely that they represent war spoils from Greece or other parts. The idea that the situla and phiale from the grave 22 of the Karaburma necropolis inaugurated direct contact between the Celts and Macedonians seems more likely. The items could have reached the 4th century Celtic dignitaries of the Danube region as keimelia - diplomatic gifts, or could have simply arrived by a trade route from the northern parts of Macedonia. In that sense, we should also remember those modest, but for this case invaluable records found in the historical sources connected with this period. It has been thought that the Celtic presence dates back to as early as the time of the defeat and expulsion of the Ardiaei in 359/358 B.C., as recorded by Theopompus. However, there are reliable records of their embassy to Alexander the Great while he was engaged with the Tribali in 335 B.C., as reported by Arrian. Precisely those could have been the points of direct contact between the highest ranking military and political dignitaries of the Celts and the aristocrats and diplomats of the Macedonian state. From all this it can be concluded that the Karaburma necropolis is truly an exception, representing the southernmost point of Celtic militarized expansion, where the military social aristocracy was stationed. The region where the Sava and Danube meet thus became an area where technological innovations concentrated and developed, and also the space where the political, military and economic contacts filtered. All this is vividly illustrated by grave 22 in the necropolis, chosen precisely because of those features. Weapons, i.e. the sword of the Celtic dignitary who was buried there, indicate the technological tradition of the early La T?ne. In the same tradition were fashioned the fibulae which, in an unchanged form, remain in the repertoire of accessories at the beginning of the middle La T?ne period, just as, on the other hand, the sword and the shape of its scabbard indicate the beginning of re-fashioning of that same conservative tradition. The sword belt chain set and the spear-butt with its spike indicate the innovations which were yet to become the characteristic features of the middle La T?ne soldiers? equipment. Furthermore, the intertwining of traditions and innovations is also evident from the symbolic and semantic processes which were connected with the ritual of this burial. At the time when the cremation became the predominant type of burial in the Celtic world, the ritual of laying gifts in graves also changed. Instead of the complete equipment which the deceased used during life, only select items are found to represent the totality, which in our example can be seen in the deposited spear-butt. Thus the suum cuique principle was replaced by the pars pro toto principle. Based on the above, the famous warrior from the Karaburma grave 22 both in an abstract and also direct sense, confirms the intertwining of traditions and the circulation of cultural elements, and thus shows that he himself was one of the carriers of the avant-garde of the time, the forerunner of a new period in political and economic relations in the central Balkans of the third quarter of the 4th century.

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Abstract Dynamic motivations for the use of product line extensions in the form of entry-level products are considered. When consumers are uncertain of their valuations for products, and their purchasing power evolves over time, firms competing in a lucrative luxury market may try to influence the future buying decisions of young consumers. Offering entry-level products allows young consumers to experiment and thereby make better future decisions. Despite this efficiency, so providing information to consumers need not benefit a firm. The dynamic motivations for offensive product introductions differ discretely from defensive introductions.

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AbstractThe paper discusses Belarusian couples’ reflections on the role of humorous folklore in their daily family interactions. The interviewees generally regarded being humorous as a positive feature and identified (explicitly or implicitly) several functions of humor, such as framing group boundaries, offering criticism, and sharing ideas that would otherwise be difficult to communicate. A recurring distinction evoked by respondents was between “good” (benevolent) and “bad” (offensive) humor. However, interviews also revealed that the actual perception of humor, especially in the form of mocking and teasing, can be very context-specific, and the boundary between aggression and playfulness is not always clear-cut. The paper explores this ambiguity by examining self-reported instances of mocking and teasing, whereupon the producer and the recipient of humor need to resolve the tension between “having a good sense of humor” and using humor in an offensive or aggressive way. The couples’ attitudes towards family humor are discussed within the broader context of the value of humor in modern society. The paper also reflects on the limitations of using the interview as a data collection method for studying family humor.

Abstract:

The study observes the core of both traffickingin persons and security offering a preliminary understandingthe interconnection between the two concepts which is indeed aprecondition of the more thorough contemplation of this securityproblem. Noteworthy is also the further elaboration of the riskthat link between violence and modern-day slavery representshaving in mind society and the individual. This informal economyviolates the principle of morality and is understood to be one of themost offensive crimes. Its elementary features are psychological and/or physical torture, coercing into engaging in the violation of the lawand established social norms as well as transporting and harboring.The consequence of all of this is the material gain, whereas the victimappears as Machiavellian means the gain will justify. Traffickingemerges in different forms, the most discernible of which are forcedlabor and sexual exploitation that is among the hardest forms ofdesecrating human soul. Unfortunately, it is a common phenomenonthat many people (some independent estimates mention a figure ofseveral million) around the world, women and children, in particular,every year become victims of this violence. Tough living conditions,as well as uncertain economic future, are among fundamentalcauses infecting healthy society. If a well-organised criminal networkor a ‘hidden economy’ succeeds to impose the rule of conduct, thenhuman trafficking finds fertile soil in which to grow. Having beenlured the victims later realize where they are, but many never returnto their families, and that terrible fate should make society do whatcan be done and help them.

Abstract:

Nowadays social media become the battleground for political parties in India. It becomes an essential part of campaigning. The political parties form their own social media teams and they generate propagating content such as cartoons, memes etc. This field has also become a tool for common people to voice their concern. With the increasing usage of smartphones use of social media are also growing rapidly. Media plays the most important role in a Democracy and it keeps the Government active. With the advent of social media including Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube etc. dramatically changed the way campaigns are run in Politics. Indians are rated as one of the most active social media users in the world. In India the 16th Lok Sabha election held in 2014 we saw the new trend in Indian politics. Social media played a proactive role in deciding which party wins the most seats. The Internet in India is offering opportunities for people to participate in interactive political social media campaigns and become political activists. Sometimes offensive online behavior on social media pages poses potential threats to its users. There are sometimes misunderstandings in comments. It will not be very effective using it as a mere campaign tool. But if used as a platform to share the latest decisions made by the Government and used effectively for active citizen engagement, social media will show positive results for future Indian elections. Social media have also become one of the important tools for nearly all of the world’s political movements. It can be a potent weapon to spread one's ideology, or at least get it to reach more ears. Social media made democracy more inclusive from which nothing can be hidden.

Abstract:

Abstract Background Despite evidence that treatment reduces addiction-related harms, including crime and overdose, only a minority of addiction-affected individuals receive it. Linking individuals who committed an addiction-related crime to addiction treatment could improve outcomes. Methods The aim of this city-wide, pre-arrest diversion program, Madison Addiction Recovery Initiative (MARI) is to reduce crime and improve health (i.e., reduce the overdose deaths) among adults who committed a minor, non-violent, drug use-related offense by offering them a referral to treatment in lieu of arrest and prosecution of criminal charges. This manuscript outlines the protocol and methods for the MARI program development and implementation. MARI requires its participants to engage in the recommended treatment, without reoffending, during the six-month program, after which the initial criminal charges are “voided” by the law enforcement agency. The project, implemented in a mid-size U.S. city, has involved numerous partners, including law enforcement, criminal justice, public health, and academia. It includes training of the police officer workforce and collaboration with clinical partners for treatment need assessment, treatment placement, and peer support. Program evaluation includes formative, process, outcome (participant-level) and exploratory impact (community-level) assessments. For outcome evaluation, we will compare crime (primary outcome), overdose-related offenses, and incarceration-related data 12 months before and 12 months after the index crime between participants who completed (Group 1), started but not completed (Group 2), and were offered but did not start (Group 3) the program, and adults who would have been eligible should MARI existed (Historical Comparison, Group 4). Clinical characteristics will be compared at baseline between Groups 1–2, and pre-post the program within Group 1. Participant baseline data will be assessed as potential covariates. Surveys of police officers and program completers, and community-level indicators of crime and overdose pre- versus post-program will provide additional data on the program impact. Discussion By offering addiction treatment in lieu of arrest and prosecution of criminal charges, this pre-arrest diversion program has the potential to disrupt the cycle of crime, reduce the likelihood of future offenses, and promote public health and safety.

Abstract:

Power and corruption have been inseparable since ancient times. The phenomenon of corruption is of particular interest not only for scientists working in the field of social and humanitarian knowledge, but also for politicians, lawyers, philosophers and public figures. Almost all modern researchers consider corruption as a social phenomenon. The problems of corruption are reflected in the works of political scientists, economists, legal scholars, lawyers, philosophers, sociologists, offering a variety of approaches to the study of a multidimensional and debatable phenomenon. The UN views corruption as a complex social, cultural and economic phenomenon affecting all countries, but does not provide a more detailed explanation of the term. The concept of a “corruption offense” does not have a separate definition in Finnish legislation. Scientists and practitioners still have not come to a common opinion on the key issue: how to objectively determine the effective work of the anti-corruption institution and its impact on the corruption situation in the country. According to the author, studying the history, causes and extent of corruption in Finland will allow understanding of its evolution, causes and influence on the state to determine the regulatory framework in the field of anti-corruption legislation in Finland. Ietekme un korupcija ir bijuši saistīti kopš seniem laikiem. Korupcijas fenomens ir īpaši saistošs ne vien sociālo un humanitāro zinātņu ekspertiem, bet arī politiķiem, juristiem, filozofiem un sabiedrību ietekmējošām personībām. Gandrīz visi mūsdienu pētnieki uzskata korupciju par sociāla tipa fenomenu. Korupcijas riskus un to ietekmi apraksta politikas zinātnes pārstāvji, ekonomisti, jurisprudences akadēmiskais personāls, filozofi, sociologi, piedāvājot dažādas pieejas šī multidimensionālā un diskusiju vērtā fenomena aplūkošanā. ANO definē korupciju kā kompleksu sociālo, kultūras un ekonomikas fenomenu, kas ietekmē visas valstis, bet sīkāku termina skaidrojumu tam nesniedz. “Korupcijas pārkāpuma” konceptam arī somu likumdošanā nav savas definīcijas. Pētnieki un praktiķi līdz šim nav vienojušies par kopēju redzējumu korupcijas sakarā: kā objektīvi izvērtēt pretkorupcijas institūciju darba efektivitāti un to ietekmi uz korupcijas risku mazināšanu valstī. Pēc šī raksta autora domām, korupcijas vēstures liecību, cēloņu un apjoma pētījumi ļaus izprast šī fenomena attīstības tendences valstī, tās cēloņus un ietekmi uz valsts pārvades struktūru, un sekmēs tādas likumdošanas izstrādi, kas regulē korupcijas risku mazināšanu Somijā.

Abstract:

Being a celebrity sure ain’t what it used to be. Or, perhaps more accurately, the process of maintaining a stable star persona isn’t what it used to be. With the rise of new media technologies—including digital photography and video production, gossip blogging, social networking sites, and streaming video—there has been a rapid proliferation of voices which serve to articulate stars’ personae. This panoply of sanctioned and unsanctioned discourses has brought the coherence and stability of the star’s image into crisis, with an evermore-heightened loop forming recursively between celebrity gossip and scandals, on the one hand, and, on the other, new media-enabled speculation and commentary about these scandals and gossip-pieces. Of course, while no subject has a single meaning, Hollywood has historically expended great energy and resources to perpetuate the myth that the star’s image is univocal. In the present moment, however, studios’s traditional methods for discursive control have faltered, such that celebrities have found it necessary to take matters into their own hands, using new media technologies, particularly Twitter, in an attempt to stabilise that most vital currency of their trade, their professional/public persona. In order to fully appreciate the significance of this new mode of publicity management, and its larger implications for contemporary subjectivity writ large, we must first come to understand the history of Hollywood’s approach to celebrity publicity and image management.A Brief History of Hollywood PublicityThe origins of this effort are nearly as old as Hollywood itself, for, as Richard DeCordova explains, the celebrity scandals of the 1920s threatened to disrupt the economic vitality of the incipient industry such that strict, centralised image control appeared as a necessary imperative to maintain a consistently reliable product. The Fatty Arbuckle murder trial was scandalous not only for its subject matter (a murder suffused with illicit and shadowy sexual innuendo) but also because the event revealed that stars, despite their mediated larger-than-life images, were not only as human as the rest of us, but that, in fact, they were capable of profoundly inhuman acts. The scandal, then, was not so much Arbuckle’s crime, but the negative pall it cast over the Hollywood mythos of glamour and grace. The studios quickly organised an industry-wide regulatory agency (the MPPDA) to counter potentially damaging rhetoric and ward off government intervention. Censorship codes and morality clauses were combined with well-funded publicity departments in an effort that successfully shifted the locus of the star’s extra-filmic discursive construction from private acts—which could betray their screen image—to information which served to extend and enhance the star’s pre-existing persona. In this way, the sanctioned celebrity knowledge sphere became co-extensive with that of commercial culture itself; the star became meaningful only by knowing how she spent her leisure time and the type of make-up she used. The star’s identity was not found via unsanctioned intrusion, but through studio-sanctioned disclosure, made available in the form of gossip columns, newsreels, and fan magazines. This period of relative stability for the star's star image was ultimately quite brief, however, as the collapse of the studio system in the late 1940s and the introduction of television brought about a radical, but gradual, reordering of the star's signifying potential. The studios no longer had the resources or incentive to tightly police star images—the classic age of stardom was over. During this period of change, an influx of alternative voices and publications filled the discursive void left by the demise of the studios’s regimented publicity efforts, with many of these new outlets reengaging older methods of intrusion to generate a regular rhythm of vendible information about the stars.The first to exploit and capitalize on star image instability was Robert Harrison, whose Confidential Magazine became the leading gossip publication of the 1950s. Unlike its fan magazine rivals, which persisted in portraying the stars as morally upright and wholesome, Confidential pledged on the cover of each issue to “tell the facts and name the names,” revealing what had been theretofore “confidential.” In essence, through intrusion, Confidential reasserted scandal as the true core of the star, simultaneously instituting incursion and surveillance as the most direct avenue to the “kernel” of the celebrity subject, obtaining stories through associations with call girls, out-of-work starlettes, and private eyes. As extra-textual discourses proliferated and fragmented, the contexts in which the public encountered the star changed as well. Theatre attendance dropped dramatically, and as the studios sold their film libraries to television, the stars, formerly available only on the big screen and in glamour shots, were now intercut with commercials, broadcast on grainy sets in the domestic space. The integrity—or at least the illusion of integrity—of the star image was forever compromised. As the parameters of renown continued to expand, film stars, formally distinguished from all other performers, migrated to television. The landscape of stardom was re-contoured into the “celebrity sphere,” a space that includes television hosts, musicians, royals, and charismatic politicians. The revamped celebrity “game” was complex, but still playabout: with a powerful agent, a talented publicist, and a check on drinking, drug use, and extra-marital affairs, a star and his or her management team could negotiate a coherent image. Confidential was gone, The National Inquirer was muzzled by libel laws, and People and E.T.—both sheltered within larger media companies—towed the publicists’s line. There were few widely circulated outlets through which unauthorised voices could gain traction. Old-School Stars and New Media Technologies: The Case of Tom CruiseYet with the relentless arrival of various news media technologies beginning in the 1980s and continuing through the present, maintaining tight celebrity image control began to require the services of a phalanx of publicists and handlers. Here, the example of Tom Cruise is instructive: for nearly twenty years, Cruise’s publicity was managed by Pat Kingsley, who exercised exacting control over the star’s image. With the help of seemingly diverse yet essentially similar starring roles, Cruise solidified his image as the co*cky, charismatic boy-next-door.The unified Cruise image was made possible by shutting down competing discourses through the relentless, comprehensive efforts of his management company; Kingsley's staff fine-tuned Cruise’s acts of disclosure while simultaneously eliminating the potential for unplanned intrusions, neutralising any potential scandal at its source. Kingsley and her aides performed for Cruise all the functions of a studio publicity department from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Most importantly, Cruise was kept silent on the topic of his controversial religion, Scientology, lest it incite domestic and international backlash. In interviews and off-the-cuff soundbites, Cruise was ostensibly disclosing his true self, and that self remained the dominant reading of what, and who, Cruise “was.” Yet in 2004, Cruise fired Kingsley, replaced her with his own sister (and fellow Scientologist), who had no prior experience in public relations. In essence, he exchanged a handler who understood how to shape star disclosure for one who did not. The events that followed have been widely rehearsed: Cruise avidly pursued Katie Holmes; Cruise jumped for joy on Oprah’s couch; Cruise denounced psychology during a heated debate with Matt Lauer on The Today Show. His attempt at disclosing this new, un-publicist-mediated self became scandalous in and of itself. Cruise’s dismissal of Kingsley, his unpopular (but not necessarily unwelcome) disclosures, and his own massively unchecked ego all played crucial roles in the fall of the Cruise image. While these stumbles might have caused some minor career turmoil in the past, the hyper-echoic, spastically recombinatory logic of the technoculture brought the speed and stakes of these missteps to a new level; one of the hallmarks of the postmodern condition has been not merely an increasing textual self-reflexivity, but a qualitative new leap forward in inter-textual reflexivity, as well (Lyotard; Baudrillard). Indeed, the swift dismantling of Cruise’s long-established image is directly linked to the immediacy and speed of the Internet, digital photography, and the gossip blog, as the reflexivity of new media rendered the safe division between disclosure and intrusion untenable. His couchjumping was turned into a dance remix and circulated on YouTube; Mission Impossible 3 boycotts were organised through a number of different Web forums; gossip bloggers speculated that Cruise had impregnated Holmes using the frozen sperm of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. In the past, Cruise simply filed defamation suits against print publications that would deign to sully his image. Yet the sheer number of sites and voices reproducing this new set of rumors made such a strategy untenable. Ultimately, intrusions into Cruise’s personal life, including the leak of videos intended solely for Scientology recruitment use, had far more traction than any sanctioned Cruise soundbite. Cruise’s image emerged as a hollowed husk of its former self; the sheer amount of material circulating rendered all attempts at P.R., including a Vanity Fair cover story and “reveal” of daughter Suri, ridiculous. His image was fragmented and re-collected into an altered, almost uncanny new iteration. Following the lackluster performance of Mission Impossible 3 and public condemnation by Paramount head Sumner Redstone, Cruise seemed almost pitiable. The New Logic of Celebrity Image ManagementCruise’s travails are expressive of a deeper development which has occurred over the course of the last decade, as the massively proliferating new forms of celebrity discourse (e.g., paparazzi photos, mug shots, cell phone video have further decentered any shiny, polished version of a star. With older forms of media increasingly reorganising themselves according to the aesthetics and logic of new media forms (e.g., CNN featuring regular segments in which it focuses its network cameras upon a computer screen displaying the CNN website), we are only more prone to appreciate “low media” forms of star discourse—reports from fans on discussion boards, photos taken on cell phones—as valid components of the celebrity image. People and E.T. still attract millions, but they are rapidly ceding control of the celebrity industry to their ugly, offensive stepbrothers: TMZ, Us Weekly, and dozens of gossip blogs. Importantly, a publicist may be able to induce a blogger to cover their client, but they cannot convince him to drop a story: if TMZ doesn’t post it, then Perez Hilton certainly will. With TMZ unabashedly offering pay-outs to informants—including those in law enforcement and health care, despite recently passed legislation—a star is never safe. If he or she misbehaves, someone, professional or amateur, will provide coverage. Scandal becomes normalised, and, in so doing, can no longer really function as scandal as such; in an age of around-the-clock news cycles and celebrity-fixated journalism, the only truly scandalising event would be the complete absence of any scandalous reports. Or, as aesthetic theorist Jacques Ranciere puts it; “The complaint is then no longer that images conceal secrets which are no longer such to anyone, but, on the contrary, that they no longer hide anything” (22).These seemingly paradoxical involutions of post-modern celebrity epistemologies are at the core of the current crisis of celebrity, and, subsequently, of celebrities’s attempts to “take back their own paparazzi.” As one might expect, contemporary celebrities have attempted to counter these new logics and strategies of intrusion through a heightened commitment to disclosure, principally through the social networking capabilities of Twitter. Yet, as we will see, not only have the epistemological reorderings of postmodernist technoculture affected the logic of scandal/intrusion, but so too have they radically altered the workings of intrusion’s dialectical counterpart, disclosure.In the 1930s, when written letters were still the primary medium for intimate communication, stars would send lengthy “hand-written” letters to members of their fan club. Of course, such letters were generally not written by the stars themselves, but handwriting—and a star’s signature—signified authenticity. This ritualised process conferred an “aura” of authenticity upon the object of exchange precisely because of its static, recurring nature—exchange of fan mail was conventionally understood to be the primary medium for personal encounters with a celebrity. Within the overall political economy of the studio system, the medium of the hand-written letter functioned to unleash the productive power of authenticity, offering an illusion of communion which, in fact, served to underscore the gulf between the celebrity’s extraordinary nature and the ordinary lives of those who wrote to them. Yet the criterion and conventions through which celebrity personae were maintained were subject to change over time, as new communications technologies, new modes of Hollywood's industrial organization, and the changing realities of commercial media structures all combined to create a constantly moving ground upon which the celebrity tried to affix. The celebrity’s changing conditions are not unique to them alone; rather, they are a highly visible bellwether of changes which are more fundamentally occurring at all levels of culture and subjectivity. Indeed, more than seventy years ago, Walter Benjamin observed that when hand-made expressions of individuality were superseded by mechanical methods of production, aesthetic criteria (among other things) also underwent change, rendering notions of authenticity increasingly indeterminate.Such is the case that in today’s world, hand-written letters seem more contrived or disingenuous than Danny DeVito’s inaugural post to his Twitter account: “I just joined Twitter! I don't really get this site or how it works. My nuts are on fire.” The performative gesture in DeVito’s tweet is eminently clear, just as the semantic value is patently false: clearly DeVito understands “this site,” as he has successfully used it to extend his irreverent funny-little-man persona to the new medium. While the truth claims of his Tweet may be false, its functional purpose—both effacing and reifying the extraordinary/ordinary distinction of celebrity and maintaining DeVito’s celebrity personality as one with which people might identify—is nevertheless seemingly intact, and thus mirrors the instrumental value of celebrity disclosure as performed in older media forms. Twitter and Contemporary TechnocultureFor these reasons and more, considered within the larger context of contemporary popular culture, celebrity tweeting has been equated with the assertion of the authentic celebrity voice; celebrity tweets are regularly cited in newspaper articles and blogs as “official” statements from the celebrity him/herself. With so many mediated voices attempting to “speak” the meaning of the star, the Twitter account emerges as the privileged channel to the star him/herself. Yet the seemingly easy discursive associations of Twitter and authenticity are in fact ideological acts par excellence, as fixations on the indexical truth-value of Twitter are not merely missing the point, but actively distracting from the real issues surrounding the unsteady discursive construction of contemporary celebrity and the “celebretification” of contemporary subjectivity writ large. In other words, while it is taken as axiomatic that the “message” of celebrity Twittering is, as Henry Jenkins suggests, “Here I Am,” this outward epistemological certainty veils the deeply unstable nature of celebrity—and by extension, subjectivity itself—in our networked society.If we understand the relationship between publicity and technoculture to work as Zizek-inspired cultural theorist Jodi Dean suggests, then technologies “believe for us, accessing information even if we cannot” (40), such that technology itself is enlisted to serve the function of ideology, the process by which a culture naturalises itself and attempts to render the notion of totality coherent. For Dean, the psycho-ideological reality of contemporary culture is predicated upon the notion of an ever-elusive “secret,” which promises to reveal us all as part of a unitary public. The reality—that there is no such cohesive collective body—is obscured in the secret’s mystifying function which renders as “a contingent gap what is really the fact of the fundamental split, antagonism, and rupture of politics” (40). Under the ascendancy of the technoculture—Dean's term for the technologically mediated landscape of contemporary communicative capitalism—subjectivity becomes interpellated along an axis blind to the secret of this fundamental rupture. The two interwoven poles of this axis are not unlike structuralist film critics' dialectically intertwined accounts of the scopophilia and scopophobia of viewing relations, simply enlarged from the limited realm of the gaze to encompass the entire range of subjectivity. As such, the conspiratorial mindset is that mode of desire, of lack, which attempts to attain the “secret,” while the celebrity subject is that element of excess without which desire is unthinkable. As one might expect, the paparazzi and gossip sites’s strategies of intrusion have historically operated primarily through the conspiratorial mindset, with endless conjecture about what is “really happening” behind the scenes. Under the intrusive/conspiratorial paradigm, the authentic celebrity subject is always just out of reach—a chance sighting only serves to reinscribe the need for the next encounter where, it is believed, all will become known. Under such conditions, the conspiratorial mindset of the paparazzi is put into overdrive: because the star can never be “fully” known, there can never be enough information about a star, therefore, more information is always needed. Against this relentless intrusion, the celebrity—whose discursive stability, given the constant imperative for newness in commercial culture, is always in danger—risks a semiotic liquidation that will totally displace his celebrity status as such. Disclosure, e.g. Tweeting, emerges as a possible corrective to the endlessly associative logic of the paparazzi’s conspiratorial indset. In other words, through Twitter, the celebrity seeks to arrest meaning—fixing it in place around their own seemingly coherent narrativisation. The publicist’s new task, then, is to convincingly counter such unsanctioned, intrusive, surveillance-based discourse. Stars continue to give interviews, of course, and many regularly pose as “authors” of their own homepages and blogs. Yet as posited above, Twitter has emerged as the most salient means of generating “authentic” celebrity disclosure, simultaneously countering the efforts of the papparazzi, fan mags, and gossip blogs to complicate or rewrite the meaning of the star. The star uses the account—verified, by Twitter, as the “real” star—both as a means to disclose their true interior state of being and to counter erastz narratives circulating about them. Twitter’s appeal for both celebrities and their followers comes from the ostensible spontaneity of the tweets, as the seemingly unrehearsed quality of the communiqués lends the form an immediacy and casualness unmatched by blogs or official websites; the semantic informality typically employed in the medium obscures their larger professional significance for celebrity tweeters. While Twitter’s air of extemporary intimacy is also offered by other social networking platforms, such as MySpace or Facebook, the latter’s opportunities for public feedback (via wall-posts and the like) works counter to the tight image control offered by Twitter’s broadcast-esque model. Additionally, because of the uncertain nature of the tweet release cycle—has Ashton Kutcher sent a new tweet yet?—the voyeuristic nature of the tweet disclosure (with its real-time nature offering a level of synchronic intimacy that letters never could have matched), and the semantically displaced nature of the medium, it is a form of disclosure perfectly attuned to the conspiratorial mindset of the technoculture. As mentioned above, however, the conspiratorial mindset is an unstable subjectivity, insofar as it only exists through a constant oscillation with its twin, the celebrity subjectivity. While we can understand that, for the celebrities, Twitter functions by allowing them a mode for disclosive/celebrity subjectivisation, we have not yet seen how the celebrity itself is rendered conspiratorial through Twitter. Similarly, only the conspiratorial mode of the follower’s subjectivity has thus far been enumerated; the moment of the follower's celebrtification has so far gone unmentioned. Since we have seen that the celebrity function of Twitter is not really about discourse per se, we should instead understand that the ideological value of Twitter comes from the act of tweeting itself, of finding pleasure in being engaged in a techno-social system in which one's participation is recognised. Recognition and participation should be qualified, though, as it is not the fully active type of participation one might expect in say, the electoral politics of a representative democracy. Instead, it is a participation in a sort of epistemological viewing relations, or, as Jodi Dean describes it, “that we understand ourselves as known is what makes us think there is that there is a public that knows us” (122). The fans’ recognition by the celebrity—the way in which they understood themselves as known by the star was once the receipt of a hand-signed letter (and a latent expectation that the celebrity had read the fan’s initial letter); such an exchange conferred to the fan a momentary sense of participation in the celebrity's extraordinary aura. Under Twitter, however, such an exchange does not occur, as that feeling of one-to-one interaction is absent; simply by looking elsewhere on the screen, one can confirm that a celebrity's tweet was received by two million other individuals. The closest a fan can come to that older modality of recognition is by sending a message to the celebrity that the celebrity then “re-tweets” to his broader following. Beyond the obvious levels of technological estrangement involved in such recognition is the fact that the identity of the re-tweeted fan will not be known by the celebrity’s other two million followers. That sense of sharing in the celebrity’s extraordinary aura is altered by an awareness that the very act of recognition largely entails performing one’s relative anonymity in front of the other wholly anonymous followers. As the associative, conspiratorial mindset of the star endlessly searches for fodder through which to maintain its image, fans allow what was previously a personal moment of recognition to be transformed into a public one. That is, the conditions through which one realises one’s personal subjectivity are, in fact, themselves becoming remade according to the logic of celebrity, in which priority is given to the simple fact of visibility over that of the actual object made visible. Against such an opaque cultural transformation, the recent rise of reactionary libertarianism and anti-collectivist sentiment is hardly surprising. ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: Michigan UP, 1994.Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968. Dean, Jodi. Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2003. DeCordova, Richard. Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Jenkins, Henry. “The Message of Twitter: ‘Here It Is’ and ‘Here I Am.’” Confessions of an Aca-Fan. 23 Aug. 2009. 15 Sep. 2009 < http://henryjenkins.org/2009/08/the_message_of_twitter.html >.Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1984.Ranciere, Jacques. The Future of the Image. New York: Verso, 2007.

Abstract:

When historian Graeme Davison famously declared that “Australia was born urban and quickly grew suburban” (98), he was clearly referring to Melbourne or Sydney, but certainly not Brisbane. Although the Brisbane of 2011 might resemble a contemporary, thriving metropolis, its genealogy is not an urban one. For most of its history, as Gillian Whitlock has noted, Brisbane was “a place where urban industrial society is kept at bay” (80). What distinguishes Brisbane from Australia’s larger southern capital cities is its rapid morphology into a city from a provincial, suburban, town. Indeed it is Brisbane’s distinctive regionalism, with its sub-tropical climate, offering a steamy, fecund backdrop to narratives of the city that has produced a plethora of writing in literary accounts of the city, from author David Malouf through to contemporary writers such as Andrew McGahan, John Birmingham, Venero Armanno, Susan Johnson, and Nick Earls. Brisbane’s lack of urban tradition makes its transformation unique among Australian cities. Its rapid population growth and urban development have changed the way that many people now live in the city. Unlike the larger cities of Sydney or Melbourne, whose inner cities were established on the Victorian model of terrace-row housing on small lots, Brisbane’s early planners eschewed this approach. So, one of the features that gives the city its distinction is the languorous suburban quality of its inner-city areas, where many house blocks are the size of the suburban quarter-acre block, all within coo-ee of the city centre. Other allotments are medium to small in size, and, until recently, housed single dwellings of varying sizes and grandeur. Add to this a sub-tropical climate in which ‘green and growth’ is abundant and the pretty but flimsy timber vernacular housing, and it’s easy to imagine that you might be many kilometres from a major metropolitan centre as you walk around Brisbane’s inner city areas. It is partly this feature that prompted demographer Bernard Salt to declare Brisbane “Australia’s most suburban city” (Salt 5). Prior to urban renewal in the early 1990s, Brisbane was a low-density town with very few apartment blocks; most people lived in standalone houses.From the inception of the first Urban Renewal program in 1992, a joint initiative of the Federal government’s Building Better Cities Program and managed by the Brisbane City Council (BCC), Brisbane’s urban development has undergone significant change. In particular, the city’s Central Business District (CBD) and inner city have experienced intense development and densification with a sharp rise in medium- to high-density apartment dwellings to accommodate the city’s swelling population. Population growth has added to the demand for increased density, and from the period 1995–2006 Brisbane was Australia’s fastest growing city (ABS).Today, parts of Brisbane’s inner city resembles the density of the larger cities of Melbourne and Sydney. Apartment blocks have mushroomed along the riverfront and throughout inner and middle ring suburbs. Brisbane’s population has enthusiastically embraced apartment living, with “empty nesters” leaving their suburban family homes for the city, and apartments have become the affordable option for renters and first home purchasers. A significant increase in urban amenities such as large-scale parklands and river side boardwalks, and a growth in service industries such as cafes, restaurants and bars—a feature of cities the world over—have contributed to the appeal of the city and the changing way that people live in Brisbane.Urbanism demands specific techniques of living—life is different in medium- to high-density dwellings, in populous places, where people live in close proximity to one another. In many ways it’s the antithesis to suburban life, a way of living that, as Davison notes, was established around an ethos of privacy, health, and seclusion and is exemplified in the gated communities seen in the suburbs today. The suburbs are characterised by generosity of space and land, and developed as a refuge and escape from the city, a legacy of the nineteenth-century industrial city’s connection with overcrowding, disease, and disorder. Suburban living flourished in Australia from the eighteenth century and Davison notes how, when Governor Phillip drew up the first town plan for Sydney in 1789, it embodied the aspirations of “decency, good order, health and domestic privacy,” which lie at the heart of suburban ideals (100).The health and moral impetus underpinning the establishment of suburban life—that is, to remove people from overcrowding and the unhygienic conditions of slums—for Davison meant that the suburban ethos was based on a “logic of avoidance” (110). Attempting to banish anything deemed dangerous and offensive, the suburbs were seen to offer a more natural, orderly, and healthy environment. A virtuous and happy life required plenty of room—thus, a garden and the expectation of privacy was paramount.The suburbs as a site of lived experience and cultural meaning is significant for understanding the shift from suburban living to the adoption of medium- to high-density inner-city living in Brisbane. I suggest that the ways in which this shift is captured discursively, particularly in promotional material, are indicative of the suburbs' stronghold on the collective imagination. Reinforcing this perception of Brisbane as a suburban city is a history of literary narratives that have cast Brisbane in ways that set it apart from other Australian cities, and that are to do with its non-urban characteristics. Imaginative and symbolic discourses of place have real and material consequences (Lefebvre), as advertisers are only too well aware. Discursively, city life has been imagined oppositionally from life in the suburbs: the two sites embody different cultural meanings and values. In Australia, the suburbs are frequently a site of derision and satire, characterized as bastions of conformity and materialism (Horne), offering little of value in contrast to the city’s many enchantments and diverse pleasures. In the well-established tradition of satire, “suburban bashing is replete in literature, film and popular culture” (Felton et al xx). From Barry Humphries’s characterisation of Dame Edna Everage, housewife superstar, who first appeared in the 1960s, to the recent television comedy series Kath and Kim, suburbia and its inhabitants are represented as dull-witted, obsessed with trivia, and unworldly. This article does not intend to rehearse the tradition of suburban lampooning; rather, it seeks to illustrate how ideas about suburban living are hard held and how the suburban ethos maintains its grip, particularly in relation to notions of privacy and peace, despite the celebratory discourse around the emerging forms of urbanism in Brisbane.As Brisbane morphed rapidly from a provincial, suburban town to a metropolis throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, a set of metropolitan discourses developed in the local media that presented new ways of inhabiting and imagining the city and offered new affiliations and identifications with the city. In establishing Brisbane’s distinction as a city, marketing material relied heavily on the opposition between the city and the suburbs, implying that urban vitality and diversity rules triumphant over the suburbs’ apparent dullness and hom*ogeneity. In a billboard advertisem*nt for apartments in the urban renewal area of Newstead (2004), images of architectural renderings of the apartments were anchored by the words—“Urban living NOT suburban”—leaving little room for doubt. It is not the design qualities of the apartments or the building itself being promoted here, but a way of life that alludes to utopian ideas of urban life, of enchantment with the city, and implies, with the heavy emphasis of “NOT suburban,” the inferiority of suburban living.The cultural commodification of the late twentieth- and twenty-first-century city has been well documented (Evans; Dear; Zukin; Harvey) and its symbolic value as a commodity is expressed in marketing literature via familiar metropolitan tropes that are frequently amorphous and international. The malleability of such images makes them easily transportable and transposable, and they provided a useful stockpile for promoting a city such as Brisbane that lacked its own urban resources with which to construct a new identity. In the early days of urban renewal, the iconic images and references to powerhouse cities such as New York, London, and even Venice were heavily relied upon. In the latter example, an advertisem*nt promoting Brisbane appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald colour magazine (May 2005). This advertisem*nt represented Brisbane as an antipodean Venice, showing a large reach of the Brisbane river replete with gondolas flanked by the city’s only nineteenth-century riverside building, the Custom’s House. The allusion to traditional European culture is a departure from the usual tropes of “fun and sun” associated with promotions of Queensland, including Brisbane, while the new approach to promoting Brisbane is cognizant of the value of culture in the symbolic and economic hierarchy of the contemporary city. Perhaps equally, the advertisem*nt could be read as ironic, a postmodern self-parodying statement about the city in general. In a nod to the centrality of the spectacle, the advertisem*nt might be a salute to idea of the city as theme park, a pleasure playground and a collective fantasy of escape. Nonetheless, either interpretation presents Brisbane as somewhere else.In other promotional literature for apartment dwellings, suburban living maintains its imaginative grip, evident in a brochure advertising Petrie Point apartments in Brisbane’s urban renewal area of inner-city New Farm (2000). In the brochure, the promise of peace and calm—ideals that have their basis in suburban living—are imposed and promoted as a feature of inner-city living. Paradoxically, while suggesting that a wholesale evacuation and rejection of suburban life is occurring presumably because it is dull, the brochure simultaneously upholds the values of suburbia:Discerning baby boomers and generation X’ers who prefer lounging over latte rather than mowing the quarter acre block, are abandoning suburban living in droves. Instead, hankering after a more cosmopolitan lifestyle without the mind numbing drive to work, they are retreating to the residential mecca, the inner city, for chic shops and a lively dining, arts and theatre culture. (my italics)In the above extract, the rhetoric used to promote and uphold the virtues of a cosmopolitan inner-city life is sabotaged by a language that in many respects capitulates to the ideals of suburban living, and evokes the health and retreat ethos of suburbia. “Lounging” over lattes and “retreating to a residential mecca”[i] allude to precisely the type of suburban living the brochure purports to eschew. Privacy, relaxation, and health is a discourse and, more importantly, a way of living that is in many ways anathema to life in the city. It is a dream-wish that those features most valued about suburban life, can and should somehow be transplanted to the city. In its promotion of urban amenity, the brochure draws upon a somewhat bourgeois collection of cultural amenities and activities such as a (presumably traditional) arts and theatre culture, “lively dining,” and “chic” shops. The appeal to “discerning baby boomers and generation X’ers” has more than a whiff of status and class, an appeal that disavows the contemporary city’s attention to diversity and inclusivity, and frequently the source of promotion of many international cities. In contrast to the suburban sub-text of exclusivity and seclusion in the Petrie Point Apartment’s brochure, is a promotion of Sydney’s inner-city Newtown as a tourist site and spectacle, which makes an appeal to suburban antipathy clear from the outset. The brochure, distributed by NSW Tourism (2000) displays a strong emphasis on Newtown’s cultural and ethnic diversity, and the various forms of cultural consumption on offer. The inner-city suburb’s appeal is based on its re-framing as a site of tourist consumption of diversity and difference in which diversity is central to its performance as a tourist site. It relies on the distinction between “ordinary” suburbs and “cosmopolitan” places:Some cities are cursed with suburbs, but Sydney’s blessed with Newtown — a cosmopolitan neighbourhood of more than 600 stores, 70 restaurants, 42 cafes, theatres, pubs, and entertainment venues, all trading in two streets whose origins lie in the nineteenth century … Newtown is the Catwalk for those with more style than money … a parade where Yves St Laurent meets Saint Vincent de Paul, where Milano meets post-punk bohemia, where Max Mara meets Doc Marten, a stage where a petticoat is more likely to be your grandma’s than a Colette Dinnigan designer original (From Sydney Marketing brochure)Its opening oppositional gambit—“some cities are cursed with suburbs”—conveniently elides the fact that like all Australian cities, Sydney is largely suburban and many of Sydney’s suburbs are more ethnically diverse than its inner-city areas. Cabramatta, Fairfield, and most other suburbs have characteristically high numbers of ethnic groups such as Vietnamese, Korean, Lebanese, and so forth. Recent events, however, have helped to reframe these places as problem areas, rather than epicentres of diversity.The mingling of social groups invites the tourist-flâneur to a performance of difference, “a parade where Yves St Laurent meets Saint Vincent de Paul (my italics), where Milano meets post-punk bohemia,” and where “the upwardly mobile and down at heel” appear in what is presented as something of a theatrical extravaganza. Newtown is a product, its diversity a commodity. Consumed visually and corporeally via its divergent sights, sounds, smells and tastes (the brochure goes on to state that 70 restaurants offer cuisine from all over the globe), Newtown is a “successful neighbourhood experiment in the new globalism.” The area’s social inequities—which are implicit in the text, referred to as the “down at heel”—are vanquished and celebrated, incorporated into the rhetoric of difference.Brisbane’s lack of urban tradition and culture, as well as its lack of diversity in comparison to Sydney, reveals itself in the first brochure while the Newtown brochure appeals to the idea of a consumer-based cosmopolitanism. As a sociological concept, cosmopolitanism refers to a set of "subjective attitudes, outlooks and practices" broadly characterized as “disposition of openness towards others, people, things and experiences whose origin is non local” (Skrbis and Woodward 1). Clearly cosmopolitan attitudes do not have to be geographically located, but frequently the city is promoted as the site of these values, with the suburbs, apparently, forever looking inward.In the realm of marketing, appeals to the imagination are ubiquitous, but discursive practices can become embedded in everyday life. Despite the growth of urbanism, the increasing take up of metropolitan life and the enduring disdain among some for the suburbs, the hard-held suburban values of peace and privacy have pragmatic implications for the ways in which those values are embedded in people’s expectations of life in the inner city.The exponential growth in apartment living in Brisbane offers different ways of living to the suburban house. For a sub-tropical city where "life on the verandah" is a significant feature of the Queenslander house with its front and exterior verandahs, in the suburbs, a reasonable degree of privacy is assured. Much of Brisbane’s vernacular and contemporary housing is sensitive to this indoor-outdoor style of living, a distinct feature and appeal of everyday life in many suburbs. When "life on the verandah" is adapted to inner-city apartment buildings, expectations that indoor-outdoor living can be maintained in the same way can be problematic. In the inner city, life on the verandah may challenge expectations about privacy, noise and visual elements. While the Brisbane City Plan 2000 attempts to deal with privacy issues by mandating privacy screenings on verandahs, and the side screening of windows to prevent overlooking neighbours, there is ample evidence that attitudinal change is difficult. The exchange of a suburban lifestyle for an urban one, with the exposure to urbanity’s complexity, potential chaos and noise, can be confronting. In the Urban Renewal area and entertainment precinct of Fortitude Valley, during the late 1990s, several newly arrived residents mounted a vigorous campaign to the Brisbane City Council (BCC) and State government to have noise levels reduced from local nightclubs and bars. Fortitude Valley—the Valley, as it is known locally—had long been Brisbane’s main area for nightclubs, bars and brothels. A small precinct bounded by two major one-way roads, it was the locus of the infamous ABC 4 Corners “Moonlight State” report, which exposed the lines of corruption between politicians, police, and the judiciary of the former Bjelke-Petersen government (1974–1987) and who met in the Valley’s bars and brothels. The Valley was notorious for Brisbanites as the only place in a provincial, suburban town that resembled the seedy side of life associated with big cities. The BCC’s Urban Renewal Task Force and associated developers initially had a tough task convincing people that the area had been transformed. But as more amenity was established, and old buildings were converted to warehouse-style living in the pattern of gentrification the world over, people started moving in to the area from the suburbs and interstate (Felton). One of the resident campaigners against noise had purchased an apartment in the Sun Building, a former newspaper house and in which one of the apartment walls directly abutted the adjoining and popular nightclub, The Press Club. The Valley’s location as a music venue was supported by the BCC, who initially responded to residents’ noise complaints with its “loud and proud” campaign (Valley Metro). The focus of the campaign was to alert people moving into the newly converted apartments in the Valley to the existing use of the neighbourhood by musicians and music clubs. In another iteration of this campaign, the BCC worked with owners of music venues to ensure the area remains a viable music precinct while implementing restrictions on noise levels. Residents who objected to nightclub noise clearly failed to consider the impact of moving into an area that was already well known, even a decade ago, as the city’s premier precinct for music and entertainment venues. Since that time, the Valley has become Australia’s only regulated and promoted music precinct.The shift from suburban to urban living requires people to live in very different ways. Thrust into close proximity with strangers amongst a diverse population, residents can be confronted with a myriad of sensory inputs—to a cacophony of noise, sights, smells (Allon and Anderson). Expectations of order, retreat, and privacy inevitably come into conflict with urbanism’s inherent messiness. The contested nature of urban space is expressed in neighbour disputes, complaints about noise and visual amenity, and sometimes in eruptions of street violence. There is no shortage of examples in the Brisbane’s Urban Renewal areas such as Fortitude Valley, where acts of hom*ophobia, racism, and other less destructive conflicts continue to be a frequent occurrence. While the refashioned discursive Brisbane is re-presented as cool, cultured, and creative, the tensions of urbanism and tests to civility remain in a process of constant negotiation. This is the way the city’s past disrupts and resists its cool new surface.[i] The use of the word mecca in the brochure occurred prior to 11 September 2001.ReferencesAllon, Fiona, and Kay Anderson. "Sentient Sydney." In Passionate City: An International Symposium. Melbourne: RMIT, School of Media Communication, 2004. 89–97.Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). Regional Population Growth, Australia, 1996-2006.Birmingham, John. "The Lost City of Vegas: David Malouf’s Old Brisbane." Hot Iron Corrugated Sky. Ed. R. Sheahan-Bright and S. Glover. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2002. xx–xx.Davison, Graeme. "The Past and Future of the Australian Suburb." Suburban Dreaming: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Australian Cities. Ed. L. Johnson. Geelong: Deakin University Press, 1994. xx–xx.Dear, Michael. The Postmodern Urban Condition. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.Evans, Graeme. “Hard-Branding the Cultural City—From Prado to Prada.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27.2 (2003): 417–40.Evans, Raymond, and Carole Ferrier, eds. Radical Brisbane. Melbourne: The Vulgar Press, 2004.Felton, Emma, Christy Collis, and Phil Graham. “Making Connections: Creative Industries Networks in Outer Urban Locations.” Australian Geographer 14.1 (Mar. 2010): 57–70.Felton, Emma. Emerging Urbanism: A Social and Cultural Study of Urban Change in Brisbane. PhD thesis. Brisbane: Griffith University, 2007.Glover, Stuart, and Stuart Cunningham. "The New Brisbane." Artlink 23.2 (2003): 16–23. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990. Horne, Donald. The Lucky Country: Australia in the Sixties. Ringwood: Penguin, 1964.Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.Malouf, David. Johnno. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1975. ---. 12 Edmondstone Street. London: Penguin, 1986.NSW Tourism. Sydney City 2000. Sydney, 2000.Salt, Bernard. Cinderella City: A Vision of Brisbane’s Rise to Prominence. Sydney: Austcorp, 2005.Skrbis, Zlatko, and Ian Woodward. “The Ambivalence of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism: Investigating the Limits of Cosmopolitanism Openness.” Sociological Review (2007): 1-14.Valley Metro. 1 May 2011 < http://www.valleymetro.com.au/the_valley.aspx >.Whitlock, Gillian. “Queensland: The State of the Art on the 'Last Frontier.’" Westerly 29.2 (1984): 85–90.Zukin, Sharon. The Culture of Cities. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1995.

Abstract:

The Harry Potter (HP) Fan Fiction (FF) phenomenon offers an opportunity to explore the nature of fame and the work of fans (including the second author, a participant observer) in creating and circulating cultural products within fan communities. Matt Hills comments (xi) that “fandom is not simply a ‘thing’ that can be picked over analytically. It is also always performative; by which I mean that it is an identity which is (dis-)claimed, and which performs cultural work”. This paper explores the cultural work of fandom in relation to FF and fame. The global HP phenomenon – in which FF lists are a small part – has made creator J K Rowling richer than the Queen of England, according to the 2003 ‘Sunday Times Rich List’. The books (five so far) and the films (three) continue to accelerate the growth in Rowling’s fortune, which quadrupled from 2001-3: an incredible success for an author unknown before the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997. Even the on-screen HP lead actor, Daniel Radcliffe, is now Britain’s second wealthiest teenager (after England’s Prince Harry). There are other globally successful books, such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Narnia collection, but neither of these series has experienced the momentum of the HP rise to fame. (See Endnote for an indication of the scale of fan involvement with HP FF, compared with Lord of the Rings.) Contemporary ‘Fame’ has been critically defined in relation to the western mass media’s requirement for ‘entertaining’ content, and the production and circulation of celebrity as opposed to ‘hard news’(Turner, Bonner and Marshall). The current perception is that an army of publicists and spin doctors are usually necessary, but not sufficient, to create and nurture global fame. Yet the HP phenomenon started out with no greater publicity investment than that garnered by any other promising first novelist: and given the status of HP as children’s publishing, it was probably less hyped than equivalent adult-audience publications. So are there particular characteristics of HP and his creator that predisposed the series and its author to become famous? And how does the fame status relate to fans’ incorporation of these cultural materials into their lives? Accepting that it is no more possible to predict the future fame of an author or (fictional) character than it is to predict the future financial success of a book, film or album, there is a range of features of the HP phenomenon that, in hindsight, helped accelerate the fame momentum, creating what has become in hindsight an unparalleled global media property. J K Rowling’s personal story – in the hands of her publicity machine – itself constituted a magical myth: the struggling single mother writing away (in longhand) in a Scottish café, snatching odd moments to construct the first book while her infant daughter slept. (Comparatively little attention was paid by the marketers to the author’s professional training and status as a teacher, or to Rowling’s own admission that the first book, and the outline for the series, took five years to write.) Rowling’s name itself, with no self-evident gender attribution, was also indicative of ambiguity and mystery. The back-story to HP, therefore, became one of a quintessentially romantic endeavour – the struggle to write against the odds. Publicity relating to the ‘starving in a garret’ background is not sufficient to explain the HP/Rowling grip on the popular imagination, however. Instead it is arguable that the growth of HP fame and fandom is directly related to the growth of the Internet and to the middle class readers’ Internet access. If the production of celebrity is a major project of the conventional mass media, the HP phenomenon is a harbinger of the hyper-fame that can be generated through the combined efforts of the mass media and online fan communities. The implication of this – evident in new online viral marketing techniques (Kirby), is that publicists need to pique cyber-interest as well as work with the mass media in the construction of celebrity. As the cheer-leaders for online viral marketing make the argument, the technique “provides the missing link between the [bottom-up] word-of-mouth approach and the top-down, advertainment approach”. Which is not to say that the initial HP success was a function of online viral marketing: rather, the marketers learned their trade by analysing the magnifier impact that the online fan communities had upon the exponential growth of the HP phenomenon. This cyber-impact is based both on enhanced connectivity – the bottom-up, word-of-mouth dynamic, and on the individual’s need to assume an identity (albeit fluid) to participate effectively in online community. Critiquing the notion that the computer is an identity machine, Streeter focuses upon (649) “identities that people have brought to computers from the culture at large”. He does not deal in any depth with FF, but suggests (651) that “what the Internet is and will come to be, then, is partly a matter of who we expect to be when we sit down to use it”. What happens when fans sit down to use the Internet, and is there a particular reason why the Internet should be of importance to the rise and rise of HP fame? From the point of view of one of us, HP was born at more or less the same time as she was. Eleven years old in the first book, published in 1997, Potter’s putative birth year might be set in 1986 – in line with many of the original HP readership, and the publisher’s target market. At the point that this cohort was first spellbound by Potter, 1998-9, they were also on the brink of discovering the Internet. In Australia and many western nations, over half of (two-parent) families with school-aged children were online by the end of 2000 (ABS). Potter would notionally have been 14: his fans a little younger but well primed for the ‘teeny-bopper’ years. Arguably, the only thing more famous than HP for that age-group, at that time, was the Internet itself. As knowledge of the Internet grew stories about it constituted both news and entertainment and circulated widely in the mass media: the uncertainty concerning new media, and their impact upon existing social structures, has – over time – precipitated a succession of moral panics … Established commercial media are not noted for their generosity to competitors, and it is unsurprising that many of the moral panics circulating about p*rnography on the Net, Internet stalking, Web addiction, hate sites etc are promulgated in the older media. (Green xxvii) Although the mass media may have successfully scared the impressionable, the Internet was not solely constructed as a site of moral panic. Prior to the general pervasiveness of the Internet in domestic space, P. David Marshall discusses multiple constructions of the computer – seen by parents as an educational tool which could help future-proof their children; but which their children were more like to conceptualise as a games machine, or (this was the greater fear) use for hacking. As the computer was to become a site for the battle ground between education, entertainment and power, so too the Internet was poised to be colonised by teenagers for a variety of purposes their parents would have preferred to prevent: chat, p*rnography, game-playing (among others). Fan communities thrive on the power of the individual fan to project themselves and their fan identity as part of an ongoing conversation. Further, in constructing the reasons behind what has happened in the HP narrative, and in speculating what is to come, fans are presenting themselves as identities with whom others might agree (positive affirmation) or disagree (offering the chance for engagement through exchange). The genuinely insightful fans, who apparently predict the plots before they’re published, may even be credited in their communities with inspiring J K Rowling’s muse. (The FF mythology is that J K Rowling dare not look at the FF sites in case she finds herself influenced.) Nancy Baym, commenting on a soap opera fan Usenet group (Usenet was an early 1990s precursor to discussion groups) notes that: The viewers’ relationship with characters, the viewers’ understanding of socioemotional experience, and soap opera’s narrative structure, in which moments of maximal suspense are always followed by temporal gaps, work together to ensure that fans will use the gaps during and between shows to discuss with one another possible outcomes and possible interpretations of what has been seen. (143) In HP terms the The Philosopher’s Stone constructed a fan knowledge that J K Rowling’s project entailed at least seven books (one for each year at Hogwarts School) and this offered plentiful opportunities to speculate upon the future direction and evolution of the HP characters. With each speculation, each posting, the individual fan can refine and extend their identity as a member of the FF community. The temporal gaps between the books and the films – coupled with the expanding possibilities of Internet communication – mean that fans can feel both creative and connected while circulating the cultural materials derived from their engagement with the HP ‘canon’. Canon is used to describe the HP oeuvre as approved by Rowling, her publishers, and her copyright assignees (for example, Warner Bros). In contrast, ‘fanon’ is the name used by fans to refer the body of work that results from their creative/subversive interactions with the core texts, such as “slash” (hom*o-erotic/romance) fiction. Differentiation between the two terms acknowledges the likelihood that J K Rowling or her assignees might not approve of fanon. The constructed identities of fans who deal solely with canon differ significantly from those who are engaged in fanon. The implicit (romantic) or explicit (full-action descriptions) sexualisation of HP FF is part of a complex identity play on behalf of both the writers and readers of FF. Further, given that the online communities are often nurtured and enriched by offline face to face exchanges with other participants, what an individual is prepared to read or not to read, or write or not write, says as much about that person’s public persona as does another’s overt consumption of p*rnography; or diet of art house films, in contrast to someone else’s enthusiasm for Friends. Hearn, Mandeville and Anthony argue that a “central assertion of postmodern views of consumption is that social identity can be interpreted as a function of consumption” (106), and few would disagree with them: herein lies the power of the brand. Noting that consumer culture centrally focuses upon harnessing ‘the desire to desire’, Streeter’s work (654, on the opening up of Internet connectivity) suggests a continuum from ‘desire provoked’; through anticipation, ‘excitement based on what people imagined would happen’; to a sense of ‘possibility’. All this was made more tantalising in terms of the ‘unpredictability’ of how cyberspace would eventually resolve itself (657). Thus a progression is posited from desire through to the thrill of comparing future possibilities with eventual outcomes. These forces clearly influence the HP FF phenomenon, where a section of HP fans have become impatient with the pace of the ‘official’/canon HP text. J K Rowling’s writing has slowed down to the point that Harry’s initial readership has overtaken him by several years. He’s about to enter his sixth year (of seven) at secondary school – his erstwhile-contemporaries have already left school or are about to graduate to University. HP is yet to have ‘a relationship’: his fans are engaged in some well-informed speculation as to a range of sexual possibilities which would likely take J K Rowling some light years from her marketers’ core readership. So the story is progressing more slowly than many fans would choose and with less spice than many would like (from the evidence of the web, at least). As indicated in the Endnote, the productivity of the fans, as they ‘fill in the gaps’ while waiting for the official narrative to resume, is prodigious. It may be that as the fans outstrip HP in their own social and emotional development they find his reactions in later books increasingly unbelievable, and/or out of character with the HP they felt they knew. Thus they develop an alternative ‘Harry’ in fanon. Some FF authors identify in advance which books they accept as canon, and which they have decided to ignore. For example, popular FF author Midnight Blue gives the setting of her evolving FF The Mirror of Maybe as “after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and as an alternative to the events detailed in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, [this] is a Slash story involving Harry Potter and Severus Snape”. Some fans, tired of waiting for Rowling to get Harry grown up, ‘are doin’ it for themselves’. Alternatively, it may be that as they get older the first groups of HP fans are unwilling to relinquish their investment in the HP phenomenon, but are equally unwilling to align themselves uncritically with the anodyne story of the canon. Harry Potter, as Warner Bros licensed him, may be OK for pre-teens, but less cool for the older adolescent. The range of identities that can be constructed using the many online HP FF genres, however, permits wide scope for FF members to identify with dissident constructions of the HP narrative and helps to add to the momentum with which his fame increases. Latterly there is evidence that custodians of canon may be making subtle overtures to creators of fanon. Here, the viral marketers have a particular challenge – to embrace the huge market represented by fanon, while not disturbing those whose HP fandom is based upon the purity of canon. Some elements of fanon feel their discourses have been recognised within the evolving approved narrative . This sense within the fan community – that the holders of the canon have complimented them through an intertextual reference – is much prized and builds the momentum of the fame engagement (as has been demonstrated by Watson, with respect to the band ‘phish’). Specifically, Harry/Draco slash fans have delighted in the hint of a blown kiss from Draco Malfoy to Harry (as Draco sends Harry an origami bird/graffiti message in a Defence against the Dark Arts Class in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) as an acknowledgement of their cultural contribution to the development of the HP phenomenon. Streeter credits Raymond’s essay ‘The Cathedral and the Bazaar’ as offering a model for the incorporation of voluntary labour into the marketplace. Although Streeter’s example concerns the Open Source movement, derived from hacker culture, it has parallels with the prodigious creativity (and productivity) of the HP FF communities. Discussing the decision by Netscape to throw open the source code of its software in 1998, allowing those who use it to modify and improve it, Streeter comments that (659) “the core trope is to portray Linux-style software development like a bazaar, a real-life competitive marketplace”. The bazaar features a world of competing, yet complementary, small traders each displaying their skills and their wares for evaluation in terms of the product on offer. In contrast, “Microsoft-style software production is portrayed as hierarchical and centralised – and thus inefficient – like a cathedral”. Raymond identifies “ego satisfaction and reputation among other [peers]” as a specific socio-emotional benefit for volunteer participants (in Open Source development), going on to note: “Voluntary cultures that work this way are not actually uncommon [… for example] science fiction fandom, which unlike hackerdom has long explicitly recognized ‘egoboo’ (ego-boosting, or the enhancement of one’s reputation among other fans) as the basic drive behind volunteer activity”. This may also be a prime mover for FF engagement. Where fans have outgrown the anodyne canon they get added value through using the raw materials of the HP stories to construct fanon: establishing and building individual identities and communities through HP consumption practices in parallel with, but different from, those deemed acceptable for younger, more innocent, fans. The fame implicit in HP fandom is not only that of HP, the HP lead actor Daniel Radcliffe and HP’s creator J K Rowling; for some fans the famed ‘state or quality of being widely honoured and acclaimed’ can be realised through their participation in online fan culture – fans become famous and recognised within their own community for the quality of their work and the generosity of their sharing with others. The cultural capital circulated on the FF sites is both canon and fanon, a matter of some anxiety for the corporations that typically buy into and foster these mega-media products. As Jim Ward, Vice-President of Marketing for Lucasfilm comments about Star Wars fans (cited in Murray 11): “We love our fans. We want them to have fun. But if in fact someone is using our characters to create a story unto itself, that’s not in the spirit of what we think fandom is about. Fandom is about celebrating the story the way it is.” Slash fans would beg to differ, and for many FF readers and writers, the joy of engagement, and a significant engine for the growth of HP fame, is partly located in the creativity offered for readers and writers to fill in the gaps. Endnote HP FF ranges from posts on general FF sites (such as fanfiction.net >> books, where HP has 147,067 stories [on 4,490 pages of hotlinks] posted, compared with its nearest ‘rival’ Lord of the rings: with 33,189 FF stories). General FF sites exclude adult content, much of which is corralled into 18+ FF sites, such as Restrictedsection.org, set up when core material was expelled from general sites. As an example of one adult site, the Potter Slash Archive is selective (unlike fanfiction.net, for example) which means that only stories liked by the site team are displayed. Authors submitting work are asked to abide by a list of ‘compulsory parameters’, but ‘warnings’ fall under the category of ‘optional parameters’: “Please put a warning if your story contains content that may be offensive to some authors [sic], such as m/m sex, graphic sex or violence, violent sex, character death, major angst, BDSM, non-con (rape) etc”. Adult-content FF readers/writers embrace a range of unexpected genres – such as Twincest (incest within either of the two sets of twin characters in HP) and Weasleycest (incest within the Weasley clan) – in addition to mainstream romance/hom*o-erotica pairings, such as that between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. (NB: within the time frame 16 August – 4 October, Harry Potter FF writers had posted an additional 9,196 stories on the fanfiction.net site alone.) References ABS. 8147.0 Use of the Internet by Householders, Australia. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/ e8ae5488b598839cca25682000131612/ ae8e67619446db22ca2568a9001393f8!OpenDocument, 2001, 2001>. Baym, Nancy. “The Emergence of Community in Computer-Mediated Communication.” CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. S. Jones. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. 138-63. Blue, Midnight. “The Mirror of Maybe.” http://www.greyblue.net/MidnightBlue/Mirror/default.htm>. Coates, Laura. “Muggle Kids Battle for Domain Name Rights. Irish Computer. http://www.irishcomputer.com/domaingame2.html>. Fanfiction.net. “Category: Books” http://www.fanfiction.net/cat/202/>. Green, Lelia. Technoculture: From Alphabet to Cybersex. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Hearn, Greg, Tom Mandeville and David Anthony. The Communication Superhighway: Social and Economic Change in the Digital Age. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997. Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002. Houghton Mifflin. “Potlatch.” Encyclopedia of North American Indians. http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/naind/html/ na_030900_potlatch.htm>. Kirby, Justin. “Brand Papers: Getting the Bug.” Brand Strategy July-August 2004. http://www.dmc.co.uk/pdf/BrandStrategy07-0804.pdf>. Marshall, P. David. “Technophobia: Video Games, Computer Hacks and Cybernetics.” Media International Australia 85 (Nov. 1997): 70-8. Murray, Simone. “Celebrating the Story the Way It Is: Cultural Studies, Corporate Media and the Contested Utility of Fandom.” Continuum 18.1 (2004): 7-25. Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. 2000. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s11.html>. Streeter, Thomas. The Romantic Self and the Politics of Internet Commercialization. Cultural Studies 17.5 (2003): 648-68. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Melbourne: Cambridge UP. Watson, Nessim. “Why We Argue about Virtual Community: A Case Study of the Phish.net Fan Community.” Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety. Ed. Steven G. Jones. London: Sage, 1997. 102-32. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Green, Lelia, and Carmen Guinery. "Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Phenomenon." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/14-green.php>. APA Style Green, L., and C. Guinery. (Nov. 2004) "Harry Potter and the Fan Fiction Phenomenon," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/14-green.php>.

Abstract:

IntroductionIn 1802 George Howe (1769-1821), the recently appointed Government Printer, published Australia’s first book. The following year he established Australia’s first newspaper; an enterprise that ran counter to all the environmental factors of the day, including: 1) issues of logistics and a lack of appropriate equipment and basic materials to produce a regularly issued newspaper; 2) issues resulting from the very close supervision of production and the routine censorship by the Governor; and 3) issues associated with the colony’s primary purposes as a military outpost and as a penal settlement, creating conflicts between very different readerships. The Sydney Gazette was, critically for Howe, the only newspaper in the infant city for over two decades. Alternative voices would not enter the field of printed media until the 1820s and 1830s. This article briefly explores the birth of an Australian industry and looks at how a very modest newspaper overcame a range of serious challenges to ignite imaginations and lay a foundation for media empires.Government Printer The first book published in Australia was the New South Wales General Standing Orders and General Orders (1802), authorised by Governor Philip Gidley King for the purposes of providing a convenient, single-volume compilation of all Government Orders, issued in New South Wales, between 1791 and 1802. (As the Australian character has been described as “egalitarian, anti-authoritarian and irreverent” [D. Jones 690], it is fascinating that the nation’s first published book was a set of rules.) Prescribing law, order and regulation for the colony the index reveals the desires of those charged with the colony’s care and development, to contain various types of activities. The rules for convicts were, predictably, many. There were also multiple orders surrounding administration, animal husbandry as well as food stuffs and other stores. Some of the most striking headings in the index relate to crime. For example, in addition to headings pertaining to courts there are also headings for a broad range of offences from: “BAD Characters” to “OFFENSIVE Weapons – Again[s]t concealing” (i-xii). The young colony, still in its teenage years, was, for the short-term, very much working on survival and for the long-term developing ambitious plans for expansion and trade. It was clear though, through this volume, that there was no forgetting the colony of New South Wales was first, and foremost, a penal settlement which also served as a military outpost. Clear, too, was the fact that not all of those who were shipped out to the new colony were prepared to abandon their criminal careers which “did not necessarily stop with transportation” (Foyster 10). Containment and recidivism were matters of constant concern for the colony’s authorities. Colonial priorities could be seen in the fact that, when “Governor Arthur Phillip brought the first convicts (548 males and 188 females) to Port Jackson on 26 January 1788, he also brought a small press for printing orders, rules, and regulations” (Goff 103). The device lay dormant on arrival, a result of more immediate concerns to feed and house all those who made up the First Fleet. It would be several years before the press was pushed into sporadic service by the convict George Hughes for printing miscellaneous items including broadsides and playbills as well as for Government Orders (“Hughes, George” online). It was another convict (another man named George), convicted at the Warwick Assizes on March 1799 (Ferguson vi) then imprisoned and ultimately transported for shoplifting (Robb 15), who would transform the small hand press into an industry. Once under the hand of George Howe, who had served as a printer with several London newspapers including The Times (Sydney Gazette, “Never” 2) – the printing press was put to much more regular use. In these very humble circ*mstances, Australia’s great media tradition was born. Howe, as the Government Printer, transformed the press from a device dedicated to ephemera as well as various administrative matters into a crucial piece of equipment that produced the new colony’s first newspaper. Logistical Challenges Governor King, in the year following the appearance of the Standing Orders, authorised the publishing of Australia’s first newspaper, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. The publication history of The Sydney Gazette, in a reflection of some of the challenges faced by the printer, is erratic. First published on a Saturday from 5 March 1803, it quickly changed to a Sunday paper from 10 April 1803. Interestingly, Sunday “was not an approved day for the publication of newspapers, and although some English publishers had been doing so since about 1789, Sunday papers were generally frowned upon” (Robb 58). Yet, as argued by Howe a Sunday print run allowed for the inclusion of “the whole of the Ship News, and other Incidental Matter, for the preceeding week” (Sydney Gazette, “To the Public” 1).The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser Vol. 1, No. 1, 5 March 1803 (Front Page)Call Number DL F8/50, Digital ID a345001, State Library of New South WalesPublished weekly until 1825, then bi-weekly until 1827 before coming out tri-weekly until 20 October 1842 (Holden 14) there were some notable pauses in production. These included one in 1807 (Issue 214, 19 April-Issue 215, 7 June) and one in 1808-1809 (Issue 227, 30 August-Issue 228, 15 May) due to a lack of paper, with the latter pause coinciding with the Rum Rebellion and the end of William Bligh’s term as Governor of New South Wales (see: Karskens 186-88; Mundle 323-37). There was, too, a brief attempt at publishing as a daily from 1 January 1827 which lasted only until 10 February of that year when the title began to appear tri-weekly (Kirkpatrick online; Holden 14). There would be other pauses, including one of two weeks, shortly before the final issue was produced on 20 October 1842. There were many problems that beset The Sydney Gazette with paper shortages being especially challenging. Howe regularly advertised for: “any quantity” of Spanish paper (e.g.: Sydney Gazette, “Wanted to Purchase” 4) and needing to be satisfied “with a variety of size and colour” (P.M. Jones 39). In addition, the procurement of ink was so difficult in the colony, that Howe often resorted to making his own out of “charcoal, gum and shark oil” (P.M. Jones 39).The work itself was physically demanding and papers printed during this period, by hand, required a great deal of effort with approximately “250 sheets per hour … [the maximum] produced by a printer and his assistant” (Robb 8). The printing press itself was inadequate and the subject of occasional repairs (Sydney Gazette, “We Have” 2). Type was also a difficulty. As Gwenda Robb explains, traditionally six sets of an alphabet were supplied to a printer with extras for ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘r’ and ‘t’ as well as ‘s’. Without ample type Howe was required to improvise as can be seen in using a double ‘v’ to create a ‘w’ and an inverted ‘V’ to represent a capital ‘A’ (50, 106). These quirky work arounds, combined with the use of the long-form ‘s’ (‘∫’) for almost a full decade, can make The Sydney Gazette a difficult publication for modern readers to consume. Howe also “carried the financial burden” of the paper, dependent, as were London papers of the late eighteenth century, on advertising (Robb 68, 8). Howe also relied upon subscriptions for survival, with the collection of payments often difficult as seen in some subscribers being two years, or more, in arrears (e.g.: Sydney Gazette, “Sydney Gazette” 1; Ferguson viii; P.M. Jones 38). Governor Lachlan Macquarie granted Howe an annual salary, in 1811, of £60 (Byrnes 557-559) offering some relief, and stability, for the beleaguered printer.Gubernatorial Supervision Governor King wrote to Lord Hobart (then Secretary of State for War and the Colonies), on 9 May 1803: it being desirable that the settlers and inhabitants at large should be benefitted by useful information being dispersed among them, I considered that a weekly publication would greatly facilitate that design, for which purpose I gave permission to an ingenious man, who manages the Government printing press, to collect materials weekly, which, being inspected by an officer, is published in the form of a weekly newspaper, copies of which, as far as they have been published, I have the honor to enclose. (85)In the same letter, King wrote: “to the list of wants I have added a new fount of letters which may be procured for eight or ten pounds, sufficient for our purpose, if approved of” (85). King’s motivations were not purely altruistic. The population of the colony was growing in Sydney Cove and in the outlying districts, thus: “there was an increasing administrative need for information to be disseminated in a more accessible form than the printed handbills of government orders” (Robb 49). There was, however, a need for the administration to maintain control and the words “Published By Authority”, appearing on the paper’s masthead, were a constant reminder to the printer that The Sydney Gazette was “under the censorship of the Secretary to the Governor, who examined all proofs” (Ferguson viii). The high level of supervision, worked in concert with the logistical difficulties described above, ensured the newspaper was a source of great strain and stress. All for the meagre reward of “6d per copy” (Ferguson viii). This does not diminish Howe’s achievement in establishing a newspaper, an accomplishment outlined, with some pride, in an address printed on the first page of the first issue:innumerable as the Obstacles were which threatened to oppose our Undertaking, yet we are happy to affirm that they were not insurmountable, however difficult the task before us.The utility of a PAPER in the COLONY, as it must open a source of solid information, will, we hope, be universally felt and acknowledged. (Sydney Gazette, “Address” 1)Howe carefully kept his word and he “wrote nothing like a signature editorial column, nor did he venture his personal opinions, conscious always of the powers of colonial officials” (Robb 72). An approach to reportage he passed to his eldest son and long-term assistant, Robert (1795-1829), who later claimed The Sydney Gazette “reconciled in one sheet the merits of the London Gazette in upholding the Government and the London Times in defending the people” (Walker 10). The censorship imposed on The Sydney Gazette, by the Governor, was lifted in 1824 (P.M. Jones 40), when the Australian was first published without permission: Governor Thomas Brisbane did not intervene in the new enterprise. The appearance of unauthorised competition allowed Robert Howe to lobby for the removal of all censorship restrictions on The Sydney Gazette, though he was careful to cite “greater dispatch and earlier publication, not greater freedom of expression, as the expected benefit” (Walker 6). The sudden freedom was celebrated, and still appreciated many years after it was given:the Freedom of the Press has now been in existence amongst us on the verge of four years. In October 1824, we addressed a letter to the Colonial Government, fervently entreating that those shackles, under which the Press had long laboured, might be removed. Our prayer was attended to, and the Sydney Gazette, feeling itself suddenly introduced to a new state of existence, demonstrated to the Colonists the capabilities that ever must flow from the spontaneous exertions of Constitutional Liberty. (Sydney Gazette, “Freedom” 2)Early Readerships From the outset, George Howe presented a professional publication. The Sydney Gazette was formatted into three columns with the front page displaying a formal masthead featuring a scene of Sydney and the motto “Thus We Hope to Prosper”. Gwenda Robb argues the woodcut, the first produced in the colony, was carved by John W. Lewin who “had plenty of engraving skills” and had “returned to Sydney [from a voyage to Tahiti] in December 1802” (51) while Roger Butler has suggested that “circ*mstances point to John Austin who arrived in Sydney in 1800” as being the engraver (91). The printed text was as vital as the visual supports and every effort was made to present full accounts of colonial activities. “As well as shipping and court news, there were agricultural reports, religious homilies, literary extracts and even original poetry written by Howe himself” (Blair 450). These items, of course, sitting alongside key Government communications including General Orders and Proclamations.Howe’s language has been referred to as “florid” (Robb 52), “authoritative and yet filled with deference for all authority, pompous in a stiff, affected eighteenth century fashion” (Green 10) and so “some of Howe’s readers found the Sydney Gazette rather dull” (Blair 450). Regardless of any feelings towards authorial style, circulation – without an alternative – steadily increased with the first print run in 1802 being around 100 copies but by “the early 1820s, the newspaper’s production had grown to 300 or 400 copies” (Blair 450).In a reflection of the increasing sophistication of the Sydney-based reader, George Howe, and Robert Howe, would also publish some significant, stand-alone, texts. These included several firsts: the first natural history book printed in the colony, Birds of New South Wales with their Natural History (1813) by John W. Lewin (praised as a text “printed with an elegant and classical simplicity which makes it the highest typographical achievement of George Howe” [Wantrup 278]); the first collection of poetry published in the colony First Fruits of Australian Poetry (1819) by Barron Field; the first collection of poetry written by a Australian-born author, Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel (1826) by Charles Tompson; and the first children’s book A Mother’s Offering to Her Children: By a Lady, Long Resident in New South Wales (1841) by Charlotte Barton. The small concern also published mundane items such as almanacs and receipt books for the Bank of New South Wales (Robb 63, 72). All against the backdrop of printing a newspaper.New Voices The Sydney Gazette was Australia’s first newspaper and, critically for Howe, the only newspaper for over two decades. (A second paper appeared in 1810 but the Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer, which only managed twelve issues, presented no threat to The Sydney Gazette.) No genuine, local rival entered the field until 1824, when the Australian was founded by barristers William Charles Wentworth and Robert Wardell. The Monitor debuted in 1826, followed the Sydney Herald in 1831 and the Colonist in 1835 (P.M. Jones 38). It was the second title, the Australian, with a policy that asserted articles to be: “Independent, yet consistent – free, yet not licentious – equally unmoved by favours and by fear” (Walker 6), radically changed the newspaper landscape. The new paper made “a strong point of its independence from government control” triggering a period in which colonial newspapers “became enmeshed with local politics” (Blair 451). This new age of opinion reflected how fast the colony was evolving from an antipodean gaol into a complex society. Also, two papers, without censorship restrictions, without registration, stamp duties or advertisem*nt duties meant, as pointed out by R.B. Walker, that “in point of law the Press in the remote gaol of exile was now freer than in the country of origin” (6). An outcome George Howe could not have predicted as he made the long journey, as a convict, to New South Wales. Of the early competitors, the only one that survives is the Sydney Herald (The Sydney Morning Herald from 1842), which – founded by immigrants Alfred Stephens, Frederick Stokes and William McGarvie – claims the title of Australia’s oldest continuously published newspaper (Isaacs and Kirkpatrick 4-5). That such a small population, with so many pressing issues, factions and political machinations, could support a first newspaper, then competitors, is a testament to the high regard, with which newspaper reportage was held. Another intruder would be The Government Gazette. Containing only orders and notices in the style of the London Gazette (McLeay 1), lacking any news items or private advertisem*nts (Walker 19), it was first issued on 7 March 1832 (and continues, in an online format, today). Of course, Government orders and other notices had news value and newspaper proprietors could bid for exclusive rights to produce these notices until a new Government Printer was appointed in 1841 (Walker 20).Conclusion George Howe, an advocate of “reason and common sense” died in 1821 placing The Sydney Gazette in the hands of his son who “fostered religion” (Byrnes 557-559). Robert Howe, served as editor, experiencing firsthand the perils and stresses of publishing, until he drowned in a boating accident in Sydney Harbour, in 1829 leaving the paper to his widow Ann Howe (Blair 450-51). The newspaper would become increasingly political leading to controversy and financial instability; after more changes in ownership and in editorial responsibility, The Sydney Gazette, after almost four decades of delivering the news – as a sole voice and then as one of several alternative voices – ceased publication in 1842. During a life littered with personal tragedy, George Howe laid the foundation stone for Australia’s media empires. His efforts, in extraordinary circ*mstances and against all environmental indicators, serve as inspiration to newspapers editors, proprietors and readers across the country. He established the Australian press, an institution that has been described asa profession, an art, a craft, a business, a quasi-public, privately owned institution. It is full of grandeurs and faults, sublimities and pettinesses. It is courageous and timid. It is fallible. It is indispensable to the successful on-going of a free people. (Holden 15)George Howe also created an artefact of great beauty. The attributes of The Sydney Gazette are listed, in a perfunctory manner, in most discussions of the newspaper’s history. The size of the paper. The number of columns. The masthead. The changes seen across 4,503 issues. Yet, consistently overlooked, is how, as an object, the newspaper is an exquisite example of the printed word. There is a physicality to the paper that is in sharp contrast to contemporary examples of broadsides, tabloids and online publications. Concurrently fragile and robust: its translucent sheets and mottled print revealing, starkly, the problems with paper and ink; yet it survives, in several collections, over two centuries since the first issue was produced. The elegant layout, the glow of the paper, the subtle crackling sound as the pages are turned. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser is an astonishing example of innovation and perseverance. It provides essential insights into Australia’s colonial era. It is a metonym for making words matter. AcknowledgementsThe author offers her sincere thanks to Geoff Barker, Simon Dwyer and Peter Kirkpatrick for their comments on an early draft of this paper. The author is also grateful to Bridget Griffen-Foley for engaging in many conversations about Australian newspapers. ReferencesBlair, S.J. “Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser.” A Companion to the Australian Media. Ed. Bridget Griffen-Foley. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014.Butler, Roger. Printed Images in Colonial Australia 1801-1901. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia, 2007.Byrnes, J.V. “Howe, George (1769–1821).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography: 1788–1850, A–H. Canberra: Australian National University, 1966. 557-559. Ferguson, J.A. “Introduction.” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser: A Facsimile Reproduction of Volume One, March 5, 1803 to February 26, 1804. Sydney: The Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in Association with Angus & Robertson, 1963. v-x. Foyster, Elizabeth. “Introduction: Newspaper Reporting of Crime and Justice.” Continuity and Change 22.1 (2007): 9-12.Goff, Victoria. “Convicts and Clerics: Their Roles in the Infancy of the Press in Sydney, 1803-1840.” Media History 4.2 (1998): 101-120.Green, H.M. “Australia’s First Newspaper.” Sydney Morning Herald, 11 Apr. 1935: 10.Holden, W. Sprague. Australia Goes to Press. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1961. “Hughes, George (?–?).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography: 1788–1850, A–H. Canberra: Australian National University, 1966. 562. Isaacs, Victor, and Rod Kirkpatrick. Two Hundred Years of Sydney Newspapers. Richmond: Rural Press, 2003. Jones, Dorothy. “Humour and Satire (Australia).” Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. 2nd ed. Eds. Eugene Benson and L.W. Conolly. London: Routledge, 2005. 690-692.Jones, Phyllis Mander. “Australia’s First Newspaper.” Meanjin 12.1 (1953): 35-46. Karskens, Grace. The Colony: A History of Early Sydney. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2010. King, Philip Gidley. “Letter to Lord Hobart, 9 May 1803.” Historical Records of Australia, Series 1, Governors’ Despatches to and from England, Volume IV, 1803-1804. Ed. Frederick Watson. Sydney: Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, 1915.Kirkpatrick, Rod. Press Timeline: 1802 – 1850. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2011. 6 Jan. 2017 <https://www.nla.gov.au/content/press-timeline-1802-1850>. McLeay, Alexander. “Government Notice.” The New South Wales Government Gazette 1 (1832): 1. Mundle, R. Bligh: Master Mariner. Sydney: Hachette, 2016.New South Wales General Standing Orders and General Orders: Selected from the General Orders Issued by Former Governors, from the 16th of February, 1791, to the 6th of September, 1800. Also, General Orders Issued by Governor King, from the 28th of September, 1800, to the 30th of September, 1802. Sydney: Government Press, 1802. Robb, Gwenda. George Howe: Australia’s First Publisher. Kew: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003.Spalding, D.A. Collecting Australian Books: Notes for Beginners. 1981. Mawson: D.A. Spalding, 1982. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. “Address.” 5 Mar. 1803: 1.———. “To the Public.” 2 Apr. 1803: 1.———. “Wanted to Purchase.” 26 June 1803: 4.———. “We Have the Satisfaction to Inform Our Readers.” 3 Nov. 1810: 2. ———. “Sydney Gazette.” 25 Dec. 1819: 1. ———. “The Freedom of the Press.” 29 Feb. 1828: 2.———. “Never Did a More Painful Task Devolve upon a Public Writer.” 3 Feb. 1829: 2. Walker, R.B. The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803-1920. Sydney: Sydney UP, 1976.Wantrup, Johnathan. Australian Rare Books: 1788-1900. Sydney: Hordern House, 1987.

Abstract:

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

Abstract:

Introduction Television has become more and more restricted within the past few years. Rating systems and "family programming" have taken over the broadcast networks, relegating violent programming, often some of the most cutting edge work in television, to pay channels. There are very few people willing to stand up and say that viewers -- even young children -- should be able to watch whatever they want, and that viewing acts of violence can actually result in more mature, balanced adults. Jib Fowles is one of those people. His book, The Case For Television Violence, explores the long history of violent content in popular culture, and how its modern incarnation, television, fulfils the same function as epic tragedy and "penny dreadfuls" did -- the diverting of aggressive feelings into the cathartic action of watching. Fowles points out the flaws in studies linking TV violence to actual violence (why, for example, has there been a sharp decline in violent crime in the U.S. during the 1990s when, by all accounts, television violence has increased?), as well as citing overlooked studies that show no correlation between viewing and performing acts of violence. The book also demonstrates how efforts to censor TV violence are not only ineffective, but can lead to the opposite result: an increase in exposure to violent viewing as audiences forsake traditional broadcast programming for private programming through pay TV and videocassettes. The revised excerpt below describes one of the more heated topics of debate -- the V-Chip. Television Violence and You Although the antiviolence fervor crested in the US in the first half of the 1990s, it also continued into the second half. As Sissela Bok comments: "during the 1990s, much larger efforts by citizen advocacy groups, churches, professional organizations, public officials, and media groups have been launched to address the problems posed by media violence" (146). It continues as always. On the one side, the reformist position finds articulation time and again; on the other side, the public's incessant desire for violent entertainment is reluctantly (because there is no prestige or cachet to be had in it) serviced by television companies as they compete against each other for profits. We can contrast these two forces in the following way: the first, the antitelevision violence campaign, is highly focussed in its presentation, calling for the curtailment of violent content, but this concerted effort has underpinnings that are vague and various; the second force is highly diffused on the surface (the public nowhere speaks pointedly in favor of violent content), but its underpinnings are highly concentrated and functional, pertinent to the management of disapproved emotions. To date, neither force has triumphed decisively. The antiviolence advocates can be gratified by the righteousness of their cause and sense of moral superiority, but violent content continues as a mainstay of the medium's offerings and in viewers' attention. Over the longer term, equilibrium has been the result. If the equilibrium were upset, however, unplanned consequences would result. The attack on television violence is not simply unwarranted; it carries the threat of unfortunate dangers should it succeed. In the US, television violence is a successful site for the siphoning off of unwanted emotions. The French critic Michel Mourlet explains: "violence is a major theme in aesthetics. Violence is decompression: Arising out of a tension between the individual and the world, it explodes as the tension reaches its pitch, like an abscess burning. It has to be gone through before there can be any repose" (233). The loss or even diminishment of television violence would suggest that surplus psychic energy would have to find other outlets. What these outlets would be is open to question, but the possibility exists that some of them might be retrogressive, involving violence in more outright and vicious forms. It is in the nation's best interest not to curtail the symbolic displays that come in the form of television violence. Policy The official curbing of television violence is not an idle or empty threat. It has happened recently in Canada. In 1993, the Canadian Radio- Television and Telecommunications Commission, the equivalent of the Australian Broadcasting Authority or of the American FCC, banned any "gratuitous" violence, which was defined as violence not playing "an integral role in developing the plot, character, or theme of the material as a whole" (Scully 12). Violence of any sort cannot be broadcast before 9 p.m. Totally forbidden are any programs promoting violence against women, minorities, or animals. Detailed codes regulate violence in children's shows. In addition, the Canadian invention of the V-chip is to be implemented, which would permit parents to block out programming that exceeds preset levels for violence, sexuality, or strong language (DePalma). In the United States, the two houses of Congress have held 28 hearings since 1954 on the topic of television violence (Cooper), but none has led to the passage of regulatory legislation until the Telecommunications Act of 1996. According to the Act, "studies have shown that children exposed to violent video programming at a young age have a higher tendency for violent and aggressive behavior later in life than children not so exposed, and that children exposed to violent video programming are prone to assume that acts of violence are acceptable behavior" (Section 551). It then requires that newly manufactured television sets must "be equipped with a feature designed to enable viewers to block display of all programs with a common rating" (Telecommunications Act of 1996, section 551). The V-chip, the only available "feature" to meet the requirements, will therefore be imported from Canada to the United States. Utilising a rating system reluctantly and haltingly developed by the television industry, parents on behalf of their children would be able to black out offensive content. Censorship had passed down to the family level. Although the V-chip represents the first legislated regulation of television violence in the US, that country experienced an earlier episode of violence censorship whose outcome may be telling for the fate of the chip. This occurred in the aftermath of the 1972 Report to the Surgeon General on Television and Social Behavior, which, in highly equivocal language, appeared to give some credence to the notion that violent content can activate violent behavior in some younger viewers. Pressure from influential congressmen and from the FCC and its chairman, Richard Wiley, led the broadcasting industry in 1975 to institute what came to be known as the Family Viewing Hour. Formulated as an amendment to the Television Code of the National Association of Broadcasters, the stipulation decreed that before 9:00 p.m. "entertainment programming inappropriate for viewing by a general family audience should not be broadcast" (Cowan 113). The definition of "inappropriate programming" was left to the individual networks, but as the 1975-1976 television season drew near, it became clear to a production company in Los Angeles that the definitions would be strict. The producers of M*A*S*H (which aired at 8:30 p.m.) learned from the CBS censor assigned to them that three of their proposed programs -- dealing with venereal disease, impotence, and adultery -- would not be allowed (Cowan 125). The series Rhoda could not discuss birth control (131) and the series Phyllis would have to cancel a show on virginity (136). Television writers and producers began to rebel, and in late 1975 their Writers Guild brought a lawsuit against the FCC and the networks with regard to the creative impositions of the Family Viewing Hour. Actor Carroll O'Connor (as quoted in Cowan 179) complained, "Congress has no right whatsoever to interfere in the content of the medium", and writer Larry Gelbert voiced dismay (as quoted in Cowan 177): "situation comedies have become the theater of ideas, and those ideas have been very, very restricted". The judge who heard the case in April and May of 1976 took until November to issue his decision, but when it emerged it was polished and clear: the Family Viewing Hour was the result of "backroom bludgeoning" by the FCC and was to be rescinded. According to the judge, "the existence of threats, and the attempted securing of commitments coupled with the promise to publicize noncompliance ... constituted per se violations of the First Amendment" (Corn-Revere 201). The fate of the Family Viewing Hour may have been a sort of premoniton: The American Civil Liberties Union is currently bringing a similar case against proponents of the V-chip -- a case that may produce similar results. Whether or not the V-chip will withstand judicial scrutiny, there are several problematic aspects to the device and any possible successors. Its usage would appear to impinge on the providers of violent content, on the viewers of it, and indeed on the fundamental legal structure of the United States. To confront the first of these three problems, significant use of the V- chip by parents would measurably reduce the audience size for certain programmes containing symbolic violence. Little else could have greater impact on the American television system as it is currently constituted. A decrease in audience numbers quickly translates into a decrease in advertising revenues in an advertising system such as that of the United States. Advertisers may additionally shy away from a shunned programme because of its loss of popularity or because its lowered ratings have clearly stamped it as violent. The decline in revenues would make the programme less valuable in the eyes of network executives and perhaps a candidate for cancellation. The Hollywood production company would quickly take notice and begin tailoring its broadcast content to the new standards. Blander or at least different fare would be certain to result. Broadcast networks may begin losing viewers to bolder content on less fastidious cable networks and in particular to the channels that are not supported and influenced by advertising. Thus, we might anticipate a shift away from the more traditional and responsible channels towards the less so and away from advertising-supported channels to subscriber-supported channels. This shift would not transpire according to the traditional governing mechanism of television -- audience preferences. Those to whom the censored content had been destined would have played no role in its neglect. Neglect would have transpired because of the artificial intercession of controls. The second area to be affected by the V-chip, should its implementation prove successful, is viewership, in particular younger viewers. Currently, young viewers have great license in most households to select the content they want to watch; this license would be greatly reduced by the V-chip, which can block out entire genres. Screening for certain levels of violence, the parent would eliminate most cartoons and all action- adventure shows, whether the child desires some of these or not. A New York Times reporter, interviewing a Canadian mother who had been an early tester of a V-chip prototype, heard the mother's 12-year-old son protesting in the background, "we're not getting the V-chip back!" The mother explained to the reporter, "the kids didn't like the fact that they were not in control any longer" (as quoted in DePalma C14) -- with good reason. Children are losing the right to pick the content of which they are in psychological need. The V-chip represents another weapon in the generational war -- a device that allows parents to eradicate the compensational content of which children have learned to make enjoyable use. The consequences of all this for the child and the family would be unpleasant. The chances that the V-chip will increase intergenerational friction are high. Not only will normal levels of tension and animosity be denied their outlet via television fiction but also so will the new superheated levels. It is not a pleasant prospect. Third, the V-chip constitutes a strong challenge to traditional American First Amendment rights of free speech and a free press. Stoutly defended by post-World War II Supreme Courts, First Amendment rights can be voided "only in order to promote a compelling state interest, and then only if the government adopts the least restrictive means to further that interest" (Ballard 211). The few restrictions allowed concern such matters as obscenity, libel, national security, and the sometimes conflicting right to a fair trial. According to legal scholar Ian Ballard, there is no "compelling state interest" involved in the matter of television violence because "the social science evidence used to justify the regulation of televised violence is subject to such strong methodological criticism that the evidence is insufficient to support massive regulatory assault on the television entertainment industry" (185). Even if the goal of restricting television violence were acceptable, the V-chip is hardly "the least restrictive means" because it introduces a "chilling effect" on programme producers and broadcasters that "clearly infringes on fundamental First Amendment rights" (216). Moreover, states Ballard, "fear of a slippery slope is not unfounded" (216). If television violence can be censored, supposedly because it poses a threat to social order, then what topics might be next? It would not be long before challenging themes such a feminism or multiculturalism were deemed unfit for the same reason. Taking all these matters into consideration, the best federal policy regarding television violence would be to have no policy -- to leave the extent of violent depictions completely up to the dictates of viewer preferences, as expertly interpreted by the television industry. In this, I am in agreement with Ian Ballard, who finds that the best approach "is for the government to do nothing at all about television violence" (218). Citation reference for this article MLA style: Jib Fowles. "Television Violence and You." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/television.php>. Chicago style: Jib Fowles, "Television Violence and You," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/television.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Jib Fowles. (2000) Television Violence and You. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/television.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

“A bunch of fa*ggots for watching men hug each other in tights.”For the past five Marches, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has produced an awards show which honours its aged former performers, such as Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, as pro-wrestling Legends. This awards show, according to WWE, is ‘an elegant, emotional, star-studded event that recognizes the in-ring achievements of the inductees and offers historical insights into this century-old sports-entertainment attraction’ (WWE.com, n.p.). In an episodic storyline leading up to the 2009 awards, however, the real-life personal shortcomings of these Legends have been brought to light, and subsequently mocked in one-on-one interview segments with WWE’s Superstar of the Year 2008, the dastardly Chris Jericho. Jericho caps off these tirades by physically assaulting the Legends with handy stage props. Significantly, the performances of Jericho and his victims have garnered positive attention not only from mass audiences unaware of backstage happenings in WWE, but also from the informed community of pro-wrestling fans over at the nihilistic humour website SomethingAwful. During Jericho’s assault on the Legend Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka at the March 02 WWE Raw event, a WWE-themed forum thread on SomethingAwful logged over sixty posts all reiterating variations of ‘gently caress me Jericho is amazing’ (Jerusalem, n.p.). This is despite the community’s passive-aggressive and ironically jaded official line that they indeed are ‘a bunch of fa*ggots for watching men hug each other in tights. Thank you for not telling us this several times’ (HulkaMatt, n.p.). Why were these normally cynical fans of WWE enthusiastically expressing their love for the Jericho-Legends feud? In order to answer this question, this paper argues that the feud articulates not only the ideal of the “giving wrestler”, but also Roland Barthes’s version of jouissance. Consuming and commenting on WWE texts within the SomethingAwful community is further argued to be a performative ritual in which informed wrestling fans distance themselves from audiences they perceive as uncritical and ill-informed cultural dupes. The feud, then, allows the SomethingAwful fans to perform enthusiasm on two interconnected levels: they are not only able to ironically cheer on Jericho’s morally reprehensible actions, but also to genuinely appreciate the present-day in-ring efforts of the Legends. The Passion of the SuperflyTo properly contextualise this paper, though, the fact that “pro wrestling is fake” needs to be reiterated. Each match is a choreographed sequence of moves. Victory does not result from landing more damaging bodyslams than one's opponent, but is instead predetermined by scriptwriters—among whom wrestlers are typically not numbered—backstage. In the 1950s, Roland Barthes thus commented that pro wrestling ‘is not a sport, it is a spectacle’ (Mythologies 13). Yet, pro wrestling remains popular because this theatricality allows for the display of spectacular excesses of passion—here Barthes not only means “an intensity of emotion”, but refers to the physically tortured heroes of medieval passion plays as well—giving it an advantage over the legitimate sport of amateur wrestling. ‘It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself’ (Mythologies 16). This observation still holds true in today’s WWE. On one hand, the SomethingAwful fans go ‘gently caress Jericho, [Superfly] will MURDER you’ (Jerusalem, n.p.) in disapproval of Jericho’s on-screen actions. In the same thread, though, they simultaneously fret over him being slightly injured from an off-screen real life accident. ‘Jericho looks busted up on his forehead. Dang’ (Carney, n.p.).However, Barthes’s observations, while seminal, are not the be-all and end-all of pro wrestling scholarship. The industry has undergone a significant number of changes since the 1950s. Speeches and interview segments are now seen as essential tools for furthering storylines. Correspondingly, they are given ample TV time. At over ten minutes, the Jericho-“Superfly” confrontation from the March 02 Raw is longer than both the matches following it, and a fifteen minute conversation between two top wrestlers capstones these two matches. Henry Jenkins has thus argued that pro wrestling is a male-targeted melodrama. Its ‘writers emphasize many traits that [legitimate sports such as] football share with melodrama-the clear opposition between characters, the sharp alignment of audience identification, abrupt shifts in fortune, and an emotionally satisfying resolution’ (Jenkins, “Never Trust a Snake” 81). Unlike football, though, the predetermined nature of pro wrestling means that its events can be ‘staged to ensure maximum emotional impact and a satisfying climax’ (Jenkins, “Never Trust a Snake” 81). Further, Jenkins notes that shouting is preferred over tears as an outlet for male affect. It ‘embodies externalised emotion; it is aggressive and noisy. Women cry from a position of emotional (and often social) vulnerability; men shout from a position of physical and social strength (however illusory)’ (Jenkins, “Never Trust a Snake” 80). Pro wrestling is seen to encourage this outlet for affect by offering its viewers spectacles of male physical prowess to either castigate or cheer. Jericho’s assault of the Legends, coupled with his half-screaming, half-shouting taunts of “‘Hall of Famer’? ‘Hall of Famer’ of what? You’re a has-been! Just like all the rest!” could be read to fit within this paradigm as well. Smarts vs. MarksWWE has repeatedly highlighted its scripted nature in recent years. During a 2007 CNN interview, for instance, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon constantly refers to his product as “entertainment” and laughingly agrees that “it’s all story” when discussing his on-screen interactions with his long-lost midget “son” (Griffin, n.p.). These overt acknowledgments that WWE is a highly choreographed melodrama have boosted the growth of a fan demographic referred to the "smart" in pro-wrestling argot. This “smart” fan is a figure for whom the fabricated nature of pro-wrestling necessitates an engagement with the WWE spectacle at a different level from mass audiences. The “smart” not only ‘follow[s] the WWE not just to see the shows, but to keep track of what “the Fed[eration]” is doing’ (McBride and Bird 170) with regards to off-camera events, but also 'has knowledge of the inner-workings of the wrestling business’ (PWTorch, n.p.). One of the few “GOLD”-rated threads on the SomethingAwful smart forums, accordingly, is titled “WWE News and Other Top Stories, The Insider Thread”, and has nearly 400 000 views and over 1000 posts. As a result, the smarts are in a subject position of relative insider-ness. They consume the WWE spectacle at a deeper level—one which functions roughly like an apparatus of capture for the critical/cynical affect mobilised around the binary of ‘real’ and ‘fake’—yet ultimately remain captured by the spectacle through their autodidact enthusiasm for knowledge which uncovers its inner workings.By contrast, there is the category of the “mark” fan. These “marks” are individuals who remain credulous in their reception of WWE programming. As cuteygrl08 writes regarding a recent WWE storyline involving brotherly envy:I LOVE JEFF HARDY!!!! i cried when i heard his brother say all the crap about him!! kinda weird but i love him and this video is soooo good!! JEFF hardy loves his fans and his fans love him no matter what he does i'll always love JEFF HARDY!!!!!!!!!!! (n.p.)This unstinting faith in the on-screen spectacle is understandable insofar as WWE programming trades upon powerful visual markers of authenticity—nearly-bare bodies, sweat, pained facial expressions­—and complements them with the adrenaline-producing beats of thrash metal and hard rock. Yet, smarts look down upon marks like cuteygrl08, seeing them as Frankfurt School-era hypnotised sots for whom the WWE spectacle is ‘the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness’ (Debord 117), and additionally as victims of a larger media industry which specialises in mass deception (Horkheimer and Adorno 41). As Lawrence McBride and Elizabeth Bird observe:Marks appear to believe in the authenticity of the competition—Smarts see them as the stereotypical dupes imagined by wrestling critics. Smarts approach the genre of wrestling as would-be insiders, while Marks root unreflexively for the most popular faces. Smart fans possess truly incredible amounts of knowledge about the history of wrestling, including wrestler’s real names and career histories, how various promotions began and folded, who won every Wrestlemania ever. Smart fan informants defined a Mark specifically as someone who responds to wrestling in the way intended by the people who write the storylines (the bookers), describing Marks with statements such as “Kids are Marks.” or “We were all Marks when we were kids.” Smarts view Marks with scorn. (169)Perhaps feeding on the antagonistic binaries drawn by WWE programming, there exists an “us vs them” binary in smart fan communities. Previous research has shown that fan communities often rigidly police the boundaries of “good taste”, and use negatively constructed differences as a means of identity construction (Fiske 448; Jenkins, “Get a Life!” 432; Theodoropoulou 321). This ritual Othering is especially important when supporting the WWE. Smarts are aware that they are fans of a product denigrated by non-fans as ‘trash TV’ (McKinley, n.p.). As Matt Hills finds, fandom is a mode of performative consumption. It is ‘an identity which is (dis)claimed, and which performs cultural work’ (Hills xi). Belonging to the SomethingAwful smart community, thus, exerts its own pressures on the individual smart. There, the smart must perform ‘audiencehood, knowing that other fans will act as a readership for speculation, observation, and commentaries’ (Hills 177). Wrestling, then, is not just to be watched passively. It must be analysed, and critically dissected with reference to the encyclopaedic knowledge treasured by the smart community. Mark commentary has to be pilloried, for despite all the ironic disaffection characterising their posts, the smarts display mark-like behaviour by watching and purchasing WWE programming under their own volition. A near-existential dread is hence articulated when smarts become aware of points where the boundaries between smart and mark overlap, that ‘the creatures that lurk the internet ...carry some of the same interests that we do’ (rottingtrashcan, n.p.). Any commonalities between smarts and marks must thus be disavowed as a surface resemblance: afterall, creatures are simply unthinking appetites, not smart epicures. We’re better than those plebs; in fact, we’re nothing like them any more. Yet, in one of the few forms of direct address in the glossary of smart newsletter PWTorch, to “mark out” is ‘to enthusiastically be into [a storyline] or match as if you [emphasis added] were “a mark”; to suspend one's disbelief for the sake of enjoying to a greater extent a match or [a storyline]’ (PWTorch, n.p.). The existence of the term “marking out” in a smart glossary points to an enjoyably liminal privileged position between that of defensively ironic critic and that of credulous dupe, one where smarts can stop their performance of cooler-than-thou fatigue and enthusiastically believe that there is nothing more to WWE than spontaneous alarms and excursions. The bodily reactions of the Legends in response to Jericho's physical assault helps foster this willing naiveté. These reactions are a distressing break from the generic visual conventions set forth by preceding decades of professional wrestling. As Barthes argues, wrestling is as much concerned with images of spectacular suffering as with narratives of amazing triumphs:the wrestler who suffers in a hold which is reputedly cruel (an arm- lock, a twisted leg) offers an excessive portrayal of Suffering; like a primitive Pieta, he exhibits for all to see his face, exaggeratedly contorted by an intolerable affliction. It is obvious, of course, that in wrestling reserve would be out of place, since it is opposed to the voluntary ostentation of the spectacle, to this Exhibition of Suffering which is the very aim of the fight. (17)Barthes was writing of the primitively filmed wrestling matches of the 1950s notable for their static camera shots. However, WWE wrestlers yet follow this theatrical aesthetic. In the match immediately following Jericho’s bullying of Superfly, Kane considerately jumps the last two feet into a ringside turnbuckle after Mike Knox pushes him into its general vicinity. Kane grunts at the impact while the camera cuts to a low-angled shot of his back—all the better to magnify the visual of the 150 kg Knox now using his bulk to squash Kane. Whenever Jericho himself traps his opponent in his “Walls of Jericho” submission manoeuvre, both their faces are rictuses of passion. His opponent clutches for the safety of the ring ropes, shaking his head in heroic determination. Audiences see Jericho tighten his grip, his own head shaking in villainous purpose. But the Legends do not gyrate around the set when hit. Instead, they invariably slump to the ground, motionless except for weakly spasming to the rhythm of Jericho’s subsequent attacks. This atypical reaction forces audiences—smart and mark alike—to re-evaluate any assumptions that the event constitutes a typical WWE beatdown. Overblown theatricality gives way to a scene which seems more related to everyday experiences with pain: Here's an old man being beaten and whipped by a strong, young man. He's not moving. Not like other wrestlers do. I wonder... The battered bodies of these Legends are then framed in high angle camera shots, making them look ever so much more vulnerable than they were prior to Jericho’s assault. Hence the smart statements gushing that ‘gently caress me Jericho is amazing’ (Jerusalem, n.p.) and that Jericho’s actions have garnered a ‘rear end in a top hat chant [from the crowd]. It has been FOREVER since I heard one of those. I love Chris Jericho’ (Burrito, n.p.).Jouissance and “Marking Out”This uninhibited “marking out” by normally cynical smarts brings to mind Barthes's observation that texts are able to provoke two different kinds of enjoyment in their readers. On one hand, there is the text which provides pleasure born from familiarity. It ‘contents, fills, grants euphoria; [it is] the text that comes from culture and does not break with it, is linked to a comfortable practice of reading’ (Barthes, Image-Music-Text 14). The Knox-Kane match engendered such a been-there-done-that-it's-ok-I-guess overall reaction from smarts. For every ‘Mike Knox throwing Mysterio at Kane was fantastic’ (Burrito, n.p.), there is an ‘Ahahaha jesus Knox [sic] that was the sh*ttiest Hurracanrana sell ever’ (Axisillian, n.p.), and a ‘Hit the beard [sic] it is Knox's weakpoint’ (Eurotrash, n.p.). The pleasant genericity of the match enables and necessitates that these smarts maintain their tactic of ironic posturing. They are able to armchair critique Knox for making his opponent's spinning Hurracanrana throw look painless. Yet they are also allowed to reiterate their camp affection for Knox's large and bushy beard, which remains grotesque even when divorced from a WWE universe that celebrates sculpted physiques.By contrast, Barthes praises the text of rapturous jouissance. It is one where an org*smic intensity of pleasure is born from the unravelling of its audience’s assumptions, moving them away from their comfort zone. It is a text which ‘imposes a stage of loss, [a] text that discomforts (perhaps to the point of boredom), unsettles the reader's historical, cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes, values, memories, brings to crisis his relation with language’ (Barthes, Image-Music-Text 14). In addition to the atypical physical reactions of the Legends, WWE cynically positions the Jericho-Legends segments during Raw events which also feature slick video montages highlighting the accomplishments of individual Legends. These montages—complete with an erudite and enthusiastic Voice-of-God narrator— introduce the long-retired Legends to marks unfamiliar with WWE's narrative continuity: “Ladies and gentlemen! Rrriiiicky “The Draaagon” Steeeeamboat!”. At the same time, they serve as a visually and aurally impressive highlight-reel-cum-nostalgic-celebration of each Legend's career accomplishments. Their authoritative narration is spliced to clips of past matches, and informs audiences that, for instance, Steamboat was ‘one of the first Superstars to combine technical skills with astounding aerial agility ... in a match widely regarded as one of the best in history, he captured the Intercontinental title from Randy Savage in front of a record-breaking 93 173 fans’ (“Raw #636”, WWE). Following the unassailably authentic video footage of past matches, other retired wrestlers speak candidly in non-WWE stages such as outdoor parks and their own homes about the Legend's strengths and contributions to the industry.The interesting thing about these didactic montages is not so much what they show —Legends mythologised into triumphant Titans — but rather, what they elide. While the Steamboat-centred package does reflect the smart consensus that his Intercontinental bout ‘was a technical classic, and to this day, is still considered one of the greatest matches of all-time’ (NPP, n.p.), it does not mention how Steamboat was treated poorly in the WWE. Despite coming to it as the widely-known World Champion of [the NWA] rival promotion, WWE producers ‘dressed Steamboat up as a dragon and even made him blow fire. ...To boot, he was never acknowledged as a World Champion and [kept losing] to the stars’ (NPP, n.p.). The montages, overtly endorsed by the gigantic WWE logo as they are, are ultimately pleasant illusions which rewrite inconvenient truths while glamorising pleasant memories.Jericho’s speeches, however, sharply break from this celebratory mode. He references Steamboat’s previous success in the NWA, ‘an organisation that according to this company never even existed’(“Raw #636”, WWE). He then castigates Steamboat for being a real-life sellout and alludes to Steamboat having personal problems unmentioned in the montage:It wasn't until you came to the WWE that you sold your soul to all of these parasites [everyone watching] that you became “The Dragon”. A glorified Karate Kid selling headbands and making poses. Feeding into stereotypes. And then you eventually came to the ring with a Komodo Dragon. Literally spitting fire like the circus freak you'd become. It was pathetic. But hey, it's all right as long as you're making a paycheck, right Steamboat? And then when you decided to retire, you ended up like all the rest. Down and out. Broken. Beaten down. Dysfunctional family ...You applied for a job working for the WWE, you got one working backstage, and now here you are. You see, Steamboat, you are a life-long sellout. And now, with the Hall of Fame induction, the loyal dog gets his bone. (WWE)Here, Jericho demonstrates an apparent unwillingness to follow the company line by not only acknowledging the NWA, but also by disrespecting a current WWE backstage authority. Yet, wrestlers having onscreen tangles with their bosses is the norm for WWE. The most famous storyline of the 1990s had “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and the WWE Chairman brutalising each other for months on end, and the fifteen minute verbal exchange mentioned earlier concerns one wrestler previously attacking the Raw General Manager. Rather, it is Jericho’s reinterpretation of Steamboat’s career trajectory which gives the storyline the intensely pleasurable uncertainty of jouissance. His confrontational speeches rupture the celebratory nostalgia of the montages, forcing smarts to apply extra-textual knowledge to them. This is especially relevant in Steamboat’s case. His montage was shown just prior to his meeting with Jericho, ensuring that his iconic status was fresh in the audience’s memory. Vera Dika’s findings on the conflict between memory and history in revisionist nostalgia films are important to remember here. The tension ‘that comes from the juxtaposition of the coded material against the historical context of the film itself ...encourages a new set of meanings to arise’ (Dika 91). Jericho cynically views the seemingly virtuous and heroic Steamboat as a corporate sycophant preying on fan goodwill to enrich his own selfish ends. This viewpoint, troublingly enough for smarts, is supported by their non-WWE-produced extra-textual knowledge, allowing for a meta-level melodrama to be played out. The speeches thus speak directly to smarts, simultaneously confounding and exceeding their expectations. The comfortingly pleasant memories of Steamboat’s “amazing aerial prowess” are de-emphasised, and he is further linked to the stereotypical juvenilia of the once-popular The Karate Kid. They articulate and capitalise upon whatever misgivings smarts may have regarding Steamboat’s real-life actions. Thus, to paraphrase Dika, ‘seen in this clash, [the Jericho-Legends feud] has the structure of irony, producing a feeling of nostalgia, but also of pathos, and registering the historical events as the cause of an irretrievable loss [of a Legend’s dignity]’ (91). “C’mon Legend! Live in the past!” taunts Jericho as he stuffs Superfly’s mouth with bananas and beats him amidst the wreckage of the exactingly reproduced cheap wooden set in the same way that “Rowdy” Roddy Piper did years ago (“RAW #637”, WWE). This literal dismantling of cherished memories results from WWE producers second-guessing the smarts, and providing these fans with an enjoyably uncomfortable jouissance that cleverly confounds the performance of a smart disaffection. “Marking out” —or its performance at least—results.The Giving WrestlerLastly, the general physical passivity of the Legends also ties into the ethos of the “giving wrestler” when combined with the celebratory montages. In a business where performed passion is integral to fan enjoyment, the “giving wrestler” is an important figure who, when hit by a high-risk move, will make his co-worker’s offense look convincing (McBride and Bird 173). He ‘will give his all in a performance to ensure a dual outcome: the match will be spectacular, benefiting the fans, and each wrestler will make his “opponent” look good, helping him “get over with the fans” (McBride and Bird 172). Unsurprisingly, this figure is appreciated by smarts, who ‘often form strong emotional attachments to those wrestlers who go to the greatest lengths to bear the burden of the performance’ (McBride and Bird 173). As described earlier, the understated reactions of the Legends make Jericho’s attacks paradoxically look as though they cause extreme pain. Yet, when this pathetic image of the Legends is combined with the hypermasculine images of them in their heyday, a tragedy with real-life referents is played out on-stage. In one of Jenkins’s ‘abrupt shifts of fortune’ (“Never Trust a Snake” 81), age has grounded these Legends. They can now believably be assaulted with impunity by someone that Steamboat dismisses as ‘a snotty brat wrestler of a kid[sic] ...a hypocrite’ (“Raw #636”, WWE), and even in this, they apparently give their all to make Jericho look viciously “good”, thus exceeding the high expectations of smarts. As an appreciative thread title on SomethingAwful states, ‘WWE Discussion is the RICKY STEAMBOAT OWN [wins] ZONE for 02/23/09’ (HulkaMatt, n.p.) ConclusionThe Jericho-Legends feud culminated the day after the Hall of Fame ceremony, at the WWE’s flagship Wrestlemania event. Actor Mickey Rourke humiliated Jericho for the honour of the Legends, flattening the co*cky braggart with a single punch. The maximum degree of moral order possible was thus temporarily restored to an episodic narrative centred around unprovoked acts of violence. Ultimately though, it is important to note the three strategies that WWE used The Legends were scripted to respond feebly to Jericho’s physical assault, slick recap montages were copiously deployed, and Jericho himself was allowed candid metatextual references to incidents that WWE producers normally like to pretend have “never even existed”. All these strategies were impressive in their own right, and they eventually served to reinforce each other. 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HulkaMatt. “Wrestlehut 2000 Rules and FAQ - Last Update: 2/13/2009 - FRANK MIR FEARS BROCK LESNAR.” SomethingAwful 5 Aug. 2008. 5 Mar. 2009 < http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2922167 >.HulkaMatt. “WWE Discussion is the RICKY STEAMBOAT OWN ZONE for 02/23/09.” SomethingAwful 24 Feb. 2009. 5 Mar. 2009 < http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3085277 >.Jenkins, Henry. “'Get a Life!': Fans, Poachers, Nomads.” The Cult Film Reader. Eds. Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik. England: Open UP, 2008. 430-43.Jenkins, Henry. “Never Trust a Snake: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama.” The Wow Climax. New York: New York UP 2007. 75-101.Jerusalem. “WWE RAW is IN SOVIET RUSSIA, HEART BREAKS YOU for 3/2/09.” SomethingAwful 3 Mar. 2009. 5 Mar. 2009 < http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3089910&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=6 >.McBride, Lawrence B., and S. 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Abstract:

In August 2006 the LiveJournal (hereafter LJ) community sga_flashfic posted its bimonthly challenge: a “Mission Report” challenge. Challenge communities are fandom-specific sites where moderators pick a theme or prompt to which writers respond and then post their specific fan works. The terms of this challenge were to encourage participants to invent a new mission and create a piece of fan fiction in the form of a mission report from the point of view of the Stargate Atlantis team of explorers. As an alternative possibility, and this is where the trouble started, the challenge also allowed to “take another author’s story and write a report” of its mission. Moderator Cesperanza then explained, “if you choose to write a mission report of somebody else’s story, we’ll ask you to credit them, but we won’t require you to ask their permission” (sga_flashfic LJ, 21 Aug. 2006, emphasis added). Whereas most announcement posts would only gather a few comments, this reached more than a hundred responses within hours, mostly complaints. Even though the community administrators quickly backtracked and posted a revision of the challenge not 12 hours later, the fannish LiveJournal sphere debated the challenge for days, reaching far beyond the specific fandom of Stargate Atlantis to discuss the ethical questions surrounding fannish appropriation and remix. At the center of the debate were the last eight words: “we won’t require you to ask their permission.” By encouraging fans to effectively write fan fiction of fan fiction and by not requiring permission, the moderators had violated an unwritten norm within this fannish community. Like all fan communities, western media fans have developed internal rules covering everything from what to include in a story header to how long to include a spoiler warning following aired episodes (for a definition and overview of western media fandom, see Coppa). In this example, the mods violated the fannish prohibition against the borrowing of original characters, settings, plot points, or narrative structures from other fan writers without permission—even though as fan fiction, the source of the inspiration engages in such borrowing itself. These kinds of normative rules can be altered, of course, but any change requires long and involved discussions. In this essay, we look at various debates that showcase how this fan community—media fandom on LiveJournal—creates and enforces but also discusses and changes its normative behavior. Fan fiction authors’ desire to prevent their work from being remixed may seem hypocritical, but we argue that underlying these conversations are complex negotiations of online privacy and control, affective aesthetics, and the value of fan labor. This is not to say that all fan communities address issues of remixing in the same way media fandom at this point in time did nor to suggest that they should; rather, we want to highlight a specific community’s internal ethics, the fervor with which members defend their rules, and the complex arguments that evolve from all sides when rules are questioned. Moreover, we suggest that these conversations offer insight into the specific relation many fan writers have to their stories and how it may differ from a more universal authorial affect. In order to fully understand the underlying motivations and the community ethos that spawned the sga_flashfic debates, we first want to differentiate between forms of unauthorised (re)uses and the legal, moral, and artistic concerns they create. Only with a clear definition of copyright infringement and plagiarism, as well as a clear understanding of who is affected (and in what ways) in any of these cases, can we fully understand the social and moral intersection of fan remixing of fan fiction. Only when sidestepping the legal and economic concerns surrounding remix can we focus on the ethical intricacies between copyright holders and fan writers and, more importantly, within fan communities. Fan communities differ greatly over time, between fandoms, and even depending on their central social interfaces (such as con-based zines, email-based listservs, journal-based online communities, etc.), and as a result they also develop a diverse range of internal community rules (Busse and Hellekson, “Works”; Busker). Much strife is caused when different traditions and their associated mores intersect. We’d argue, however, that the issues in the case of the Stargate Atlantis Remix Challenge were less the confrontation of different communities and more the slowly changing attitudes within one. In fact, looking at media fandom today, we may already be seeing changed attitudes—even as the debates continue over remix permission and unauthorised use. Why Remixes Are Not Copyright Infringement In discussing the limits of unauthorised use, it is important to distinguish plagiarism and copyright violation from forms of remix. While we are more concerned with the ethical issues surrounding plagiarism, we want to briefly address copyright infringement, simply because it often gets mixed into the ethics of remixes. Copyright is strictly defined as a matter of law; in many of the online debates in media fandom, it is often further restricted to U.S. Law, because a large number of the source texts are owned by U.S. companies. According to the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8), Congress has the power to secure an “exclusive Right” “for limited Times.” Given that intellectual property rights have to be granted and are limited, legal scholars read this statute as a delicate balance between offering authors exclusive rights and allowing the public to flourish by building on these works. Over the years, however, intellectual property rights have been expanded and increased at the expense of the public commons (Lessig, Boyle). The main exception to this exclusive right is the concept of “fair use,” defined as use “for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching..., scholarship, or research” (§107). Case law circ*mscribes the limits of fair use, distinguishing works that are merely “derivative” from those that are “transformative” and thus add value (Chander and Sunder, Fiesler, Katyal, McCardle, Tushnet). The legal status of fan fiction remains undefined without a specific case that would test the fair use doctrine in regards to fan fiction, yet fair use and fan fiction advocates argue that fan fiction should be understood as eminently transformative and thus protected under fair use. The nonprofit fan advocacy group, the Organization for Transformative Works, in fact makes clear its position by including the legal term in their name, reflecting a changing understanding of both fans and scholars. Why Remixes Are Not Plagiarism Whereas copyright infringement is a legal concept that punishes violations between fan writers and commercial copyright holders, plagiarism instead is defined by the norms of the audience for which a piece is written: definitions of plagiarism thus differ from academic to journalist to literary contexts. Within fandom one of the most blatant (and most easily detectable) forms of plagiarism is when a fan copies another work wholesale and publishes it under their own name, either within the same fandom or by simply searching and replacing names to make it fit another fandom. Other times, fan writers may take selections of published pro or fan fiction and insert them into their works. Within fandom accusations of plagiarism are taken seriously, and fandom as a whole polices itself with regards to plagiarism: the LiveJournal community stop_plagiarism, for example, was created in 2005 specifically to report and pursue accusations of plagiarism within fandom. The community keeps a list of known plagiarisers that include the names of over 100 fan writers. Fan fiction plagiarism can only be determined on a case-by-case basis—and fans remain hypervigilant simply because they are all too often falsely accused as merely plagiarising when instead they are interpreting, translating, and transforming. There is another form of fannish offense that does not actually constitute plagiarism but is closely connected to it, namely the wholesale reposting of stories with attributions intact. This practice is frowned upon for two main reasons. Writers like to maintain at least some control over their works, often deriving from anxieties over being able to delete one’s digital footprint if desired or necessary. Archiving stories without authorial permission strips authors of this ability. More importantly, media fandom is a gift economy, in which labor is not reimbursed economically but rather rewarded with feedback (such as comments and kudos) and the growth of a writer’s reputation (Hellekson, Scott). Hosting a story in a place where readers cannot easily give thanks and feedback to the author, the rewards for the writer’s fan labor are effectively taken from her. Reposting thus removes the story from the fannish gift exchange—or, worse, inserts the archivist in lieu of the author as the recipient of thanks and comments. Unauthorised reposting is not plagiarism, as the author’s name remains attached, but it tends to go against fannish mores nonetheless as it deprives the writer of her “payment” of feedback and recognition. When Copyright Holders Object to Fan Fiction A small group of professional authors vocally proclaim fan fiction as unethical, illegal, or both. In her “Fan Fiction Rant” Robin Hobbs declares that “Fan fiction is to writing what a cake mix is to gourmet cooking” and then calls it outright theft: “Fan fiction is like any other form of identity theft. It injures the name of the party whose identity is stolen.” Anne Rice shares her feelings about fan fiction on her web site with a permanent message: “I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes.” Diana Gabaldon calls fan fiction immoral and describes, “it makes me want to barf whenever I’ve inadvertently encountered some of it involving my characters.” Moreover, in a move shared by other anti-fan fiction writers, she compares her characters to family members: “I wouldn’t like people writing sex fantasies for public consumption about me or members of my family—why would I be all right with them doing it to the intimate creations of my imagination and personality?” George R.R. Martin similarly evokes familial intimacy when he writes, “My characters are my children, I have been heard to say. I don’t want people making off with them.” What is interesting in these—and other authors’—articulations of why they disapprove of fan fiction of their works is that their strongest and ultimate argument is neither legal nor economic reasoning but an emotional plea: being a good fan means coloring within the lines laid out by the initial creator, putting one’s toys back exactly as one found them, and never ever getting creative or transformative with them. Many fan fiction writers respect these wishes and do not write in book fandoms where the authors have expressed their desires clearly. Sometimes entire archives respect an author’s desires: fanfiction.net, the largest repository of fic online, removed all stories based on Rice’s work and does not allow any new ones to be posted. However, fandom is a heterogeneous culture with no centralised authority, and it is not difficult to find fic based on Rice’s characters and settings if one knows where to look. Most of these debates are restricted to book fandoms, likely for two reasons: (1) film and TV fan fiction alters the medium, so that there is no possibility that the two works might be mistaken for one another; and (2) film and TV authorship tends to be collaborative and thus lowers the individual sense of ownership (Mann, Sellors). How Fannish Remixes Are like Fan Fiction Most fan fiction writers strongly dismiss accusations of plagiarism and theft, two accusations that all too easily are raised against fan fiction and yet, as we have shown, such accusations actually misdefine terms. Fans extensively debate the artistic values of fan fiction, often drawing from classical literary discussions and examples. Clearly echoing Wilde’s creed that “there is no such thing as a moral or immoral book,” Kalichan, for example, argues in one LJ conversation that “whenever I hear about writers asserting that other writing is immoral, I become violently ill. Aside from this, morality & legality are far from necessarily connected. Lots of things are immoral and legal, illegal and moral and so on, in every permutation imaginable, so let’s just not confuse the two, shall we” (Kalichan LJ, 3 May 2010). Aja Romano concludes an epic list of remixed works ranging from the Aeneid to The Wind Done Gone, from All’s Well That Ends Well to Wicked with a passionate appeal to authors objecting to fan fiction: the story is not defined by the barriers you place around it. The moment you gave it to us, those walls broke. You may hate the fact people are imagining more to your story than what you put there. But if I were you, I’d be grateful that I got the chance to create a story that has a culture around it, a story that people want to keep talking about, reworking, remixing, living in, fantasizing about, thinking about, writing about. (Bookshop LJ, 3 May 2010)Many fan writers view their own remixes as part of a larger cultural movement that appropriates found objects and culturally relevant materials to create new things, much like larger twentieth century movements that include Dada and Pop Art, as well as feminist and postcolonial challenges to the literary canon. Finally, fan fiction partakes in 21st century ideas of social anarchy to create a cultural creative commons of openly shared ideas. Fan Cupidsbow describes strong parallels and cross-connection between all sorts of different movements, from Warhol to opensource, DeviantArt to AMV, fanfiction to mashups, sampling to critique and review. All these things are about how people are interacting with technology every day, and not just digital technology, but pens and paper and clothes and food fusions and everything else. (Cupidsbow LJ, 20 May 2009) Legally, of course, these reuses of collectively shared materials are often treated quite differently, which is why fan fiction advocates often maintain that all remixes be treated equally—regardless of whether their source text is film, TV, literature, or fan fiction. The Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works, for example, does not distinguish in its Content and Abuse Policy section between commercial and fan works in regard to plagiarism and copyright. Returning to the initial case of the Stargate Atlantis Mission Report Challenge, we can thus see how the moderator clearly positions herself within a framework that considers all remixes equally remixable. Even after changing the guidelines to require permission for the remixing of existing fan stories, moderator Cesperanza notes that she “remain[s] philosophically committed to the idea that people have the right to make art based on other art provided that due credit is given the original artist” (sga_flashfic LJ, 21 Aug. 2006). Indeed, other fans agree with her position in the ensuing discussions, drawing attention to the hypocrisy of demanding different rules for what appears to be the exact same actions: “So explain to me how you can defend fanfiction as legitimate derivative work if it’s based on one type of source material (professional writing or TV shows), yet decry it as ‘stealing’ and plagiarism if it’s based on another type of source material (fanfiction)” (Marythefan LJ, 21 Aug. 2006). Many fans assert that all remixes should be tolerated by the creators of their respective source texts—be they pro or fan. Fans expect Rowling to be accepting of Harry Potter’s underage romance with a nice and insecure Severus Snape, and they expect Matthew Weiner to be accepting of stories that kill off Don Draper and have his (ex)wives join a commune together. So fans should equally accept fan fiction that presents the grand love of Rodney McKay and John Sheppard, the most popular non-canonical fan fiction pairing on Stargate Atlantis, to be transformed into an abusive and manipulative relationship or rewritten with one of them dying tragically. Lydiabell, for example, argues that “there’s [no]thing wrong with creating a piece of art that uses elements of another work to create something new, always assuming that proper credit is given to the original... even if your interpretation is at odds with everything the original artist wanted to convey” (Lydiabell LJ, 22 Aug. 2006). Transforming works can often move them into territory that is critical of the source text, mocks the source text, rearranges relationships, and alters characterisations. It is here that we reach the central issue of this article: many fans indeed do view intrafandom interactions as fundamentally different to their interactions with professional authors or commercial entertainment companies. While everyone agrees that there are no legal, economic, or even ultimately moral arguments to be made against remixing fan fiction (because any such argument would nullify the fan’s right to create their fan fiction in the first place), the discourses against open remixing tend to revolve around community norms, politeness, and respect. How Fannish Remixes Are Not like Fan Fiction At the heart of the debate lie issues of community norms: taking another fan’s stories as the basis for one’s own fiction is regarded as a violation of manners, at least the way certain sections of the community define them. This, in fact, is not unlike the way many fan academics engage with fandom research. While it may be perfectly legal to directly cite fans’ blog posts, and while it may even be in compliance with institutional ethical research requirements (such as Internal Review Boards at U.S. universities), the academic fan writing about her own community may indeed choose to take extra precautions to protect herself and that community. As Kristina Busse and Karen Hellekson have argued, fan studies often exists at the intersection of language and social studies, and thus written text may simultaneously be treated as artistic works and as utterances by human subjects (“Identity”). In this essay (and elsewhere), we thus limit direct linking into fannish spaces, instead giving site, date, and author, and we have consent from all fans we cite in this essay. The community of fans who write fic in a particular fandom is relatively small, and most of them are familiar with each other, or can trace a connection via one or two degrees of separation only. While writing fan fiction about Harry Potter may influence the way you and your particular circle of friends interpret the novels, it is unlikely to affect the overall reception of the work. During the remix debate, fan no_pseud articulates the differing power dynamic: When someone bases fanfic on another piece of fanfic, the balance of power in the relationship between the two things is completely different to the relationship between a piece of fanfic and the canon source. The two stories have exactly equal authority, exactly equal validity, exactly equal ‘reality’ in fandom. (nopseud LJ, 21 Aug. 2006) Within fandom, there are few stories that have the kind of reach that professional fiction does, and it is just as likely that a fan will come across an unauthorised remix of a piece of fan fiction as the original piece itself. In that way, the reception of fan fiction is more fragile, and fans are justifiably anxious about it. In a recent conversation about proper etiquette within Glee fandom, fan writer flaming_muse articulates her reasons for expecting different behavior from fandom writers who borrow ideas from each other: But there’s a huge difference between fanfic of media and fanfic of other fanfic authors. Part of it is a question of the relationship of the author to the source material … but part of it is just about not hurting or diminishing the other creative people around you. We aren’t hurting Glee by writing fic in their ‘verse; we are hurting other people if we write fanfic of fanfic. We’re taking away what’s special about their particular stories and all of the work they put into them. (Stoney321 LJ, 12 Feb. 2012)Flaming_muse brings together several concepts but underlying all is a sense of community. Thus she equates remixing within the community without permission as a violation of fannish etiquette. The sense of community also plays a role in another reason given by fans who prefer permission, which is the actual ease of getting it. Many fandoms are fairly small communities, which makes it more possible to ask for permission before doing a translation, adaptation, or other kind of rewrite of another person’s fic. Often a fan may have already given feedback to the story or shared some form of conversation with the writer, so that requesting permission seems fairly innocuous. Moreover, fandom is a community based on the economy of gifting and sharing (Hellekson), so that etiquette becomes that much more important. Unlike pro authors who are financially reimbursed for their works, feedback is effectively a fan writer’s only payment. Getting comments, kudos, or recommendations for their stories are ways in which readers reward and thank the writers for their work. Many fans feel that a gift economy functions only through the goodwill of all its participants, which remixing without permission violates. How Fan Writing May Differ From Pro Writing Fans have a different emotional investment in their creations, only partially connected to writing solely for love (as opposed to professional writers who may write for love but also write for their livelihood in the best-case scenarios). One fan, who writes both pro and fan fiction, describes her more distanced emotional involvement with her professional writing as follows, When I’m writing for money, I limit my emotional investment in the material I produce. Ultimately what I am producing does not belong to me. Someone else is buying it and I am serving their needs, not my own. (St_Crispins LJ, 27 Aug. 2006)The sense of writing for oneself as part of a community also comes through in a comment by pro and fan writer Matociquala, who describes the specificity and often quite limited audience of fan fiction as follows: Fanfiction is written in the expectation of being enjoyed in an open membership but tight-knit community, and the writer has an expectation of being included in the enjoyment and discussion. It is the difference, in other words, between throwing a fair on the high road, and a party in a back yard. Sure, you might be able to see what’s going on from the street, but you’re expected not to stare. (Matociquala LJ, 18 May 2006)What we find important here is the way both writers seem to suggest that fan fiction allows for a greater intimacy and immediacy on the whole. So while not all writers write to fulfill (their own or other’s) emotional and narrative desires, this seems to be more acceptable in fan fiction. Intimacy, i.e., the emotional and, often sexual, openness and vulnerability readers and writers exhibit in the stories and surrounding interaction, can thus constitute a central aspect for readers and writers alike. Again, none of these aspects are particular to fan fiction alone, but, unlike in much other writing, they are such a central component that the stories divorced from their context—textual, social, and emotional—may not be fully comprehensible. In a discussion several years ago, Ellen Fremedon coined the term Id Vortex, by which she refers to that very tailored and customised writing that caters to the writers’ and/or readers’ kinks, that creates stories that not only move us emotionally because we already care about the characters but also because it uses tropes, characterisations, and scenes that appeal very viscerally: In fandom, we’ve all got this agreement to just suspend shame. I mean, a lot of what we write is masturbation material, and we all know it, and so we can’t really pretend that we’re only trying to write for our readers’ most rarefied sensibilities, you know? We all know right where the Id Vortex is, and we have this agreement to approach it with caution, but without any shame at all. (Ellen Fremedon LJ, 2 Dec. 2004)Writing stories for a particular sexual kink may be the most obvious way fans tailor stories to their own (or others’) desires, but in general, fan stories often seem to be more immediate, more intimate, more revealing than most published writing. This attachment is only strengthened by fans’ immense emotional attachment to the characters, as they may spend years if not decades rewatching their show, discussing all its details, and reading and writing stories upon stories. From Community to Commons These norms and mores continue to evolve as fannish activity becomes more and more visible to the mainstream, and new generations of fans enter fandom within a culture where media is increasingly spreadable across social networks and all fannish activity is collectively described and recognised as “fandom” (Jenkins, Ford, and Green). The default mode of the mainstream often treats “found” material as disseminable, and interfaces encourage such engagement by inviting users to “share” on their collection of social networks. As a result, many new fans see remixing as not only part of their fannish right, but engage in their activity on platforms that make sharing with or without attribution both increasingly easy and normative. Tumblr is the most recent and obvious example of a platform in which reblogging other users’ posts, with or without commentary, is the normative mode. Instead of (or in addition to) uploading one’s story to an archive, a fan writer might post it on Tumblr and consider reblogs as another form of feedback. In fact, our case study and its associated differentiation of legal, moral, and artistic justifications for and against remixing fan works, may indeed be an historical artifact in its own right: media fandom as a small and well-defined community of fans with a common interest and a shared history is the exception rather than the norm in today’s fan culture. When access to stories and other fans required personal initiation, it was easy to teach and enforce a community ethos. Now, however, fan fiction tops Google searches for strings that include both Harry and Draco or Spock and Uhura, and fan art is readily reblogged by sites for shows ranging from MTV’s Teen Wolf to NBC’s Hannibal. 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