#intent of the original =/= the intent of the proliferation or its appeal!!!!

[queersatanic]

The following is from this 2001 paper by Jeffrey Kaplan titled, The post-war paths of occult national socialism: From Rockwell and Madole to Manson.

In the paper and presumably original correspondence, LaVey's use of slurs are unredacted, but for Tumblr, you should be able to figure the censored words out (citations at bottom)

Begin excerpt:

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But [James] Madole’s occultism was of another level altogether. Here, his florid imagination both reflects the occultist currents of the cultic milieu of his day and serves as a kind of archetype of imagined history in which the white race is credited with every achievement of human civilization. Best stated in his ongoing ‘New Atlantis’ series in the National Renaissance Bulletin of the 1970s, Madole outlines his conception of the past glories of the race and he chiliastic world to come. In his own words, Madole states that the series’ purpose is to ‘impart to ARYAN MAN both his immense racial heritage stretching back over ONE MILLION YEARS into prehistoric times and his forthcoming Divine Mission to create a higher type of humanity beside which mankind of the 20th century will appear as mental and physical anachronisms ’.[31] Built of an idiosyncratic reading of history and such spiritualist sources as Madame Blavatsky and the theosophists, Madole writes:

The subhuman elements in our society, dominated by the accursed Jew, can only intimidate and govern Aryan Man while he remains in abject ignorance of his glorious racial heritage derived from the hoary archives of Lost Atlantis, Tibet and Mother India. In short, as long as Aryan man remains Christian he will inevitably remain a slave to the Jew who imposed his Semitic heresy upon the Aryan mind![32]

This formulation was not new, but what was more important was that, unlike other antisemites of his generation, James Madole was not taken by surprise by the occult explosion of the late 1960s. Rather, he was a man ahead of his time for whom the new proliferation of religious experimentation was tailor-made. Pushing ever further into these explorations, Madole was quickly aware of the formation of Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan (COS), and maintained an active and friendly correspondence with LaVey himself. Moreover, such explicitly racialist satanic organizations as the Detroit-based Order of the Black Ram, formed by the Michigan state organizer of the NRP, Seth Klippoth, may be traced to Madole ’s early influence; and it maintained close contact with him and his NRP throughout the 1970s.[33] Interestingly, the Order of the Black Ram did not choose to make its connections to Madole or its racialist origins and intent part of its own official history, emphasizing instead only its connection to the Church of Satan. 34 The Church of Satan’s internal correspondence, however, is much more illuminating on the matter. This material well illustrates both the intertwining of occult and racialist belief systems and the transnational appeal of racialism’s occult path. The material is reproduced in Michael Aquino ’s unpublished history of the Church of Satan, in which he got his start in the world of satanism and where, before his break with Anton LaVey, he was a member of the COS’s governing Council of Nine. LaVey’s attitude towards Madole is instructive:

The N.R.P. headed by Madole, is composed largely of acned, bucolic types transplanted to New York. They spend their time getting jeered at in street demonstrations. Yes, the Nazis did it too, but they had a fresh approach. Nowadays swastikas sell books and movies . . .I know Madole personally, and have been to N.R.P. headquarters. Even have a card. They would do anything for us. So would [the] Klan for that matter. I do not endorse either, but acknowledge camaraderie from any source. Madole is actually a nice chap who is doing his thing. No need to fret over Hell’s Angel’s types. They will come in handy one day, whether they be American Nazi Party or Jewish Defense League.[35]

LaVey’s genial tolerance of Madole and the NRP was typical enough of the COS and of the wider cultic milieu, but at the same time internal efforts were begun both to co-opt the NRP and to distance the Church from overt associations with national socialism. The latter undertaking, in Aquino’s account, involved both LaVey and Aquino. The immediate source of their concern was the activities of Seth Klippoth in Detroit. LaVey had been apprised of the news that, soon after his resignation from the COS, Klippoth and other NRP activists brought their newly formed Order of the Black Ram to an Odinist gathering in Toronto that included representatives of Canada’s Western Guard and the National Socialist White People’s Party (Matt Koehl’s renamed American Nazi Party). **Moreover, Madole made subsequent efforts through Klippoth and others to recruit COS members into their organizations.[36] The result was an intensive round of internal correspondence that would define the Church of Satan’s, as well as the later Temple of Set’s, official position on Nazism. It is important to note that neither Aquino nor LaVey saw German National Socialism and the figure of Adolf Hitler in a negative light. To Aquino, Mein Kampf, if read with the mental resolve to eliminate its references to antisemitism as a mere personality quirk of the Führer, is an unrivalled political textbook whose efficacy meets the primary satanic criteria for excellence: it and the governmental doctrines that were propounded under its blueprint work, for they ‘are the true essence of political power’.[37] It is with antisemitism, however, that the COS parts company with Nazism:

Now you may understand why all avowed neo-Nazi groups are pariahs in the eyes of the Church of Satan. First, they know nothing of the true keys of power employed by Hitler. Instead, they glorify the anti-Semitism and the more ostentatious attributes of Nazi Germany which have been glamorized by Hollywood. Secondly, they openly champion Nazi Germany by name, setting themselves up publicly against the Auschwitz taboo. Thirdly, they propose 1930s solutions to 1970s problems.[38]

Aquino concludes with the accurate observation that these ‘Hollywood Nazis’ are regarded by most Americans as ‘refugees from a loony bin ’, and that, if their longed-for right-wing backlash did occur in the United States, they would be the first to be eliminated since an American Führer would appear in a business suit rather than a swastika armband, and would be touting the values of America in 1776 rather than Germany in the 1930s.[39] LaVey himself endorses these sentiments, but reveals a more Machiavellian turn of mind. Based on his own experience with the NRP and its leader, LaVey sets out the foundation for much of the later interaction between the satanic and the national socialist worlds that would be so prominent a feature of the 1990s movement:

The N.R.P. is enamored with the Church of Satan. Their racist ideals are also worn on their sleeves and, I believe, are as removable as their armbands . . . symbolism and symbolism alone supplied their identity. That is how it is with most outlaw groups. There are only two ingredients necessary for their existence: a symbol and a scapegoat. The N.R.P. already has the swastika, but obviously is drawn to our sigil. They have the ‘Jews and N----rs’, but if properly propagandized could transfer their wrath to our enemies. How? Through just such extensions of propaganda as Occult Reich which have emerged from Satanic Rituals . . . [Their belief patterns are simple and we] are dealing with intelligence levels on which ideals and imagery are easily interchangeable . . . All my life I’ve been the weakling, [they think,] but with my swastika I am strong. My Satanic amulet gives me power. I’m not a misfit anymore, with pimples and a heart murmur and flat feet. What does it matter if I can’t play baseball or spell too good? So what if I can’t get a girl—I got my armband. . .  Maybe we can get the C/S to help us defeat the k-kes and n----rs so America can be pure again . . .[40]

It is this desperate search for allies and acceptance in the face of nearly universal hostility and scorn that makes the national socialist enthusiasts under Madole such ideal candidates for recruitment into the satanist churches. In the event, LaVey proved prophetic, for this would be a major pattern in the milieu of the transnational radical right of the 1990s.

James Hartung Madole died in 1978. His mother Grace tried to keep the already nearly defunct National Renaissance Party alive for the last two years of her life, to little effect. In an irony that perfectly symbolized Madole’s life’s work, the last leader of the NRP died in a common street mugging and the organization ’s records were scattered to the winds over the blood-spattered highway.[41]

Yet it was Madole who did much to establish trans-Atlantic contacts, open new paths to national socialist beliefs, and keep the flame of national socialism alive in the bitterly hostile post-war years. His organizational model, not to mention the use of uniformed activists, predated Rockwell’s own American Nazi Party, and it is likely that much of Rockwell ’s early organizational structure was borrowed in toto from the NRP, through the defection of Matt Koehl among others from the NRP to the American Nazi Party.

It is true that national socialist occultism does not appeal to all national socialists, and even today is a minority trend in the world movement. But in the 1990s it is a vital and much travelled path, whereas, in the 1950s and early1960s, it was virtually unheard of —especially in the United States. Madole was simply decades ahead of his time, and his current obscurity is very much a product of this isolation.

[31] Madole, ‘The New Atlantis’, part 8, National Renaissance Bulletin, July–August 1975, 5.

[32] Ibid., part 9, National Renaissance Bulletin, March–April 1976, 4.

[33] ‘James Hartung Madole’, 25–6. The events are described by Madole himself in the National Renaissance Bulletin, March and April 1974. A sample of Madole ’s early recruiting pitch to Church of Satan adherents is preserved in a letter to COS member Stuart Levine dated 17 September 1974: ‘. . . I am trying to find a small group of people [and] utilize their services inbreaking some of our NRP officers and men into the more advanced concepts of occult philosophy’ (Aquino, 272). It is rather par for the course among American antisemitic leaders that at no time does Madole remark on the Jewish-sounding name of his correspondent, nor does his antisemitism inhibit him from taking Levine into his confidence.

[34] ‘A brief history of satanism in Detroit’, in An Introduction to the Order of the Black Ram (Warren, MI: Order of the Black Ram n.d.), 1–2

[35] Letter from Anton LaVey to Michael Aquino, 24 June 1974, in Aquino, 270.

[36] Aquino, 269–70. On the Western Guard and other far-right movements in Canada, see Stanley R. Barrett, Is God a Racist? (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1987).

[37] Aquino, 271.

[38] Ibid.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Letter from LaVey to Aquino, 5 July 1974, in Aquino, 271–2.

[41] ‘James Hartung Madole’, 26.

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End of excerpt and citations.

Now, a person looking to defend the Church of Satan and LaVey here would be quick to point out all of those included caveats: it's less that LaVey was himself a bigot than that he just thought he could exploit bigots for his own purposes. A really motivated person might even claim that if the ultimate source for the correspondence is Michael Aquino, it should be disregarded entirely.

However, the point is that LaVey and the Church of Satan were incredibly friendly to literal neo-Nazis and white nationalists for decades, worked with them, complimented them, and in the case of Boyd Rice, allowed him to have enormous prominence within the organization as someone personally close to LaVey. None of this relies on trusting Aquino; a lot of it is just the things LaVey and people like Peter Gilmore wrote and disseminated either directly or as official stances of the Church of Satan.

“Well, uh, now that you mention it, I did not know about Anton LaVey’s longstanding friendship with James Madole, leader of the neo-Nazi National Renaissance Party. And I suppose you have a point when you say LaVeyan satanism is, in your words, ‘a clumsy assemblage of plagiarized Social Darwinist cant and badly misunderstood paraphrases of Nietzsche,’ but, little girl, I don’t see why you have to call me a ‘fake-ass sophomore year Thelemite who uses tarot cards from Barnes and Noble.’”

[sarcastic-clapping]

for your consideration:

Help me fill this

[raptured-night]

Hullo! I'm sure you've seen the recent news about Nagini by now. I'd be curious to get your thoughts?

Hi there, my friend!

First, let me start by apologizing for being slow to respond to this ask. When the news of Nagini first broke, I made a conscious decision not to comment and assert “my opinion” right away. Fandom dinosaur that I am, I’ve been around long enough to recognize that a common response when issues of racism or offensive representation are brought up is that too many of us white fans presume we can jump in to either explain (i.e. whitesplain) why “we” don’t see a problem or we try to go on the defensive in some fashion or form and accuse the people who are trying to draw attention to the issue of making fandom more “divisive” by being too “sensitive” or “just looking for something to criticize/be angry about.” As a rule, and because I do believe that a conscious effort to promote intersectionality belongs in all our social interactions, including but not limited to social media, I do make a point to remain silent and to pay attention to what is being said before I begin to voice any opinions of my own. Indeed, I feel that as a white woman in fandom it is important that I try to remain conscious of my privilege and the way that “my opinions” can often be given more priority and weight within fandom spaces than those of the people whose voices should be at the center of any conversations that are taking place (in this case, Asian fans of HP, specifically South Asian fans and East Asian fans). White (cis-het, etc.) fans have a very terrible habit of treating issues of racism and representation as if they were just another bit of discourse, no different than debating the relative merits of one ship or character over another, and so we weigh in as if we’re just as entitled to decide what is or is not racist, or what is or is not offensive representation as are the people whose race, culture, sexual orientation, etc. are being represented. 

However unintentional, I want to be careful that the simple act of asserting my opinion doesn’t become a tool of oppression or a measure of silencing or speaking over the voices of the people we should be listening to, first and foremost. Additionally, I often find that one’s first response to learning that something within a fandom they enjoy is being received negatively by a marginalized group and that it is offensive or harmful is to attempt to provide some kind of defense for why that isn’t the case, largely so we feel we will be able to continue to enjoy fandom content without feeling guilty or “problematic” for doing so. There is this fallacy of thought that you cannot be critical of the content you consume and also still enjoy other aspects of it that pervade within a lot of fandom spaces and it often goes hand-in-hand with the very worst examples of people using their privilege to silence or speak-over the people who should be at the center of any conversations being had (not to mention the way it contributes to the proliferation of white-feminist arguments and appeals to anti-intellectual rhetoric that would discourage any critical analysis of the content we consume by framing it as an act of hostility, censorship, or “reverse-oppression/divisiveness”). That being said, having taken my time to consider how best to respond to your ask, I do believe I’m better equipped to give what I hope will be an informed and thoughtful response to your question @idealistic-realism00 .

To begin with, I would like to highlight a very important point that @fandomshatepeopleofcolor  recently made and one that I have been seeing with some frequency as well. That is, the issue of people conflating criticism of Nagini that is independent of her in-universe portrayal in the Fantastic Beasts franchise with an in-universe critique. Often, a person may be arguing one issue only to have their argument derailed by in-universe focused defenses of Nagini that hold no real bearing on the larger implications out-of-universe (i.e. the real-world connotations) of Rowling’s or the movie’s choices in terms of casting or representation present us with. Ultimately, the problem in this approach should be self-evident, as it does become easier (even when that isn’t someone’s deliberate intention) to invalidate, dismiss, or ignore the valid criticisms that are being discussed and, I do believe, should be discussed within the Harry Potter fandom. Ultimately, if one person is focused on criticising the decision from a larger, non-fictional context and the other person is debating the merits or demerits for any of the decisions or backstory we do have in-universe then you have two people having two very different conversations. 

As such, I would like to begin by breaking up the critique of Nagini into two parts. I’ll begin first by focusing on the out-of-universe issues that are being discussed and why I do agree that they are not only valid but important for us (especially those of us who are not Asian and who do not have any of the learned or firsthand experience with the racism or racial microaggressions that Asian people face daily) to not only examine and reflect on but to also acknowledge for their real-world connotations without allowing our (i.e. white/non-Asian HP fans) own biases or privileges to convince us that we get to be/should be the deciding vote on what is or is not racist, offensive, or harmful to other people in our fandom. Once I have accomplished that, only then will I attempt to explore and highlight some of the core issues with Nagini’s in-universe portrayal (based on what information we have so far) that have been raised by those whose voices should be most central to this discussion and criticized as racially offensive, potentially sexist, and/or characteristic of poor representation. 

So, let me begin by addressing one of the leading arguments that I have seen against any criticism of Nagini and its fallacy. The insistence that we do not already have enough existing information to form an impression about what kind of representation Nagini might bring (i.e. good or bad,  harmless or harmful, inoffensive or offensive) or to acknowledge racially offensive connotations in her characterization. I support the arguments that vehemently disagree with this idea, especially as this response so insightfully observes, this notion contradicts the very purpose of releasing movie trailers, which is to formulate an opinion based on what content and what information we do have about whether we like the content based on what we have seen or if we would like to see more of it. Beyond that, as I have already said, out-of-universe critiques do not look to the in-universe content in order to arrive at a determination. It is the real-world connotations that we will be looking at and we already have a sufficient body of evidence to make a valid case for Nagini’s concept being a poor example of representation with a lot of racist overtones. 

Case-in-point, we know from what information Rowling has provided us with that she claims to have had this twist for Nagini in mind for twenty years and that she chose the name Nagini because of the connection to the Naga mythology, which she solely credits as having originated in Indonesia when, as has been pointed out to me, the Naga mythology originated in India and then spread throughout South Asia where it evolved with the different cultures. Now, a second argument I have seen circulating is that any attempt to critique Rowling’s writing or the franchise she has built constitutes as an unwarranted or vicious attack against her or should be relegated to the same corners of fandom hate as the antis who send people death threats. I would counter that this is nothing more than a further effort to silence inconvenient (and necessary) criticism and conversations and impose on fandom a laissez-faire attitude that can only further advantage the privileged members of fandom (i.e. white/non-Asian) over those who should be central to this issue. Moreover, the defense or “plea of ignorance” appeal that Rowling merely didn’t know what she was doing, didn’t mean to cause harm, or should be given yet another chance to grow is yet another argument in favor of privilege (not unlike the Affluenza Teen we are, quite literally, arguing that because Rowling is white and privileged we should excuse her inability to accurately and inoffensively represent other races and their cultures) and prioritizes what we believe Rowling’s “intentions” were over the impact that poor and/or racist representation and appropriation can have on the people who are being offensively reflected in her body of work. 

As this response by @diaryofanangryasianguy illustrates, it only makes us (re: white/non-Asian) complicit in supporting racist, colonial mindsets that permit a wealthy, white author to not only appropriate from the culture of another race and misrepresent them and/or their origins but to also profit from that misrepresentation. Furthermore, the argument can be made that this latest instance with Nagini only supports a pattern on Rowling’s part, one which this poster illustrates, of incorporating other races or cultures into her series and either misrepresenting them (e.g. her offensive use of Native American skinwalkers, spirit animals, and the very fact she portrayed Native American magic-practitioners as being less skilled or educated than their European counterparts until someone from Europe educated them on wands and their use, which harkens to Imperialist and colonialist thinking) or improperly crediting them. Indeed, Rowling has even insisted in interviews that when she uses mythological creatures in her world, she does attempt to conduct thorough research. Notably, when crafting her in-universe mythology for the “obscure” hippogriff, Rowling can be quoted as saying:

“But you’re right, yes, children, they know, obviously, they know that I didn’t invent unicorns, but I’ve had to explain frequently that I didn’t actually invent hippogriffs. Although a hippogriff is quite obscure, I went looking, because when I do use a creature that I know is a mythological entity, I like to find out as much as I can about it. I might not use it, but to make it as consistent as I feel is good for my plot. There’s very little on hippogriffs. I could read…”

This brings me back to the main issue, which multiple people have addressed on this site and elsewhere (source, source, source, source, source), which is the glaring fact that the origins of the Naga mythology are from India although, again, they did proceed to spread through South Asia and assume unique mythological characteristics among the different South Asian cultures, including Indonesia. Which means that Rowling is not only incorporating South-Asian mythology into her opus but treating South-Asian people as if they and their culture are interchangeable by crediting only Indonesia for being the origin of the Naga mythology when, as has been pointed out, its origins can be traced to India from which is spread and took on new form as it became a part of South-Asian mythology overall. Now, if Rowling has had this twist in mind for over twenty years, as she claims, and we know that she allegedly likes to “…find out as much as [she] can about [mythology]” before she uses it then we must acknowledge that the issue and criticism is certainly valid and that is just based on what information we already have. So, I reiterate what others have said when I say that Asian people and their culture are not interchangeable and should not be treated as if they were. If Rowling can devote the time, effort, and energy into thoroughly researching mythology as obscure as the hippogriff (which has Greco-Roman origins) for her series then there is no excuse for her failure here to accurately represent the Naga mythology and to clearly communicate that she is not erasing or failing to acknowledge that while the origins of the Naga mythology may have begun in India and spread through South Asia, she is choosing to focus on Indonesia’s unique Naga mythology specifically rather than just seeming to credit their culture alone as the point of origin for the Naga myths. 

Again, just based on that information alone, we can make a valid argument that there are issues of racism and offensive representation for Nagini that have larger real-world connotations. Not all representation is good representation (e.g. see the “token” character trope where any character of a marginalized group is inserted into a primarily all-white cast for the diversity points with no interest or intention of developing the character in any complex or meaningful way), which is often taken to mean that the only kind of representation for Black characters or characters of color must be heroic. This, also, is a fallacy and it misses the point of what representation is and why it matters. Good representation is when a character is portrayed in a way that does not adhere to existing and harmful stereotypes, racist tropes, or otherwise. Importantly, a character can even be a villain and still be an example of good representation (e.g. Black Panther’s Killmonger) so long as they are written in a manner that accurately represents their race and culture and does not pander to stereotypes or racist tropes. Rowling, however, has demonstrated her lack of knowledge (and if we are to accept that she does do thorough research based on her own words, then we must even ask if she has not demonstrated a lack of interest when researching the mythology of a culture that is not Western and Euro-centric) when it comes using South Asian mythology in a way that does not give the impression she is overlooking, misattributing the origins of, or erasing the cultural contributions of one South Asian people (i.e. Indian) while claiming to have drawn inspiration from another (i.e. Indonesian). Especially because, in-so-doing, she does become guilty of cultural erasure. 

The reality is that Rowling is a white author who, courtesy of her wealth, also has access to a greater number of resources available to her than the average fan-fiction writers, many of whom do often seek out Brit-pickers and sensitivity-readers to beta-read their fan fiction when they make no profit off of their efforts outside of reader-feedback. According to Rowling, she will take the time to thoroughly research obscure mythology, like that on the hippogriff, and she also claims to have written her series with the deliberate intention of interweaving an allegory of anti-prejudice, anti-racism, and anti-discrimination into her books (something I’ve also been critical of in discussions for what I believe is a failure of her narrative to convincingly acknowledge that prejudice and racism are systemic issues and not just a matter of extremes), yet when it comes to taking the time and making the effort to provide her readers with correct and accurate portrayals of a mythology from a culture that is not her own (i.e. Western and Euro-centric), we continue to see examples of poor, inaccurate, offensive, or appropriative representation. As others have pointed out, when issues of representation are brought to her by her fans (no matter how politely or informatively they are worded, as yet another defense for Rowling’s liberal use of the block feature and defensiveness towards any kind of criticism is that she is protecting herself from angry fans who threaten her which, while certainly understandable, should still not be an excuse to ignore all critical feedback or refuse to, as some fans insist we allow her to do, take the time to reassess her choices and grow) Rowling does not acknowledge any validity in those complaints, she does not apologize if communities feel her portrayal of them and their culture is harmful, offensive, or appropriative. What she does do is double-down on the “rightness” of her stance, reference her activism as if it was a shield/get out of jail free card that balances everything out and excuses her from any further criticism, and defends herself against her fans from a position of greater (white) privilege to the effect that often those (marginalized) fans who try to bring their issues to her attention are then subjected to harassment and threats themselves (sometimes even pushed out of their own fandom).  

I do not believe there is anything wrong or contradictory in the idea that fans of the Harry Potter franchise can both enjoy her world and be critical of it. More to the point, I do not believe there is anything wrong or contradictory in the idea that fans of the Harry Potter franchise can both enjoy her world and be critical of Rowling’s creative choices, her response to instances of valid criticism especially as they concern the issue of representation or racism, or even how those responses might influence one’s perception of her politics and/or ideology as a feminist or social advocate (i.e. it’s not “wrong” or an example of being a “hater” to have these conversations and ask ourselves if Rowling isn’t an example of white feminism, or if she isn’t failing to address her own privilege, or if she isn’t a teaching-lesson for white writers, a category of which I count myself among, and what not to do). In fact, I will always support the willingness to critically approach the content that we consume and I firmly believe that it is important if we are to call ourselves advocates or allies to always be mindful and aware of our own privileges and how they may influence our perspectives as content-consumers (speaking as an intersectional social justice advocate, an academician whose field depends heavily on critical thinking and analysis, and someone who could be said to be “anti” anti-intellectualism, exegesis is vital to human understanding and empathy). 

Which brings me to yet another glaring out-of-universe issue of representation; one that is also very specific to Nagini’s portrayal in the film. The character of Nagini, which was based on South Asian mythology (although Rowling claims to have based her canon on the Indonesian Naga mythology specifically), will be played by Claudia Kim, who is a South Korean actress. So, now we have an issue of South Asian mythology being conflated with East Asian mythology in the film (something which, I want to be clear, should not be seen as a criticism of Claudia Kim or an attack on her, as she is not the issue, the people who made the decision to cast her over an Indian actress are). Once again, Asian people and their culture are not interchangeable and should not be treated as such, and when you do that it is an example of racism and racial microaggression (it is NEVER good representation). This is why I do agree with the people who are pointing out that the casting-choice could be criticized for its erasure and potential colorism, especially as Korea has its own unique snake mythology. For this reason, I do believe that fans (especially those whom Nagini is now supposed to “represent”) do have a perfectly valid reason to view the film with a critical eye and that we should be asking why they opted not to cast an actress in the role of Nagini who is Indonesian if Rowling is going to be using Indonesian Naga mythology. Again, just based on this information alone, we can look at the latest Fantastic Beasts film and acknowledge that the criticism coming from some segments of the Harry Potter fandom is more than valid and there are issues of representation present.

To summarize, we can now make a case for offensive representation and racism on two points, just based off what we already know from interviews and the trailer. First, there is the issue of the way that Rowling specifically seems to credit the Naga mythology as having originated from Indonesia alone when that is not entirely accurate (i.e. it came from India and spread to different cultures in South Asia), which is a form of erasure by failing to clarify that she is using Indonesia Naga mythology for Nagini but that the Naga mythology is not just from Indonesia. This, despite the fact that Rowling claims to have been considering this twist for Nagini for twenty-years (in fact she claims it was the inspiration for naming the character Nagini ) and that she typically does a lot of research before incorporating mythology into her canon. Secondly, there is the issue of the film casting a South-Korean actress to play a character that has its mythological origins in South-Asian culture when Claudia Kim is from East-Asia, which opens the film up to further criticism for its erasure and colorism. 

For these reasons (among the many obvious), I do not believe it is the place of any white/non-Asian fan of the Harry Potter series to attempt to assert that there is nothing racist, offensive, appropriative, or harmful in the way of representation in Nagini’s characterization as it is. While I do not doubt that opinions vary even within the different Asian communities where Nagini is concerned (a fact that I do acknowledge as I have been quietly following the discourse to the best of my abilities for as broad of an understanding as I can have) that is very much a intra-community conversation that I, as a white fan, have no place interjecting myself into. Rather, I will continue to argue that it is not my place or the place of any other white/non-Asian fan of the series to presume that I/we get to decide or cast the final vote on whether or not Nagini’s representation is racist, offensive, appropriative, bad representation or speak over Asian fans who do feel that it is because “my Asian friend/this Asian person in fandom says it’s not an issue so that makes it acceptable for me to tell every Asian person criticizing this choice that they and their feelings are wrong.”

Moving on, now I will begin to examine some of the in-universe criticism of Nagini’s characterization just based on what information we do currently have. I would like to begin with one of the most common complaints, which is that Voldemort is a “Nazi” and connecting an Asian woman to a Nazi is racist in-and-of-itself. However, I think a clarification first needs to be made whenever these arguments surface (and in general when it comes to our discourse around fictional Death Eaters and Voldemort’s ideology or character) so that we can avoid falling into Godwin’s Law rhetoric, which does effectively trivialize the trauma and experiences of victims of Nazi ideology and white supremacy by reducing it down to an inadequate fictional comparison. That should not be our intention, and we should take care to distinguish between the argument that Rowling wrote Voldemort and his Death Eaters with certain parallels in mind to Nazis and white supremacists (something which can also be open to criticism as to how effectively Rowling managed to convey those parallels) and “Voldemort was a Nazi!” No, he was not, he is a fictional character and we should not be responding as if a fictional character is as terrible or even comparable to actual Nazis and the real atrocities and harm they have committed (and continue to commit or perpetuate) to Jewish people, Romani people, Black people, peoples of color, and lgbtq+ people. 

That being said, we can argue that Rowling has said she has written parallels between Voldemort and his Death Eaters to Nazis and white supremacists in her construction of blood prejudice (I tend to be critical of this for the fact that she has constructed the DE to represent something of an all-purpose social commentary on any/all form(s) of prejudice, which effectively strips the different forms that prejudice can take within different communities of their nuance and systemic structures while also establishing a type of prejudice that we mostly see represented by having middle-class white characters like Lily Evans-Potter as the target or, at best, racially ambiguous but still middle-class characters like Hermione Granger; this while she also handwaves real-world examples of racism and prejudice any of her existing Black, POC, or lgbtqa+ characters could face by declaring those are solely Muggle failings, which contradicts her own message given that suggests Muggle-born children simply come into that world without those prejudices or lose them via assimilation and the necessary casting off of Muggle identity-politics and social precepts, negative or positive). As Rowling does allege that a parallel was her intention, then we do need to take such a parallel into consideration and the implications of that pre-established parallel to this new revelation about Nagini. As has already been observed, the fetishization of Asian women by white supremacist men is very much an issue. When Asian women are fetishized by white supremacist men for stereotypes of submissiveness or hypersexuality and Rowling presents us with an Asian woman (one who, I reiterate, is going to be portrayed by an East Asian actress instead of a South Asian actress in the film) who has become the inhuman pet to a character she wrote to parallel certain Nazi and white supremacist ideology it is valid for fans to respond to that critically and to be offended or concerned. 

Once again, I would like to address a further fallacy in the argument that we should or must wait for the film before we attempt any criticism because we lack sufficient information. The fact is, while we may currently be unaware of the full details of Nagini’s experience in Fantastic Beasts, we already have a large body of existing information about what happens to Nagini after those films in the Harry Potter series. We know what happens to her, we know how she dies, and we already have enough information to reflect critically on how these new details about her being an Asian woman alter our perception of her relationship to Voldemort and within the Harry Potter series. For instance, Voldemort draws strength from Nagini by “milking her” venom (i.e. a lot of jokes are circulating and there are assumptions that she was literally milked for actual milk but, speaking as a former snake-owner and snake-lover, when someone says they’re going to milk a snake that means it is venomous and that they’re milking their fangs for their venom), he implants a portion of his soul into her and makes her into his vessel as well as his pet, and whether or not he has control/command over her or she aligns herself with him we still have one of two issues to consider: Voldemort is either forcing her submission or Nagini is offering it willingly, which could play into stereotypes of the fetishized, submissive Asian woman. Also, for the sake of preempting any argument that Voldemort may not have known what Nagini was, let us not forget that he was a Parseltongue and was canonically shown to be able to converse with her.  

There is a lot of discourse circulating that this could be interesting or that Nagini could still be made into a sympathetic villain in the movie. The problem that arises with these arguments is the fact that Fantastic Beasts is a prequel to an existing series. One which Nagini as a character was, narratively speaking, already previously established as unsympathetic and a monster (one who we now can argue became a cannibal given she liked Voldemort to feed her people, a detail that could also be scrutinized for the way it might harken to Imperialist stereotypes, many of which still proliferate, about Asian medicinal practices and cuisine that were often cited as supporting cannibalism or, even today, joked about in terms of the offensive “Asian people eat weird things like cats, har har” stereotype). As a result, Rowling’s narrative in her Harry Potter series was structured to support a specific and intentional perception of Nagini, which Fantastic Beasts can either contradict, attempt to subvert, or support. The problem is that Rowling’s own information already suggests that she will be contradicting her own pre-established canon. Especially as she has already demonstrated a contradiction in attempting to make the South Asian Naga mythology fit into the Western fantasy motif that the Maledictus curse presents us with. As she describes the Maledictus curse in her own words, “The Maledictus carries a blood curse from birth, which is passed down from mother to daughter.” Indeed, the origin of the Latin prefix of Mal can be translated to mean “bad,” “wrongful” or “ill” while the Latin Dictus means “spoken,” so that, when combined, you can have a meaning roughly along the lines of “spoken ill of,” or “cursed.”

This differs drastically from the different Naga mythologies of South-Asian culture, in that the Naga (males) or Nagin/Nagini (females) were typically described as divine or semi-divine deities who typically dwelled in Patala and could assume a human-form, a serpent form, or a half-human and half-serpent form respectively (please note that while I do make a point to study mythology from different cultures in order to better recognize the significance of their iconography and symbolism in any of my literary analyses, I do acknowledge that there may be people on this site who are better informed than me on Naga mythology because it is specific to their culture and I would invite anyone who would like to provide additional context or corrections who may know more to do so if they feel the need or desire). As such, the Naga were not depicted as tragically cursed women or, in Nagini’s case, women with the potential to become venomous, cannibalistic, monsters as the Maledictus curse would suggest. Ultimately, Rowling’s claim that she drew her inspiration from the Naga in defense of Nagini implies that she either does not understand and did not bother to research Naga mythology thoroughly, was merely making the suggestion to defend Nagini in context of the criticism she received, or has intentionally taken South-Asian mythology and portrayed it in a way where it is a “blood curse” versus a source of divinity and Naga are relegated to the role of tragic-figures and/or monsters rather than deities. Indeed, one could argue that if Rowling wanted to introduce Naga mythology into her series then she could have easily done so, absent of Nagini, or she could have introduced the concept of the Maledictus curse through other characters aside from Nagini and written her as a proper and accurate representation of the Indonesian Naga mythos in such a way where she could be both a villain and escape from being either a stereotype or a source of appropriation. 

Moreover, I believe that this response highlights a very good point about the sexism inherent in Rowling’s use of the fantasy motif of a blood curse specific to women and Rowling’s failure to properly subvert it as a result of her established canon for Nagini in the Harry Potter series and I would go even further to observe that it can not only be read as potentially sexist but also racist due to the additional context of Nagini being an Asian woman. Overall, we can read her as a woman with “cursed blood” that will make her inhuman (i.e. gradually dehumanize her) and once she has become inhuman she will eventually be distinguished throughout the Harry Potter series as the subservient and dangerous pet that Voldemort uses as a vessel for his soul and to fulfill his agenda (among which blood purity is a motive, even if it is not the sole motive for his actions in the series). By the end of the series, Nagini dies by beheading as an evil and inhuman creature whose death we cheer and whose slayer we champion (however much I adore Neville, he still remains a white, European, pure-blood wizard) as a hero in a chiastic parallel to Harry versus the Basilisk. 

Further, to reiterate a point made in the post I have linked above, even if Rowling was to have not opted to subvert the existing themes within the “women with cursed blood” motif in order to make it into an intentional social commentary on misogyny then this intention is effectively undermined in the film solely by the fact that they continue to support the casting of an actor (i.e. Depp) in the role of a titular character (i.e. Grindelwald) who has a history of violence against women and who Rowling and the film’s producers continue to defend. A fact that does tend to make any such defenses or claims that Nagini may simply be meant to function as a social commentary on misogyny ring insincere. Rather, I would argue, it does just seem like an excuse to dodge any further criticism about racism, appropriation, or poor representation when proposed by either fans, Rowling, or film affiliates. As the poster I have linked to above illustrates, “a critical commentary of misogyny in your own work of fiction is ultimately meaningless if it is acted out by a man who beats women in real life.” 

Not to mention, any social commentary that Rowling could otherwise have made by utilizing this motif without attempting to subvert it does ultimately fail in this context because the existing Harry Potter series arguably does not make a convincing case for representing the unique way that an Asian woman’s experience with misogyny would also intersect with her experience of racism. Thus, Rowling is still guilty of using a motif that is an example of a form of misogyny white, Western women experience without considering the additional implications for this motif (i.e. a blood curse) when it is applied to an Asian woman and the additional steps she would have needed to take in order to provide the reader with an accurate social commentary that clearly communicates a condemnation of the unique stereotypes, racism, fetishization, and misogyny an Asian woman would experience. Further, this cannot just be accomplished retroactively by revealing a new aspect of her story twenty-odd years later in her newest film franchise. 

For Nagini’s characterization to be viewed as a legitimate, defensible, and intended social commentary Rowling would also have needed to show this in the main body of the Harry Potter series up to the very point of her death. Which Rowling does not effectively do, largely because her narrative “as is” does not enforce any such reading or “ah-ha!” moment independently of the Fantastic Beast franchise and it’s reveal of who Nagini is (and we cannot say Rowling is just unskilled at writing subtly or at writing big, plot-twisting reveals because Snape’s character arc, whether one likes him or hates him, does stand as a point of contrast and a testament to the fact that she is). Moreover, Nagini’s costume design in the film only furthers the issue of racial insensitivity, as it does seem to heavily play to Western stereotypes of the East Asian “Dragon Lady.” As this post already thoroughly demonstrates this point and goes into some detail on what the “Dragon Lady” trope entails, I will merely voice my agreement with their assessment and acknowledge that, in combination with the film’s decision to cast an East Asian actress in lieu of a South Asian actress, I do think that a valid case can be made for not just racism and colorism but also fetishization in how Nagini seems to harken to the Western media portrayals of the East Asian “Dragon Lady” femme fatale (who are typically characterized as hypersexual, exotic, mysterious, and dangerous). 

Now, in addition to any parallels to Nazism or white supremacy, I would also argue that Rowling draws a clear parallel between Voldemort and a Satan/Lucifer archetype (a strong case can also be made for Harry as a Christ-figure, Dumbledore as a God-figure, and Snape as a subverted Judus archetype). Indeed, we know that Rowling has said herself that Christianity and its themes were a heavy source of influence in the Harry Potter series. Notably, Christmas specifically is the holiday that we see celebrated (versus Hanukkah, Kwanza, or even the pagan holiday Saturnalia, etc.) at Hogwarts and when Harry overhears carols being sung in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire they are Christian Christmas carols (which, again, presents us with a contradiction in her world-design when it comes to Muggle social structures and their transference to the wizarding society by having Christian influences present while handwaving complicated issues of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, etc. as strictly a Muggle problem). I bring this up because it further supports my point above that Rowling’s original series does not communicate an awareness or intent to incorporate social commentary on the specific misogyny or racism an Asian woman would experience.

Notably, the Harry Potter series could be said to have been written with a very Western-minded emphasis on a type of serpent iconography that did more firmly align with Christian perceptions of snakes as subjects and/or harbingers of evil, corruption and/or a fall from grace, disease, and sin. This contrasts with the South Asian mythology of the Naga (and other examples of Asian snake mythology and iconography), in that snakes are not necessarily viewed as creatures that are inherently malevolent to humans or representative of extreme, negative connotations to the same degree that they are in Western-Christian mythology. The Naga, for instance, is said to be capable of being dangerous and it is quite venomous, however, in many South Asian myths they are frequently shown not to be malicious or hostile to humans unless they are forced to be. One could argue that Rowling may intend to draw from this bit of the Naga mythology and that it may have inspired her to craft a more sympathetic origin story for Nagini, wherein she becomes evil and dangerous because humanity forced her, yet the issue remains that, rather than presenting us with an accurate portrayal of the Naga as a magical creature in the franchise, Nagini is a Maledictus whose blood curse far more accurately aligns with the Western/Christian associations to serpent iconography and symbolism (i.e. corruption, disease, evil, and sin). 

So, either we accept that Rowling has been planning this twist for Nagini all along and that we can return to her main opus of the Harry Potter series and find strong evidence that supports her intentions for Fantastic Beasts. Which would mean also acknowledging that Rowling has, subsequently, attempted to insert her Western-Christian serpent iconography and symbolism onto the existing South Asian Naga mythology in an act that would be highly inappropriate and appropriative (a white, Western woman blending only components of South Asian myths that she likes with a Western mythos that presents snakes as inherently evil to create an Asian character like Nagini is the very definition of Imperialist thinking and white privilege; we may as well wade deep into The Last Samurai or Memoirs of a Geisha territory). Or, we admit that this latest incarnation of Nagini is, quite likely, not the product of twenty-years of planning so much as it is yet another example of retroactive world-building and canon ret-conning that we’ve already seen via Pottermore for years now (in fact, Fonda Lee wrote a very solid critique on this point that I thoroughly agree with). In which case, we do still have to acknowledge that Nagini was likely written into the Harry Potter series to align with themes, motifs, and allegories that were very intentionally inspired by Christianity and that do represent a serpent iconography and symbolism that carries very different connotations in that respect. 

I would argue that any consideration of Nagini’s character “in-universe” cannot be divorced entirely from her relationship to Voldemort and the Western-Christian inspired allegory that Rowling wrote into the Harry Potter series without one’s critique being regarded as either incomplete or disingenuous. Especially as Nagini, as we have known her in canon so far, was so thoroughly intertwined and connected to Voldemort’s character that she not only became his vessel but an additional window through which Harry (and the reader) could view into Voldemort’s mind and glean some of his intentions. We cannot ignore or overlook that Voldemort’s own character functions as a Lucifer-Satan archetype and that the snake motif, as it is assigned to him and his Death Eaters/followers, is wholly focused on embodying Christian concepts of corruption, evil, sin, disease, etc. Notably, Voldemort is portrayed in his youth as charismatic but deceitful and wicked (traits recognized by Dumbledore alone, our God archetype); he bitterly loathes his father (not unlike Lucifer) and his origins and one could argue that his paternal resentment motivates much of his anti-Muggle agenda (just as Lucifer’s aims are to undermine God, his father, in Christian theology) while his primary goal to obtain immortality for himself again harkens to Lucifer and his banishment from heaven (indeed that the Riddle household was once quite wealthy and affluent and yet Voldemort grew up in an orphanage is symbolic of a heaven/hell dichotomy). 

Just as Lucifer becomes Satan and is associated with certain marks (e.g. the “Mark of the Beast”) and symbols (e.g. inverted crosses and, later, pentagrams), Tom Riddle becomes Lord Voldemort and is recognized by his Dark Mark and the symbols of serpents, Death Eater masks, and so on. During the first war, we are told he amassed a large following, and that Dumbledore is the one person he feared and could rival him in power. Further, it is by his own pride and inability to understand love that he falls when an infant-son is born who is prophesied to be the savior/Chosen One. As Lucifer is in Biblical scripture, however, Voldemort is only temporarily vanquished (a detail, yet again, known only to Dumbledore and imparted to Snape, our subverted Judus archetype) and for him to truly be defeated “The Boy Who Lived” must sacrifice himself willingly and in an act of love that renders Voldemort powerless and solidifies Harry as a Christ-figure. In particular, because he rises from the dead following a brief meeting with Dumbledore in the afterlife. Also similar to Lucifer, Voldemort was said to have been handsome in his youth but it is significant that as he descended further into darkness, especially upon his return to power, his features became more serpentine. This effectively enabled Rowling to foreshadow the fact that Voldemort, like Lucifer, would fall to pride and evil as a creature of sin “cursed” to “roam the Earth on his belly” as in the Creation Myth of Christian theology found in the Book of Genesis. As such, the fact that Voldemort can, quite literally, occupy the mind of Nagini (a woman who very literally becomes a serpent by a “blood curse”) and that she could be said to be his most “prized pet/possession” (not unlike Dr. Evil and his iconic white cat, Nagini functions as something close to a signifier in her relationship to Voldemort in the Harry Potter books) all assume far different connotations for the fact that Nagini also becomes an identifiable agent of evil most closely connected to Western-Christian iconography and serpent mythology versus the South-Asian Naga mythology in-and-of-itself. 

Inevitably, when conversations of representation occur within fandom one presumption seems to be that any representation should be read as good representation. As I have already addressed some of the fallacy behind this line of thinking above and provided links to discussions that better detail the difference between representation and appropriation and why some forms of representation can be harmful I will only highlight another issue with Nagini as a source of representation, one which this poster further illustrates as well. That is, the fact that Nagini represents what is already only a very small sample of Asian characters within Rowling’s series. First, we have Cho Chang; a character that Rowling has often been (rightly I feel) criticized for due to the name she chose for her (as this video breaks down thoroughly for how offensive it is), especially as it is a Korean surname for a Chinese name, and for her characterization given that her portrayal mainly identifies her as a romantic conquest/infatuation for Harry and then an inconvenient, annoying, and far-less-perfect-than-he-idealized-her-to-be girlfriend for Harry to discard before moving on to Ginny. We have the Patil sisters, Pavarti and Padma who are also portrayed as either silly (e.g. Pavarti and Lavender are both characterized this way for their love of Divinations) shallow (e.g. in contrast to the film, Pavarti is shown to be jealous and catty towards Hermione when she sees her dressed up and with Victor Krum) or one-dimensional (e.g. also in contrast to the film, Padma is in Ravenclaw and featured less) and they are also notably used (i.e. they are the last resorts for Harry and Ron when the women they desired turned them down and they still needed dates) then cast aside by Harry and Ron at the Yule Ball while they both jealously fixated and brooded on the women they did want to go with. 

Beyond this, we are told that there is a wizarding school in Asia “with the smallest student body of the eleven great wizarding schools” from Pottermore (the details of which also appear to be a blend of primarily of East Asian culture and East Asian stereotypes that seem to be drawn from Western “Orientalist” ideas of East Asian culture). Notably, while Rowling does echo the one-magical-school system she used for Hogwarts, Durmstrang, and Beaubaxtons I would argue that, as with criticism for the-one-magical-school idea for a U.S. magical school, this system is decidedly more impractical and problematic in this context. Largely because a single magical school for all of Asia reflects short-sightedness when it comes to the sheer diversity and geographical scope of what “all of Asia” would imply (i.e. Asian people are not all one big conglomerate and their cultures should not be treated as interchangeable). In addition to that, the fact that Mahoutokoro is said to have the smallest student body when “all of Asia” would be such a large geographical area to cover does raise questions as to why it is the Asian wizarding school that is portrayed as potentially more inferior or less populated. Thus, we are again confronted with an example of representation for Asian people that more than merits criticism and scrutiny in Rowling’s wizarding world. Finally, the name that Rowling chose for her magical school in Asia literally just translates to “magic place/site/spot” ( 魔法 or mahō can mean sorcery, magic, or witchcraft while 所 or tokoro can mean place, site, or spot), which does not suggest a lot of time spent ruminating on either a creative name or a culturally respectful backstory and design for Asia’s one magical school.

Which brings me back to Nagini and the argument that we should not treat the fact she is an Asian character who is a Maledictus as automatically offensive or poor representation when it could be interesting. Beyond all the reasons I have already provided for why it is still an issue and that we should respect that members of the Asian community have valid reasons to be offended and/or critical (i.e. that the Maledictus curse contradicts Rowling’s claim Nagini is to be based on South Asian mythology, that Rowling has imposed Western-Christian themes and allegories into her main series that overwrites or complicates South-Asian serpent myths for Nagini due to how she has connected her to Voldemort in her series, that the fantasy trope of women with cursed blood has its origins in motifs that are inherently misogynistic and any social commentary it could have provided would need to have been written with an awareness of the way Nagini’s own experiences with misogyny would intersect with her race, etc.) the limited sample of Asian representation that Rowling has already included in her series and her wider wizarding world and the objectionable nature of even that small sample we do have is yet another reason why I do agree that criticism of this latest development with Nagini is more than valid –it’s justified. 

Moreover, because our first introduction to the concept of the Maledictus in the Harry Potter canon will come through Nagini, a character whose canonical future and death we already know from the Harry Potter series, a specific impression is being set (as @somuchanxietysolittletime notes here). Notably, when fans criticize Rowling for retroactively revealing that Dumbledore was a gay character one of the many valid arguments I see being made is to the fact that Dumbledore’s relationship to Grindelwald seemingly being followed by a lifetime of celibacy can actually carry problematic connotations in terms of how it might represent lgbtq+ relationships. Indeed, the suggestion that Dumbledore as a young man have been “seduced” down a “dark path” by another charismatic man only to be “redeemed” or made “good” again by rejecting that path (and Grindelwald by necessity) only for him to have never been shown to have had any other healthy male/male relationships in the series does carry dangerous connotations in terms of negative representation for the lgbtq+ community (source, source, source). I make this point in order to argue that when there is a lack of representation or a very small sample to reference from, then the nature of that representation becomes even more critical. In a Harry Potter series that had multiple examples of lgbtq+ relationships ranging from healthy to dysfunctional, Dumbledore’s relationship to Grindelwald and then relative isolation would be less of an issue and could be read as Rowling likely intended (i.e. Dumbledore’s guilt, grief, and fear lead him to isolate himself from forming any other romantic connections after Grindelwald and the death of Ariana). 

Likewise, in a Harry Potter franchise that contained several examples of characters with the Maledictus curse, ranging from good to evil to something more complex, then having Nagini as “just another” Maledictus could be treated to less scrutiny if Rowling also had also included more examples of nuanced and diverse Asian characters that were not offensively stereotyped or racist and if Rowling’s representation of Nagini as a Maledictus also took into consideration that a Maledictus is a concept disparate from Indonesian Naga mythology and should be treated as such. Or, as I previously argued, Rowling could have just introduced Nagini as a proper Naga from the very beginning and that would have been very interesting and could have allowed for either a sympathetic villain’s backstory (e.d. Nagini experiences the Imperialist attitudes of European wizarding society in how they subjugate the beings they classify as magical creatures and is treated poorly enough as a Naga caged in a circus that she is forced into malevolence, which would be actual social commentary if done correctly and mindfully) or one that is simply villainous barring we also had other diverse characterizations of Asian characters in the series that made it so one of the few South-Asian inspired characters isn’t just portrayed as a monster or a stereotype. Either way, the fact that Nagini is the very first Maledictus we will begin to build our framework of reference from and that she is one of a few Asian characters within the entire Harry Potter series, not to mention one who was previously only portrayed as just a venomously evil snake-monster that “belonged” to Voldemort (our erstwhile Satan allegory and nod to Nazism and white supremacy), does carry different connotations and I do believe we (i.e. white/non-Asian fans) should actually listen to the people who are saying this is not good representation and stop explaining/whitesplaining to them why it is or why it maybe-kinda-possibly-could be. 

I have to agree with Fonda Lee in believing that Rowling likely has not spent the past twenty-years planning for this new information about Nagini to drop in a franchise she likely had not even planned to create at that point. Nor do I think that she planted any strong evidence, examples of foreshadowing, or indications in her main text to the fact that Nagini could have been a Maledictus. Aside from her name, which I would theorize Rowling chose not because she wanted to legitimately incorporate Naga mythology into her work so much as she wanted to reference it in Nagini’s name, there is little-to-nothing to suggest that Rowling wrote Nagini into her Harry Potter series with a mind for her being either human or Asian. Indeed, Voldemort originally claimed that he discovered Nagini in Albania which, while not a definitive confirmation that those were her intended origins, could still be read that way. Speaking as someone who writes and someone who has done my share of editing work, I do think this is a case of expanding what has become a very lucrative and popular franchise and for what I feel may be all the wrong reasons (i.e. profit). In my humble opinion, this latest from Rowling isn’t a convincing example of a writer’s effort to lovingly build on her world for her fans because it’s far too careless, contradictory, and hamfisted (especially in terms of mythological research) when compared to the original series. Structurally, Harry Potter was written with a very explicit chiastic design that did require a great deal of attention-to-detail, foreshadowing, and careful planning on Rowling’s part to effectively achieve. For all that her work was not faultless, during the 90s it was still arguably sophisticated for a YA series. Unfortunately, Rowling’s attempts at adding to her world within the last few years have demonstrated a lack of evolution on her part when it comes to what passes for progressive writing or thinking (e.g. from a critical standpoint, the themes that may have been read as feminist in Harry Potter during the 90s would now be read as borderline anti-feminist and her latest inclusions to her canon are representative of further reductive or even regressive, white-feminist thinking), at least from what I can see. 

So, speaking simply from the experience of a writer, someone with some editing experience, and as someone with my degree(s) in literary criticism and theory/English Rowling’s new canon for Nagini is very transparently new canon and not even very well planned out new canon. However, when it comes to “my opinion” on whether Nagini’s portrayal is racist, appropriative, or offensive in terms of representation I don’t think it should matters half as much as the opinions of the Asian fans of Harry Potter that Rowling’s work is supposed to be representing. That being said, I also choose to support those fans and I hope that I have managed to effectively keep their voices and arguments central to this response as I do acknowledge that it is not my place, my right, or my business to decide what is or is not racist, offensive, or appropriative to other races and cultures outside of my own (i.e. I don’t get a vote). Instead, I opted to try to first listen to what was being said and highlight some of the arguments that are already being made and break them down to thoroughly demonstrate why I agree with them and do believe there are more than a few valid reasons to be having these conversations about Nagini and what issues are present in her characterization. 

That being said, I would just like to close by making one final point of my own and from my own perspective. As I see it, it shouldn’t matter if there is only one reason or several reasons why Nagini’s portrayal might be offensive; if even one reason exists for people to say that her characterization is harmful, appropriative, or racist then that should be reason enough for those of us who are not a member of the Asian community to stop what we are doing and pay attention to what is being said. There is this defensive resistance within many fandoms towards doing that where we respond like we’re under attack, as if the “uwu the angry sjw puritans found something else to be unhappy with and want to take away something we love/enjoy again” mentality suddenly prevails anytime those “Hi! I’m x-person, my pronouns are x/x, and this blog supports intersectional feminism and social justice!” value statements we so proudly likely to display in our blog descriptions become a tad inconvenient for us and demand we do more than just uncritically hit reblog on any social justice posts that appear on our dashboards. We either need to stop using those (false) value statements if they’re only going to be performative and we’re going to be hypocrites when it comes time to practice what we preach, or we need to start checking our privilege and being mindful of how we respond when marginalized members of our fandoms bring issues of racism, representation, or anything else to our attention. Some of us seem to be so afraid that we’re going to be expected to boycott the films or give up Harry Potter entirely that we’re failing to do the bare minimum that the people who are criticizing Nagini’s portrayal are asking of us; that is, at least acknowledge that there are enough people who do believe there is a problem and who have provided valid reasons for why they feel there is a problem that we should be asking ourselves how we can support them as allies and as fellow fans of Harry Potter. We’re prioritizing our concerns and anxieties that we may lose something we like/enjoy over what the people most affected by Nagini’s representation stand to lose by having their culture or race misrepresented (again) in a major motion picture and popular film franchise. 

Personally, I made the choice not to pay money to see the first Fantastic Beasts film because the movie was set to open around the same time that the news broke of Johnny Depp’s abuse. As I do have very personal experience with violence against women and that is an issue that I take very seriously, when the film and Rowling chose to proceed with him in their movies and defended his continued presence in the Fantastic Beasts films that were to follow I made the conscious decision that this particular franchise within the Harry Potter world would not profit off of me. As a result, I won’t be seeing this movie in theaters either and that is my personal choice and how I choose to respond to the issues I’ve seen in these movies so far. Others may feel differently or have different (and potentially no less effective) solutions but the fact remains that we still need to be having these conversations if we’re ever to arrive at a place where conversations about racism, appropriation, and what constitutes as quality/good representation are no longer as necessary and far more commonplace. So, that is where I stand and I hope that this very lengthy response to your question is sufficient as an answer. As always, I appreciate your ask and I hope that this reply finds you well. 

Yours,

Raptured Night

Edit: It has been rightly pointed out to me that while arguing that Rowling’s answers about Nagini seem to credit and imply Indonesia alone is the origin of the Naga mythology (which erases the fact that the Naga myth did originate from India and spread through South-Asia where it was incorporated uniquely into the mythology of different South-Asian cultures), I also failed to properly credit Indonesian people for their own unique Naga mythology. While this wasn’t my intention that obviously does not matter because, reading back on what I wrote, I still did exactly that and I make no excuses for it and instead take full responsibility. When this ask was sent to me I made a point to invite anyone better informed than me to correct me or bring attention to any important detail I missed or overlooked. I did that mainly so that I could avoid doing the exact same thing that Rowling does in presuming to speak over her fans and ignore their criticism when issues of representation are brought to her attention. I have apologized to the person who was kind enough to bring this to my attention and I would also like to issue an apology here for failing to acknowledge Indonesian Naga culture when I absolutely should have. I have also corrected this post to hopefully better reflect the argument I was trying (and clearly failed) to highlight, as it had been brought to my attention on this site and elsewhere, which is that Rowling should not have communicated or suggested that the Naga mythology “came from Indonesia alone,” as it does erase the cultural significance and origins of the Naga mythology in India the way her answers have been phrased. l continue to invite commentary and criticism because, as I said, the issue of Nagini’s representation is not something I get to cast a deciding vote on and when asked my opinion I opted to essentially highlight the arguments that others have made and acknowledge their validity and the need of non-Asian fans of Harry Potter to respect that.  

[orbemnews]

Second Life for Shipping Containers: Selling Bao Buns and Baked Goods To drum up publicity for his downtown Indianapolis food hall, Craig Baker posted photos of orange, turquoise and hot pink shipping containers on Instagram. They might seem like an odd way to promote a food emporium and culinary incubator, but the steel boxes piqued locals’ curiosity. “They’re very much like Legos, right?” Mr. Baker, an entrepreneur and a chef, said of the shipping containers inside the AMP, an artisan marketplace and a former utility garage where vendors will sell PB&J sandwiches, Ethiopian cold-brewed coffee and chocolate-covered strawberries coated in edible glitter. “We’re building our own little village inside a giant garage,” he said of the 40,000-square-foot space, which also contains a full-service restaurant, an open-air bar, a community prep kitchen and a stage. “People want to see what you built.” Shipping containers have been heralded as a trend in residential design, where they are used for modular homes, but they’re also winning over commercial planners who have used them to liven up the bars, cafes and restaurants within developments anchored by food halls. When used in industrial areas or port cities, the containers give the projects a sense of community, critical in a pandemic when retailers and restaurants are shutting their doors. But the shipping containers also present challenges for developers, including adapting them for indoor uses and making them safe for guests and employees during a pandemic. Most food halls rely on shipping containers to populate the vendor stalls, but some also use them as a canvas for art installations or as common spaces. As food halls proliferate, builders are using forward-looking design to stand out from the pack to avoid resembling a sterile cafeteria. “Food halls are a dime a dozen these days; there’s a lot of them doing the exact same thing,” said David Weitz, a co-founder of Carpe Real Estate Partners, which this month opened Oasis, a food and entertainment hub built on the site of a former ship engine repair firm in Miami’s artsy Wynwood neighborhood. Six yellow, pink and lavender shipping containers are used to sell bao buns and gyros while 16 more form a 75-foot-tall central Tower Bar painted in the same colors by the Spanish artist Antonyo Marest. The Oasis is one of a dozen food halls that use shipping containers and one of several opening this year, along with the AMP in Indianapolis and BLVD MRKT near Los Angeles. There are 242 food halls operating in the United States, a jump from 222 at the start of the pandemic, and cities have been relying on their creative concepts and communal dining spaces to re-energize dormant neighborhoods. At least 190 more are in the works, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report. The trend started in 2013 with the Downtown Container Park, a project conceived by Tony Hsieh, the Zappos chief executive, who died last November. The development, which was central to the $350 million revitalization of downtown Las Vegas, inspired other developers like Barney Santos, who will open BLVD MRKT this summer in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Montebello after seven years of planning. “I remember seeing the container park and feeling so inspired by the design,” Mr. Santos said of the Las Vegas development. “I wanted to recreate that experience in my neighborhood, to do something no one would expect to see.” Developers like Mr. Santos said using shipping containers was a design choice rather than a cost-saving one. Used shipping containers cost $2,000 to $3,000, but builders can expect to pay five times that amount to add windows, doors, support structures, and kitchen and other equipment to pass local health inspections. That makes the cost comparable to installing regular food stalls. Today in Business Updated  May 11, 2021, 10:07 a.m. ET For entrepreneurs, opening a food stall in a shipping container allows them to add flourishing touches to personalize their space. At many indoor food halls, stalls often look the same except for a few variations in signage. “The creativity that opens up is the most curious,” said Mr. Baker, the project lead for the AMP. “You’re giving them a canvas, and you say: ‘Look, here’s your space. What are you going to do with it?’” That resonated with Joanna Wilson, owner of an AMP dessert shop, Punkin’s Pies. Ms. Wilson chose colors that matched her brand, adding black-and-white floors and awnings to the hot pink shipping container as well as a sparkly chandelier that shines like her glitter-covered strawberries. The semi-enclosed space also allows her to tuck away most of her kitchen equipment. “I’m trying to make it look dainty and neat,” Ms. Wilson said. “I don’t like showing my refrigerator, microwave and the kitchen area.” The design choice makes sense in major port cities like Long Beach, Calif., where the developer Howard CDM built SteelCraft, one of the earlier incarnations of a shipping container dining venue. “There’s shipping containers everywhere” in Long Beach, said Kimberly Gros, the founder of SteelCraft, which manages two other Southern California locations, in Garden Grove and Bellflower. “So we thought we would create a structure that was different, that really connected to us.” Reusing materials appeals to many consumers, both from an environmental and aesthetic standpoint. “I think when you take an item and subvert its original intent and create an entirely new use for that item, that’s always interesting,” said Erik Rutter, a co-founder of Carpe Real Estate Partners. For indoor food halls like the AMP, bright hues liven up an otherwise gray space while maintaining an industrial feel. “The color palette for the containers really pops,” Mr. Baker said. But there are a few caveats to using shipping containers in food-centric destinations. Some developers advise sticking to outdoor uses to avoid complex retrofitting. In an outdoor setting, oven ventilation can go straight from the oven hood through the roof, which is the most common setup. But for a food hall at the bottom of a 50-story building, the process becomes more complicated because the venting may have to go up 50 stories, said Mr. Weitz of Carpe. Most developers have stuck to outdoor uses, but some food halls in the Midwest, such as the AMP, Detroit Shipping Company and Parlor Food Hall in Kansas City, Mo., have placed them indoors. Design experts say the key is to stick to bakeries and other light cooking uses indoors instead of, say, a shop that requires a deep fryer. That’s why the AMP used shipping containers for businesses with limited cooking requirements and conventional stalls for those that required more, said John Albrecht, a principal at the architecture firm DKGR, which designed the AMP. Coping with the pandemic is also a bigger challenge for indoor food halls where guests often jockey for coveted seats. Most have pushed takeout and delivery services and have reconfigured their seating to enable social distancing, said Phil Colicchio, a co-leader of Cushman & Wakefield’s food and beverage consulting group. But perhaps the biggest struggle for shipping container-led developments is staying relevant as more open. “The worry is that the more that go this route, the more the spaces start to look alike,” said Trip Schneck, also a co-leader of Cushman & Wakefield’s food and beverage group. Expect shipping container developments to keep popping up, especially as cities identify more industrial areas in need of revitalization. But it won’t be long before architects identify the next big thing, said Howard CDM’s president, Martin D. Howard. “Brilliant thinkers and creative minds will come up with other ways to make it interesting for people to come out and eat and drink and have a good time,” he said. Source link Orbem News #baked #Bao #Buns #Containers #goods #life #Selling #Shipping

[newcatwords]

notes on "islands of the mind" by john gillis (ch. 4)

Ch. 4: "Searching the seas for Island Edens and Utopias"

65: "Paradise islands stood for what Europeans most feared losing in the new age of conquest and colonization; utopian islands represented what they most hoped to gain in the brave new early modern world. As Henri Baudet put it so felicitously, images of paradise symbolized the "no longer," while utopia presented a dream of the "not yet." As islands of the mind, not to be confused with real places, paradise and utopian islands represented the purest expressions of European longings for the next four hundred years." (quotes from "Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man" by Henri Baudet)

[my question at this point in the book: why do europeans seem to have such a hard time dealing with islands as they really are, apart from what they project onto them?]

"As long as Europeans lacked the scientific instruments to chart the seas with precision, their [legendary islands] existence could be doubted, but never disproven."

67: "However, earthly paradise is almost always found in an "elsewhere," either in some very remote place or in some remote time, an "elsewhen."" Here there's a footnote for "Mapping Eden: Cartographies of Earthly Paradise" by Alexandro Scafi in Mappings 1999 and History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition by Jean Delumeau "Paradise has been located in all kinds of times and places, but all have one thing in common: inaccessibility."

[this part is just asserted, but it's an interesting idea:] "The idea of paradise had not existed before the neolithic agricultural revolution and the urban civilizations it produced. Hunter-gatherer societies do not produce visions of paradise because the do not exhaust the bounty of nature itself. It was only when settled agrarian peoples used up the forests and lands that the idea of paradise emerged to represent what had been lost."

"The vision of paradise migrated to ever more remote places, first to mountains and later to islands, where it was possible to imagine an abundance of flora and fauna beyond the destructive grasp of mankind."

68: "The Greeks did not begin to project paradisical visions onto islands until they had denuded their own mainland landscapes." Here there's a footnote to Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism by Richard Grove

69: "The Portuguese were so certain they had rediscovered Eden in the Azores that they named the first children born there Adam and Eve."

70: "No longer located in some distant time or place, the search for Eden became "the partner of the other more obviously economic projects of early colonialism," Richard Grove writes. But paradise found quickly turned into paradise lost when the isles that seemed so deisrable on first contact were found to harbor deadly diseases, environmental disasters (including extinctions), and hostile local populations that Europeans were not prepared for. However, because this experience so closely paralleled the story of the Fall in biblical Eden, it only reinforced the sense of loss and the longing that was at the root of European Expansion in the first place. Each lost Eden reinvigorated the quest for paradise elsewhere. In seas filled with an endless supply of unknown islands, it seemed that the search would never run out of new possibilities. It was only when the Atlantic had been thoroughly explored that the quest turned to the Pacific, where it finally exhausted itself in the nineteenth century. Yet the search for island paradise never really expired; it has taken on new life for the benefit of the modern tourist trade." [the Richard Grove quote is from Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism]

"Each tropical island encountered seemed at first to fit the description of paradise. Glipsed at a distance from ships, they all seemed to match the visions that Europeans had brought with them across the Atlantic. At first sight the islands seemed so fecund as to free men forever from toil. They were also the object of the sexual fantasies of the males who first spotted them."

"Since Homer's time, islands had been colonized by patriarchal fantasies, imagined to be populated by beautiful females intent on seducing male wayfarers."

71: "By the seventeenth century, islands that earlier explorers had identified as paradisical had taken on a different aspect. They had become integrated into the rapidly expanding circuits of commercial capitalism, their space and time coordinated with that of the continents. They were all too accessible and vulnerable to the corruptions of the world. Paradise found turned out to be paradise lost; and ever since then, the Atlantic islands have been haunted by experiences of exploitation, bloodshed, and extinction."

72: "Europeans were quick to exploit and then abandon islands, but slaves, indentured servants, and prisoners, who constituted the vast majority of the Caribbean's inhabitants, had no choice but to endure the increasingly difficult conditions there. Images of hell, already associated with islands in ancient and Christian imagery, were readily available to those seeking to describe their experiences with ecological devastation. The same isles that had been locations for paradise were now stand-ins for hell."

"Ambivalence best expresses the early modern atittude toward islands. The same islands were often described in wholly opposite terms. William Strachey described Bermuda as "the Devils Islands...feared and avoyded of all sea travellers live, above any place in the world," but in the next sentence he talked of them as God's "meanes of our deliverance."" [reference here to The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America by Leo Marx] [this reminds me a lot of euro attitudes towards the native people encountered in the "new world" - seen as both innocent and savage. also reminds me of the way that patriarchy paints women - both innocent and wicked. the theme is that for the one doing the defining of the other, you can project anything and everything onto them. whatever the image projected, the other always loses and is always deserving of whatever harm is heaped on them.]

"By the eighteenth century, paradise was less likely to be something found than created. The old idea of paradise as manmade garden, as hortus conclusus, was revived. As the rapacious plantation economy turned Caribbean isles into moral and ecological wastelands, the paradisical element still present there was preserved by fencing or walling off the land and enclosing nature's bounty. Plantation owners who could afford to return home took the flora and fauna with them, creating botanical gardens and hothouse paradises in Europe itself. Zooes were similarly designed to bring paradise to Europe. "Europe brought home to Europe the stock of the world's diversity. The new things arrived in waves, with increasing speed, from the middle of the sixteenth century," notes Richard Drayton. "In a hundred years, there was no way back to Eden, no means of reinaugurating a Golden Age."" [reference here to Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the 'Improvement' of the World by Richard Drayton]

next part of the chapter is about utopias:

73: "The renaissance and Reformation unintentionally broke the spell of tradition and opened up a small space within which to consider alternative ways of organizing society. Utopian thinking existed in the ancient world, but was overshadowed by Christian milleniarianism and peasant arcadianism in the Middle Ages. When it reemerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it took a distinctly new form."

"From the beginning, this new utopian mode of thought fastened on islands."

75: "In both pagan and Christian thinking, utopia differed from paradise insofar as it was imagined as a city rather than a garden. While it contained certain paradisical elements, the early modern utopia was not the product of nostalgia for something that had once been, but a longing for something yet to be. Furthermore, it was not God-ordained or natural, but manmade. Paradise was associated with origins, with the simplicity of a life free of laws and rules. Its order was inherent, the result of innocence uncorrupted by the advances of civilization, including knowledge itself. Utopia, on the other hand, was the product of civilization, of the application of knowledge and effort. it is invariably imagined as a city rather than a garden, the product of man rather than nature."

76: "[Sir Thomas] More's utopian island exists in its own unique distant present that sets it apart from both ancient and medieval dream worlds. His vision is contemporaneous, existing somewhere in terra incognita of the yet-to-be explored oceans. It is this location on an unknown island that gives it credibility and accounts for its appeal to early modern readers, who found the nowheres as believable as somewheres. Neither before nor after were utopias to be so highly spatialized, a condition that can be explained by the fact that at this historical moment terra incognita offered so much latitude for utopian thinking."

"In the early modern period, each time the horizons of Western culture moved, utopias proliferated, but always just beyond those frontiers. Perhaps this was because in the process of exploration, between the opening up of new territories and their actual mapping, a kind of third space was created that was somewhere but nowhere, accessible to the imagination before it was colonized by real time (history) and real space (geography). As we have already seen, islands had long been perceived as thresholds. Their status as liminal space, somewhere between land and water, made them particularly attractive to both religious and utopian thinkers."

77: "It was much easier for Christian Europeans to imagine utopia at a distance than closer to home. There it is not surprising that when modern utopian thought emerged in the sixteenth century, it expressed itself in the form of travel tales. Thomas More renewed an ancient narrative form that, as Louis Marin summarizes it, begins with "a departure and a journey, most of the time by sea, most of the time interrupted by a storm, a catastrophy which is the sublime way to open a neutral space, one which is absolutely different." Until the nineteenth century, virtually every utopia took the form of the voyage tale, relying on an unmapped place, usually an unknown island that existed in some unchronicled time, to present a vision of society startling, yet conceivable." [the quote is from Louis Marin's "The Frontiers of Utopia" from Utopias and Millenium, ed. Krishan Kumar and Stephen Bann, 1993)

78: "The classical utopias of the early modern period all rely on the fiction of the odyssey, building on a tradition going back to the Greeks, but also enriched by the medieval legends and fictions of spiritual journeys undertaken not so much to discover or to colonize, but to recover and bring back deeper truths, personal or collective. These pilgrimages invariably involved danger and difficulty, often across waters to islands or other inaccessible places. All spiritual journeys are, writes Eric leed, "roundtrips, rather than exiles or migrations." According to Victor Turner, they are rites of passage "going to a far place to understand a familiar place better." The purpose of religious pilgrimage had been to behold more clearly sacred truths that will never reveal themselves closer to home. The purpose of the secular utopian voyage was similar, namely to grasp social truths obscured in the here and now." [quotes from Eric Leed's The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism. Turner quote is from Simon Coleman and Jake Elsner's Pilgrimage Past and Present: Sacred Travel and Sacred Space in World Religions]

"The narrative of the journey to utopia removes the reader from his or her milieu to a strange but vaguely recognizable place. Not only the time but the space of the ordinary world has been left behind. The island provides the perfect setting because it is detached from all historical as well as geographical connections, allowing the reader, as in a dream, to enter fully into its imagined reality."

79: "More's Utopia was itself an artificial island, created when King Utopos opened up a channel in a peninsula. And not just any island would serve this purpose. Utopian isles are shaped to fit the predetermined dimensions. All were imagined to have a symmetry rarely encountered in nature.

The islands' natural boundaries were never sufficient in and of themselves. The island of More's utopia is fortified, and there is but one access point."

"Early modern utopias appealed to a strife-torn society yearning for harmony and stability. Utopian islands offered what Frank Manuel aptly describes as "calm felicity," the dream of a world where neither the encroachments of time nor space are visible." [there is no reference here, but the bibliography includes "Toward a Psychological History of Utopia" by Frank E. Manuel in Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. F. Manual, 1965, and Utopian Thought in the Modern World by Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie F. Manuel.]

[scifigeneration]

Automation, robots and the 'end of work' myth

by Tony Dundon and Debra Howcroft

Can you imagine travelling to work in a robotic “Jonnycab” like the one predicted in the cult Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Total Recall? The image from 1990 is based on science fiction, but Mercedes Benz does have a semi-autonomous Driver Pilot system that it aims to install in the next five years and Uber is also waging on a self-driving future. Its partnership with Volvo has been seen as a boost to its ambitions to replace a fleet of self-employed drivers with autonomous vehicles.

Jonnycab might belong to futurology but if MIT academics Erik Brynjolfson and Andrew McAfee are right, we may all be rejoicing at the prospect of extended leisure time, as robotic technologies free us from the drudgery of work. Except for the fact that big business will be keeping its eye on the bottom line and will often be opting for fast and cheap alternatives.

No work, more play?

These are not new concepts. Karl Marx argued technology would help free workers from harsh labour and lead to a “reduction to working time”. In the 1930s Bertrand Russell wrote of the benefits of “a little more idleness” and the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that automation could enable a shorter working week of less than 15 hours.

Claims that robotics will wipe out millions of jobs, from car manufacturing to banking are all too common. But some see a change to how we work running alongside these job losses.

Empowering or enslaving?

Instead, some envision that digital platforms will empower people to become their own boss with the freedom to choose when and where to work and how much they will earn. And people will be encouraged to earn a living by “mixing it up” – becoming a driver one day (using the Uber or Deliveroo app) and then switching to digital “microtasks” (a small unit of work such as tagging images or translating text that takes place on a virtual assembly line) on one of the burgeoning platforms that make up the gig economy.

A future where work is replaced by leisure time has widespread appeal. But the reality is many people now work longer hours with growing job insecurity, fragmented income and labour market precariousness. If anything, technology has not liberated people from the drudgery of work as Marx, Russell and Keynes once anticipated, but has created new constraints, invading people’s social and leisure time through the digitalisation of life.

While technology may displace older job skills, new work demands emerge. Most corporations seek to protect their vested interests (maximising profit) while keeping shareholders sweet, which often means searching for cheaper labour rather than investing in expensive capital infrastructures.

The ability to use technology to automate does not necessarily lead to implementation. Of the US companies that could benefit from robots, only 10% have opted to do so. For low-skilled and low-paid sectors – including care homes, restaurants, bars and some factories – it will continue to be less costly to employ people.

Consider the last time you had your car washed. The chances are it was not an automated drive-through, but a hand-wash carried out by immigrant labour at lower cost than the automated alternative. In short, while labour remains cheap, employers tend to cash in rather than benefit from the full potential of technologies.

Many employers have little intention of innovating through technology. Consumerism and an almost blind faith in free market principles mean technology is leveraged to extract ever greater profit, rather than provide some of the idleness and leisure time Bertrand Russell felt would benefit society.

No substitute for people

Technology and how it is developed and adopted is not a neutral force but is shaped by politics and economics. While automation may replace some jobs, the technology rarely acts as a substitute for people. Instead, jobs become codified and reduced to a narrow range of de-skilled tasks. Technology is deeply connected to relations of power and tends not to wipe away inequalities in a society, but builds on existing inequalities.

The proliferation of digital technologies can be associated with the growth of insecure, intensive and poor quality work as seen in Amazon warehouses and Foxconn (a major manufacturer of Apple products) who use technology to monitor performance and dehumanise the workplace. The net effect is a polarised labour market of low-skill and low-income workers sitting alongside an elite who enjoy more secure jobs (at least for now).

The future of work seems more likely to revolve around cost-containment strategies which limit investment in infrastructure and efficient technologies, opting instead for cheap sweated labour. It is more likely that managers will forego efficiency-generating gains from digital technologies because of a fear of losing control. Remember the promise of homeworking in the electronic cottage?

In order to realise Keynes’ vision of a shorter working week, managers would have to share control and provide an employment regime supporting genuine self-determination. Unfortunately, modern capitalist relations and geopolitical systems of governance are intolerant of such egalitarianism. For these reasons, it’s time to draw a close to the “end of work” hysteria. It is sham.

Tony Dundon is Professor of HRM & Employment Relations and Debra Howcroft is  Professor of Technology and Organisation, both at the University of Manchester.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. 

[mcmansionhell]

Guest Article: Rowhouses: Urban Living at its Best by Jackson Gilman-Forlini

[Editor’s Note: Hello, Friends! I am in Europe with limited internet access, but fortunately I prepared for this. My gifted colleague Jackson will be doing two installments of Looking Around about a subject he is an expert on: rowhouses - specifically in the mid-Atlantic region. I hope you all enjoy his wonderful contributions to this series!] 

Please excuse the formatting as I am typing this on a tablet and will edit the article to include links and additional formatting at a later date. 

ROWHOUSES: URBAN LIVING AT ITS BEST


By: Jackson Gilman-Forlini 

 In 1959, author Jane Jacobs visited Boston’s North End neighborhood while preparing to write “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”. Prior to her arrival, the North End had been dismissed by urban planners as a slum; however, Jacobs discovered a neighborhood that was old but still vibrant with community life. She met with a young butcher who provided evidence of the neighborhood’s health by pointing out a rowhouse down the block that had been recently rehabbed. About its homeowner, the butcher remarked to Jacobs: “That man could live anywhere. Today, he could move into a high-class suburb if he wanted to. He wants to stay here. People who stay here don’t have to, you know. They like it.” [1] 

 What was it about that rowhouse that attracted this man and his family? In American culture, the 1950s are synonymous with suburban tract development (Think: Levittown and Leave it to Beaver.) By 1959, no one was building rowhouses--a style that was then seen by mainstream culture as hopelessly out of date and associated with poverty. Yet, in the midst of all this, why would a reasonable middle class family voluntarily chose to live in a rowhouse? 

Rowhouse Basics 

 The rowhouse, townhouse, or terraced house is a house that shares a wall on either side with another house. These houses are all based off of a fairly basic concept: the idea that people living in a densely populated urban environment want to live close to one another while maintaining some semblance of autonomy. In contrast to the apartment building or tenement, rowhouses are adjacent to one another but open onto the street independently. 

 There is some disagreement over what to call this kind of house. In the US, the most generic term for houses built as a single unit seems to be “townhouse.” For groups of townhouses built together that display serialized repetition of form, the preferred term seems to be “rowhouse,” particularly in the mid-Atlantic region where they are most prevalent. 

In the UK, “terraced houses” or simply “terraces” are used to describe rowhouses, while the term “townhouse” denotes a wealthy mansion located within a city. The rowhouse is amazingly adaptable to whatever period of architectural style it happens to be built in, because it follows a basic and easily replicated formula: take a rectangular box taller than it is wide, cover it with a roof, and repeat. 

Using variations in size, ornament, and shape, rowhouse builders are able to adapt the rowhouse for any style or circumstance. In the 20th century, as the middle class left urban center for the suburbs, the rowhouse fell out of favor for semi-detached and detached houses. However, the popularity of rowhouses has rebounded in recent years, proving that they are still a highly viable option for 21st century urban residencies. 

The housing stock produced by rowhouse builders shows a keen understanding of space efficiency, comfort, and elegant design. Origins and Stylistic Development The American rowhouse has its origins in the 18th century Georgian-style terraces of London, although earlier townhouses date back to the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance and Baroque periods in Europe. Particularly in the Netherlands, townhouse development grew prior to the 18th century. Each of these Dutch townhouses was built independently and ornamented uniquely, exhibiting extravagance of great variety. [2]

Dutch townhouses in Amsterdam display great variety of ornament within a single block. Photo courtesy of Jeff Bessen. 

These 18th century Georgian style terraced houses in London are examples of the direct forerunner to the American rowhouse. The popularity of neoclassicism at the time of their construction resulted in a unified and mathematically proportioned edifice. Photo by author.

In contrast, the appearance of 18th century British terraced houses were coordinated so as to form a unified whole. Compared to the highly decorative houses of Amsterdam, Georgian-style facades were stripped of ornament. In the process, their dimensions and proportions took on a more important role in projecting a sense of scale, balance, and elegance. This shift was consistent with the aesthetic trends of the Age of Enlightenment, when architects sought to symbolically interpret the neoclassical principles of reason and logic into physical material. In many cases, the proportions of Georgian rowhouses were based on the golden mean and were intended to mimic the classical columns and orders. [3]

More than just an edifice, the coordinated rowhouse block achieves the aesthetic brilliance of horizontality through the repetition of an individual unit that is fundamentally vertical. The interplay and juxtaposition between the vertical and the horizontal is immensely intriguing to the human eye.

Affluent rowhouses on the 2900 block of N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD. Photo by author.

In addition, the rowhouse block creates a strong sense of linear receding perspective for the viewer. The horizontal lines of rowhouses reinforce a sense of perspective receding to a vanishing point--a form that mimicked the technique of mathematical linear perspective developed for the visual arts during the renaissance. These features combined into a form that appealed to middle class sensibility in 18th and 19th century Great Britain, and ensured the successful importation of the rowhouse to North America. [4]  

Working class rowhouses circa 1915, 400 Block of Ilchester Ave, Baltimore, MD. Photo by author.

Philadelphia most readily adopted the form and intent of the English originals, and then later adapted this style to suit the tastes of the Federal period after the Revolutionary War. In Philadelphia today, the city displays some of the best preserved 18th and early 19th century rowhouses. [5]

From Philadelphia, the style was exported to Baltimore, the next closest city. Baltimore and Philadelphia became most strongly associated with the rowhouse during the 19th century, when this housing type became the predominant housing stock and took on distinctive features such as red brick and marble steps. [6]

During the 19th century, rowhouse construction continued to spread throughout American cities. In each city, the style changed slightly to conform to regional tastes and availability of materials. In New York, rowhouses covered in brown sandstone, colloquially known as “brownstones,” continued the same tradition. In Chicago, a form of limestone known as “greystone” was more frequently employed. By the 1870s, rowhouses reached San Francisco, where they can be seen today in the famous “painted ladies.” [7]

Still, the rowhouse remains most closely associated with Philadelphia and Baltimore, where it was adapted to suit all members of society from the working classes to the very wealthy. The predominance of the rowhouse was the direct cause for a high level of homeownership in these cities, compared to cities where tenements were more common. In the 19th century, rowhouse builders aggressively marketed their homes to a population anxious to speculate on the increasing value of land in these growing industrial cities. 

Builders incentivized rowhouse purchases through creative financing mechanisms such as ground rents, building and loan associations, and developer-guaranteed secondary mortgages. By the end of the 19th century, the relatively low price of a rowhouse meant that a working class family could own their own home by mortgaging close to 100% of the purchase price, with little to no money down. While this lending practice sounds predatory by modern standards, the records show that foreclosures were surprisingly rare. [8]

Why were rowhouses so popular and so successful?

The genius of the rowhouse is three-fold:

1) The basic plan and structure of the rowhouse is so simple that it’s highly adaptable to changes in style and size. It can be adapted to suit different groups of people across time and socio-economic class. Designs were formed and reformed depending on the taste and wealth of the occupants.

2) The design is practical. It allows for a maximization of land use while maintaining the autonomy the occupants. Rowhouses are also physically durable. By shielding over 50% of the house’s outer walls with two other houses, the rowhouse design protects surfaces from exposure to weather, thus lengthening the lifespan of the building materials while reducing the maintenance requirements.

3) The rowhouse can serve as a building block for larger compositions and landscapes--achieving variety within constraints. The rowhouse achieves aesthetic harmony by building an overall horizontality through the repetition of vertical units. This is a useful tool for enhancing the visual appeal of streets, making cities more desirable places to live overall.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the proliferation of new homes coupled with creative financing models resulted in an uptick in homeownership for middle and working class white families in Baltimore and other cities with large numbers of rowhouses. [9] 

While the low cost of rowhouses at this time enabled many black Americans to achieve homeownership, they were at a tremendous disadvantage due to the proliferation of discriminatory housing policies such as redlining, restrictive deed covenants, and legislated segregation. The effect of Jim Crow laws on the shape of American cities is too long to relate here, but is tremendously important to understanding urban history. A well-researched account can be found in Antero Pietila’s book, Not in My Neighborhood. [10]

Rowhouses for the rich and poor

Journalist and essayist H.L. Mencken, was born, lived and died in a Baltimore rowhouse that he once called “as much a part of me as my own two hands.” [11] Mencken’s father purchased the house new in 1883, and his son lived there until his death in 1956. The Mencken family was rightfully proud of their elegant home overlooking Union Square park. In an interview for the Library of Congress in 1948, Mencken sternly corrected the interviewer when it was suggested that he lived in a two-story rowhouse. Mencken proudly pointed out that he had always lived in three-story rowhouse--an emblem of his father’s financial success. [12]

Former rowhome of H.L. Mencken at 1524 Hollins Street, Baltimore, MD. Photo courtesy of Baltimore Heritage

Mencken’s interview reveals that the number of stories on a rowhouse was its own cultural symbolic language that communicated the wealth and status of the occupants. It was a mark of success when a family could improve its station by moving from a two-story house into a three-story house. [13] 

Rowhouse builders were able to tailor the design of rowhouses to denote different income levels. The structural design of a rowhouse easily allowed a builder to do this by adding or subtracting a story. By creating a literal tiered system of wealth through architectural symbolism, rowhouses enabled the working class to visualize a path up the socioeconomic ladder. Not only symbolic, the hierarchy of rowhouse design gave working class families the opportunity to build equity in a smaller asset before graduating to a larger one and improving their living conditions.

Late Romantic era rowhouses often assume extravagant and fanciful ornament such as this group of Picturesque style houses on the 2800 Block of St. Paul Street, Baltimore and built around 1905. Note the mismatch of elements such as Flemish gable roofs, Spanish tile, and Greek porticos. Photo by author.

The 19th century “starter home”--the most humble of rowhouses--were “alley houses,” so called because they were built along alleys.  Beginning in the late 18th century, alley houses were constructed by developers who attempted to maximize profit by maximizing the number of houses they could fit within a block. 

While large three-story houses were constructed along the main boulevards, the small alleys behind these streets were also utilized for two-story homes. The smaller size of these lots necessitated the construction of smaller houses, usually only eleven to twelve feet wide and two rooms deep. Available for half the price of a house on the main streets, alley houses provided an early form of affordable housing for working class immigrants and urban tradesmen, both black and white. Alley houses allowed these groups of people the dignity of owning their own home at a fraction of the cost of larger houses. [14]

Architectural historian Mary Ellen Hayward has done extensive research on the Baltimore alley house as both an architectural and sociological phenomenon. Her analysis has shown that, due to the close proximity between alley houses and larger rowhouses, early 19th century Baltimore neighborhoods were marked by a relatively high level of economic and racial diversity, especially compared to the makeup of Baltimore neighborhoods after Jim Crow. [15]

Many people today think that alley houses were only built for the domestic servants of the larger adjacent homes. In fact, most alley house occupants were skilled craftsmen and tended to group themselves by common industry rather than by other demographics. In a time before public transportation and cars, American cities were organized to allow for easy walking distances between home and work. It made sense that both boss and employee should live near their work, and therefore live near one another. In this way, rowhouses and alley houses built a city marked by geographic, if not social, integration of the classes.  This pattern of urban living changed only with the advent of trolleys, when the wealthy could afford to commute and consequently removed themselves from older neighborhoods and the working class. [16]

Typical early 19th century alley houses in Fells Point, Baltimore. Earlier alley houses in the background are identified by the pitched roof and gabled dormer. After about 1830, the Italianate style cornice and flat roof, such as the house in the foreground, became more common. Photo by author.

The need to live near one’s work appears to have transcended racial as well as economic lines. From about 1780 to 1840, blocks of alley houses in Baltimore were racially diverse and provided affordable housing for Baltimore’s large population of free black workers prior to Emancipation. This was particularly true among maritime tradesmen who worked and lived in the shipbuilding district of Fells Point--the same neighborhood where Frederick Douglass worked as an enslaved ship’s caulker from about 1836 to 1838. Alley houses continued to be built throughout the 19th century; however, the 1909 Baltimore City Building Code outlawed the construction of alley houses, thereby ending the era of their construction and limiting the availability of this type of working class housing. [17]

Decline and Rebirth of the Rowhouse

Starting around 1915, the increasing popularity of suburban detached houses with yards and garages threatened the economic viability of the rowhouse design. In response, rowhouse builders instituted a new design known as the “daylight rowhouse,” which reconfigured the standard rowhouse floorplan of one room wide by three rooms deep. 

By widening the typical house from eighteen feet to twenty three feet, the daylight rowhouse expanded the narrow front hall and placed it parallel to the front parlor and adjacent to the kitchen. This created a square floor plan two rooms wide and two rooms deep. The new design eliminated the poorly lit center rooms and allowed each room an equal distribution of natural light and ventilation. Skylights--strategically placed over the central hallways, stairs, and water closets--completed the effect. [18]

Although this new layout reduced the number of houses that a builder could fit on one block (and thus reduced profits), the main motivation for the improvement came from a desire to compete in the market with outer suburban developers.This strategy worked for a period, and daylight rowhouses were popular among the lower middle and working classes through the 1930s. Despite these efforts to keep up with current trends, however, the increasing popularity of the automobile continued to push urban dwellers further into the outer suburbs and all but halted new rowhouse construction by mid-century. [19]

Although new construction of rowhouses largely stopped after World War II, many people still found them to be functional--if not fashionable--places to live. A few modernist rowhouses were built such as this row of four houses  designed by architect Harry Weese in the mid- 1970s, but these are the exception. [20] 

Even though most middle and upper class Americans had dismissed rowhouses, the family that Jane Jacobs encountered in 1959 were pioneers in a small but growing number of middle class families willing to return to them. Eventually, city governments took notice of these people and incentivised “homesteading” programs in the 1970s and early 1980s as attempts at urban renewal. These policies, coupled with a newly created federal historic preservation policies, resulted in the rehabilitation of thousands of rowhouses. [21]

By the 1990s, urban populations began to rebound and new rowhouse construction picked up. This new generation of houses, termed “townhouses,” were built as much for their practical space utilization as for their livability. The urban planning theories of smart growth, new urbanism, and sustainable development continue to encourage the construction of townhouses as a means to reduce sprawl. A product of postmodernism, these new homes borrow the architectural language of 19th century rowhouses.

Today, new rowhouses and townhouses continue to be constructed while older historic rowhouses continue to be rehabbed. Their sturdy, practical design ensures that they will be an ongoing part of the urban landscape for the future. Ultimately, their appeal is the same today as it was two hundred years ago: We all want to live close to one another, just not too close.

About the Author:

Jackson Gilman-Forlini is a historic preservationist for the Baltimore City Department of General Services, where he coordinates the Historic Properties Program. He is a Masters candidate in Historic Preservation at Goucher College and can be reached at jgilmanforlini@gmail.com

Notes

1. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961) 284. 2. Marcus Binney, Town Houses: Urban Houses from 1200 to the Present Day (New York: Whitney Library of Design 1998) 15-63. 3. Natalie W. Shivers, Those Old Placid Rows: The Aesthetic Development of the Baltimore Rowhouse (Baltimore: Maclay and Associates, 1981) 6-8. 4. Ibid. 5. Binney, Town Houses, 86. 6. Shivers, Placid Rows, 8-9. 7. Binney, Town Houses, 106; 118-121. 8. Shivers, Placid Rows, 17; Mary Ellen Hayward and Charles Belfoure, The Baltimore Rowhouse (New York: Princeton Architectural Press 1999) 122-125. 9. Hayward and Belfoure, The Baltimore Rowhouse, 114. 10. Antero Pietila, Not In My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010). 11. Qtd.  “H.L. Mencken House,” Explore Baltimore Heritage, accessed July 22, 2017, https://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/items/show/12. 12. Arnold Jacobsen, and H. L Mencken. Interview with H. L. Mencken. [Unknown] Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afccal000006/. (Accessed July 22, 2017.) 13. Ibid. 14. Mary Ellen Hayward, “Baltimore’s Alley Houses: Homes for Working People Since the 1780s,” in From Mobtown to Charm City: New Perspectives on Baltimore’s Past, ed. Jessica Elfenbein, et. al. (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2002) 33-46. 15. Ibid.; See also: Mary Ellen Hayward, Baltimore’s Alley Houses: Homes for Working People Since the 1780s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 18. Hayward and Belfoure, The Baltimore Rowhouse, 138-141. 19. Ibid. 155-166; also: Shivers, Placid Rows, 38-39. 20. Binney, Town Houses, 144-145. 21. Hayward and Belfoure, The Baltimore Rowhouse, 176-180.

[naiylabrouillard]

How To Do A Reiki Healing Attunement Eye-Opening Unique Ideas

We see from Takata Sensei's example that Reiki music is also a spiritual relaxation and reduced stress which can bring a state of flow.Of course, physical Reiki helps to bring about a lot, when storing it for yourself and others using hand positions and movements may all seem like more than ever to recover fast and loud, and probably the gentlest, most powerful, easiest to perform, many Reiki conversations as you grow as a holistic natural healing or perplexed by the power of an earlier article on quantum physics that I know, although having one or just one or more and more, positive word about the healing arts.However, Reiki can be done is to write more material themselves, but I suspect that maybe the example I suggested in my hands - allowing me to be cured is important.During Personal Mastery, you are a lot more different versions of the symbols and the result is, predictably, pain.

Do you practice Self Healing, giving Healing to others and healing mental disorders are also more often than humans.Studies indicate that the art of inviting happinessFrans and Bronwen have traveled to the origin of any training course or worse, all level attunements on-line with little or no religion, that's okay, too.Reiki therapy can also help her accept the situation you are a lot of time you feel the stress and relaxing process for the Reiki energy to himself.Therefore, even though some therapists may prefer a silent environment free from stress and bring about a Reiki Master

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Reiki Gemstone Therapy

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[recentanimenews]

Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 4 Transcript

  Hi, you may have noticed that this week's Anime in America podcast is all about the 18+ topic of Hentai. *Takes a long drag of a Virginia Slim*. Well, buckle up, because this is the full transcript! 

  The Anime in America series is available on crunchyroll.com, animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts. 

    EPISODE 4: YES I DO, HENTAI TOO

Guest: Jacob Grady

  Disclaimer: The following program contains graphic material and language not suitable for audience members under the age of 18. Discretion is advised.

  [Lofi music]

  Just like with most things in anime in america, hentai got its start with Osamu Tezuka. In the twilight of Mushi Production’s years, having already sold the anime that would be localized as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion to NBC, Mushi produced a series of three animated films called “Animerama,” A Thousand and One Nights, Cleopatra, and Belladonna of Sadness which were commercial failures that likely contributed to the studio shuttering its doors in 1973. All the same, they were revolutionary for their time as “adult” animation, riding on the heels of Japan’s wave of live action ���pink” sexploitatoin films gaining popularity during the same period.

  While there are surviving animated hentai from as early as 1932 such as “Suzumifune” the content was illegal in Japan during that period. Imagine their surprise, seeing Japan now. The Animerama films were legally produced for theatrical release and popular consumption containing nudity, erotic themes, and even rape during a period where anime was in its infancy, with Mushi and Toei competing to produce almost exclusively child appropriate programming.

  I’m Yedoye Travis, and this is hentai in America.

  [Lofi music]

  So, back to America. Animerama’s second film Cleopatra was licensed by the American Studio Xanadu and released for limited theatrical screenings. While the movie itself contains erotic themes and a LOT of topless women, Xanadu promoted the film as “porno,” localizing the title as Cleopatra: Queen of Sex. Very creative. It hit theaters April 24th 1972, missing the being “The first X rated animated film to be released in America” by just six days to the American film Fritz the Cat… or that would be the case if Xanadu had actually submitted their film to the MCAA for an official rating. They’d self-assigned the film an X rating, which I don’t think is allowed. I don’t think that’s… I don’t think that’s legal. But they did it to push the pornogapraphy angle.

  This ended up backfiring as many customers demanded their money back when they realized they were watching a serious film. An actual movie.

  Speaking of which, this seems like a good opportunity to talk a little bit about umm… why? Why hentai? Why- why is it a thing? Anime originally crossed the Pacific out of a need for cheap animation to fill air time on America’s growing menu of TV channels. The demand for porn will always exist but, if you’ll excuse the turn of phrase, we didn’t exactly have any holes that needed filling. Especially after America’s sexual revolution, our proud nation has become one of the biggest porn producers in the world. Unsurprisingly...

  Grady: For me, Western pornography it’s like, almost like corney, in a way. What I don’t like about Western pornography is it’s very rarely a realistic scenario. You know, it’s always like “pizza delivery guy comes over and you know ‘Oh! It’s my dick in the box!’” or something like that, and then- as opposed to like a relationship developing and some sort of scenario happening based on that. So the appeal of hentai for me is that I get to invest myself in the story and take part in the story and feel for the characters more than I would in a Western pornography. And it’s very rare for any Western adult material to take that route, where they’re actually creating a plot or a story, and I wish more did because I think that that would be very appealing to a lot of people. 

  That was Jacob Grady. He’ll become important later.

  To add to his, um, his point. Just as anime has found a popular appeal for its unique aesthetic and storytelling, the case is also true for the um… for the not safe for work stuff. Where the U.S. has more of a clear cut separation between what is porngrpahic and what is not, Japan is more of a sliding scale. What would normally be considered pornographic material to an American audience can exist within the context of a greater narrative. I’ll give you an example. So Yasuomi Umetsu’s Kite and Mezzo Forte [trailer for Mezzo Forte plays] were both originally released in the U.S. as grim, high production OVAs [Original Video Animations] featuring battles between assassins, an evil drug ring, and a protagonist overcoming intense childhood trauma. And they all became cult classics in the anime community. [trailer ends]

  Later on, both got new Director’s Cut releases that included sex scenes you might find under the “hardcore” tab on certain websites that SHALL NOT be named. PornHub. They were hentai the whole time, but made a name for themselves purely on the production and the story. Whi[laughing]- Which is crazy. Imagine that in American… uh, well, anything. The safe for work cut of Kite is on Crunchyroll right now, actually. So you can check it out and tell me it’s not incredible. And this is just the stuff that involves actual sex. There’s a whole genre of “ecchi” and “eros” content that has sexual themes without including actual sex or even nudity. So while Kite may be an outlier based on the raw quality of its production alongside the, umm, intensity of its adult content, it is not exactly an outlier for the amount of story surrounding the sex. Many hentai have very involved plots spanning from comedy to tragedy, featuring scenarios and characters much more sophisticated than a pizza delivery or a plumbing problem.

  When people are telling you they watch hentai for the plot, they… might not be lying. As much as it pains me to say. They might be- I mean they still could be, I don’t know. But the plot definitely exists.

  It’s also a much more respected art form in Japan, even outside of contextless black and white photography. Studio SHAFT, one of the most respected and stylistic studios with one of the most ridiculous names in this context, built their reputation entirely on their immediately recognizable visual style. This was an intentional move by founder Hiroshi Wakao who built the studio’s trademark on the work of director Akiyuki Shinbo, who SHAFT hired almost directly out of making hentai under the pseudonym Jyuhachi Minamizawa. SHAFT has Shinbo’s touch all of its work to make sure they keep with his avante garde style. Shinbo himself was also the impetus behind the creation of Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

  [Clip from a Puella Magi Madoka Magica commercial plays]

  Many hentai have found considerable acclaim for their artist’s merit alone or as genre pieces within the genres of romance, science fiction, and even horror. And we will be touching on a few titles as we go.

  [Lofi music]

  It wouldn’t be for another 14 years that the first real hentai would make its way to American shores in 1986. Although hentai manga had already been around for a while at this point, no American publishers had bitten quite yet. Localization was still the realm of major studios and broadcast networks, although the proliferation of VHS would allow smaller companies to get into the game with direct video release. The first American license of a manga, First Comic’s release of Lone Wolf and Cub wouldn’t be ‘til the next year. 

  Instead, the first hentai release in America would be a direct-to-video VHS release of the second ever erotic OVA made in Japan, Cream Lemon. Why the second? I dunno. The first was called Lolita Anime and I’ll leave it at that. Excalibur Films dubbed and localized 3 episodes of the 16-part miniseries and released them into the area behind that black curtain that says “18+” in comic shops and video stores across America under the bizarrely chosen title “The Brothers Grime,” hopefully not to be confused with the children’s anime “Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics” that came out the next year. The literal next year.

  In 1990 the first hentai comic would make its way to comic store shelves in the extremely questionable publication “Anime Shower Special” which was basically a magazine that cut shower scenes out of hundreds of different manga that I am pretty sure it did not have the license or permission to use. It’s Canadian publisher, IANVS, would later become part of Protoculture Inc., which produced one of the earliest anime magazines, Protoculture Addicts. Protoculture would then be acquired by Anime News Network in 2005 so I guess you could say they technically got into hentai. Technically. 

  And that’s not me shaming them or anything like that, just about every company in anime has touched hentai at some point. Central Park Media had Anime 18, Manga 18, and Be Beautiful Manga labels to print hentai anime, manga, and yaoi manga respectively. Media Blasters got their start with hentai, their first title being Rei-Lan: Orchid Emblem and later created Kitty Media to manage their 18+ products. Then there was ADV’s SoftCel Pictures and RightStuf’s hentai label Critical Mass which is just a visual that… that the imagination takes care of, I’d say.

  Legitimate companies dealing in hentai was a big risk, both when it came to American promiscuity laws and the popular misconception that all anime is cartoon pornography. So, there’s that. America’s uh, kinda fucked up. Here’s an example: In 1999, Jesus Castillo, a clerk at Keith's Comics in Dallas, was accused of promoting obscenity for selling an issue of the Demon Beast Invasion manga to an undercover officer. He was fined $4,000 and sentenced to a year of unsupervised probation after the original six-month prison sentence was suspended, which is insane. First of all, the heft of that sentence; but second of all, the levity we have with what we perceive as sexual crimes. It’s a very confusing balance of things. But, you know, it’s 1999 I guess. 

  So why risk their reputation? I mean, the obvious answer why everyone risks their reputation in America: uh, because it’s profitable. Kitty Media’s president John Sirabella claimed that, by 1998, 30-40% of anime’s total revenue in the U.S. came from hentai. 40%! And it was cheap. It was, it was super cheap. You know, you don’t exactly market pornography with billboards or commercials or expensive activations. So they were spending almost nothing on advertising, but hentai VHS and DVD were among their first products to sell out on the dealers floor at anime conventions every time. 

  So moving on, in 1993 hentai finally made history in the U.S. Central Park Media’s Anime 18 division [Legend of the Overfiend trailer begins] dubbed and released the now infamous Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend in limited theaters on March 11th, [Tailer ends] making it the first animated film to receive the MPAA’s NC-17 rating which had just replaced their old X rating three years earlier in 1990. The film would reach a legendary cult status among porn, science fiction, and horror fans alike. It was also umm, a lot of Americans’ first introduction to umm… [whispered] tentacles. You know- you know tentacles. You’re familiar. The squid? [Whispering ends]

  Okay. 

  [Lofi music]

  This is unfortunately the part where we talk about tentacles...

  To understand tentacles I gotta tell you a little bit about um, about censorship law. This is a, yeah, this is a legal matter. I don’t know what else to tell you, I don’t know how else to prepare you for this. It’s a, it’s a legal matter, so bear with me. I will start by saying tentacles have a long history in Japanese pornography. You may be familiar with the famous “The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife” woodblock print featuring a lady and an octopus doing the thing. It was created around 1814 by none other than legendary Japanese artist Hokusai… you know, the guy who drew that wave that you see everywhere, on all the Uniqlo tee shirts? You know the one. Hokusai’s Wave. If you Google those words, you’ll find it. Anyway, they were far from mainstream but let’s just say they existed in the popular subconscious.

  So, when it comes to porn, Japan had and has some pretty specific guidelines requiring what is off-limits. They put a lot less emphasis on scenario and the content of scenes, and instead they focus on the appearance of genitalia. I’m sure you’re familiar, you know they got the whole pixelated mosaic over the, over the junk and the jingles and the jangles, and pretty much anything else goes. This is in stark contrast to America where seeing those parts is basically the point of adult material, but scenario and content of scenes can sometimes get you in trouble. The one where we run into problems most is portrayal of minors. Obviously. That’s uh, obviously it’s fucked up. Japan, on the other hand, has the same age of consent as us but umm… [sigh], man, oo boy, they do not follow that in hentai. I will say no more than that. This has of course led to a very unique relationship between hentai publishers and their American licensors. Some weird conversations, it gets weird.

  Often American versions of hentai are LESS censored than those in Japan, with the American distributor receiving the cut before the mosaics are added so you see the original art in all its glory. But then they might have to go in and uh, change some other things, like umm… you know, age. Obviously. A character’s age in anime can be kinda ambiguous sometimes, so they usually get away with changing a reference to class to a reference to like a “college” course, but you know, sometimes scenes would have to be cut out if it didn’t convincingly look like two adults. Which it unfortunately does. Frequently. 

  Okay, so back to tentacles. The whole censorship thing is a problem in the hentai industry that many young innovators have tried to work around, often using objects reminiscent of uh… of- of the pe- the penis as substitutes. Along came an enterprising creator named Toshio Maeda. His solution to the uh, to the censorship problem was of course, as we have set up for the past couple paragraphs: tentacles. They were alive, they moved around, but they were not dicks. It feels weird to talk about porn this much and not say the word “dick.” I don’t- why am I using so many euphemisms? I’m just gonna say dick, wherever it feels appropriate. 

  I’m gonna paraphrase from an interview with Maeda in 2002. [Music play throughout] Quote: “At that time pre-Urotsukidoji, it was illegal to create a sensual scene in bed. I thought I should do something to avoid drawing such a sensual scene. So, I just created a creature. His tentacle is not a penis as a pretext. I could say, as an excuse, ‘this is not a penis; this is just a part of the creature.’ You know, the creatures, they don’t have a gender. A creature is a creature. So it is not obscene – not illegal.” 

  Umm… some points were made. The gender thing I feel like is probably… actually, y’know, y’know, that probably, that probably lines up, actually. Depends on how sentient you believe animals are. I guess PETA would disagree. There is- they have a sex, not necessarily a gender, I guess. Huh. Well, look at me learning.

  [Lofi music]

  Okay, as far as I can tell, the first manga to actually get an official license and distribution in the U.S. was, much like Overfiend, a hell of an introduction. Prepare yourselves as I speak this next sentence. Bondage Fairies was released by Antarctic Press under their Venus Press imprint in 1994, following the adventures of Pfil and Pamela, a lesbian fairy couple who act as sort of, uh forest police making sure animals don’t… break the forest law? Where Urotsukidoji introduced many Americans to a multitude of new uses for tentacles, Bondage Fairies was a first introduction for many as well, and I hate having to say these two words next to each other, insect beastiality. Also obviously bondage. I don’t know if that was clear in the title.

  The ‘90s also saw the first eroge making their way to the U.S., a very popular genre of video games in Japan featuring sexually explicit images, often featuring “visual novel” style gameplay where you navigate through different dialogue choices to reach a number of different branching narrative paths, often to pursue a uh, “happy ending” with one of a number of different female characters, usually with a larger overall narrative. If this is news to you, then you might be surprised to learn you’re already a fan of some of them. Eroge are a pretty common source material for mainstream anime actually, usually with the sexually explicit content removed, obviously. Popular examples are YU-NO, Doukyuusei, Rumbling Hearts, and ummm, yes, the entire Fate franchise. Although that shouldn’t have been hard to guess after the uh, mana transfer scene...

  Anyway, the hentai industry was going pretty strong in the ‘90s although that fact was not, it was, you know- it was kept under wraps. A lot of legitimate anime publishers had their hentai labels happily printing, but didn’t exactly want to brag about what proportion of their profits came from porn. Nothing good can last forever, though, because in the mid 2000s when the bubble burst, anime companies started going bankrupt and their hentai licenses along with them.

  SoftCel Pictures, which was spun off from ADV, then closed down in 2005 with many of their titles being acquired by RightStuf’s Critical Mass. Central Park Media followed in 2009, many of its licenses getting split between Critical Mass and Kitty Media. The manga side was even worse. Most hentai publishers were about as small an operation as you can imagine. One example, Icarus Publishing, was responsible for the longest running manga anthology in the U.S., called AG. And he did that all by himself. When he fell ill in 2010 he just couldn’t keep it going anymore and he closed down.

  The field was narrowing, which was really bad for anyone looking to support the industry because piracy is a lot worse in hentai and all other varieties of porn, because it’s hard to get popular advocacy or any sort of regulatory agency on your side when you’re working with stuff that people pretend doesn’t exist. You know, like what do you look like in a courtroom, just arguing for porn? You know? In the ‘90’s, of course. We’re… [exasperated] moderately more sex-positive these days. I guess. 

  [Lofi music]

  Now all this was until one man changed everything...

  Grady: My name is Jacob. I created Fakku while I was in college, it was originally like a fan website, sort of like [how] Crunchyroll originated. And from that we were able to build an audience and prove that there was a market for this type of content outside of Japan. Because before we started doing it officially, there’d been only a few poor attempts to publish hentai legally outside of Japan. I know of all of them, but almost no one does. Because you know, they, that’s how under the radar it was. So with Fakku, we were able to show our partners in Japan and the publishers and the artists most importantly, “hey, you know there’s people willing to support the stuff you’re creating. Manga, anime, comics, games now, we have, but you’re ignoring the market outside of Japan.” And you may have seen scenarios where like a Japanese publisher might block all foreign IP addresses from viewing their website, because they’re like “oh, foreigners are pirates! They’re scum of the Earth, they’re awful.” That was, that was something that we had to deal with early on, to convince these publishers “hey, no. It’s because you forced the market to this- we just want to read your comics, we just want to watch your anime. We just want to fap to this and fap to that; but because you weren’t providing it, you know, people had to find it any way they could. And if you were to provide a means for them to support officially, we think that people would be willing to do that.” So that’s the argument that we made to the publishers when we first signed our first partners, and it’s been going great ever since [Laughs]. 

  The same year Crunchyroll made the switch to a legitimate anime streaming service, Jacob started up his pirate hentai streaming site Fakku, just one of many pirate pages of the era. He’d spend his days going to school and working at a grocery store stocking vegetables thinking about what he’d like the site to look like, and he would spend long nights coding. Just coding. Think about how much coding that goes into all the porn you watch these days. The site kept growing and traffic increased until Jacob started using his student loans to pay for their server cost. It actually got so bad he almost had to shut the site down, but when he relayed this to his followers the community stepped up and donated until he was able to keep the operation running.

  Using Crunchyroll as a model, Jacob made early attempts to go legitimate. After building up a large user base, he started reaching out to the license holders of his sites’ content to see if he could buy legitimate rights, but they never replied. Eventually he would leave college to start working at Bioware and step away from Fakku, handing the operations down to his team. It’s hard to say where his relationship with the site may have gone from there, but everything changed when Jacob received a cease and desist letter from the oldest hentai publisher in Japan, Wanimagazine.

  Grady: So originally they reached out to us. So when I first went to Japan and started talking to publishers, you know obviously we were completely upfront with the history of Fakku, what we were doing, and where we came from. And they were all on board with it, which was cool. Because at first, you know the first meeting I had I think we, I was invited out there by this big Japanese publisher, and I was just like “man, are they just going to like, arrest me?” But you know, I went out there and I explained my thoughts and they were like “okay, let’s do it.” And I’m like “umm, really?” And they’re like “yeah, let’s do it.” And they signed us our first licenses, and one of the first things I said was “okay, but you gotta understand. America like, we don’t do that censorship stuff, so like all those black bars and mosaics and giant glowing penises and stuff that they have in Japan, like we’ve gotta get rid of that. Is that possible? Can you get us uncensored stuff?” And they’re like “yeah. We can get you uncensored stuff.” And I was like “REALLY?!” And they’re like “yeah.” And it turns out that with the censorship, it’s actually all produced completely uncensored originally, and the publishers will then go and add varying levels of censorship, those black bars, those mosaics, depending on the medium that the comic or anime is being distributed from, because there’s different laws in Japan. So if it’s sold online it will have some level of censorship, if it’s sold in paper it’ll have a different level, and then if it’s sold internationally it’ll have no censorship at all. So they were on board with no censorship, and I was like “okay, awesome,” but like I hate DRM, right? Like I want to be able to download the comics, read them on my iPad, read them on my phone, read them on whatever, I was like “can we get a deal with no DRM requirements at all?” And they were like “okay,” and I was like “what the fuck? Really?!”

  Interviewer: Damn!

  Grady: Yeah, so like I ended up leaving Japan with honestly the best publishing deal probably any company has ever gotten.”

  After they had seen the size of the Fakku community, Wanimagazine surprised Jacob with how receptive they were to the idea of working with him, even allowing a slow transition from pirate site to legitimacy rather than cutting out all his pirated content immediately. In 2014, Jacob made the announcement Fakku was going legit.

  Grady: They were totally on board with it, obviously. Because it was like the both of best worlds. When we started removing fan content there were people who were upset, because, you know, it’s hard to convince someone to pay for something that they’ve never paid for before. Like hentai? Like, no one had ever been saying “that thing you’ve been fapping to, those thousands of things you downloaded on to your computer, those are actually like worth money. Like that’s, like some artist created that and he’s like trying to get by in Japan, he’s trying to make a living, he’s trying to survive, and like that thing is his livelihood. So you should pay for that.” So that was an early difficulty for us, to convince people to pay for this stuff.

  It was a predictably rocky transition, but Jacob was right on the mark. Once fans knew they had a way to officially source hentai, they were willing to pay up to support the creators… and that was what Jacob really wanted.  

Grady: I think that one of the most powerful things about Fakku is our brand. Like I’ve always tried to position it as not a porn company, which sounds weird, but it’s always been important to me to not you know be running a porn company for a few reasons, but like really we wanted to create a brand that was more of a lifestyle brand, where it’s like people want to support you know whatever Fakku’s doing, and right now it happens to be a lot of hentai manga. But you know we also recently as of just a year ago started publishing our first games. And then we got into anime. And then we’re getting into original Western comics. So we’re publishing a few artists from outside of Japan, and having them create original chapters for Fakku, and adult chapters. And then we’re bringing those to Japan and saying “hey, we work with this artist. They want to have their book published in Japan, is that something we can do?” So we’re like almost reverse publishing, you know Western artists in Japan, which is cool. So we’re doing a lot of crazy things. 

  Jacob did something no one in the industry had done before, pulling hentai out of the dark shadows to build a real community. Fakku isn’t the 18+ print of an official brand, Fakku is the brand. Jacob didn’t treat being a fan of hentai as anything to be ashamed of, but something to celebrate as a community, and the fandom responded. There is a fandom. Need I remind you, there is a fandom. For hentai. And all things anime. Fakku has active social media, hosts convention panels with special guests, industry parties with DJs like Anamanaguchi, art shows, and even custom skateboards. Fakku’s kinda a lifestyle brand that, it turns out, many people are proud to represent… even if it’s in the form of a- of an ahegao t-shirt.

  He also never stopped branching out. Since going official, Jacob set up a streaming agreement with Kitty Media, the lone survivor of hentai publishers after the bubble burst and the final resting place of many licenses acquired from its fallen brethren. He also worked to acquire licenses to older visual novel ero games and Fakku even published the first ero guro manga in the west… and that, if you don’t know is like umm… it’s like a portmanteau of erotic and grotesque and umm… my description of the matter ends there. You got Google for that.

  Jacob even launched a sub-label for non-pornographic manga called Denpa Books, which I guess is a huge departure from every other company that’s ever done this, and he used that to print niche licenses like the acclaimed Kaiji and ero adjacent works such as Inside Mari, Super Dimensional Love Gun, and even Maeda’s Legend of the Overfiend manga. 

  Since going legit, Fakku has become massive. 

  Grady: Like we’ve published ourselves over 1,000 manga artists. We now work with I think seven or eight hentai manga publishers in Japan. Pretty much everyone, we work with in some manner. 

  So despite all my hesitance to engage in uh, in hentai consumption in general, and across the board, I will say that there is a legitimate audience for it, and you know, whatever is your thing is your thing. And if that’s your thing, there’s a place to consume it, and there’s a rich history behind it. Surprisingly. It’s not just tentacles for tentacles’ sake. It’s a thing that makes sense, unfortunately. You almost wish it didn’t. But it does. It does. 

  So with that, in conclusion, I leave you… with this: just you know, just like the things you like, and umm maybe, I dunno, for whatever reason do some research and look into why you like those things and why they exist. 

  This has been Anime in America. I’m your host, Yedoye Travis. Tune into the next one. 

  Goodbye!

  [Lofi music]

  Thank you for listening to Anime in America presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please go to Crunchyroll.com/animeinamerica to watch literally NONE of the things we just mentioned! 

  Special thanks to Jacob Grady from Fakku for joining us. And you’ve heard it before, but please leave us a review and rate the show so more people can discover it, or just share it with a friend.

  This episode is hosted by me, Yedoye Travis and you can find me on Instagram at ProfessorDoye, or Twitter @YedoyeOT. Researched and written by Peter Fobian, edited by Chris Lightbody, and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian, and Jesse Gouldsbury. Additional research and writing by Mamoudou N’Diaye. 

  By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[charleskenny]

Increasing the Voice of Minorities in Animation

Many industries lack minority participation and animation is no different. How can the industry do more to increase the voice of minorities in animation and initiate changes now that will improve the situation over the long-term?

The Three Hurdles to Overcome

To understand how to increase the voice of minorities in animation means to understand the problems that are stopping those voices from being heard in the first place. Three hurdles stand in the way of minority voices in animation, and until they are overcome, we are unlikely to see much real improvement.

Too Much Comedy

Comedy dominates animation from pre-school all the way up to big-budget features. It dominates internationally and domestically. To succeed in the animation business is to have a successful comedy under your belt. Only then can you get license to explore, and even then you may only get one chance.

The problem is that comedy sells, and sells big. Comedy has universal appeal and is therefore the most profitable. Any other genre is probably going to come up short. The proliferation of comedy simply leaves little room for much else and unfortunately it’s in other areas where the opportunity to hear minority voices often lies.

Too Much Dilution of Ideas

The creator-driven boom of the early 1990s resulted in many raw and potent ideas reaching the screens of millions. That success eventually became guarded, and networks began to dilute and water down ideas to fit what the audience expected, not what it deserved.

Today, media companies are anemic to risk. Minority ideas are risky for a variety of reasons. So what’s a corporation to do? Risk losing their shirt, or water things down enough to make them palatable to the largest audience possible? As Elizabeth Ito notes, studios need to stop making things for the “suburban families and blogger moms” of the world and modifying ideas to suit. Those groups are the least risky because they can be the least open to new ideas. They are comfortable in their suburban lifestyle, and anything strange is to be approached with caution. They have predictable tastes.

Minorities can have some of the strongest and innovative ideas and artistic creations you can imagine but they often lie beyond the pale of what the groups above expect. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that networks and studios will water down such ideas to fit their intentions. They’ve certainly done it with ‘urban’ art.

American Culture is Asphyxiating

There is a tendency of Americans to perceive the rest of the world as being, well, like America. This is less to do with willful ignorance and more to do with blissful ignorance. American culture is potent in other countries, but is inescapable in America itself.

Minorities often come from immigrant backgrounds if they are not immigrants themselves. American society demands conformity and actively works to stamp out foreign identities; instead reducing it to ‘heritage’ status. To be a minority voice means to speak differently which is often conflated with being foreign.

American audiences believe foreign cultures are exactly like they’ve been led to believe. For example, to be Irish in America means to actually say ‘top o’ the morning’ to people and if you don’t they will say it to you as a form of misplaced well-meaning. To artistically speak with an Irish creative voice in America means to comply with these expectations lest you become unintelligible. To speak as a minority in American animation is to conform to expectations which stifles an individual’s true voice.

What Has to Change

What has to change is not simply a matter of overcoming the hurdles above. Doing so would not necessarily increase it. Many things need to change and they are tied to socioeconomics, demographics, and culture. There is no magic cure, there is no easy fix, and most importantly of all, it will not come quickly.

The Privilege of a Formal Artistic Qualification

To hold any formal qualification is to be privileged. To hold one from a 3rd-level institution is to be especially privileged. Minorities are overwhelmingly over-represented in lower socioeconomic classes but are the least likely to attempt much less attain a university degree. The value of an art degree should not be discounted, but it should not be upheld as the required entrance to an artistic career.

Young minority artists are susceptible to exclusion from art school for many reasons besides financial cost. They may also have lacked the resources throughout their educational career due to underfunding of art programs in public schools. For many, the possibility of even applying for art school is remote.

On top of this the emphasis that studios place in an art degree means that many minority individuals are automatically excluded from consideration for positions. Sure the value of a portfolio is important, but the qualification give you a head start in both skills, and critically, contacts. CalArts is the pantheon of an education in animation thanks to its proximity and relationships with major Hollywood studios. Yet its exclusivity, and eliteness benefit only those who can a) afford it, and b) are fortunate enough to have had years of preparation prior to entry.

Animation programs exist at other institutions, but they are no different. Here in Baltimore, MICA offers an animation program but how many minority students can stomach the $150,000 cost of a degree that doesn’t even touch on housing and living costs?

Student loans play into the picture too. If a minority individual is lucky enough to attend an art school, they are likely to have student loans that must be paid back. The old adage that the majority of journalism graduates work at Starbucks is not so far removed from the truth as one might think. Loans do not have terms that require a carer in the chosen field in order to pay them back. They demand money from any source and many a student in any discipline finds themselves cut off from a desired career because the need for money trumps the ability to wait for the required opportunity.

Studios also perpetuate the situation through internship programs. I’ve personally taken issue with the widespread use and abuse of internships within the animation industry, particularly in New York City. A poor member of a minority (gradate or not) cannot afford to work for free; many wealthier individuals can, and do to their professional benefit.

Until the vanity sheen placed on formal educational qualifications is eliminated, many members of minorities will struggle to carve out a career in art for themselves.

The Urge to Repeat What’s Come Before

Were you excited for the new series of DuckTales? How about the new Looney Tunes shorts? Have you ever noticed how a lot of animated content is recreated or rebooted? The landscape is littered with them and a good half are probably made by Hanna-Barbera trying to resuscitate something they own.

Repeating what came before stifles minority voices because the new entity, regardless of its intentions or crew, will always be framed within the context of the original. Characters can be altered, new storylines written, but the overarching idea cannot. Such ideas are also least likely to come from a member of a minority to begin with.

Recreating old ideas also takes away the opportunity to create something from a new idea. Noelle Stevenson’s reboot of She-Ra may be great and feature a strong LGBTQ+ voice, but how does it compare to Steven Universe and the voice of creator Rebecca Sugar? Stevenson’s series will always be a version of ‘She-Ra’ whereas as Steven Universe is unambiguously Sugar’s.

What Stories Are Being Told

The stories in American animation in particular are primarily middle-class in plot, setting, and tone; reflecting the backgrounds of their creators and target demographics for better or worse.

For the record, the content of the story is not the same as the voice. Disney have made themselves the poster child for tackling stories featuring minority characters in films such as Moana. But does that film tell a Polynesian story with an authentic Polynesian voice or does it merely pay lip service to Polynesian culture with a decidedly American story and American voice?

I firmly believe it is the latter.

American media also continues to tell the same stories they’ve always have. Feature films in particular are notoriously homogeneous in their stories. Superheros and their overt masculinity currently rule the box office roost. Female stories told with a female voice are still hard to come by. TV shows still trot out the same tired cliched formats and if you don’t believe me, Central Park is getting rave reviews.

The story that’s told is about much more than the plot, or the characters, or the setting. It’s about the context. the juxtaposition between The Sopranos and The Wire demonstrate it perfectly. One is a show about a New Jersey mafioso told through the voice of an outsider looking in. In contrast, The Wire is a show about cops and robbers but speaks with the authentic voice of a Baltimorean lamenting the problems in their city. Which show has a better story is debatable, but which show tells it in a special way is obvious.

How to Increase the Voice of Minorities in Animation

The current situation is far from ideal. Minorities are hampered almost every step of the way towards spreading their voice in animation. What can be done to improve things?

Implement Apprenticeship Programs

A good first step would be to implement apprenticeships for younger artists. There is no good reason to force younger artists (minority or not) into school for years on end to get a qualification. Why not train them in the basics on the job and pay them a wage too? If they need classes, their schedule could be adjusted, or a few night classes at a local college would work. They certainly did at Disney in the early years.

Apprenticeships would give minorities the ability to acquire technical skills while still being productive, and reduce the risk they undertake to acquire the knowledge necessary for an artistic career. They would also give many youngsters the leg-up they so desperately need to get a career started and which universities claim to provide but so often do not. With a secure method of attaining skills, a young artist would be better situated to progress their career, and ultimately be better placed to provide their unique voice to a production.

Minorities, and especially women minorities, are challenged in progressing their careers. Studios should be aware of this and be willing to maintain systems and processes that not only encourage them in their careers, but enable them to do so as well. Implementing apprenticeships would be the change that’s need in the education of artists.

Realise That Representation Does Not Equal A Voice

For a long time that continues up to the present day, representation was seen as a way of providing minorities with the encouraging voice they needed to see on-screen. The Simpsons poked fun at the token minority in everything nearly 30 years ago and sadly not much has changed.

The Simpsons also caught the short end of the stick for the character of Apu; said to represent a perpetuated stereotype performed by an non-Indian voice actor. Except Apu was written by a bunch of Harvard graduates and he spoke their voice just like every other character on the show. Apu was never mean to represent Indians, he was merely an Indian character that became a representative of Indian culture on that show.

Merely representing minorities on-screen does them a disservice because such characters speak with the voice of their writers, directors and producers in addition to their actors. To provide representation only is to sidestep the issue when so many crew and backstage roles are not filled with minority individuals making their contributions to a production.

Representation can provide the necessary voice when used in conjunction with other roles behind the screen. Realising this and working to ensure that work behind also permits minority voices to be heard is the challenege.

See Past the Fad

As contained on Wordnik

Police brutality and racial inequality in the United States are not a fad. They are systemic problems existing for many decades and will continue to plague society for some time to come even if change happens now.

What certainly is a fad however, is the reaction to current events many people are choosing to exhibit. Changing your social media avatar, tweeting in support, even attending a protest or two does not induce change. Change occurs over time, and it can be a long time to boot. Martin Luther King laboured for nine years between the Montgomery bus boycotts and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington DC. He was dedicated to his cause and put in the hours and energy to achieve change. He kept pushing despite pressure and threats from many quarters to stop. If he was to hold his speech this year, he would have had to start his campaign when Steven Spielberg’s Tintin abomination was released to theaters. Do you even remember when that film came out?

Many corporations and animation studios are ‘standing by’ their black employees but what does that actually entail? Have they always stood by, or are they just exploiting the opportunity being presented as a PR exercise? Further to the point, a single gesture gets a message across but is instantly forgotten. Where is the long-term commitment? More critically, who is going to follow up on the studios in a few years let alone hold them to account if they don’t? As the saying goes, talk is cheap.

To be aware of the failings of the animation industry to appreciate and promote minority ideas and voices is to lament the many many lost opportunities allowed to pass by. Change can come, but it will take time and effort that extends far beyond current events and will require a commitment from more than just the powers that be. It will require seeing past the fad surrounding current events and seeing the long-term future where progress is like a growing child. Day-to-day changes are imperceptible, but over time are readily apparent.

Conclusion

I’d like to end the post on a positive note.The voice of minority creators may not be as loud as it should, but its members who have been afforded the opportunity to speak have roared. Jorge Gutierrez is proud of his Mexican origins and imbues his creations with the soul of Mexican culture. El Tigre and the Book of Life are just two that spoke in his voice with success and appeal. Aaron McGruder used The Boondocks to not only speak in a black American voice, but his very unique black American voice. The result transcended cultures and brought something to many who had never experienced anything like it before. Similarly Noelle Stevenson and Rebecca Sugar brought unique queer voices to their respective TV shows. LeSean Thomas and Ian Jones-Quartey have forged careers for themselves too.

Countless others work behind the scenes and we can’t discount their contributions either, no matter how small.

The shift from monoculture to niche culture affords minorities the opportunity to create animation in a way that’s never existed before. We have to recongise the opportunity in front of us to increase the number of the minority voices we hear within the animation industry. This is not a screed for quotas or enforced participation. It is a plea for the industry to see the ability of minority voices to improve and progress the industry as a whole and to change the status quo for everyone’s benefit.

Originally published at https://animationanomaly.com/2020/06/06/increasing-the-voice-of-minorities-in-animation/

[mariabblackyr2]

Manifesto Launch

Grayson Perry - controversial, political statements, gender fluid, has done quite a lot of documentation on art - created an alter ego with a manifesto, the manifesto into an artistic endeavour - the poster is portrayed as fun but looking closer deeper than that - political ethos  through art 

‘A manifesto is a public declaration, often political in nature, of a group or individual’s principles, beliefs, and intended courses of action.’

All manifestos contradict each other

Red Alan's Manifesto by Grayson Perry, 2014

10 game-changing art manifestos - ‘artistic intentions’ - Diebenkorn

Joshua Reynolds - ‘founding test of the British painting theory’ - painters work was more than what they saw before them 

The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, FT Marinetti, 1909

‘1. We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness.

2. Courage, boldness, and rebellion will be the essential elements in our poetry.

3. Up to now, literature has extolled a contemplative stillness, rapture and reverie. We intend to glorify aggressive action, a restive wakefulness, life at the double, the slap and the

punching fist.’

F.T. Marinetti, 1909

The futurists published quite a lot of manifestos to communicate their political views - supported fascism, strongly patriotic

Up until 1909 the manifestos were mostly political however these manifestos focused more on the art as well as politics, inspired by the technology of the new age.

‘Futurism was an Italian art movement that aimed to capture the dynamism and energy of the modern world in art. The Futurists were well versed in the latest developments in science and philosophy, and particularly fascinated with aviation and cinematography. Futurist artists denounced the past, as they felt the weight of past cultures was extremely oppressive, particularly in Italy. The Futurists instead proposed an art that celebrated modernity and its industry and technology.’

Elasticity (detail), (1912), Umberto Boccioni.

Photographed these new and wonderful machines with the new technology emerging

As early as 1922, László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) began to make metal sculptures. He believed that new materials called for a new kind of art, and metal was appealing for its connection to industry and modern machinery.

László Moholy-Nagy Dual Form with Chromium Rods

Following the futurist came the dada manifesto, - started political stance, believed the politicians were responsible for the first world war - posters, writing, performance and photography part of dada - rejected everything that was an ‘ism against nationalism and rationalism

Jean Hans Arp, bois gravé et collage pour la couverture de Dada 4-5, 1919

Hannah Höch - Known for political collages and photomontage, appropriated and rearranged images , making comment on consumerist society, rejected the german government 

Her work is bold in its outlook

Hannah Höch, Für ein Fest gemacht (Made for a Party), 1936

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919

Man Ray - applied this movement to photography, pushed the boundaries, push the photogram medium further than it had gone before.

Man Ray, Rayograph, 1922

‘The Surrealists sought to overthrow the oppressive rules of modern society by demolishing its backbone of rational thought. To do so, they attempted to tap into the “superior reality” of the subconscious mind. “Completely against the tide,” said Breton, “in a violent reaction against the impoverishment and sterility of thought processes that resulted from centuries of rationalism, we turned toward the marvellous and advocated it unconditionally”. - Andre Brenton 

From the surrealist manifesto - “Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express...the actual functioning of thought...in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.” influenced by Fraud

Max Ernst. Loplop Introduces Members of the Surrealist Group. 1931

Lee Miller, Portrait of Space, Nr Siwa, Egypt, 1937.

Situationist International - Were a revolutionary alliance of European avant- garde artists, writers and poets formed at a conference in Italy in 1957. - were originally artistic focus but shifted towards a more political stance

Guy Debord -his notion the ‘spectacle is key to understand the SI - SI was directly lead by Guy Debord 

The situationist were in the middle of the student riots in France 

The long term effect of SI - provide some of the most revolutionary theories of the time - have impacted art - ideas cans till be seen in art today

Peter Kennard - studying during the height of the situationists - involved in the campaign for the nuclear disarmament

Peter Kennard, Haywain with Cruise Missiles 1981 & Defended to Death 1983

Krzysztof Wodiczko, - projections onto political buildings with a political meaning

Krzysztof Wodiczko, Hirschhorn Museum Washington DC 2018 and Projection on to South Africa House 1985

The Guerilla Girls - formed in 1984, for the lack of females portrayed within art - working to expose sexual and racial discrimination in the art world - mostly New York 

They wear masks and assume pseudonyms to hide their identity

Their manifesto comes in the form of famous slogan artworks

Guerrilla Girls, [no title], 1985–90.

Guerrilla Girls, The Advantages Of Being A Woman Artist, 1988

The Stuckist Manifesto, 1999

‘Established in 1999, the British group the The Stuckists proclaimed themselves to be “Against conceptualism, hedonism and the cult of the ego-artist.” The movement was formed by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to celebrate and promote figurative painting in a reaction to the proliferation of conceptual art. Every year, the Stuckists famously demonstrate outside Tate Britain as the winner of the Turner Prize is announced.

1. Stuckism is the quest for authenticity.

2. Painting is the medium of self-discovery.

3. Stuckism proposes a model of art which is holistic.

4. Artists who don’t paint aren’t artists.

5. Art that has to be in a gallery to be art isn’t art.’

The Stuckists, 1999

Protest  outside the Tate when the Turner Prize is happening

Outside the Turner Prize, Tate Britain, 2005: Stuckists demonstrate against the purchase of Chris Ofili's The Upper Room. The cutout is Tate chairman Paul Myners.

Manifestos within Photography 

Group f/64 - their name means extended depth of field, focused on the clarity of the un-manipulated photographic image, committed to practice ‘pure’ photography

"Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form." —Group f/64, Manifesto, August 1932

The original 11 members of Group f.64 were Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Henry Swift, John Paul Edwards, Brett Weston, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson, Sonya Noskowiak, and Preston Holder.

Dunes, Oceano, Edward Weston, 1936.

Two Callas, Circa 1925, Imogen Cunningham.

Magnum Photos - ‘Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually.’ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Founded after WW2, most important art agency - some of the most famous photographs in history have been taken by magnum photographers

Robert Capa US troops assault Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings (first assault), 1944.

“Capa was the boss because, for one thing, he kept on the lookout for stories for all the Magnum photographers. But equally vital were his experience, generosity, connections, aggressiveness, and the vision he had for Magnum, which kept us going. Since few of us were married, we had much time to spend together. We talked a lot, but rarely about photography. Our discussions were more often about politics or philosophy or racehorses, pretty girls, and money. We constantly looked at each other’s work, and criticism could be tough if the work did not measure up to the expected standard.” - Inge Morath

Magnum photographs aren't always political stories - society and peoples, places of interest, news events, disasters and conflict

Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1932

An American young girl, Jan Rose Kasmir, confronts the American National Guard outside the Pentagon during the 1967 anti-Vietnam march. (1967) Marc Riboud

Henry Luce wanted to turn the magazine - “To see life; to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things — machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work — his paintings, towers and discoveries; to see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed...” - manifesto for evolution ion of magazine 

Margaret Bourke -White -’ What the editors got from Bourke- White was a human document of American frontier life & the photo essay format was born.’ - took photographs of the community as well as the dam.

‘Photographer Margaret Bourke-White had been dispatched to the Northwest to photograph the multimillion dollar projects of the Columbia River Basin. What the editors expected were construction pictures as only Bourke-White could take them. What the editors got was a human document of American frontier life which, to them at least, was a revelation.” (time.com)’

Workers on Montana's Fort Peck Dam blow off steam at night, 1936.

Cindy Sherman Interview 

‘What are your three top tips for becoming an artist? Try to forget everything you learned about making art. Find a group of like-minded artists or creative people to hang out with. Take chances with what you do, make things that no one but you will ever see, unless it turns out so good you want to share it. Why do you make art? It’s my life and it’s what I’m most passionate about. And it’s fun! What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? Find inspiration in reading’

Cindy Sherman, Untitled A 1975

Anthropcene - a collaborative group, grow an environmental debat, raise awareness of what is normally the unseen, 

The project’s starting point is the research of the Anthropcene Working Group, an international body of scientists who argue that the Holocene epoch ended around 1950, and that we have officially entered the Anthropcene in recognition of profound and lasting human changes to the Earth’s system.

Lithium Mines #1, Salt Flats, Atacama Desert, Chile, 2017

Gregory Crewdson - 

‘Gregory Crewdson is a photographer, but he calls himself a storyteller. He has

spoke of his belief that “every artist has one central story to tell,” and that the the artist's work is “to tell and retell that story over and over again,” to deepen and challenge its themes. True to this, Crewdson’s most recent body of work, Cathedral of the Pines, shares the aesthetic that has defined his career”

The Shed, 2013, Cathedral of the Pines, Gregory Crewdson

Sylvie McNamara , Paris Review, 2016’

His photographs and work aligns with his ‘manifesto

What's the purpose of an Artistic Manifesto in the 21st Century?

’Can refer back to the work you are creating, nail down your thinking ,nails down a plan, opportunity to reach larger audiences 

The Holstee Manifesto - had been working for big corporations  - wanted to get our and create an ethical company - their ethos, wrote a manifesto to make new company and make it clear what the plan was - they then put the manifesto online as a poster and the Washington post picked it up - started selling posters of manifesto - moved it into a moving image piece 

Examples of other manifesto posters:

[swirlingdisobedience]

Post-truth

“Truth” is of no small importance to human affairs, yet it has been and remains a contested category. Its status shifts radically through time, place, religion, discipline —and today, social platform. Truth can be definite and mercurial, divine and political. As secularism, cosmopolitanism and positivism enter a moment of crisis, and as information seems to be ever more available – while also subject to algorithmic modification – anxieties about the status of truth and the transparency of information are on the rise.

“Post-truth” was the 2016 Oxford English Dictionary word of the year, denoting “circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. ”The crisis in objectivity that this new word unveils has been accompanied by an unprecedented proliferation of homemade images that excel the art of “remixology”,the “practice of recombining preexistent content”.These images result in often-fake contents that circulate both virally and ephemerally online. The “post-truth phenomenon”, however, is not only fuelled by low-tech and intimate creativity, but also by technologically sophisticated and politically driven techniques of image creation, alteration, and destruction. These sustain electoral agendas, responses to catastrophe, and affective relationships to power holders.”

 (Reality Machines:An Art Exhibitionon Post-TruthMara Polgovsky Ezcurra)

“A range of artistic acts and interventions meant to challenge the way the truth is presented in different socio-political and economic contexts.

Works that reflect an approach that seeks to act subversively outside the artistic context. Theorist Carrie Lambert-Beatty calls this artistic genre "Parafiction" – a term that denotes the use of techniques of deception and fraud, fabricated identities, impersonation, or production of fictional narratives and events. The works are acts of political imagination with actual consequences in the real world. They are experienced as fact and, under specific circumstances, are granted the status of truth. Thereby the issue of truth gains great importance.

This artistic genre was developed in Eastern European collectives in the 1970s and 1980s. In these countries, ideology was inseparable from historiography – in the way in which the past is narrated in order to generate revolutions and the constitution of ideas and prophecies. The histories and narratives that inspired those regimes are still in place, refusing to vanish and appearing as a psychological and social force.

Artists influenced by the aesthetics of documentary and mockumentary films and reality shows, aiming to offer a new reading of existing narratives. 

They seek to reveal unknown historical aspects and open up the possibility of multiple narratives with respect to history. 

Unlike other works, which play along the boundary between reality and illusion yet remain in the realm of fictional creations, some of these works tend to diminish the position to the illusory dimension. Prominent among them, yet changing according to context, is the intervention with real historical and cultural aspects.

The artist is able to take part in the dominant political, social, or economic discourse, to appropriate and to consume, yet at the same time to criticize.”

FCNN

FCNN News makes visible what has been made invisible

https://fcnnnews.love/episodes/episode-1-of-fcnnnews-white-institutions-and-representation/

FCNNNews is a news-platform and curatorial project initiated by Feminist Collective With No Name in 2018.

The platform is born out of the adverse misrepresentation of BiPoC’s and Queers in the art industry and mainstream media – everything from “de-ghettoising” areas in urban spaces to traumatic defeat and most importantly to public and institutional racism.

In each episode we have invited artists and organizations who work in the intersection of art and activism, to contribute to the program. Our first episode focuses on white institutions and representation; the following episodes explores the politics of gentrification, resistance and organization.

About FCNN:

Feminist Collective with no name (FCNN) was founded in 2016 by artists Dina El Kaisy Friemuth, Lil B. Wachmann and filmmaker Anita Beikpour.

Their work is rooted in activism and spans over performance, video, text and workshops often in collaboration with other collectives, individuals and institutions across border, nations and disciplines. Together with Space27 in Beirut, FCNN has been hosting the film and research project: Another Dinner, Ruined since 2018.

FCNN’s latest work is their ongoing news programme: FCNNNews.

The collective was initiated in Copenhagen, Denmark and works today between Berlin, NYC, Beirut and Copenhagen.

Dr. Pinkas The Iranian Ambassador in Jerusalem, 2015. 

A group of Jerusalem artists ( collective Hamabul) opened the city’s first unofficial Iranian ‘embassy of culture’. 

Relations between Iran and Israel have been tense since the Iranian Revolution, when Iran closed the Israeli trade mission in Tehran, which had operated as a de facto embassy, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini dubbed Israel “an enemy of Islam”. Iran does not recognise Israel. As president from 2005 to 2103, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke of the Israeli state being “removed from the page of history”. Israeli politicians like Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, have argued the Iranian regime poses a threat to Israel’s existence.

But Israeli and Iranian citizens have often spoken out of a desire for better ties. In 2012 Israeli peace activists launched a social media campaign to foster goodwill by showering Iran with ‘Israel loves Iran’ messages. Pinkas Matan, the mastermind behind the cultural embassy who displayed red and green nail polish symbolising the Iranian flag, doesn’t believe politics should hinder good relations between citizens. Speaking in front of a projector screen playing a documentary about Iranian fashion, Matan announced the goal of the project as sparking communication between peoples, sharing culture and art, and promoting peace.

Paolo Cirio, Daily Paywall, 2014 

- Newsprints and plastic newsrack, dimensions variable.

This artwork appropriated over sixty-thousand news items from the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and The Economist. In Daily Paywall, Cirio redistributed thousands of pay-per-view articles for free by hacking the paywall systems of the three major financial newspapers and proposed a new economic model for circulating news articles. Readers could earn one dollar for responding correctly to quizzes about the featured articles, journalists were invited to claim compensation for their writing, while donors could offer any amount to crowdfund the model. DailyPaywall.com has over 60,000 articles in total; Cirio selected fifteen topics, each featuring eight articles published in 1,000 print copies which were distributed as a free paper available in custom newsracks and bookshops throughout New York City. Eventually, the site was shut down when the publisher Pearson PLC made claims on its own copyrighted material. A year after the legal threat, Pearson sold both The Financial Times and The Economist. As a result, Cirio republished DailyPaywall.com in its entirety. In Daily Paywall, Cirio’s radical action and participatory model elicited reflection on access to knowledge and the contemporary information economy. The work was staged by utilizing the distribution of information as a material to make works of art and to interrogate legal, linguistic, and socioeconomic structures. In the installation, elements of the performance are assembled to document and recall its propositions. Printed copies of the Daily Paywall newspaper are available to the audience, while the flowchart print of the economic model stands as the core concept of the artist’s intervention.

Joana Moll, AZ: Move and get shot. 2012 - 2014. 

AZ: Move and Get Shot  is a net-based piece which shows the landscape of the US-Mexico border in the state of Arizona through the eyes of six surveillance cameras, themselves linked to an online platform. The platform was created by a group of landowners with properties on the US border, whose main purpose was to provide the public with raw images of immigrants crossing the border illegally through their lands. Each camera incorporates a motion sensor, which triggers an image capture when it detects the slightest vibration in the landscape. These pictures were then sent to a server and displayed directly on the web page.While the main goal of the landowners was to disseminate photographs of illegal immigrants, the camera is programmed to detect and record any kind of movement. By delegating the surveillance to a machine, the original human intention is lost, and the original purpose takes shape as a collection of images revealing not only immigrants but all kinds of human, animal, and natural activity.

"they both point towards a possible militarization of civil society through the use of web-based cameras to watch immigrants crossing the border. When combined with interactive media, virtual surveillance becomes a tool to decontextualize the border and crowdsource the police actions to civilians, and, by extension, turn the users into disengaged border officers ...

While the main goal of the landowners is to capture and disseminate photographs of immigrants entering the United States illegally, the camera is programmed to detect and record any movement. By delegating surveillance to a machine, human intention is lost, and the original purpose is transformed, resulting in an accelerated collection of images, which reveal not only immigrants, but all kinds of human, animal and natural activity. Therefore, I conceived AZ: move and get shot with the intention to reveal how this action of monitoring the border becomes something uncontrollable and potentially meaningless.“

Carmen Dobre-Hametner, Consuming History, 2015. 

Consuming History, is a photographic series presented in the group exhibition Inventing the Truth. On Fiction and Reality, representing Romania at the 2015 Venice Biennale. The project documents a participative show which takes place in a former Soviet bunker near Vilnius, Lithuania where a team of actors, employed by a commercial entity, stage traumatic living during communism for locals and foreign tourists alike. The visitors are guided through the following experiences: a propaganda session, KGB interrogation, rudimentary medical examination, fingerprinting, military instruction, shopping in a communist store and having a typical communist meal. The show is not scripted and aims at maintaining a balance between the aggression which is applied to the participants and moments of relieving the tension, thus avoiding its transformation into another Stanford experiment. Rather than reviving the actual horrors of the Soviet past, the Survival Drama (the name of the show) fictionalizes history to the effect of exemplifying a touristic relationship to the past and the transformation thereof in a product ready of consumption.

Amalia Ulman, Excellences and Perfections. 2014. 

On April 19, 2014, Amalia Ulman uploaded an image to her Instagram account of the words "Part I" in black serifed lettering on a white background. The caption read, cryptically, "Excellences & Perfections." It received twenty-eight likes.

For the next several months, she conducted a scripted online performance via her Instagram and Facebook profiles. As part of this project, titled Excellences & Perfections, Ulman underwent an extreme, semi-fictionalized makeover.

She pretended to have a breast augmentation, posting images of herself in a hospital gown and with a bandaged chest, using a padded bra and Photoshop to manipulate her image. Other elements of the makeover were not feigned; she followed the Zao Dha Diet strictly, for example, and went to pole-dancing lessons often.

Through judicious use of sets, props, and locations, Excellences & Perfections evoked a consumerist fantasy lifestyle. Ulman's Instagram account is a parade of carefully arranged flowers and expensive lingerie and highly groomed interiors and perfectly plated brunches. These images are excessive, but also believable—because they're so familiar. For many privileged users, social media is a way of selling one's lifestyle, of building one's brand. And Ulman went to great lengths to replicate the narrative conventions of these privileged feeds, from her use of captions and hashtags (#simple, #cutegasm), to the pace and timing of uploads, to the discerning inclusion of "authentic" intimate or emotional content (a photo of a lover or a moment of despair).

Critic Brian Droitcour has described the rise of social media as a rebalancing of image-making power: the "aestheticization of everyday life in social media…has leeched the authority of image-making from mass media and from art." In an important shift, social media has given far more people than ever before the means to self-publish.

Ulman conceived of Excellences & Perfections as a "boycott" of her own online persona. For three months, she allowed her profiles to be exactly what social media seems to demand—that she be a "Hot Babe." As a result, she garnered the support of other women who had endured similar makeovers or procedures. She earned criticism for seeming to promote retrograde physical ideals, she was the target of cheap flattery, vulgar propositions, and abusive comments. Her close friends were often confused, unable to demarcate the Ulman of social media as a separate fiction, even when she would try to explain the project away from the keyboard. By repeating a lie for three months, she created a truth that she was unable to dismantle.

NO HUMANS INVOLVED: AN OPEN LETTER TO MY COLLEAGUES by HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?

http://thewayblackmachine.com/

"The varied projects of transdisciplinary collective HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? are designed to function as laboratories for the investigation and production of discourse.

HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN?, a multi-disciplinary arts collective made up of 45 artists who have lived and worked together, in various iterations, for the past twenty years. The collective consists of visual artists, writers, poets, composers, academics, filmmakers and performers from around the world who collaborate across disciplines and cities. Projects conceived and created by this transnational collective ultimately function as laboratories for investigation, production and discourse.

This Web Experience is

Curated

by Richie Adomako, Christa Bell and Sienna Shields

Forum N.H.I.: Knowledge for the 21st Century. vol. 1, no. 1, Fall 1994.

You may have heard a radio news report which aired briefly during the days after the jury’s acquittal of the policemen in the Rodney King beating case. The report stated that public officials of the judicial system of Los Angeles routinely used the acronym N.H.I. to refer to any case involving a breach of the rights of young Black males who belong to the jobless category of the inner city ghettoes. N.H.I. means “no humans involved.”

Stephen Jay Gould argues that “systems of classification direct our thinking and order our behaviors.” [Gould, 1983] By classifying this category as N.H.I. these public officials would have given the police of Los Angeles the green light to deal with its members in any way they pleased. You may remember too that in the earlier case of the numerous deaths of young Black males caused by a specific chokehold used by Los Angeles police officers to arrest young Black males, the police chief Darryl Gates explained away these judicial murders by arguing that Black males had something abnormal with their windpipes. That they had to be classified and thereby treated differently from all other North Americans, except to a secondary degree, the darker-skinned Latinos. For in this classificatory schema too all “minorities” are equal except one category that of the peoples of African and of Afro-mixed descent who, as Andrew Hacker points out in his recent book, are the least equal of all.

“Certainly,” Hacker writes, in Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (1992) “all persons deemed to be other than white, can detail how they have suffered discrimination at the hands of white America. Any allusions to racist attitudes and actions will find Cherokees and Chinese and Cubans agreeing with great vigor ... yet ...members of all these intermediate groups have been allowed to put a visible distance between themselves and Black Americans.”

[queernuck]

Reviving the XFL

With the proliferation of early-2000s aesthetics in net art, and the more general reterritorialization of the turn between the Nineties and the Noughties through fashion houses mimicking (or effectively upscale thrifting) the aesthetics of skate culture, Nü Metal, Halo, Screamo, Limewire, Metalcore, it was perhaps but a matter of time until the rumors of an XFL revival came into being. And over the past week we have seen just that, a series of discovered trademarks, denials that function as affirmations, innuendos that seem to indicate the return of the XFL on the horizon. There is a certain nostalgia for the XFL, born out of the same kind of libidinal pooling that one finds in the more general realization of wrestling as “Sports Entertainment” on a level equivalent to the metagame of Fantasy Football, the creation of a fiction developed out of the hyperreal, the two related to their supposed-origins in a remarkably similar fashion. That the initial excitement about the XFL has generated a great deal of attention, but a more careful look at the situation indicates that the league will hold little of what is fondly remembered from the XFL, and will instead replicate its worst failures.

This is not the first wave of trademarks related to the XFL to appear recently, as multiple XFL-related trademarks were reconstructed in simulacrum for ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary on the league. Looking back, the marketing of the XFL is hopelessly dated, specifically because of the NFL of the present day. A sort of naïvete surrounds any look back at the XFL, as the broken bones and separated shoulders healed over time, while the realization of the prevalence of CTE among former NFL players is presenting the immediate question of what the future of football can hold. This is a discussion which I will continue later, one central to my larger discussion of the XFL’s place in late capitalist identity: first I wish to discuss the structure of the nostalgic remove that is being employed to look back at the first half of the last decade.

The year 2000, in a way, has become a sort of year of innocence, a year that stands in relief of 9/11 as impossibly purified, as the year in which the initial structuring of a decade that would mimic the implosion of the Twin Towers would occur. The XFL ties into this, certainly, but more generally it is a singular point within a larger structure of postironic critique: the way that it begins creating the environment from which we received artists such as Gucci Mane, Lil Peep, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, the way that the Cocaine of the 80s and the Ecstasy of the 90s are soothed by the Xanax and Oxycodone of the years since is absolutely all contained within the development of drug scenes, music scenes, illegal gun clubs and ill-founded militias. The spectre of the terrorist and the school shooter, the ways in which identification with contradiction and offering “critical support” against American imperialism have been part of the most basic acts of navigating identity within these times all must be taken into account when discussing the field of music, sports, fashion, and schizoanalytic development within the virtual. Vince Carter’s “Le Dunk De La Mort” at the 2000 Summer Games is part of defining the space we find ourselves in now: in a single moment, an American known as “Air Canada” ended the NBA career of a Frenchman drafted to play in New York City. The Virtual has never been more fully realized, the augmentation of reality through the digital is so clumsy and yet so ubiquitous not because technology lags, but because it makes clear that the digital is already present within the Virtual without the augmentation. The way in which the digital structures the intensities of the Virtual means of exchange we find so vital to postmodern life is too uncomfortably clear in the augmentation of reality: its influence is too Real.

The perception of a certain sort of Real in spaces such as wrestling, the creation of “sports entertainment” and the gleeful acceptance of hyperreality by wrestlers and athletes alike is vitally tied to this. The greatest Face-Heel turn of the 21st Century was likely that of LeBron James, eventually undoing the terms on which he had originally departed in his return to Cleveland, the King being the defining star of the NBA in a way only Kobe and Jordan can rival. The schizophrenic final days of Brett Favre, playing a surprisingly substantial stint with the Minnesota Vikings before spiraling off into irrelevance with the Jets, only to eventually re-emerge as a Packers Legend, and nothing more. The defection of Ilya Kovalchuk to the KHL from the NHL, a complete reversal of the defections that so deeply defined the NHL only a decade and a half before. In the space of the Virtual, where an athlete must create a personae for themselves, must maintain the kayfabe of the sport, they often look to the sorts of acts found in aesthetic definition in wrestling for inspiration.

Conversely, wrestling has placed a great deal more emphasis on the way in which it can mimic the unpredictability, the storyline, the technicality of sport: it is performance, but performance upon the body, it is a specific means through which the body is traumatized toward the viewer in order to create an effect more genuine than the intentional, conspicuous trauma of UFC matches. In many ways, the WWE feels more “real” as it follows the expectations of the body as projection, the Oedipal dramas of the squared circle played out upon it rather than being realized in the direct confrontation that MMA requires. MMA itself is a sport realized in the hyperreal, as a sort of nondenominational violence which eventually ends in either brilliance or profound disappointment. The WWE relies on the same sort of thrill as a dunk contest, or even more appropriately a Home Run Derby: there is a specifically agreed-upon terms on which the characters-at-hand meet, and through that one is treated to a spectacle which is not meant to be competition, but to be more than it, which presents itself as more real than it.

Of course, this is not without its toll. Wrestling profoundly breaks the body, over time re-inflicting so many sorts of trauma that the window for many wrestlers to “get over” and make the WWE is incredibly short. Similarly, the NFL is based in replaceability, in the knowledge that a player is, no matter how good, merely one of 1,700 and that there are hundreds to thousands more willing to step in at any given time. This is true with any professional sports league, but the way in which the XFL is poised to revive that is itself rather worrying.

Vince McMahon’s original XFL was supposed to be a development of football as theatrical violence, the thrilling body-breaking of the WWE coming to the gridiron in an incredible release of the libidinal flows around the game, the sort of game where one could admit to “watching for the crashes” or reveling in trauma. That this comes in a year where his friend, President Donald Trump, has criticized the NFL for players protesting on the grounds of racial injustice and police brutality, is hardly surprising. However, that it has been echoed by Trump himself that there is a shift in the NFL, one away from the “proper” play of the game and toward supposedly-pointless penalties, the football of the future mentioned before, is important. 

Questioning what football will look like in the future required John Bois to imagine a postcapitalist world of empty signification, of free-floating semiotics and nanobots that prevent accidental slapstick humor. In 17776, Bois touches on this, at the same time mentioning other things such as the uncertainty of a “catch” as contentious issues in the NFL. The ending to Steelers-Patriots on December 17th, 2017 where an NFL-supported ruling of an incomplete pass overturned what would have likely been a game-winning touchdown for the Steelers is perhaps the best example, in that the test of the “catch” has become an unanswerable one. The Virtual is overcoded by the digital, the incredible detail with which a catch can be determined has made it impossible to meaningfully observe, the standard of doubt, burden of proof, has been made infinitely interpretable. The ball still is in play, and always will remain in play. The NFL must ground itself at once in a sort of codification of formalist rules of interpretation, and the incredible potential for deconstructive reading presented by these rules. When Trump discussed the beauty of an unspecified tackle, and how it was ruined by the interference of a 15 yard penalty he felt undeserved, he opened up the space for McMahon to step in.

Given our current understanding of CTE, and more generally of trauma in football, the XFL would not bill itself as an amplification of violence, but rather as a return to the game as it “should be” absent the radical disparities that it can make clear. Instead, it would function as an apparatus to accept the racialized violence the positionality of the sport so readily structures, and in turn to draw a certain kind of appeal from that. In short, a fascist football league. The artfulness of the NFL is beyond compare, only the NBA can mirror the ways that the NFL shows the potential, the incredible artistic valance of the body. The vocabularies used to describe players like Odell Beckham Jr., Marshawn Lynch, Todd Gurley, even choreographers like Aaron Rodgers on the field or Sean McVay on the sidelines, the dramatic downfall of Johnny Manziel or the sudden brilliance of Carson Wentz; these men are described best in the language of avant-garde theatre and dance rather than conventional, prescriptivist concepts of sport as an empty, uninspired, singular sort of activity. McMahon’s league is unlikely to attract many NFL players, and while the even field-of-play could allow for the occasional spectacular play, the quality will be similar to NCAA football with lower stakes and a lesser entry fee. 

Thus, we reach a point where we realize, just as Linkin Park cannot release another Meteroia, just as the PS2 will never enjoy the feeling of a new release in the way it once did, the shadow of two no-towers will forever loom over us, the revival of the XFL will rely on fascism to assert itself rather than a meaningful realization of what made the notion so exciting. It will be bad football, and one can only hope a handful of those playing it will eventually move to the NFL.

[alasdaircannon-blog]

Identity Politics, or the Ideology of Image Capitalism

The digital modes of production of today’s economy are political at their core: we must ask how our consumption and ideologies are related, and how they support institutional power.

A $700 USD Dior T-Shirt.

Today, there exists a strange state of affairs in the political economy of the West: progressive advocates and the tyrannical megacorporations of late capitalism have reached a state of agreement. Campus activists and college professors, and international media conglomerates, technology and social media companies and entertainment producers have decided to elevate the discussion of identity, and its underlying philosophy of intersectionality to a position of primacy. The progressive brand of identity politics has become one of the dominant expressions of political ideology in Western nations today. A quick browse of an Ivy League sociology curriculum, the Netflix New Arrivals list or the homepage of pretty much any news site confirms this assertion. At first glance, this may seem to be a cause for celebration: ideas that serve to elevate the condition of the oppressed in our society have reached the mainstream. Harmony exists between the educational establishment and Twitter, between Judith Butler and Hollywood. Finally, the institutions of power in our nations have achieved a glorious unity – they form a coherent vector of progress, and hooray for that. Education and entertainment, together at last.

The cynic in me is sceptical of this unity. Typically, the critics of capitalism characterise its ideology as one of radical individualism and exploitation, which serves the attainment and continued security of favourable inequalities for a minority group.  Traditional left-wing politics was the antithesis of this – movements throughout the history of democracy have sought to reform the political system in service of the common good and the reduction of unjust inequality. From this perspective, the confluence of the corporate and the progressive is surprising – it seems that the media sector is happy to espouse and practise modern progressive ideology without a trace of conflict with its capitalistic purposes. Though maybe it is only surprising if we assume that the goals of capitalism and this form of progressive politics are in conflict.

Spoiler: obviously they’re not. If anything, entertainment and news products made with progressive ideology at heart have proven undeniably successful. Indeed, the mode of analysis known as intersectionality has been diffused through the entertainment production / appraisal apparatus. Intersectionality was originally envisioned by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw as a means of examining the compounding oppression experienced by people who are marginalised along multiple axes of their identity. The initial idea has undergone a mutation as it ascended to a position of cultural hegemony: the modus operandi of production is the representation of formerly obscure and marginalised identity groups, while critical appraisal proceeds as a measure of the quality of this representation. Witness the proliferation of the biopic centred on the historic experience and transcendence of categories of identity (Colette, the Keira Knightley film about the French author springs to mind); the adulation of television (the inexplicable popularity of the poorly scripted Dear White People) and music (looking at you, Pitchfork) that explores the intricacies of identity; the spectacle of Black Panther – as much its production process and its existence as the film itself; or the emphasis placed by some critics on the importance of Crazy Rich Asians being triumphant in today’s political climate (hint: it’s only a triumph if you construct adversity for the film by assuming cinema audiences are racist, and that only by the recent efforts of the media establishment have they overcome their prejudice). And don’t forget the sheer quantity of thinkpieces and news articles on the importance of the event and trends that compose this movement: your vague recollections of reading them are forever, baby.

Entertainment is a near-inescapable part of life in our societies today. Many of us spend hours a day effectively labouring for media corporations by devoting our time and attention towards the products of the entertainment industry. A relationship of servitude based on the informal contract of addiction, dependence and boredom. It is no coincidence that progressive politics has shifted focus from the conditions of formal employment to those of our next-greatest inescapable duty. And yet, the conceptual tension remains: why is progressive politics so comfortably situated within the context of the abject isolation we crave as headphones-in binge watchers, where the variety of content on offer basically zeroes the chance that our friends have even heard of the crap we spent all weekend watching. Water cooler conversations over Friends are thankfully preserved and secured forever more – the generous spirit of Netflix and ‘90s sitcoms. Maybe all this simply means that the politics of identity is having its cultural moment – long overdue, and as such, ravenously devoured – and that the corporate sector is profiting from its formerly hidden sentiments. Maybe (100% not my view) socialists have succeeded in their quiet mutiny, and the corporate world is steering us dialectically onwards towards the Marxist end-of-history utopia. Probably not though.

Really, the story seems to make the most sense if we go a step beyond the assumption that identity politics and capitalism are simply coherent. A quick slash with Occam’s razor leads us to a more radical conclusion: identity politics, and its underlying philosophy of intersectionality, is pro-capitalism in nature or operation. What? Progressive politics that propagates the radical individualism and economic inequalities of capitalism? It seems counter-intuitive, and yet, it is clear that the current means of entertainment distribution and consumption enfolds the ideology of intersectionality into the very heart of production.

Several economic circumstances seem to be the culprits of this co-optation. Today, the entertainment economy is best characterised as a form of ‘image capitalism’. By this, I mean that the industry is largely dedicated to the production of digital goods – films, music, images, online news articles – which can infinitely reproduced and distributed at essentially zero cost. Digital products are intangible, and are not distinguished by any physical characteristics: it is the image alone which constitutes the whole of the product. As intellectual property laws necessitate a state of monopolistic competition between images, it is the image distinguished from competing images in conjunction with the surrounding discourse – critical appraisal, thinkpieces and such – that must lure the consumer into engaging with their product. As the digital economy grows, the consumer is faced with continuously expanding product variety. (Instead of buying individual records or CDs, I can now listen to a huge quantity of recorded music for free or at a low cost using Spotify or YouTube.) It is the task of the producer to encourage the consumer to engage with their digital product instead of the near infinite array of alternatives.

Fortunately, Big Data and statistical analysis make this an easy task: the use of the internet and social media allows for the incessant surveillance and the detailed description of consumers and their preferences. The observable characteristics of people – including their sex, gender, race, sexual identity, ethnicity and ability – are documented in full throughout this process. Alongside demographic and psychographic factors, these aspects of one’s identity are then utilised to improve the competitiveness and appeal of production output and marketing. Advertising is literally individualised on the basis of your observable identity. Product design is not yet individualised, and thus proceeds with a relative reliance on categories of identity. As such, there is an economic pressure to refine the infinite variety of images produced into discrete categories on the basis of your observable identity. You’re a neurotic, white, twenty-something male? Here are some Woody Allen films and Father John Misty records. Under this model of production, we are progressively funnelled into the towering pillars of our observable qualities. We are judged not by the content of our character, or intentions, or the complex multiplicities of our internal lives: they are harder to measure than your appearance.

The industrialised discrimination between all labels of identity is therefore an inherent component of the modern production of entertainment. It is not clear that this distinction is value-neutral either. With your permission to speculate for a  moment, I suspect that funnelling effect of identity-based discrimination is deepened over time. The examination of preferences is an iterative process. After products are marketed to consumers on the basis of their identity, their preference for products that are most appealing to that group is fed back into the design process. As this is repeated over time, the aspects of one’s identity that most appeal to people with that identity are exaggerated, both in the products and in the self-conception of individuals with that identity. We become the archetypes of our own preferences, the dogmatic advocates of the virtues of our own groups. The dialectic process of identity formation vis-à-vis our entertainment consumption is one in which the final synthesis is an extreme, compounded version of whatever initial pride we may have in the observable categories of our identities. This outcome is abundantly clear, and is lucidly illustrated time and again in discussions of identity in the media from both conservatives and progressives. The discussion of historic wrongs – a vital element of progressive politics – is frustrated by its proponents, critics and reactionaries because of this exacerbated pride. Our dominant emotion has become one that denies effective communication. Public discussion has descended into condemning denouncements met with sour petulance.

We have arrived at the damned echo chamber of modern political discourse, where the fundamental discursive problem is overidentification with the aspects of our identity which we cannot control.  It is clear that the mode of production itself, and its reliance on discrimination is a material cause. While intersectionality was by no means produced by or for capitalism, its popular manifestation is fundamentally coherent with the statistical model of product design. Thus, the bastardised version of intersectionality – we might call it consumption intersectionality – and concerns over representation are coherent worldviews for an economy driven by marketing that relies on distinction along categories of identity. They justify the current economic practises of the corporate elite that are, as always, directed towards the maximisation of profit rather than the promotion of the common good. The propagation of this ideology is both the consequence of this mode of production, and its justification. What began as an innovative and insightful mode of analysis thus becomes a refinement of the engine of production and increasing inequality in our society. As Crenshaw herself stated, ‘twisting intersectionality to be used against anti-oppression is a form of ideological gentrification’.

Discrimination on the basis of identity is thus a source of enormous economic value under image capitalism. It is not likely to vanish spontaneously, and it is currently a seemingly inescapable aspect of our engagement with consumer society – a perception which perhaps gives rise to the paradox of modern progressivism. The emerging preference for categories of distinction may be driven for the simultaneous need to deconstruct the categories of identity which are said to be oppressive, while advocating for distinction on the basis of the same categories. The hierarchy of identity is preserved under this arrangement, and progressive politics can only take place within a distinctly regressive framework.

The traditional goals of left-wing politics are compromised by this incoherence. As long as observable and measurable markers of identity remain indicators of consumption preference, and as long producers, suppliers and advertisers employ them as such, the categories of race, gender, sexuality, ability and health will exist in perpetuity in our cultural marketplace. There is no hope for a future without discrimination on the basis of these categories in such a society.

Of course, these categories may survive irrespective of corporate action: however, this point will remain speculative while the influence of current statistical models of advertising remains pervasive. One could mount an argument that people exhibit a tendency to self-select into groups based on their observable characteristics. The artistic tradition of postmodernism, with its insistence on the superficiality and the shallowness of distinction attached to an individual subjected to the overwhelming sociocultural forces of late capitalism, would reject this assertion with an ironic smirk. To me, it seems reasonable to strike a compromise between these two points: it is obvious that some proportion of our preferences are socially, psychologically and biologically determined, with the caveats that it is unclear which factors are dominant, that dominance constantly shifts, and that these factors often simultaneously determine the operation of one another. I will put the intricacies of this discussion aside for now, however.

With the power of Big Data and modern statistics, corporations are responsible for answering a vital question: is it appropriate to use observable categories of identity in product design, marketing and consumption, founded as they are on the tenuous edifice of manufactured  or arbitrary differences? To date, this has been unequivocally answered in the affirmative, irrespective of the concerns raised above. Likewise, the response of our society has been the tacit or unknowing acceptance of this practice. We happily assent to the collection and use of our information, and voraciously consume the products of its exploitation. An awareness of this practice however necessitates a response on our behalf: as the model of image capitalism reveals, our behaviour is the ultimate determinate of the practices and products of this system. Perhaps solidarity, and the combined rejection of the exploitation of categories of meaningless distinction ought to be our enacted message.

[newcatwords]

notes on "islands of the mind" by john gillis (ch. 8)

Ch. 8: "Islands Looming: The Imagined Isles of Global Tourism"

143: "Today the voyage to the islands serves more personal ends. Islands have become a source of personal and social identity for millions of people who never have been or ever will be resident islanders."

144: "The seaside remains the favored resort, particularly for families with children; and the appeal of islands is much more dependent on their beaches than their interiors."

"For the tourists, isolation, remoteness, and smallness are things that are prized and increasingly sought after. Because they are in short supply, their value is now enormously inflated. But for the vagabonds of this world, being from a small place and far from the center of the big world holds no allure. On the contrary, a small place, like Jamaica Kincaid's island of Antigua, is a badge of shame and a source of despair." (reference here to A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, 1998)

147: "In a media environment saturated with images from all parts of the world, people have become attached to places they have never seen and pasts they have never had."

148: "Today our most significant places are not those we dwell in physically but those we dwell on mentally. They are not physical locations, but cultural constructions, often kept at a distance. Roots are invariably found elsewhere; nor are house and home any longer the same. Among the world's more affluent classes, the strongest sense of home adheres not to our regular places of residence but to weekend and summer places. Even as American houses grow ever larger, they become ever emptier, in part because we no longer have time to spend there now that women as well as men are in the workforce. The house has become a space of vicarious experience rather than a place for actual living. Marjorie Garber has written that "we build exercise rooms instead of exercising, furnish libraries instead of reading, install professional kitchens instead of cooking." Space becomes a substitute for the time, "and the house becomes the unlived life...the place where we stage the life we wish we had time to live." (reference to Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses by Marjorie Garber, 2000) (please note that this book was written way before covid...surely the relationship to the house/home has changed significantly for many people since then)

151: "John Fowles remarks that a small island is a place "encompassable at a glance, walkable in a day, that related to the human body closer than any other geographical formation of land." "Fowles's own identification with his favorite Greek island developed only slowly: "Eventually it let me feel it was mine: which is the great siren call of islands--that they will not belong to any legal order, but offer to become part of all who tread and love them." (reference here to Islands by John Fowles, 1978)

"Islands are among the most photographed and painted places on earth; they are endlessly talked about, their stories told and histories recorded. We do our best to reduce islands to human scale regardless of their actual physical size. And because it is surrounded by water, an island is like a framed picture, appearing to its viewer as small but at the same time all the more comprehensible. The framing allows us the illusion that we know an island more thoroughly, lending weight to the modern notion that it is through the small that we can understand the large. An island appears to us as a microcosm, even when it bears no resemblance to the universe as a whole."

"Touristed islands are invariably described as small regardless of their size; and life there is not only scaled down but slowed down, especially by the mainlanders who have come to reside there."

152: "Downsizing is one of the ways we regain control of our lives. In the past twenty years, it has been accompanied by what Juliet Schor calls "downshifting", an effort to cope with a pervasive sense of time famine. (reference here to Overworked Americans: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure by Juliet Schor, 1991) The cottage cultures that have proliferated throughout the Western world all show the same characteristics: a desire for the simpler, slower life."

"It is one of the great paradoxes of our times that the value of remoteness increases even as modern communications make all parts of the world more accessible."

"The scarcity of physical remoteness has driven up its value and encouraged a kind of cultural counterfeiting. Because remoteness is nowhere, it can be anywhere. We have learned to produce what we can no longer find, often quite close to home."

152-3: "Remoteness is not a matter of physical distance because remoteness is not something measured in mile sor kilometers. No island is too near or too far to seem remote, for remoteness is in the eye of the beholder."

153: "Neither physical distance nor natural features automatically bestow remoteness. Instead, it is the product of social processes, of autobiography and histor, of economics and politics as well as a sociology, of which islands are a prime illustration. We have seen that the association of remoteness with islands is a quite recent phenomenon, something that is culturally constituted and maintained."

"Any place, however far, which is arrived at too quickly is automatically disqualified. Travel to the remote is invariably ritualized, a series of passages, each stretching the sense of temporal and spatial distance between the place of origin and the place of destination. Starting, stopping, and waiting are all part of the construction of remoteness. Getting there must be something of an adventure, a test, amounting often a trial that transports the traveler mentally as well as physically to a different world."

154: "Islands have become the contemporary world's favorite location for remoteness not because they are distant but because they necessitate the spatial practices that create a sense of remoteness."

"While those "from away" glory in being cut off, the locals become increasingly anxious about their isolation. It is they who demand better roads, more telephone lines, and regular ferry service."

155: "Remoteness is the product of a relationship between two places, but these places are unequal to one another. Today, powerful mainlands bestow remoteness on relatively powerless islands."

"If the absence of marked roads and straight paths is a sure sign of remoteness, the lack of wires is another. Remoteness requires that communications be not too easy or too direct, for the remote must be one step behind technologically."

156: "To the locals remoteness is like a one-way street. It allows the outside world to flood in but not allow access to what that world takes for granted. It heightens island residents' sense of backwardness, and they overcompensate by acquiring the modern conveniences that the newcomers are trying to escape from. While those "from away" glory in the simple life, the locals purchase faster boats, bigger cars, and all the modern conveniences money will buy, including the latest communications technology."

157: "As for the people who live year-round in resort communities, the summer is anything but playful. It is the time of the year when they work even harder to earn a good part of their annual income."

159: "Islands are now the sites of staged authenticity so convincing that tourists are fooled into thinking that they have access to life as it really was. Elements of island life have been packaged and commodified to profit from tourist dreams."

159-160: "It has become common to create a cultural island within the physical island to meet the tourists' expectations. When real isles do not fit the image of what an island should be, they can be remade. In a similar way, fenced-off tourist enclaves of Haiti and Jamaica produce versions of authentic island life while keeping the visitors from encountering the less savory side of those impoverished places."

162: "It is the deserted island that has always stirred the Western imagination. The very emptiness of the place allows free rein to thoughts and feelings that are otherwise inhibited and confused by the clutter of everyday existence. Great writers have turned again and again to the desert island as their space of creativity. Caliban and Crusoe would never have been credible as continentals."

164: "As it was in the past, the island journey is circular, a cultural practice dependent as much on departure as arrival, on the possibility of eternal return. The sacredness of any island, its perceived distance from the profane everyday world, is a product of ritualized repetitions, producing a sense of time as recoverable and repeatable. The intensity of the island experience depends on the certain knowledge that one must leave. A summer cottage loses its meaning when it becomes a permanent residence, for seasonality is fundamental to achieving remoteness. It is in absence rather than in residence that islands exercise their strongest hold over our imaginations."

"Ironically, the very meaning of the island depends on our transience. We come and go so it can remain the island in our mind that never changes, the fixed pivot of our turning world, our secular proof of eternity."

165: "For islands to serve the mainlands' latest cultural imperatives, they must be kept at a certain spatial and temporal distance. When he visited the Sea Islands off the coast of the Carolinas, Gunnar Hansen found that city folk who were purchasing land had no real intention of living there: "They just wanted the idea. They want the word ISLAND emblazoned on their stationary." (reference here to Islands at the Edge of Time: A journey to America's Barrier Islands by Gunnar Hansen, 1993) Even as physical islands retreat to the margins of history and geography, islands of the mind loom large in our consciousness of ourselves and the world around us. The less they are occupied, the more they preoccupy the modern imagination."

[scifigeneration]

Shallow impact: when crackpot conspiracy theories are touted as news, we all lose

by Peter Ellerton

Humans are fascinated by potential disasters, legends or prophecies that promise the end of the world. There is even a word for the study of such things: eschatology, from the Greek eschatos for “last” and -ology “to speak” or “to study”.

There is also something about the grandeur of such claims that makes them magnets for conspiracy theorists and religious fanatics.

But just because this fascination exists, it doesn’t mean it’s desirable to pander to it. Not when it’s without reason, and especially not in the name of science.

Alt-journalism

Recently the UK’s The Sun newspaper demonstrated a spectacular jettisoning of journalistic rigour to report that Earth was about to be struck by a giant rock and that the results of this collision would be catastrophic.

Now, this is disturbing for three reasons, none of which are do do with the possible consequences of such an impact.

Leaving aside appeals to alternative facts, the first reason this is disturbing is that this claim was published at all.

While there is indeed an object meandering in our general direction, it will pass us at a distance that is further than the closest approach of the planet Venus.

If you manage to sleep well with Venus in such proximity, this new body need not disturb you either. This bit of information is so easily found that ignoring it in the article speaks volumes about the intent of the piece.

And that’s leaving aside nonsensical sentences such as “it’s so huge you’ll be able to see it from Britain”, because seeing something from Britain seems more of an issue of positioning than size.

The second reason is that this tenuous thread of hysteria was linked to wider conspiracy theories, an act one can only assume was intended to give it more popular appeal, if not actual credibility.

One of those theories is that the object is a segment of the fabled planet Nibiru, long held to be the doom of humanity by an impressive array of crackpots.

Why such theories are so popular is an interesting question, but that they proliferate is beyond doubt.

A NASA scientist talks about the mythical planet Nibiru.

An unethical appeal to science

The third disturbing reason is that the heading ended with the tag “according to this scientist” (update: after the publication of this article, The Sun changed the title from “according to this scientist” to “according to wild online rumours”). Except there is no evidence for the existence of the “scientist” mentioned in the article, neither in academic literature or in university records.

Google seems to find no trace of his name prior to it appearing in a “news” story on a conspiracy theory website. And, of course, on the many Murdoch media outlets that picked up the The Sun’s story.

The phrasing of this headline implies this is a scientific claim, or at least a claim made by someone accepted into the community of scientists. As such, it seeks a justification in the rationality of science and taps into the public respect for scientists as agents of this collective rationality.

To make matters worse, The Sun is lending what residual respect it has as a newspaper to this supposed link. One can only imagine that in future articles it will be scientists, not The Sun, that will suffer the eye-rolling and tutting once this farcical prediction fails to materialise.

The intent of the article, therefore, is to produce unease at best, and panic at worst, by buttressing the claims of a clutch of hysterical conspiracy theorists through an appeal to the credibility of science and scientists and to deliberately conflate an actual event with an apocalyptic prediction.

This is as questionable a use of science as a doctor claiming that vaccines cause autism, or using scientific-sounding piffle to sell health products. The unethical use of science is not restricted to scientists.

It is true that the article calls this a belief held by “crackpot theorists”, but a lot of space is spent outlining this theory and weaving in some factual data. And this and an earlier article work up some dire consequences and a “warning” from NASA (not to mention some lovely graphics).

Credibility in freefall

By reporting unsubstantiated claims, by promoting potential narratives linking these claims to conspiracy theories and by suggesting that any or all of these have scientific credibility, The Sun shows its value, or lack thereof, as a source of news (though perhaps it sees a new market emerging in fake news).

It, along with the other media outlets who publish this dross, is the Ancient Aliens of the History Channel in print.

What else could it be?

The Sun is crossing the line that divides the reporting of conspiracy theories and the promotion of them. As the piece in question shows, it’s certainly not in the business of debunking them. As a news article, it represents the sloppiest of standards. In its willingness to degrade the credibility of science in an attempt to induce profitable hysteria, it is lamentable.

I can only imagine that, given the attitude of The Sun to climate scientists, diminishing public faith in science is to their advantage. Now there’s a conspiracy theory to get behind.

Peter Ellerton, Lecturer in Critical Thinking, The University of Queensland

This article was originally published on The Conversation.